bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Psychotherapeutic and Pharmacological Treatment for Problematic Digital Technology Use
Authors: Faust David , Potenza Marc N. , Gaudet Charles , Faust Kyle A.
Published: October 2020

This chapter focuses on the psychological treatment of problem Internet and digital technology use (PRIU), such as excessive gaming, and also briefly overviews pharmacological approaches. Forms of Internet and digital technology use that provide alternative vehicles for more specific problem or addictive behavior, such as excessive gambling or shopping, and which often seem to present with differing features, are not covered here [editors’ comment: but rather addressed in other chapters of this book]. Although treatment research is still in an early stage of development, an accumulating body of literature involving a diverse range of presentations and populations and a variety of treatment strategies has often yielded positive and robust effect sizes. Hence, a relatively compelling justification can be provided for therapeutic intervention, especially when using treatments of demonstrated effectiveness with similar clients, when PRIU seems to be associated with significant malfunction or worsening of co-occurring conditions, and when trends suggest that problems are not remitting or are worsening. Beyond these broad conclusions, research on PRIU in general and treatment studies, although often considerably less complete than preferable, provide varying levels of guidance for tailoring or designing intervention in lines with client presentation. Hence, the chapter also covers various specific topics and possible guides for therapeutic planning and implementation.
Internet Addiction and Internet Gaming Disorder
Authors: Wölfling Klaus , Müller Kai W. , Dreier Michael , Beutel Manfred E.
Published: October 2020

Several forms of excessive pathological Internet use, such as Internet addiction (IA), Internet gaming disorder (IGD), or gaming disorder (GD) are perceived as public health concerns. IGD was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as a research diagnosis and recently GD was announced for the International Classification of Disease (ICD-11). IA represents a variety of excessive and unregulated consumption of video games, social networking, chat rooms, use of online pornography, online gambling, or the aimless gathering and research of information. The outpatient treatment program Short-Term Treatment of Internet and Computer Game Addiction (STICA) aims to reduce psychosocial burden and foster abstinence of the former problematic behavioral pattern. The outpatient program consists of 15 group and up to 8 individual sessions lasting 4 months. The cognitive-behavioral psychotherapeutic rational for paradigmatic sessions, as well as the consequent phases, is delineated and working materials are described in this chapter. The therapy contract, weekly protocols, and a subjective model of IA, as well as its individual development and the development of media education, are especially highlighted. Recently, the program was proofed in a multicenter randomized controlled trial regarding its efficacy.
Problems Relating to Internet Use in China
Authors: Hao Wei , Cai Shangli
Published: October 2020

The Internet has penetrated all aspects of Chinese society and has become a crucial part of its social, economic, and cultural activities, as well as its personal life. Meanwhile, the rapid development of the Internet, along with a lag in the development of legislation and guidelines for use, has had an enormous impact on Chinese society and created unprecedented challenges. This chapter overviews the current status of Internet use in China, directing particular attention to problems that youth may encounter, and then reviews progress that the Chinese government has made in managing problems related to Internet use.
Mesopotamian Religion
Authors: Abusch Tzvi
Published: October 2020

This chapter presents the background situation that gave rise to Mesopotamian religious concepts, as well as the forms of the gods and their service in the classical theology of Mesopotamia. The chapter examines both the temple cult, that is, the public dimension of the religion, and the cult of the individual. It studies several supernatural beings, some active in the state pantheon, others in the sphere of family life, and discusses several literary works of religious significance. The chapter concludes its reflections on Mesopotamian religion with a short piece about the Epic of Gilgamesh, a profound Mesopotamian reflection on the meaning of life and death.
Sacred and Ritual Times
Authors: Davis Andrew R.
Published: October 2020

The present chapter explores the ritual times of ancient Israel. After providing a theoretical framework that draws on the work of Mircea Eliade, it provides an overview of the sacred times of the year in ancient Israel, as they are presented in the ritual calendars of the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Exod 23, 34; Lev 23; Num 28–29; Deut 16). Although this section follows the calendrical order of Israel festivals, it also considers how ritual times correspond to agricultural seasons and to the human life cycle. The final section highlights three features of sacred time in ancient Israel that can be drawn from the preceding overview.
Ritual and Religious Practices
Authors: Gane Roy E.
Published: October 2020

Ancient near eastern (ANE) rituals and other religious practices fostered relationships with superhuman members of the interactive cosmic community, especially deities, who affected human life. These practices were believed to establish, maintain, restore, or utilize such relationships. The present chapter explores the functions and worldview implications of ANE including biblical Israelite religious practices within the following categories: prayer, sacrificial rituals, non-sacrificial ritual activities including divination and magic, and ritual gestures. Similarities and differences between these and interhuman interactions reflect ANE perspectives regarding the nature of superhumans as personal beings and how to interact with them. The biblical Israelite religious system was more intensely relational than elsewhere in the ANE because the deity YHWH established a covenant with his people and personally resided among them so that they could interact with him more intimately, rather than through idols or other material symbols.
Ritualizing Iconic Jewish Texts
Authors: Watts James W.
Published: October 2020

