Steve Ashby
I'm an early-medieval artefacts specialist, with broad interests in human-object-animal-landscape interactions. I've spent the last 7 or 8 years looking at Viking-Age hair combs, and my current areas of interest come out of this work. Research areas include personal display and the social content of technology. More generally, I'm interested in the following:
(1) Social archaeology of the Viking Age, particularly regarding environment
(2) Early medieval worked bone and antler
(3) Integration of scientific method and anthropological theory
(4) Metal-detecting and archaeology
(1) Social archaeology of the Viking Age, particularly regarding environment
(2) Early medieval worked bone and antler
(3) Integration of scientific method and anthropological theory
(4) Metal-detecting and archaeology
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Papers by Steve Ashby
particularly, it discusses certain aspects of the relationship between deer and
people in this period. It is clear that deer held a particular importance to the people
of early-medieval Europe, and though on multiple grounds a case could be made for their symbolic, cosmological, or ritual significance, that is not the tack taken here.
Rather, my concern is with the practical and economic significance of deer. Quite apart from its role as a provider of high quality meat, and as the elite’s game animal of choice, probably even before the Norman Conquest, the deer was also the source of a key raw material: antler.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Everyday products in the Middle Ages: Crafts, Consumption and the Individual in Northern Europe c. AD 800-1600: An Introduction
Steven P. Ashby, Gitte Hansen, and Irene Baug
Chapter 2: ‘With staff in hand, and dog at heel’? What did it mean to be an ‘Itinerant’ artisan?
Steven P. Ashby
Chapter 3: Itinerant Craftspeople in 12th Century Bergen, Norway - Aspects of Their Social Identities
Gitte Hansen
Chapter 4: Urban craftspeople at Viking-age Kaupang
Unn Pedersen
Chapter 5. Crafts in the landscape of the powerless
A combmaker’s workshop at Viborg Søndersø AD 1020-1024
Jette Linaa
Chapter 6. Bone-workers in medieval Viljandi, Estonia: comparison of finds from downtown and the Order’s castle
Heidi Luik
Chapter 7: Consumers and Artisans: Marketing Amber and Jet in the Early Medieval British Isles
Carolyn Coulter
Chapter 8. The home-made shoe, a glimpse of a hidden, but most ‘affordable’, craft.
Quita Mould
Chapter 9. Fashion and Necessity. Anglo-Norman leatherworkers and changing markets
Quita Mould and Esther Cameron
Chapter 10. Tracing the nameless actors: Leatherworking and production of leather artefacts in the town of Turku and Turku Castle, SW Finland
Janne Harjula
Chapter 11. Ambiguous Stripes: a Sign for Fashionable Wear in Medieval Tartu
Riina Rammo,
Chapter 12. Silk finds from Oseberg: Production and distribution of high status markers across ethnic boundaries
Marianne Vedeler
Chapter 13. The soapstone vessel production and trade of Agder and its actors
Torbjørn P. Schou
Chapter 14. Actors in quarrying. Production and distribution of quernstones and bakestones during the Viking Age and the Middle Ages
Irene Baug
Chapter 15. The role of Laach Abbey in the medieval quarrying and stone trade
Meinrad Pohl
Chapter 16. Iron producers in Hedmark in the medieval period - who were they?
Bernt Rundberget
Chapter 17. What did the blacksmiths do in Swedish towns? Some new results
Hans Andersson
Chapter 18. The Iron Age blacksmith, simply a craftsman?
Roger Jørgensen
Chapter 19. Bohemian Glass in the North: Producers, distributors and consumers of late medieval vessel glass
Georg Haggrén
Chapter 20. If sherds could tell: imported ceramics from the Hanseatic hinterland in Bergen, Norway. Producers, traders and consumers: who were they, and how were they connected?
Volker Demuth
Chapter 21. Marine trade and transport-related crafts and their actors: People without archaeology?
