Items18The creator’s order
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The Bright AgesA blue and gold ceiling in Ravenna gives Gabriele and Perry a place to begin. They consider how the mosaic was made and ask whether Galla Placidia commissioned the chapel’s decoration. The book moves through episodes like this one to keep the period’s art, movement, and political violence in view…0 - 2
The Golden RhinocerosA small gold rhinoceros from a burial at Mapungubwe is one clue to the history Fauvelle pieces together. He brings archaeological finds and written accounts into the same book, traveling through places including Nubia, Ghâna, and Zimbabwe. The short chapters give each piece of evidence room to show…0 - 3
The Light Ages (2020)Published Jan 1, 2020A manuscript on an instrument for finding the positions of planets leads Falk to John of Westwyk, a fourteenth-century English monk. Through his life, readers encounter the astrolabe, practical astronomy, and the scholarship of a monastery. It makes the instruments worth paying attention to, right…0 - 4
A medieval life (1999)Published Jan 1, 1999Bennett reconstructs the life of Cecilia Penifader, an English peasant who lived before the Black Death. Records from her village make it possible to look closely at landholding, work, and the ties between neighbors. The book also explains how historians make sense of a person’s life when most…0 - 5
Cahokia (2009)★ 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2009Earthworks and a vast central plaza survive near present-day St. Louis, where a Native American city flourished roughly a thousand years ago. Pauketat brings together evidence for large feasts and ways of observing the sky. The city gives readers a point of comparison with what was happening across…0 - 6
The Silk Road (2012)Published Jan 1, 2012Some records from the Silk Road survived because discarded paper was reused in burial garments. Hansen follows the evidence into individual towns, where letters, legal documents, and travelers’ accounts give trade a human scale. The stops show how people kept goods and ideas moving across routes…0 - 7
Byzantium (2006)★ 10.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2006Herrin tells the story of the eastern Roman Empire through short chapters on subjects including imperial government, the arguments over religious images, and the historian Anna Komnene. Constantinople anchors the account. You can read a chapter on one practice or person and see how it fits into a…0 - 8
Medieval Women (2012)Published Jan 1, 2012Eileen Power’s lectures move between the worlds of noblewomen, peasants, townswomen, and nuns. Her account puts ideas about women beside evidence about how they earned a living and what their households and institutions expected of them. The separate chapters make it easy to compare lives that…0 - 9
Medieval Bodies (2018)Published Jan 1, 2018Hartnell moves from head to toe to explore what bodies meant in places including Cairo, Constantinople, and Canterbury. A king’s heart could carry political meaning, and a wound could be understood through both medicine and faith. The illustrated approach lets you see how differently the same part…0 - 10
Children of Ash and Elm (2020)★ 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2020Silk caps found in York and Lincoln help Price recover the material world of Viking Age Scandinavians and the places they reached. He gives religion, storytelling, and trade room alongside raiding. Read it for what excavated objects can add to the written accounts left by outsiders.0