Bibles and parts of bibles are themselves used as ritual objects in Jewish and Christian worship. Their display and manipulation, oral performance, and semantic interpretation have been ritualized by synagogues and churches since antiquity. The origins of these practices are rooted in the Bible itself. Their influence has shaped every Jewish and Christian tradition and reaches beyond them to Muslims, Manicheans, and other religious communities. This chapter and its companions in this volume on Christianity and Islam focus mostly on how the iconic dimension of scriptures gets ritualized, because the iconic dimension has received less scholarly attention than the ritualization of scripture’s oral performance, artistic illustration, and semantic interpretation.
Sin and Expiation
Authors: Janzen David
Published: October 2020

Expiation refers to a ritual attempt to deal with sin, and while in the Hebrew Bible it can include such things as prayer and acts of mourning, we most frequently find it manifested in sacrifice. Biblical texts rarely explain how sacrifice functions in relation to sin, but sacrifice is described at greatest length in the Priestly writing, particularly in Leviticus 1–7, which has been described as a manual of sacrifice. Even here, however, P does not provide a theory of sacrificial expiation—does not, that is, explain how or why sacrifice functions as the proper ritual response to sin. Jacob Milgrom’s re-creation of the worldview that stands behind P’s understanding of sacrifice claims that the Priestly tradents understood sin as creating a miasma of impurity that polluted the sancta, and saw the blood of the sin or purification offering as a ritual detergent that cleansed the sanctuary. If we read the Priestly narrative without trying to reconstruct this worldview, but look rather for the ways in which P portrays sacrifice and expiation, we see that sacrifice functions as a way for Israelites to publically acknowledge their sin and to signal that they have no intentions of violating God’s commandments again. Part of this ritual message involves honoring God as sovereign, thus also acknowledging God’s right to command and indicating the sacrificers’ awareness that they must act as loyal subjects to their divine sovereign.
Sickness and Healing
Authors: Rooke Deborah
Published: October 2020

Following some methodological remarks the chapter briefly reviews the vocabulary of sickness used in the biblical Hebrew text. It then examines instances of sickness and healing that are described in the Hebrew Bible, in order to establish how sickness is understood and how ritual might therefore relate to it. Aspects considered include the relationship between sickness and sin; whether and how YHWH is involved in causing sickness; epidemics versus individual cases of sickness; and instances of ritual action, broadly understood, that are used to address sickness-related issues. Such instances of ritual action include consulting a functionary such as a priest or prophet, and performing ritual laments and prayers either at home or at a shrine. Two instances of concerns relating to childbearing are also considered, both of which are pictured in the context of ritual action at a shrine.
Death and Afterlife
Authors: Schmidt Brian B.
Published: October 2020

This chapter surveys what is known about ancient Israel’s beliefs and practices relating to the end of life, the experience of death, and one’s transformation into the life thereafter. The results were gleaned from the integration of material cultural data, epigraphic sources, and the critical assessment of biblical texts. Ancient Israelites placed significant emphasis on living the good life and experiencing the good death. In addition to the conventional mourning and burial rites performed on behalf of the deceased, both medium-range and long-term rituals were also observed. These comprised such rites as the care and feeding of the dead, who apparently possessed a post-mortem sentience and also a ghostly existence in the netherworld (see the references in 1 Sam 28 to the ʾôb “ghost” and ʾereṣ “earth”—a synonym of Sheol). These rites also included the commemoration of the dead in which the legacy and exemplary lives the dead had formerly led were ritually remembered, recalled, and passed forward. As such, these commemorative rituals also constituted a form of immortality of the dead; one that was perpetuated cross-generationally in the minds of family and community survivors.
Divine Presence and Absence
Authors: Berlejung Angelika
Published: October 2020

The topic of divine presence and absence is embedded in the theological debate about the communication between human beings and their gods. Intact communication and divine presence belong together, as well as disturbed communication and divine absence. The interpretation and construction of their own history (of the individual, as well as of the collective) as result of the interplay between divine presence/blessing or divine absence/punishment was a basic pattern. Different literary traditions in the Old Testament attest how the theology of the presence of YHWH was in pre-exilic times a local kind of play of traditional ancient Near Eastern conceptions and mainly connected to Zion. However, after the fall of Jerusalem (perhaps already Samaria), the theology of YHWH’s presence underwent various processes of mobilization, spiritualization, and abstraction. The rebuilding of the Second Temple in Jerusalem was a new impulse for the discussion about the mode(s) of divine presence. Several concepts found their way into the canon which are sketched in this contribution.
Ritual and Worship at Qumran
Authors: Schuller Eileen M.
Published: October 2020

