Releasing the genie: English manorial records and their (huge) potential for interdisciplinary studies
The present article stresses the unmatched quality of late-medieval English manorial documents, both in quantity and quality, and their importance for both economic and environmental history. The corpus of manorial documents is used here as a case study to reinvigorate interest in late-medieval agri...
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| Published in | Rural history pp. 1 - 23 |
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| Main Author | |
| Format | Journal Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
24.07.2025
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| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | The present article stresses the unmatched quality of late-medieval English manorial documents, both in quantity and quality, and their importance for both economic and environmental history. The corpus of manorial documents is used here as a case study to reinvigorate interest in late-medieval agricultural history of England. To do so, the paper suggests to integrate manorial documents with methods and data from other palaeo-scientific disciplines: palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology, aDNA analysis, stable isotope analysis, palaeo-epigenetics, and molecular analysis of parchments. The paper argues that involving scientists from these fields in collaborative work and integrating the novel analysis of manorial documents and palaeo-scientific data will both help resolve various outstanding controversies and reshape the discipline. But beyond that, such interdisciplinary interdisciplinary framework has a strong potential to ask and answer new questions, create new data knowledge, and take our knowledge to new heights. |
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| ISSN: | 0956-7933 1474-0656 |
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0956793325100071 |