A re-post from the Medievalists.net blog of a 2007 article in Medieval History Journal (10) by Anna Akasoy:
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Philip Slavin: How Great Was the Great Famine of 1314-22: Between Ecology and Institutions. Yale Economic History Workshop, October 19, (2009)
Abstract
There can be little doubt that the Great European Famine of 1314-22 was a single most severe food crisis in the late Middle Ages. The almost biblical flooding of 1314-17 led to a harsh subsistence crisis that deeply transformed European population, society, economy and ecology. Historians have long been aware of this in relation to the crop failures that occurred in these years, but their studies have tended to stand outside the analytical, and certainly statistical, frameworks that historians have created for assessing the impact of the catastrophe. The present working paper proposes the preliminary re-assessment of three important aspects of the Great Famine, from an English and Welsh perspective. The reason for concentrating on England and Wales is the fact that this region is abundant in a large corpus of statistical data, which either does not survive or does not exist for other regions in Northern Europe.
http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/echist/eh09/slavin-091026.pdf
archaeologist professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university
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As open access available:
“Sickness, Hunger, War, and Religion: Multidisciplinary Perspectives.”
Rachel Carson Center Perspectives 2012, Issue 3
Edited by Michaela Harbeck, Kristin von Heyking, and Heiner Schwarzberg
A peste, fame et bello libera nos, Domine!” Disease, hunger, war, and religion have shaped human existence over many centuries. This volume presents exciting syntheses between research in the fields of archaeology, anthropology, and history; moving from prehistory to the medieval period, six chapters look at humanity’s struggles with subsistence, religious belief, ill-health, death, and warfare in a variety of global landscapes, and show how, by sharing expertise and combining methodological approaches, we can advance our understanding of our common past.
available as pdf (pdf, 7.5 MB) (or printer-friendly version, pdf, 6.6 MB)
archaeologist professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university
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Ongoing analysis of the human skeletal remains from London by Sharon DeWitte reveals changes in health and lifespan in the wake of the Black Death, and adds to the growing body of bioarchaeological evidence that life for survivors was better.
http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/decoding-black-death.html
archaeologist professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university
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At http://www.zotero.org/groups/87194 we collect relevant publications.
You are invited to join this group, to contribute and to use this hopefully growing database.
archaeologist professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university
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Reposted from http://archaeologik.blogspot.de/2011/11/yersinia-pestis-missing-ecological-and.html
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| Yersinia pestis, Direct Fluorescent Antibody Stain (DFA), 200x Magnification (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s Public Health Image Library [PHIL], identification number #1918 [public domain]). |
archaeologist professor in medieval and postmedieval archaeology at Bamberg university
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These are two very useful papers that deal with the impact of the early 14th century cattle plagues on English manors:
Newfield, T. 2009. A cattle panzootic in early fourteenth-century Europe. Agricultural History Review 57, 155-190.
Slavin, P. in press. The great bovine pestilence and its economic and environmental consequences in England and Wales, 1318-1350. Economic History Review DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2011.00625.x
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