Environment, Society and the Black Death

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Environment, Society and the Black Death Page 1

by Desconhecido




  Published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by

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  Front cover:

  Wall painting from 1437 in Tensta Church, Sweden.

  (Photo: Per Lagerås)

  Contents

  Preface

  Part I. Introduction

  1. An interdisciplinary approach

  Per Lagerås

  2. Current knowledge on the late-medieval crisis

  Per Lagerås

  3. Societal crisis and environmental change

  Per Lagerås

  Part II. Empirical studies

  4. Abandonment, agricultural change and ecology

  Per Lagerås, Anna Broström, Daniel Fredh, Hans Linderson, Anna Berg, Leif Björkman, Tove Hultberg, Sven Karlsson, Matts Lindbladh, Florence Mazier, Ulf Segerström & Eva Sköld

  5. Change, desertion and survival – an archaeology of the late-medieval crisis

  Lars Ersgård

  6. Living conditions in times of plague

  Caroline Arcini, T. Douglas Price, Maria Cinthio, Leena Drenzel, Mats Andersson, Bodil Persson, Hanna Menander, Maria Vretemark, Anna Kjellström, Rickard Hedvall & Göran Tagesson

  Part III. Conclusions in a wider perspective

  7. Environment–society interactions

  Per Lagerås

  8. Studying the late-medieval crisis – reflections on research perspectives

  Lars Ersgård

  9. Epidemics in a social context

  Caroline Arcini

  10. Summary of conclusions

  Per Lagerås

  References

  Author presentations

  Appendix 1. Pollen sites

  Appendix 2. Osteological stature data

  Appendix 3. Isotope data

  Preface

  The studies of the late-medieval crisis presented in this book build on the work of many colleagues from different disciplines. We have had the privilege to compile and explore data produced during innumerable hours in the field and behind the microscope. In many cases the original investigations did not primarily deal with the late-medieval crisis, but due to their high quality and careful documentation, they make important contributions to the compilations and discussions presented here. To interpret and reinterpret old and new data from new perspectives have been a truly exciting and rewarding endeavour.

  While completing this book we have benefited from valuable discussions with many colleagues and friends. First of all we want to thank Janken Myrdal at the Division of Agrarian History, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. His research on the late-medieval crisis is of major importance and has been a great source of inspiration for us. Several others have shared their expertise and we want to especially thank Torbjörn Ahlström at the Dept. of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University, Frank Götmark at the Dept of Biological & Environmental sciences, University of Gothenburg, Olof Karsvall and Alf Ericsson at the Division of Agrarian History, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Örjan Kardell at the Dept. of Language Studies, Umeå University, and Ola Magnell at the Swedish National Heritage Board.

  We also want to thank Conny Johansson Herven and Lars Salminen at the Kulturen Museum in Lund for giving access to skeleton material, Emma Foberg at ATA Swedish National Heritage Board for providing archived data, Jesper Boldsen at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Southern Denmark, and Chatarina Ödman at Malmö Museer for providing unpublished archaeological data, Timothy Hatton at the Australian National University for providing modern stature data, Adam Bolander and Katja Meissner for tree-ring data handling, and Henrik Pihl and Staffan Hyll for help with graphics. We also want to thank Hélène Borna-Ahlkvist at the Swedish National Heritage Board, UV Syd, for hosting our project and providing excellent research facilities.

  The research was funded by the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish National Heritage Board.

  Per Lagerås

  Lund, January 2015

  PART I

  INTRODUCTION

  1.

  An interdisciplinary approach

  Per Lagerås

  The late-medieval crisis was one of the most dramatic episodes in Europe’s history. Characterised by significant population drop, land desertion and social unrest, it was a true societal crisis with few counterparts before and after. The crisis started in the fourteenth century and lasted for several generations, in many areas for more than a century, before the negative chain of events was broken and society slowly started to recover. In one way or the other the crisis affected every corner of society, from town to countryside and from agricultural farmlands to the most remote and sparsely populated woodlands. In a longterm perspective it was an anomaly to the predominant trend of expansion of settlement and agriculture and a break in the exponentially rising graph of population numbers. But to see the late-medieval crisis only as an interruption – as a temporary phase before things went back to normal – would be to diminish its historical role. The crisis had long-lasting consequences for society, for instance by changing the economic and political relationship between social classes, by agricultural change and by stimulating technological development and increased consumption and trade. In a wider perspective it laid the foundation for the strong expansion that characterised many countries in the sixteenth century, and in the long run the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Period.

