Encounters: Medieval Economy in 50 Objects

Exploring medieval economy through its artifacts, this book presents 50 object biographies that illuminate daily life, economic ethics, production, trade, and finance, offering a tangible perspective on the systems of the long medieval period.

Combining the expertise of three historians and an archaeologist, this book bridges abstract theory with the material realities of the past. This volume examines fifty diverse artifacts, including tally sticks, tools, glassware, and coins, to provide a human-centered understanding of the commercial revolution, agricultural innovations, and the emergence of a consumer society between 500 and 1600. The content is organized into five parts, focusing on economic thought, production, distribution, finance, and everyday life. Empowering students to integrate material culture as a crucial primary source, the book reveals the evolving mentalities and innovative practices that shaped medieval economic behaviour and laid the foundations of our modern world.

Encounters: Medieval Economy in 50 Objects is written for a broad audience, including undergraduate and postgraduate students in history, archaeology, and art history who are seeking a tangible, source-based approach to medieval economy. It is an essential resource for instructors looking for a modular, object-oriented teaching tool that connects material culture with economic theory, providing a refreshing alternative to traditional text-heavy histories. Museum professionals, heritage specialists, and history enthusiasts will also find its accessible narrative and focus on "object biographies" invaluable for contextualizing collections and understanding how everyday items drove the transition to a modern consumer society.

Tanja Skambraks is professor of Medieval History at the University of Graz, Austria. Before that she was assistant professor at the University of Mannheim, where she got her PhD in 2014 and wrote her second book on the Monti di Pietà (Karitativer Kredit. Monti di Pietà, franziskanische Wirtschaftsethik und städtische Sozialpolitik in Italien (15. und 16. Jahrhundert) Stuttgart 2023). She studied Medieval History, English Literature and Communication Science at the Technical University Dresden and the University of Edinburgh. Her current research focuses on economic and social history, especially financial and banking history as well as the moral economy, mercantile ethics and material culture.

Christina Antenhofer is a University Professor of Medieval History and the head of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Salzburg. She studied History, German, French and Latin at the Universities of Innsbruck and Sorbonne (Paris IV) as well as at the Collège International de Philosophie. Subsequently, she researched and taught at the Universities of Innsbruck and New Orleans. Her research focusses on the cultural, social, communication and gender history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. She is particularly interested in the material culture of this period from a transcultural perspective.

Elisabeth Gruber is Associate Professor of Medieval History and Head of the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture. She studied History and German Studies at the University of Salzburg and completed a master's degree at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research in Vienna. She has worked on urban history in medieval Austria, monastic-civic networks, and material culture. Her research focuses on the significance of material culture in religious and secular spaces where various forms of entanglement overlap.

Ulrich Müller is an archaeologist whose research focuses on the Middle Ages and contemporary archaeology at the University of Kiel. He pursued his academic studies at the universities of Kiel, Mainz, and Konstanz, and has held positions at various institutions, including those in Lübeck, Greifswald, Bergen, and Freiburg. The present author's current research focuses on high medieval urbanization in Europe and the Anthropocene. His research has encompassed the archaeology of the northwestern Slavs, medieval castles, and the theoretical underpinnings of historical archaeology. Since 2018, he has served as deputy spokesperson for the subcluster UrbanRoots within Kiel's Excellence Cluster ROOTS: Social, Environmental, and Cultural Connectivity in Past Societies.