This chapter describes key aspects of the ritual and worship of a specific group within Second Temple Judaism, especially as can be known from the written texts preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls. These manuscripts, discovered some seventy years ago in the caves near the site of Qumran, provide much previously unknown information, both descriptions about ritual practice and actual texts of many prayers, psalms, blessings, and liturgies that are known only because they were preserved in the caves. Many of these scrolls are very fragmentary, and any reconstruction of the details of worship practice must remain tentative. The Scrolls contain collections of set prayers for the days of the week, the days of the months, for feasts, songs for the Sabbath, a collection of Thanksgiving Psalms (Hodayot) that are expressive of the distinctive worldview and spirituality of this group, and liturgies for entrance into the community through a covenant renewal ceremony
Islamic Ritual
Authors: Gauvain Richard
Published: October 2020

This chapter begins by introducing readers to the five “pillars of Islam” (arkan al-Islam), as well as to other essential aspects of Islamic ritual (section 1). By so doing, it recognizes the enduring power of these rituals, in particular, to provide all Muslims—despite their differences in historical, socio-cultural and political realities—with a shared sense of religious identity. The following section (2) nuances this presentation of Islamic ritual as intrinsically a cohesive force, which necessarily relies heavily on canonical Sunni legal sources and authorities, by exploring five alternative strategies to ritual: Shi’i, esoteric, folk, rationalist, and reformist. Thereafter, it briefly discusses the potential of Islamic ritual in a variety of sources and contexts to both reflect and generate social hierarchies (section 3). It concludes by reflecting on Western scholarly approaches to Islamic ritual and by suggesting future directions for its study (section 4).
The Politics of Worship
Authors: Morrow William S.
Published: October 2020

Cases of politically oriented rituals used to maintain the kingdom of Judah and its successor societies are surveyed from the beginning of the Davidic monarchy through to the Hasmonaean era. Preference is given to the concept of “national religion” instead of “official” or “state religion” to describe attempts to centralize worship on Jerusalem during this period. Challenges were posed to these efforts by Judah’s internal religious pluralism. Social configurations at the family and local levels were maintained by forms of worship not always amenable to subordination to centralized authority. After a general discussion of the concept of political rituals, interactions between the impulse towards a national religion and forms of family and local cultic practices are described. The ideology of kingship (especially in the royal psalms), and the politics of sacrifice in the post-exilic era receive particular attention.
Socio-Religious Functions of Worship
Authors: Cook Stephen L.
Published: October 2020

What were the socio-religious functions of worship and ritual within ancient Israel? How did worship affect and form Israelite society, and vice versa? To ask this question is not to reduce worship to a mere social phenomenon, lacking, for example, theological witness or spiritual efficacy. Rather, it is to recognize that Israelite worship had a social context and, among its several other roles, had significant social effects. It expressed and buttressed the shared values and convictions of the community of YHWH, or, better, of specific Yahwistic groups. It publicly embodied religious orientations and habits. It enacted the traditions and teachings of the societal authority or segment that authorized and choreographed it. Participants in Israelite worship publicly acknowledged the worldview and attendant lifestyle communicated as social meaning by the proceedings.
Rituals and Ritual Theory
Authors: Gruenwald Ithamar
Published: October 2020

It is customary to view rituals as a dominant feature in the practice of religions. Thus, scholars generally discuss rituals in terms of a theological setting and focus on meaning, reason, and purpose. However, this chapter proposes a wider context from which to view ritual that takes into account the behavioral factors that are embedded in performing the rituals. It suggests that a ritual element may be seen in every human action that is structured and performed as a timed and repetitive event and that, in turn, such events are likely to foster ritualistic patterns of behavior. In this sense, there is no structural difference between one kind of ritual and the other. A discussion of these matters constitutes substantial parts of this chapter.
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Authors: Gilders William K.
Published: October 2020

This chapter looks at the interpretation of ritual in the Hebrew Bible from the perspective of anthropology, which has had a close symbiotic relationship with biblical studies since the emergence of the comparative study of human culture in the 19th century. Beginning in the 1960s, a new wave of anthropological interest in biblical ritual was catalyzed especially by the work of Mary Douglas. Biblical scholars have drawn on anthropologists’ theories of ritual. The dominant approach to ritual in both anthropology and biblical studies identifies it as symbolic, representational activity. This perspective has been challenged by interpreters who highlight the absence of indigenous symbolic interpretation of ritual in a number of societies and urge caution in constructing elaborate symbolic systems for biblical ritual. Study of biblical ritual involves the ethnography of ancient Israelite texts about ritual activity.
The Merovingians and Byzantium
Authors: Esders Stefan
Published: October 2020