Natascha Mehler
particularly, it discusses certain aspects of the relationship between deer and
people in this period. It is clear that deer held a particular importance to the people
of early-medieval Europe, and though on multiple grounds a case could be made for their symbolic, cosmological, or ritual significance, that is not the tack taken here.
Rather, my concern is with the practical and economic significance of deer. Quite apart from its role as a provider of high quality meat, and as the elite’s game animal of choice, probably even before the Norman Conquest, the deer was also the source of a key raw material: antler.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Everyday products in the Middle Ages: Crafts, Consumption and the Individual in Northern Europe c. AD 800-1600: An Introduction
Steven P. Ashby, Gitte Hansen, and Irene Baug
Chapter 2: ‘With staff in hand, and dog at heel’? What did it mean to be an ‘Itinerant’ artisan?
Steven P. Ashby
Chapter 3: Itinerant Craftspeople in 12th Century Bergen, Norway - Aspects of Their Social Identities
Gitte Hansen
Chapter 4: Urban craftspeople at Viking-age Kaupang
Unn Pedersen
Chapter 5. Crafts in the landscape of the powerless
A combmaker’s workshop at Viborg Søndersø AD 1020-1024
Jette Linaa
Chapter 6. Bone-workers in medieval Viljandi, Estonia: comparison of finds from downtown and the Order’s castle
Heidi Luik
Chapter 7: Consumers and Artisans: Marketing Amber and Jet in the Early Medieval British Isles
Carolyn Coulter
Chapter 8. The home-made shoe, a glimpse of a hidden, but most ‘affordable’, craft.
Quita Mould
Chapter 9. Fashion and Necessity. Anglo-Norman leatherworkers and changing markets
Quita Mould and Esther Cameron
Chapter 10. Tracing the nameless actors: Leatherworking and production of leather artefacts in the town of Turku and Turku Castle, SW Finland
Janne Harjula
Chapter 11. Ambiguous Stripes: a Sign for Fashionable Wear in Medieval Tartu
Riina Rammo,
Chapter 12. Silk finds from Oseberg: Production and distribution of high status markers across ethnic boundaries
Marianne Vedeler
Chapter 13. The soapstone vessel production and trade of Agder and its actors
Torbjørn P. Schou
Chapter 14. Actors in quarrying. Production and distribution of quernstones and bakestones during the Viking Age and the Middle Ages
Irene Baug
Chapter 15. The role of Laach Abbey in the medieval quarrying and stone trade
Meinrad Pohl
Chapter 16. Iron producers in Hedmark in the medieval period - who were they?
Bernt Rundberget
Chapter 17. What did the blacksmiths do in Swedish towns? Some new results
Hans Andersson
Chapter 18. The Iron Age blacksmith, simply a craftsman?
Roger Jørgensen
Chapter 19. Bohemian Glass in the North: Producers, distributors and consumers of late medieval vessel glass
Georg Haggrén
Chapter 20. If sherds could tell: imported ceramics from the Hanseatic hinterland in Bergen, Norway. Producers, traders and consumers: who were they, and how were they connected?
Volker Demuth
Chapter 21. Marine trade and transport-related crafts and their actors: People without archaeology?
Natascha Mehler
Using interdisciplinary methodologies, this paper begins with a synthesis of textual and archaeological evidence for judicially-prescribed maiming and execution. This evidence is used to highlight new details of the frameworks of the discrete English and continental Scandinavian systems of judicial violence, shedding light on the structures, settings, and motivations of the systems in question. These syntheses and comparisons clarify the picture of how the social technology of judicial violence operated in each society. Using these newly synthesised findings as a sort of groundwork, the paper then moves on to demonstrate their usefulness in a case study of the punitive attitude prevailing during the multicultural reign of Knútr the Great. This particular period was chosen as a case study for several reasons: first, it was characterised by especial ideological interaction between England and Scandinavia; second, it had a demonstrably changing landscape of juridical attitudes; and finally, it is rich in textual and archaeological evidence. This paper will demonstrate how these features make Knútr’s reign a particularly productive case for considering judicially-violent punishment.