Medieval Technology

This is the summary of my dissertation (Medeltidens åerbruk), published in 1985, and the public defense of the dissertation was in January 1986. The goal was to give a detailed description of agriculture, see diagram 6, page 155. This then led to the interpretation about technical complex, which I later further developed. This interpretation is thus based on an inductive approach rather than a deductive – though I of course was steered by general ideas of an economic base and small scale technology as decisive. The cover is one of my favorite pictures, showing plowing in the fall after harvest when animals graze the meadows - it is  from 1437, Tensta, Uppland and shows Adam / Cain working.

Обнаружены и изучены следы применения литерных пуансонов при производстве штемпелей небольшой группы восточноевропейских куфических подражаний рубежа IX и X в. Проведена параллель с фрагментом скандинавской подковообразной фибулы, орнаментированной при помощи подобных куфических пуансонов.

Aleksey Golemikhov. On the punch technique of manufacture of dies for East European imitations group at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. April 17, 2017. Electronic version.
Discovered and examined the use of lettered punches in the manufacturing of dies of a small group of East European Kufic imitations at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. A parallel is shown with a fragment of Scandinavian penannular brooch ornamented with similar Kufic punches.

This chapter deals with the origins of stained glass: why, when, and what was used to screen the windows in buildings before c. year 1000. Archaeological finds made in the last few decades have confirmed what was hinted by textual sources and by occasional finds: glass was indeed employed in the windows before the High Middle Ages, although it was cut in geometrical shapes and did not show any painting. While Roman and late Roman buildings – baths, private dwellings, then Christian basilicas – have shown remains of geometrical panes, the earliest instances of figurative stained-glass windows, made with panels cut like sectilia, date to the early eight century and have been found in Merovingian France and Anglo-Saxon England. A large fragment of what is by now the earliest figurative window in the West with its original leading, in which pieces of coloured glass are held together to create the bust of Christ – still like an opus sectile, with no painting on it – has come to light in 2007 in a central-Italian monastery destroyed in 881 AD. The appearance of the painting called grisaille, with which it was possible to achieve more detailed figurative designs than simply by juxtaposing geometrically cut panes, is instead to be localized in the northern Carolingian domain, and dated after the mid-eighth century. The contemporary evolution of window screens in Byzantium and in Islam will also be taken into account in a comparative approach.

The Dull Gret in Ghent, 15th century sister bombard  of the scottisch Mons Meg and the Swiss Basel Canon, has to be situated in the evolution of the medieval gun powder artillery and in the military history  of the ducs of Burgondy.
This book is the result of a 25 years study of archives and of literature on the subject, it describes the methods used for the technical examination and the restoration of the bombard and the  results of the inquiries until now.

This book is the most comprehensive empirical study to date of the social and technical aspects of milling during the ancient and medieval periods.

Drawing on the latest archaeological evidence and historical studies, the book examines the chronological development and technical details of handmills, beast mills, watermills and windmills from the first millennium BCE to c. 1500. It discusses the many and varied uses to which mills were turned in the civilisations of Rome, China, Islam and Europe, and the many types of mill that existed.

The book also includes comparative regional studies of the social and economic significance of milling, and tackles several important historiographical issues, such as whether technological stagnation was a characteristic of late Antiquity, whether there was an 'industrial revolution' in the European middle ages based on waterpower, and how contemporary studies in the social shaping of technology can shed light on the study of pre-modern technology.

Bruno Jané et Philippe Schiesser, Les outils monétaires du Musée de La Cour d’or - Metz Métropole et les techniques de fabrications du « Grand Est », actes du colloque coorganisé par la SENA et le Musée de La Cour d’Or – Metz Métropole « Le monnayage à Metz et en Pays lorrain de l'Antiquité à nos jours » du 27 au 30 septembre 2018, Recherches et travaux de la Société d’Études Numismatiques et Archéologiques 9, 2019, p. 195-222.

The rebuilding of Westminster Hall by Richard II in the last years of his reign is the supreme expression of his kingship and resulted in one of the most spectacular creations of the medieval offi ce of works-to be seen alongside the Wilton Diptych as a measure of the artistic refinement of the age. As the king's great hall in the Palace of Westminster, it performed major functions in every sphere of national life and was the backdrop for key events and for long the home of the central courts of justice. The paper discusses the design and technology of the roof carpentry.