This chapter surveys the political, military, and religious relations of the Merovingian kingdoms with the Byzantine Empire from the time of Clovis to the late seventh century. For Byzantium, there were most often two or three Merovingian kingdoms, relations to which were part of multilayered contacts and could to some extent be seen as “Kingdoms of the Empire.” While the Merovingian kingdoms valued the legitimacy of recognition by Constantinople through treaties and titles, these, in turn, became important for Byzantium in military terms with regard to Italy under Ostrogothic and later Lombard rule. Following the baptism of Clovis, the Catholic faith of Frankish Gaul appears to have been an important precondition for closer relations to Constantinople. The major theological controversies centered around the Three Chapters and monothelitism, propagated as part of imperial Byzantine religious policy, also had many repercussions in Gaul. Relations between the Byzantine Empire and the Merovingian kingdoms were complex, having been developed dynamically in periods of intense contact and often in reaction to rapid changes that took place outside of Gaul.
Gender in Merovingian Gaul
Authors: Halsall Guy
Published: October 2020

The relationships between gender, sex, and sexuality are far more complex than is often acknowledged, whether in modern politics or in publications about medieval history. In a Merovingian context, this can be shown from various stories from the works of Gregory of Tours and from the archaeology of cemeteries. The spaces within which what we might term non-normative gendered identities could be enacted in Merovingian Gaul is examined via a discussion of the development of gendered norms from the classical Roman period to the seventh century. It is argued that a Roman concept of gender that focused on a single civic masculine ideal gradually evolved, not least through the emergence of more politically effective rival forms of masculinity, into a more binary sixth-century construction with separate masculine and feminine ideals. It is proposed that widespread changes around 600 led to a reversion to a more “monopolar” construction of gender but that the masculine ideal that was its focus was now overwhelmingly martial. Developments in the ecclesiastical ideas of gender and sexuality are explored in parallel to these secular changes, and it is suggested that they frequently led in interestingly different directions.
Transformations of Identities
Authors: Coumert Magali
Published: October 2020

Ethnogenesis theory has brought about a seminal shift in research on ethnic identities. This chapter maps the fluidity of Frankish identity in the Merovingian realm, illustrating that the assertion and role of ethnic identity depended on the specific context in which such claims were made. In the fifth century, elite Romans and Franks were open to innovation and local collaborations. As demonstrated by Salic Law, the Merovingians built their kingdom on territorial authority. Only after 580 did they choose to be linked with the Franks as a specific group, in the context of the civil wars and the partition of the territory among different kings. From the seventh century, the Merovingian kings voluntarily increased the legal diversity inherited from the conquests with laws for specific groups, like the Lex Ribuaria, distinguished by their place of origin. This custom highlighted royal authority as well as autonomy within the kingdom. Interest in the gens Francorum grew in parallel. The eighth century brought a new unification of the Franks with Merovingian and Pippinid leaders.
Letters and Communication Networks in Merovingian Gaul
Authors: Gillett Andrew
Published: October 2020

While some letters from Merovingian-era Gaul are well known—for example, Remigius’s letters to Clovis or Radegund’s letters founding her monastery—the scale and scope of extant and attested letters tell us more about the period than the sum of data from individual documents. The cumulative range of known epistolary communications indicates that Merovingian Gaul, like the late Roman Empire of the previous centuries, hosted multiple, entangled networks of social and political interconnections. This chapter considers how we can set about contemplating both the limitations and value of the evidence we have. Comparison with contemporary Egypt, from which letters are preserved both in manuscript tradition (as with Gaul) and as papyri originals, evokes the possibility of envisaging Merovingian Gaul quite differently from our received image. The extant evidence for letters is surveyed, including “literary” collections of letters, letters preserved in other types of texts, and the extensive number of descriptions of letter exchange in narrative texts. The chapter includes the first checklist of more than 500 extant letters and a list of narrative sources, including the first complete list of references to letters in the works of Gregory of Tours.
Merovingian Epigraphy, Frankish Epigraphy, and the Epigraphy of the Merovingian World
Authors: Handley Mark A.
Published: October 2020

Inscriptions are a rich and illuminating source for Merovingian history, and the study of epigraphy illuminates important aspects of literacy and culture at this time. Inscriptions are attested for the entirety of the Merovingian period, from the end of Roman control through the rise of Clovis to the end of Merovingian rule. They are preserved not only in surviving inscribed artifacts (stone, metal, stucco), but also in medieval manuscripts. In addition to commemorating Merovingian kings, queens, bishops, and members of the aristocracy, inscriptions preserved in Latin and runic script inform us of the names and hopes of otherwise unknown Franks, male and female. New examples of inscribed objects continue to surface. Beyond inscriptions dedicated to members of the Merovingian royal family, this chapter discusses epitaphs of non-Merovingian royals, inscriptions of Franks, and inscriptions alleged to have been written in “Frankish.” An appraisal of scholarship on epigraphy is followed by a survey of the evidence from the entirety of the Merovingian world.
The Merovingians, the Avars, and the Slavs
Authors: Hardt Matthias
Published: October 2020

