Group items tagged

"The CHSSP is proud to introduce our third Blueprint unit: Sites of Encounter in the Medieval World, funded through the generous support of the Social Science Research Council and the British Council.  Drawing on new historical scholarship about the Mediterranean world, maritime technology transfers, travel narratives and multicultural trade cities, the unit is framed around the investigation question:  How did sites of encounter change the medieval world?"

"In the Navigatio sancti Brandani, the ocean voyage is imagined as a liminal phenomenon, suspended between earthly life in the terrestrial world and paradise, envisaged as an oceanic island, beyond it. Many famous medieval maps, such as the late thirteenth-century Hereford Map and its near-contemporary, the no longer extant Ebstorf world map, can be adduced to support the ocean's conceptually peripheral status in this period. Nevertheless, the genesis of the paper on which this article is based lay in a simple observation: that in a corpus of detailed world maps drawn in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries - the same period in which the Voyage of St Brendan and texts like it were circulating across Europe - the notion of the ocean sea as a   peripheral phenomenon is repeatedly and graphically counteracted."

Springing from the Classical Atlas Project and the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, Pleiades is a historical gazetteer and more. It associates names and locations in time and provides structured information about the quality and provenance of these entities. There is also a graph in Pleiades: names and locations are collected within places and these collections are associated with other geographically connected places. Pleiades also serves as a vocabulary for talking about the geography of the ancient world within Linked Data sets and is referenced by research projects such as Google Ancient Places and PELAGIOS.

"There are, in other words, no perfect maps-just maps that (more-or-less) perfectly capture our understanding of the world at discrete moments in time. In his new book, A History of the World in 12 Maps, Brotton masterfully catalogs the maps that tell us most about pivotal periods in human history. I asked him to walk me through the 12 maps he selected (you can click on each map below to enlarge it)."

Course | History of the World to 1500 CE This course presents and at the same time critiques a narrative world history from prehistoric times to 1500. The purpose of the course is to convey an understanding of how this rapidly growing field of history is being approached at three different levels: the narrative textbook level, the theoretical-conceptual level, and through discussion sections, the research level.

Thousands of  painters, craftsmen, patrons of the arts perished during the mid 14th century. The heart of the cultural world was torn open.  The horrors of the black death pervaded all aspects of Medieval culture and especially art. The effects were lasting, bringing a somber darkness to visual art, literature, and music. The dreadful trauma of this era instigated the imaginations of writers and painters in worrying and unsettling ways for decades to follow. The insecurity of daily survival created a atmosphere of gloom and doom influencing artist to move away from optimistic themes and turn to images of Hell, Satan and the Grim Reaper. Many painters simply gave up art believing that it was hopeless to try and create beauty in a hellish world.

"Introduction: This essay is concerned not with the formation of all European states of the first millenium A.D., but to highlight and then briefly explore a recurring pattern of historical development on the fringes of the great empires of the era. In the Germanic world beyond the frontiers of the Roman state in the first half of the period, and later in the Slavic world bordering the Carolingian and Ottonian states in the second, there emerged, over time, even more substantial political entities. This paper will compare the processes of development in each case, to establish that they were indeed parallel, and then concentrate upon causation. Wht should history have repeated itself in this way?"

"TimeMaps is best described as a mash-up of encyclopedia, timeline, and map elements. TimeMaps' world map is designed as an overview of the development of the world's societies. The map's timeline begins in 3500BC and concludes in 2005AD. Click on the timeline's icons or on the map's icons to learn more about each place represented on the map. " (from Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers site)

This course presents Jack E. Maxfield's "A Comprehensive Outline of World History" with an alternative organization of material by region and across eras within a region.

Medieval World Websites - links list with descriptions

The plague also affected religion and art, which became very dark and preoccupied with death. Many people believed that the Black Death came from God's extreme anger at the world. A group of fanatics, called Flagellants, inflicted various punishments on themselves in an attempt to atone for the world's sins--and end the disease. An artistic style known as the danse macabre depicted skeletons and corpses mingling with the living during happy occasions. These actions reminded the people of the overriding sense of doom that shadowed their lives because of the Black Death.

"Conflict History [conflicthistory.com], developed by TecToys, summarizes all major human conflicts onto a single world map - from the historical wars way before the birth of Christ, until the drone attacks in Pakistan that are still happening today. The whole interactive map is build upon data retrieved from Google and Freebase open data services."

"The Ryhiner map collection is one of the most valuable and outstanding collections of the world. It consists of more than 16,000 maps, charts, plans and views from the 16th to the 18th century, covering the whole globe. Together with the 20,000 manuscript maps of the State Archives, the Canton of Berne owns not only a local, but a worldwide geographical memory. It's our duty to preserve this cultural heritage and make it accessible."

The open source tool turns the vast history of the universe -- 13.8 billion years of information -- into an interactive, visual timeline. Features enable users to zoom in and out as they explore curated content about, for example, the history of life on Earth, extinction of the dinosaurs, or causes of World War I. Users also can author and share their own timelines about specific events or eras.

Interactive Map

" What did medieval cities look like? Or more precisely, how did medieval people depict cities? Here are 15 images from the Middle Ages that show how the urban world looked like."

"Archaeology grad student Nir Ortal explains the brief 3000 year old history of The Temple Mount, one of the most important religious sites in the world."

" The map of the medieval world was constantly changing, as various kingdoms, principalities and states fought each other and redrew borders. In Europe and western Asia there were many states that rose to power and then later fell. Some of the most well-known ones include the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Abbasid Caliphate. Here, we take a look at 10 of the lesser known kingdoms that no longer exist."

"The deadly assault on Jacob's Ford was launched at dawn, on Thursday 29 August 1179. The leader of the attack was the the Muslim warrior Saladin, b.1137?-d.1193 (known as Salah ad-Din in Arabic), the Sultan of Egypt and history's great opponent of the Crusaders."