  Closely linked to the crisis was the Black Death, the plague pandemic that ravaged Europe, the Middle East and North Africa in 1346–1353. Even though parts of Europe witnessed decline already some centuries before, in particular after a series of crop failures and famines in 1315–1322, most authors agree that the Black Death was the single most important factor behind the dramatic population drop and its social and economic consequences. Killing about half of the population in only a few years, the pandemic for good reason has been called the worst disaster that has ever hit Europe. The first strike was followed by several recurring outbreaks during the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, and sporadic outbreaks continued to haunt the population until the early eighteenth century. In spite of these later outbreaks, of which some were devastating but often of a more local or regional character, the Black Death of the mid-fourteenth century was to be remembered as something special, unrivalled in force an
d mortality.

  Obviously the story of the late-medieval crisis and the Black Death is a sad story – a story about disease, death and abandonment. But it is also a story about survival, new strategies and systemic change. Over the years the plague pandemic itself, as well as the wider context of the late-medieval crisis, has attracted a lot of research, and in particular the possible relationships between different changes and processes during and after the crisis are the subject of continuous debate. Research has so far mostly been based on historical sources, i.e. written documents of different kinds. These range from literary chronicles giving colourful testimonies of the plague, via letters and charters to manorial accounts and land registers. Most documents are of an economical character, providing evidence on transactions, rents and expenses, which may be used to interpret different aspects of the crisis. The character and amount of the written sources vary greatly between countries and influence the direction of the discussion. To some degree non-documentary evidence, in particular from archaeology, has contributed to the discussion, but still research on the late-medieval crisis in most countries is very much based on written documents and the dominant approach is that of economic history.

  Fig. 1. Map showing provinces in present-day Sweden. During most of the Middle Ages the provinces of Halland, Scania and Blekinge belonged to Denmark whereas Bohuslän, Härjedalen and Jämtland belonged to Norway. The study presented in this book uses material from within present-day Sweden, including these provinces

  In this book we take a deeper look at some non-documentary sources and what they may contribute to the discussion on the late-medieval crisis. Our studies focus on southern Sweden (Fig. 1), but our interpretations and conclusions are discussed in a wider European context. In Sweden the impact of the late-medieval crisis has been upgraded during the last 15 years. According to earlier research, for instance within The Scandinavian Research Project on Deserted Farms and Villages, Sweden was hit by the plague and experienced a severe crisis, but in comparison to other parts of Western Europe it seemed to have come off relatively well.1

  Later research, in particular by Janken Myrdal, emphasises that Sweden was hit hard and that it witnessed significant population drop during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.2 However, in comparison to most European countries the documentary source material from the time is scarce. Myrdal’s conclusions are based on a broad spectrum of fragmentary medieval sources from the time. Other researchers have used much later sources, in particular cadastral registers and maps from the sixteenth century onwards, to study the late-medieval decline and in particular to estimate the degree of farm abandonment.3

  Hence, in Sweden like elsewhere present knowledge on the late-medieval decline is much based on the historical record – both scarce documentary records from the time and later more plentiful records used in retrogressive analysis. There have been interdisciplinary attempts, and in particular historical geography has played an active role in some earlier studies, but non-documentary sources have so far made only minor contributions to the discussion. In the studies presented in this book we examine four types of non-documentary evidence: pollen records, dendrochronological data, settlement archaeology and human skeletons.

  Pollen records reflect vegetation development and indirectly the development of agricultural land-use and settlement. Sweden has a wealth of pollen-analytical studies and many of them, in particular from the last two decades, are detailed and with good chronologies. In an earlier study, Lagerås showed that late-medieval farm abandonment was possible to detect in South-Swedish pollen diagrams.4 The conclusion was based on the interpretation of individual diagrams. In the present study we use a data set of 28 pollen records to make quantitative estimations and more thorough interpretations. We provide new evidence on late-medieval abandonment and reforestation, but also on changes within the agricultural system. We discuss the environmental responses to the crisis as well as the possible influence of environmental change on the course of the crisis and the recovery that followed.

  Another type of data that we take a deeper look at comes from dendrochronology, i.e. the dating of old wood by tree-ring analysis. In a pioneer dendrochronological study on old farm buildings, Thomas Bartholin showed that there was a significant drop in construction activity soon after the Black Death – a break that lasted for about 100 years.5 His study areas were situated in Middle and Northern Sweden where medieval log houses are still standing. Inspired by Bartholin’s work, we have compiled dendrochronological dates from southern Sweden – 1882 dates, representing churches as well as profane buildings and other constructions from both towns and countryside. Because there are very few buildings from the Middle Ages still standing in southern Sweden, except for the churches, much of our material derives from archaeological excavations. Our aim is to reveal possible changes in the building activity during the Middle Ages and also to discuss the utilisation of woodlands and their possible recovery during the crisis.