After the dissolution of the kingdom of Thuringia in 534, several factors shaped the relationship of the Merovingian kingdom to its eastern neighbors, the Slavs and Avars. These included the ethnogenesis of the Bavarians, which encouraged the Franks to secure the southeast, the Avar occupation of the middle Danube area after 568, and the development of the Slavic world in the surroundings of the Avar khaganate. A Slavic uprising against the Avars resulted in the creation of the kingdom of Samo, which also successfully opposed King Dagobert I. Samo’s successes created Slavic self-confidence, which necessitated the Merovingians’ efforts, in turn, to secure eastern Thuringia and the Main area as well as Bavaria administratively and militarily. This strategy was also one of the aims of the ecclesiastical penetration of the Thuringian border areas in the north and the Carantanian-Slavic eastern Alpine area, which had begun under Boniface and Vergilius and continued thereafter.
From Gaul to Francia
Authors: Fouracre Paul
Published: October 2020

The ways in which “Gaul” became “Francia” have been regarded as key to the development of Europe as a whole during the Middle Ages and beyond. This has led to a “Francocentric” view of west European history. This chapter considers how that view was constructed from a canon of narrative and normative sources. It examines the emergence of a Frankish polity and asks why that polity was so large. It then considers why the Frankish kingdoms did not disintegrate over the course of the seventh century, given the political conflict evident in the later narrative sources. The aristocracy and the church were considered cohesive as well as disruptive forces. A high level of social, political, cultural, and religious integration against a background of diminishing economic resources is seen as central to long-term stability in the polity. Shorter-term outbreaks of violence are analyzed in terms of factional politics that ultimately worked to restore balance. The chapter closes with a discussion of how the balance of power was finally upset, leading to the demise of the Merovingian dynasty and the rise of the Carolingians. Emphasis, however, is given to the strong cultural and religious continuities that were the fruit of a long period of stability and that became the basis of Carolingian power.
Liturgy and the Laity
Authors: Bailey Lisa Kaaren
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores the experience of Merovingian liturgy from the perspective of the participants, both clerical and lay. It especially focuses on the eucharistic liturgy, which was one of the primary liturgical acts of Christian unity and was intended to include all members of the community. At the same time, the eucharistic liturgy also inscribed differences between clerical and lay Christians and established a hierarchy of power. The chapter explores the consequences of this tension: clergy idealized liturgy as an enactment of commonality, while laity engaged with it on their own terms, sometimes appropriating, resisting, or rejecting clerical understandings.
Magic and Divination in the Merovingian World
Authors: Klingshirn William E.
Published: October 2020

This chapter situates practices of magic and divination within the framework of what can be conceptualized as a lived Merovingian religion. It identifies such practices, including many rituals of healing, not as rejections of Christianity or expressions of residual paganism, but as strategies for accessing divine power and knowledge in a world of deep uncertainty and risk. Topics discussed include client agency, the specialties of practitioners, surviving texts, amulets, and spells, and the interpretation of ecclesiastical texts. Particular attention is paid to written evidence from the sixth century (Caesarius of Arles, Gregory of Tours) and the eighth (Homilia de sacrilegiis, Indiculus superstitionum et paganiarum).
Elite Women in the Merovingian Period
Authors: James Edward
Published: October 2020

The only Merovingian women of whom we learn anything substantial in the sources are elite women; but those we learn most about are far from ordinary members of the elite: they are above all queens and abbesses. However, it does seem that elite women were able to control their own property, as is shown by the will of Burgundofara and a handful of other documents. That property could have been very extensive, as is seen in the case of a number of queens, and this helped them to play a significant role in politics while their husbands were alive, and above all after their deaths. This chapter examines the cases of Fredegund, Brunhild, and Balthild and ends with a discussion of elite women as nuns and abbesses. Particular focus is on Radegund and her monastery in Poitiers, where the revolt of the nuns in 589 dramatically illustrates the problems of confining women with elite expectations within the constraints of monastic humility and obedience. Conversely, the Lives of some seventh-century women (Gertrude, Sadalberga) suggest that monasteries were a way to maintain independence and avoid forced marriage.
Maritime and River Traders, Landing Places, and Emporia Ports in the Merovingian Period in and Around the Low Countries
Authors: Tys Dries
Published: October 2020

