Legal plunder

households and debt collection in late Medieval Europe

As Europe began to grow rich during the Middle Ages, its wealth materialized in the well-made clothes, linens, and wares of ordinary households. In a world without banking, household goods became valuable commodities that often substituted for hard currency. Pawnbrokers and resellers sprung up throughout ...

Deep History

the architecture of past and present

Humans have always been interested in their origins, but historians have been reluctant to write about the long stretches of time before the invention of writing. In fact, the deep past was left out of most historical writing almost as soon as it was discovered ...

Deep history

the architecture of past and present

Humans have always been interested in their origins, but historians have been reluctant to write about the long stretches of time before the invention of writing. In fact, the deep past was left out of most historical writing almost as soon as it was discovered ...

Vengeance in Medieval Europe

a reader

Eds. Daniel Lord Smail, Kelly Gibson. How did medieval society deal with private justice, with grudges, and with violent emotions? This ground-breaking reader collects for the first time a number of unpublished or difficult-to-find texts that address violence and emotion in the Middle Ages.The ...

On deep history and the brain

When does history begin? What characterizes it? This brilliant and beautifully written book dissolves the logic of a beginning based on writing, civilization, or historical consciousness and offers a model for a history that escapes the continuing grip of the Judeo-Christian time frame. Daniel Lord ...