  Archaeology of medieval settlement is of course an important source of information in this context. Since The Scandinavian Research Project on Deserted Farms and Villages, which published its final report in 1981, there has been a strong development of medieval archaeology in Sweden. In addition to theoretical and methodological advances, the number of excavated sites has increased dramatically. However, in relation to the high level of investigation activity and the large amount of documentation, archaeology has made only minor contributions to the discussion on the late-medieval crisis. Abandoned farms have been investigated but few studies have focused specifically on the crisis. In this book we review evidence in Swedish archaeology of the late-medieval decline and also take a closer look at three rural settlement sites. The sites represent settlements that survived in one way or the other and our focus is on how individual households adjusted to the crisis by developing new strategies.

  The last of our empirical studies is based on human skeletons. We have compiled osteological data from 65 different medieval churchyards, three execution sites and two military mass graves. Based on estimations of stature on 4876 adult individuals we discuss possible changes in health, diet and the standard of living during the Middle Ages. Stature is an established indicator of diet and welfare both in historical studies and of populations living today. In particular we compare stature before and after the Black Death, but also between town and countryside and between different social classes. To further investigate possible changes in diet and also to look for indications of migration we have performed stable-isotope analysis on teeth from 104 medieval individuals. In addition to the osteological analyses we discuss the burial customs during the plague epidemics.

  Our general aim in this book is to present accessible compilations and conclusions that shed new light on different aspects of the late-medieval crisis. To use non-documentary sources may be particularly rewarding in Sweden, because of the scarcity of written documents from the time. Also important is that Sweden has a strong research tradition in both medieval archaeology and palaeoecology. However, a similar interdisciplinary approach has the potential to make major contributions also in countries with abundant documentary material. To use a diversity of source materials and techniques opens up for new perspectives and brings different academic disciplines together.

  Notes

  1 Gissel et al. 1981

  2 Myrdal 2003; 2006; 2009; 2012a. Also Dick Harrison (2000) and Lennart Andersson Palm (2001) came to similar conclusions

  3 This retrogressive method was used within The Scandinavian Research Project on Deserted Farms and Villages (Gissel et al. 1981) and has been further developed in later research (e.g. Antonson 2009; Karsvall 2011)

  4 Lagerås 2007

  5 Bartholin 1989a; 1990

  2.

  Current knowledge on the late-medieval crisis

  Per Lagerås

  Society during the Middle Ages was by and large an agricultural society. Even though towns, trade and non-agrarian production wer
e expanding, the vast majority of the medieval population lived in the countryside and made their living from agriculture. In Sweden, where towns were few and small in a European perspective, still by the end of the Middle Ages about 95% lived in the countryside.1 The most densely populated areas were the fertile plains, which offered good natural conditions for agriculture and where settlement was characterised by villages and hamlets. Uplands, with their poorer stony soils and shorter vegetation period, had a more dispersed rural settlement characterised by smaller hamlets and single farms. The agricultural system was however principally the same in both types of environment, being based on a combination of crop growing and animal husbandry (Fig. 2). The dominating crop was barley, which was used for baking flat bread and making porridge, as well as for brewing beer. Rye, oats and wheat, and occasionally peas complemented it. The number of animals depended of course on social standard, but, if possible, farms had a combination of cattle, pigs, sheep and goats, and they used horses or oxen as draft animals. Because of the relatively harsh climate of northerly latitudes animals were kept indoors during the winter.

  Villages and hamlets as well as single farms organised their land into infields and outland. The infields contained arable fields for crop growing and hay meadows for producing winter fodder. They were situated close to the settlement and were protected from grazing animals by fences. During the Middle Ages many villages on the plains practised a two- or three-field crop rotation system, while most upland settlement stuck to a one-field system. Animals grazed in open pastures in the outland, watched over by a herder, and on fallow land in the infields. The combination of crop growing and animal husbandry was important because animals produced manure for the arable. A certain balance between arable, meadows and pastures was therefore aimed at. However, the balance differed between regions and also changed through time. In areas with fertile soil and dense population a larger proportion of the land was put under the plough at the expenses of pastures. In the most heavily cultivated areas there was a shortage of outland pastures and therefore grazing was much restricted to fallow land in the infields. This contrasts to upland areas where more weight was put on animal husbandry – a consequence of excess of pastures in combination with great demands for manure to get decent grain yields from naturally poor soils. The vast outlands of the uplands were also used for slash-and-burn cultivation as a complement to infield cultivation and for the collection of leaf fodder. Furthermore, upland agriculture was often combined with non-agricultural production, in particular of iron and timber.

 

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