The origin, rise, and dynamics of coastal trade and landing places in the North Sea area between the sixth and eighth centuries must be understood in relation to how coastal regions and seascapes acted as arenas of contact, dialogue, and transition. Although the free coastal societies of the early medieval period were involved in regional to interregional or long-distance trade networks, their economic agency must be understood from a bottom-up perspective. That is, their reproduction strategies must be studied in their own right, independent from any teleological construction about the development of trade, markets, or towns for that matter. This means that the early medieval coastal networks of exchange were much more complex and diverse than advocated by the simple emporium network model, which connected the major archaeological sites along the North Sea coast. Instead, coastal and riverine dwellers often possessed some form of free status and large degrees of autonomy, in part due to the specific environmental conditions of the landscapes in which they dwelled. The wide estuarine region of the Low Countries, between coastal Flanders in the south and Friesland in the north, a region with vast hinterlands and a central position in northwestern Europe, makes these developments particularly clear. This chapter thus pushes back against longstanding assumptions in scholarly research, which include overemphasis of the influence of large landowners over peasant economies, and on the prioritization of easily retrievable luxuries over less visible indicators of bulk trade (such as wood, wool, and more), gift exchange, and market trade. The approach used here demonstrates that well-known emporia or larger ports of trade were embedded in the economic activities and networks of their respective hinterlands. Early medieval coastal societies and their dynamics are thus better understood from the perspective of integrated governance and economy (“new institutional economics”) in a regional setting.
Children’s Lives and Deaths in Merovingian Gaul
Authors: Perez Émilie
Published: October 2020

The role of children in Merovingian society has long been downplayed, and the study of their graves and bones has long been neglected. However, during the past fifteen years, archaeologists have shown growing interest in the place of children in Merovingian society. Nonetheless, this research has not been without challenges linked to the nature of the biological and material remains. Recent analysis of 315 children’s graves from four Merovingian cemeteries in northern Gaul (sixth to seventh centuries) allows us to understand the modalities of burial ritual for children. A new method for classifying children into social age groups shows that the type, quality, quantity, and diversity of grave goods were directly correlated with the age of the deceased. They increased from the age of eight and particularly around the time of puberty. This study discusses the role of age and gender in the construction and expression of social identity during childhood in the Merovingian period.
De Gente Scottorum Monachi
Authors: Picard Jean-Michel
Published: October 2020

The Irish played an important role in the remarkable development of monasticism in seventh-century Merovingian Gaul. Merovingian rulers sponsored the foundation of monasteries not only for religious motives but also as an element in their settlement strategy for liminal areas and newly conquered territory. The Irish monastic foundations on the continent (e.g., Luxeuil, Péronne, Fosses) were in fact the result of close cooperation between Frankish kings or magnates and Irish individuals who, while preserving a certain independence, as was the custom in Ireland, contributed to the reorganization of lands conquered by the Franks. The cooperation between Irish ecclesiastics and Frankish warlords was not the result of chance encounter and must be understood in the wider context of early commercial contacts between Ireland and Merovingian Gaul and Frankish interests in the British Isles. The relationship between the Irish and the Frankish aristocracy was a privileged one but not unique, as other groups from the insular world, Bretons and Anglo-Saxons, played a similar role in the foundation of monasteries as part of the Frankish settlement strategy. Within that larger context, the Irish managed to preserve a strong sense of identity throughout the Merovingian period and established a positive reputation that lasted well into the Carolingian era.
Good and Bad Plants in Merovingian Francia
Authors: Squatriti Paolo
Published: October 2020

This chapter shows that human–plant interactions between 500 and 750 in the Frankish area were just as dynamic as such relationships had been in earlier epochs in the same regions. It suggests that Merovingian botanical history, the changes and continuities in crop regimes and weed populations, as well as people’s evaluation of the goodness or badness of plants, both reflected and drove changes in rural settlement, production, and culture. To demonstrate plants’ influential contribution, the chapter analyzes not only written sources from the period, but it also investigates the archaeobotanical traces of certain plants. Juxtaposing the two kinds of sources reveals some incongruities but confirms the centrality of the botanical world in Merovingian Francia.
The History of Historiography in the Merovingian Period
Authors: Reimitz Helmut
Published: October 2020