In 1459, the manuscript called Thott 290 2° (now stored in Copenhagen) was completed at the request Hans Talhoffer. Most of its teachings related to the myriad forms of fighting that were the trade of a fencing master. However, modern readers paging through it for the first time are quick to notice an anomaly: 36 pages toward the beginning of the manuscript contain fantastic depictions of complex war machines, exotic inventions, and strange scenarios. They tend to conclude that Talhoffer must have been an inventor or technologist, his generation’s Leonardo da Vinci. What is not apparent is that these are not creations of Talhoffer at all; they are a remnant of Konrad Kyeser’s treatise _Bellifortis_ and predate Talhoffer’s manuscript by over fifty years. To date, there has been no substantial work on _Bellifortis_ in English, so my intent with this article is threefold: 1. To give a sense of Kyeser’s life and place in history; 2. To briefly outline the origin and evolution of _Bellifortis_ and its tradition; 3. To review the contents of the 7-chapter _Bellifortis_, with attention to the parts found in Copenhagen.

Η παρούσα μελέτη αποσκοπεί στη συγκριτική παρουσίαση και την εξαγωγή συμπερασμάτων σχετικά με την τυπολογία, τα τεχνολογικά χαρακτηριστικά και την οργάνωση του χώρου των εργαστηρίων κεραμικής που έχουν εντοπιστεί ανασκαφικά στον ελλαδικό χώρο και χρονολογούνται από τον 4ο έως τον 15ο αιώνα.

This paper aims at the comparative presentation and the inference of conclusions about the typology, the technological aspects and the spatial organization of the light industrial ceramic production workshops that have been excavated in Greece and have been dated from 4th to 15 th century.

A paper given at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in 2018 at the session "New Perspectives on Medieval Combat and Weaponry". It argues, in brief, for the advantages and disadvantages in developing a typology to better classify medieval and early modern crossbows.

This new standard textbook examines in detail portable timepieces ('watches') in the 15th and in particular 16th centuries. For this purpose, it gives all known preserved pieces of German and French production with over 800 pictures and 3D computer tomographies.

For the first time, this allows for a detailed analysis and comparison of movement structures, decorative and constructive elements.

Furthermore, spring-driven timepieces in paintings and art and in archives are examined as well as their accessories (keys, hands, cases). This completes the picture of late medieval and early Renaissance time measurement. Text in GERMAN, 500+ pages, 800+ pictures, hardcover, available on Amazon.de

The organisation of textile production in medieval England underwent a dramatic transition between roughly the 10th and 12th centuries. These changes, which include the formation of weaving guilds and the evolution of weaving as a male-dominated trade, are typically attributed to the adoption of a new, more efficient style of loom. In order to critically examine the role of technology during this transitional period, an experiment was designed to compare the relative efficiency of two different types of loom in use during the Middle Ages. The experiment yielded interesting timed results and experiential observations, which indicate a difference in the skill level required by each loom, suggesting a complicated relationship between gender, new technology, and the perception of skill in medieval England.

We investigate several early Nuremberg clocks and archival evidence for clockmaking in the 14th to 16th centuries. This allows us to corroborate several hypotheses about dissemination of horological knowledge in the sixteenth century and gain new insights on well-known clockmakers

Traction trebuchets were medieval rotating-beam siege engines; they were powered by a human team pulling ropes and hurled stone projectiles from a sling. I have reconstructed and tested a full-sized traction trebuchet in order to find out exactly how they worked and how they differed from other kinds of mechanical siege artillery.

The remains of medieval ore mining operations uniquely attest to the historic cultural landscapes of many regions in central Europe; the same goes for the Ore Mountains of Saxony and Bohemia and the Bohemian- Moravian Highlands in the Czech Republic. The development of these mining regions was linked to ore deposits mined with varying degrees of success since the 12th and 13th centuries. Recent archaeological and archaeometallurgical investigations involving treatment and metallurgical plants abandoned since the Middle Ages as well as mining settlements in Saxony and the Czech Republic have unearthed fresh findings on the origins of non-ferrous metalworking activity in the region. Whether or not they evolved into mining towns or fell back into desolation, the picture of these early mining settlements comprises a very broad spectrum of building and house remnants which are not easily interpreted on site. Now our findings have been confronted by the results of recent excavations in Dippoldiswalde (Saxony) and the Kremsiger in the Ore Mountains of Bohemia as well as geomagnetic surveys of abandoned mining settlements in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands; in the field of mining complexes dating from the High and Late Middle Ages, these have revealed surprisingly extensive settlements with highly developer mining structures.

