Parchment : demand and supply in medieval Scandinavia /
Lena Strid
Bok · Engelsk · 2026 · Avhandlingar
Tekstet på: Engelsk
| Omfang | 607 sider : illustrasjoner
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| Opplysninger | Diss. Lund : Lunds universitet, 2026. - In medieval Scandinavia, parchment was a crucial writing material for everything from property deeds and judicial matters to religious works and account keeping. As society became more and more invested in literacy, the demand for parchment grew. However, the supply of animals for parchment could not increase to the same extent without great changes in animal husbandry. This thesis explores how medieval society in Scandinavia negotiated this increased demand for parchment, focussing on five towns in three regions: eastern Denmark (Lund), western Sweden (Lödöse, Skara) and eastern Sweden (Sigtuna, Uppsala). Charters written in these towns were analysed for the social status and gender of their issuers and a survey of writing-related artefacts provided a spatial and chronological view the archaeological indicators of literacy. Proteomic analyses of extant charters and codices provided species identification that could be compared with animal husbandry strategies as indicated by zooarchaeological assemblages.The results showed that members of the Church initiated the adoption of literacy from the start of the Middle Ages. There was an increase in issuers from the nobility in the late 13th/early 14th century and from burghers in the early/mid-14th century. Women were issuing charters far less than men, but the comparatively small size of the samples made it difficult to analyse this chronologically or regionally. The analysis of writing-related artefacts was affected by a comparatively large number of undated objects, particularly from Lund. That said, Lund exceeded the other towns in quantity and variety of artefacts, probably a reflection of its status as an archbishopric seat since the early 11th century. I created a typology of styli, the most common writing-related artefact, and with comparisons from other sites in northern Europe, several types could be dated. Type 6 with its metal writing tip appear to have some correlation with the rise in urban literacy in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. I hypothesize that they were first used as a visual signifier of (mercantile?) literacy and later a signifier of urban identity.The proteomic analyses of almost 200 charters and almost 100 codex folios showed an overwhelming predominance of calf parchment. This is not found in England, France or Belgium, where a variety of species were used for codices and a shift to sheep parchment for charters occurred in the early-mid-13th century. I argue that this dependency on calf parchment is connected to dairy production, where calves were culled to free milk for humans. In Scandinavia, butter was used for taxation purposes and was an important export product. This, together with the perceived higher quality of calf parchment meant that sheep or goat parchment were rarely used. Dental age analyses show a high percentage of young calves in medieval bone assemblages, higher than natural mortality rates. This was particularly common in urban sites, suggesting that a large proportion of the calf parchment may have derived from culled calves in small-scale urban dairying.
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| ISBN | 9789190055083
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