The writing of history played an important part in Merovingian society, a fact that is well documented in the Merovingian authors’ writing and rewriting of history. The different histories and versions of history also show that Merovingian culture was not a culture in decline after the end of the western Roman Empire. A closer look demonstrates that the transformation of historical knowledge and culture demanded a higher degree of sophistication, expertise, and originality than modern scholars have been willing to allow for the authors of Merovingian histories. The extant historical works from the Merovingian period testify to the historical sophistication and education of their authors. They also show that their authors were well aware of a variety of histories, historical interpretations, models, and genres. This chapter suggests that we might understand the work of these historians better if we take their generic choices more seriously than we usually do. They all worked with the preconception of a genre to define the subject of their historical inquiry while attempting to transform the expectations and patterns of reading and writing history in a post-Roman world. Such an approach might also help us to understand the diversity of generic choices and forms of historical writings in the Merovingian period as one of the characteristic features of a Merovingian historiography.
Livestock and the Early Medieval Diet in Northern Gaul
Authors: Yvinec Jean-Hervé , Barme Maude
Published: October 2020

Animals played an important role in Merovingian rural society, but it is only recently that archaeo-osteology has made it possible to think about diet and animal husbandry in a more nuanced way. The number of animals relative to population varied significantly over time and by region, but cattle were prominent. Their high representation among livestock owed much to their multifunctionality during their lifetimes, and after death. The place of pigs was somewhat less secure, with a decline during the Merovingian period and new prominence in the Carolingian era. Ovicaprids likewise occupied a relatively marginal place in the Gallo-Roman and Merovingian periods but gained an increasingly influential space in early medieval diets during the Carolingian era. Once Gallo-Roman techniques of mass butchery disappeared, and there was a break in the chain of the artisanal handling of beef caused by the ruralization of society (which made the movement of animals and their products over distances more difficult), human diets changed in northern Gaul and were further supplemented through wild game and birds provisioned through hunting.
Migrants and Minorities in Merovingian Gaul
Authors: Drews Wolfram
Published: October 2020

There is evidence that several ethnic minorities with different characteristics populated Merovingian Gaul. Irish and Scottish monks came to Gaul in search of an ascetic life in a foreign land. In their own monasteries, they constituted cohesive communities with their own Irish identity. For their part, Syrian and oriental migrants were too few in number to form distinct minorities with a proper religious and cultural life. Jews represented the most important minority in the Merovingian kingdoms, but they were no migrants, not even outsiders. In fact, they belonged to the old Roman provincial population. We have little evidence that would allow us to define the identity of Jewish communities. Jews had the same legal status as the Christian Roman population, and they were generally treated well by their Christian neighbors. Neither Merovingian kings nor Church councils tried to convert Jews to Catholic Christianity systematically or to deprive them of their rights. The massive forced conversion of Clermont in 576 remained an exception. The Church mainly attempted to avoid conversions of Christians to Judaism. In general, minorities testify to the cultural diversity and vitality of Merovingian society.
Merovingian Gaul and the Mediterranean
Authors: Bonifay Michel , Pieri Dominique
Published: October 2020

This chapter assesses what ceramics can tell us about the interaction of Gaul with Mediterranean trade in the Merovingian period. Broken into three main chronological periods, the analysis suggests some of the possible developments that affected trade in African Red Slipware, amphorae, and associated artifacts. With precipitous drops in population and the abandonment circa 455 of the annona grain shipments, which also provided transport for ceramic goods, the fifth century saw a steady decline in the supply that reached Gaul from both the eastern and western Mediterranean. The decrease in imports led, in turn, to its replacement by local forms of tableware, including those most famously known as Dérivées-des-Sigillées Paléochrétiennes, (derivatives of early Christian sigillata). By the early sixth century, however, Gaul saw a revival of trade, and with the annexation of Provence in 536, the Merovingian kingdoms gained, for the first time, a Mediterranean port in the city of Marseille. The port made some of the goods of Mediterranean trade accessible not just to the south but also the northern parts of Gaul, where occasional amphorae are found. Gaul’s engagement with Mediterranean trade occurred until at least the 730s, but future research may push that date even later into the Merovingian period.
Bead and Garnet Trade Between the Merovingian, Mediterranean, and Indian Worlds
Authors: Pion Constantin , Gratuze Bernard , Périn Patrick , Calligaro Thomas
Published: October 2020

Written sources document the pursuit of trade between India and the Mediterranean world during the early Middle Ages. These traded goods, notably spices, perfume, and luxury fabrics, rarely leave material remains as a result of their perishable nature. Two types of archaeological finds dated from the fifth and sixth centuries have helped fill some of the gaps in the documentary sources. The first includes small beads of green-colored glass found in graves in which the beads appear to have been sewn onto pieces of clothing. As their chemical composition and the specific method of their manufacture reveal, these beads were produced in southern India and Sri Lanka and are known termed Indo-Pacific. The second type of archaeological find are garnets, which are found throughout western Europe at the start of the Merovingian period, decorating weapons, jewelry, and clothing accessories, most often in the cloisonné style. Recent chemical analysis of the garnets and their specific inclusion has been conducted with precision laboratory techniques. This analysis demonstrates that they came from deposits in India (mainly Rajasthan) and Sri Lanka, at least until around 600. For historical and economic reasons that remain unclear, the emporia in southern India and Sri Lanka at this time ceased to export the Indo-Pacific beads, and later garnets, to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean basin.
Inscribed in the Book of Life
Authors: Rose Els
Published: October 2020