Publishers blurb:

The crossbow is an iconic weapon of the Middle Ages and, alongside the longbow, one of the most effective ranged weapons of the pre-gunpowder era. Unfortunately, despite its general fame it has been decades since an in-depth history of the medieval crossbow has been published, which is why Stuart Ellis-Gorman’s detailed, accessible, and highly illustrated study is so valuable.

The Medieval Crossbow approaches the history of the crossbow from two directions. The first is a technical study of the design and construction of the medieval crossbow, the many different kinds of crossbows used during the Middle Ages, and finally a consideration of the relationship between crossbows and art.

The second half of the book explores the history of the crossbow, from its origins in ancient China to its decline in sixteenth-century Europe. Along the way it explores the challenges in deciphering the crossbow’s early medieval history as well as its prominence in warfare and sport shooting in the High and Later Middle Ages.

This fascinating book brings together the work of a wide range of accomplished crossbow scholars and incorporates the author’s own original research to create an account of the medieval crossbow that will appeal to anyone looking to gain an insight into one of the most important weapons of the Middle Ages.

In this article we give an overview of watchmaking at the time of Peter Henlein in the  rst half of the sixteenth century. We present a stackfreed mechanism that is signi cantly older than previously known pieces and hence brings forward the possible development of  at watches to the  rst third of the sixteenth century. We investigate the pricing structure of clocks and watches from Nuremberg between 1521 and 1541 and present archival evidence to link a remarkable timepiece in the British Museum to the famous early watchmaker Peter Henlein of Nuremberg

Resumen: Más allá de la simple existencia, se sabía muy poco de la explotación medieval de los yacimientos férricos del Moncayo. El presente estudio demuestra que se remonta, de forma probada, al siglo XIII, aunque es muy posible que sus raíces se retrotraigan, como mínimo, al siglo anterior. Reproduciendo con notable fidelidad los grandes flujos de avance y retroceso de la minería europea e integrando las novedades tecnológicas en el ámbito de la forja que iban sucediéndose, la producción de hierro del Moncayo alcanza cotas interesantes a fines de la Edad Media. Estos resultados, aunque modestos en comparación con los de las grandes áreas férricas del Cantábrico, debieron tener un efecto visible en la economía regional.

Palabras clave: hierro, siderurgia, minería, Moncayo, Aragón.

Abstract: We have few information about working on iron beds in the area of mount Moncayo in the Middle Ages, except for its only existence. This  study shows that those works can be proved for XIIIth century and,  perhaps they have some roots, at least, in the previous century. The iron production in mount Moncayo reaches interesting levels at the end of Middle Ages. It reproduces accurately the movements of European mining, going ahead or going back, and it integrates technological advances that were made in industrial sector. These results, even though they seem not very big, -if we compare them with the rest of great mining areas in the Cantabric coast-, must have been quite profitable for the local economy.

Keywords: Iron, iron industry, mining, Moncayo, Aragon.

Despite the usual historiographical assumptions, the evidence strongly contradicts the presence of Muslim specialists in planning and directing the construction of major irrigation works in Valencia and other Iberian Mediterranean regions after the Christian conquest. To the contrary, those in charge of such works were always Christian masons and levellers frequently coming from areas alien to Andalusi hydraulic “heritage”. These technicians were organised in crafts which, in fact, excluded Muslims, and which responded to the requirements of the social powers which emerged following the conquest. As a consequence, the standing ideas on the transmission of Arabo-Muslim hydraulic techniques to the irrigation practices of the new colonists need to be revised.

In a well-known English poem of about 1500, a carpenter's tools debate their contribution to their master's livelihood. This short note considers once more the identity of some of the more obscure tools, known only by their Middle English names.

This paper utilizes approximately 75 annual accounts compiled between 1322 and 1422 for a Suffolk manor owned by the Abbey of Bury St. Edmund's. The "Custus Molendini" panels are used to discover the terminology involved in specifying parts and materials involved in the mill's construction and upkeep. 134 relevant words are discussed and their implications for understanding mill technologies of the period adduced.

We describe in detail two 15th century gothic domestic clocks in the Musée Charles VII in Mehun sur Yèvre. One of them is remarkable for being one of the very few courtly domestic clocks with exceptionally lavish decoration. The other one is unique in maintaining its original curved foliot with curved pallets. Text in French language.