The present chapter discusses the ritual of reciting names in the public performance of the Merovingian mass and studies the prayers accompanying this ritual based on sources dating to the late seventh and early eighth centuries. This study focuses on how membership of the Christian community was defined and, more specifically, on the composition of the liturgical assembly that gathered on Sundays and feasts for the public celebration of mass. The effort to create and strengthen the idea of membership in and belonging to the Christian community in this complex time of great change was not marked by the development and consequent use of an entirely new vocabulary, but rather by the reuse of existing terminology, derived from ancient and biblical discourse concerned with citizenship and belonging. The public celebration of the cult is one of the loci in which this vocabulary was filled with new, sometimes radically changed, meanings.
Belt Buckles and Burials in Southwestern Gaul
Authors: Patrello Ralph J.
Published: October 2020

Objects recovered through mortuary archaeology are often incomplete, and yet they are presented as whole. In particular, items of personal adornment appear in illustrations or photographs either in a restored form or with outlines indicating what would or should have completed the items. Fragmentation, as such, is explained away as the result of degradative processes or of grave robbing. In the case of the ornate belt buckles of fifth- to seventh-century southern Gaul, the relative frequency of apparently intentionally broken objects invites further investigation. As part of the memorialization process, fragments of belt sets may have at once drawn a line between the deceased and those responsible for their burial, as well as serving as public proclamations of familial alliances that surviving kin claimed through the dead. Focusing on fragmentation as an intentional act likewise opens new possibilities for understanding the means by which objects of personal adornment moved across regions. While objects did not move without the intervention of people, the presence of incomplete belt sets in southern Gallic graves implies that belt sets circulated as a means of forming networks of allegiance.
Human Remains and What They Can Tell Us about Status and Identity in the Merovingian Period
Authors: Czermak Andrea
Published: October 2020

The Merovingian period was marked by economic, political, social, and cultural changes, leading to new social structures and cultural identities. Stable isotope analysis of human remains, focusing on potential changes in individuals’ life histories can provide important clues about this transitional period, allowing for conclusions about social structures and relations within a population. Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios are used for characterization of individuals’ diets. Gained from bone material, isotope ratios reflect an average of an individual’s diet during the last years of life. Teeth reflect nutrition during childhood and adolescence and, due to their appositional growth, can provide a chronology of dietary intake during the first twenty years of life. Serial microsampling of dentine from different teeth that grow at different times allows detection of potential changes in diet and subsistence and thus can give information about changing environmental conditions during an individual’s early lifetime. This chapter asks whether the radical cultural changes evident in material culture in Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages reflect the migration of populations from eastern Europe or cultural change among members of the former Roman population.
Near Eastern Practice of Law in Deuteronomy
Authors: Russell Stephen C.
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines the implications of documentary evidence on Near Eastern legal practice for understanding legal material in the biblical book of Deuteronomy. The chapter extends to Deuteronomy B. Wells’s approach to biblical law by observing similar legal issues, similar legal reasoning, and similar legal remedies shared by the Deuteronomic Code and cuneiform records of ancient Near Eastern legal practice. These data suggest that Deuteronomy was produced by scribes who were directly familiar with legal practice or who utilized textual traditions in turn directly rooted in legal practice. Deuteronomy presents legal practice in a systematic way, probing its underlying principles. At the same time, the data examined here also suggest that the Deuteronomic Code was not merely descriptive of legal practice. For example, in the law about fugitives, the Deuteronomic Code presents a vision of Israel’s international status that did not precisely match historical reality. As a literary work, Deuteronomy embodied a political and religious vision of Israel, including its legal system.
Deuteronomy in the Texts from the Judean Desert
Authors: Feldman Ariel
Published: October 2020

Second Temple Jewish texts found in the Judean Desert are of paramount importance for those interested in early transmission, interpretation, and reception of Deuteronomy. These texts, particularly the scrolls found in the caves near Khirbet Qumran, yield multiple manuscripts of Deuteronomy that predate the medieval copies by more than one thousand years. Revealing a plethora of variant readings, some known from other textual witnesses and some new, they indicate that a variety of texts of Deuteronomy were circulating in the Second Temple period. Other scrolls found at Qumran, both those that reflect a worldview of a sectarian community and those that seem to come from wider Jewish circles, utilize Deuteronomy in myriad ways. This chapter offers a sample of these various kinds of intertextualities and concludes with a brief survey of Deuteronomic themes and ideas that have impacted the Dead Sea Scrolls.