Tuesday, 02 March 2010– Jonathan Wilson - The Siege and Conquest of Silves 1189
July 1187; Saladin’s troops annihilated the Frankish army at the Horns of Hattin in Palestine. The Sultan marched triumphantly into Jerusalem less than three months later. In Rome, Pope Urban III dies of grief. His successor proclaims the Third Crusade. Responding to the Pope’s call, a fleet of crusaders embarked from the River Weser in Northern Germany travelling via England along the Atlantic seaboard, heading for Jerusalem and the Third Crusade. Arriving in Lisbon, they heard of previous battles for Silves, and at the request of the King of Portugal, the fleet set sail for the Algarve.
Hundreds of years later, in 1837, an Italian academic bought a battered and anonymous text in a market in Aix-en-Provence, France, a text that would become known as the Codex of Aix. Written in medieval Latin, the text told the story of ‘The Siege and Conquest of Silves.’ Jonathan Wilson has now translated the Codex of Aix into English and will present an illustrated story of this momentous event in the history of the Algarve.
Jonathan Wilson was born in 1962 and is a barrister, formerly practising commercial law in London, before moving to the Algarve in 2000. Since then he has devoted his time to journalism, translation, photography and principally to the study and research of Portuguese Medieval and Islamic history. Originally from Birkenhead in the county of Merseyside, England, he holds degrees in the Universities of Wales, London and Cambridge. He lives in Silves city centre.
July 1187; Saladin’s troops annihilated the Frankish army at the Horns of Hattin in Palestine. The Sultan marched triumphantly into Jerusalem less than three months later. In Rome, Pope Urban III dies of grief. His successor proclaims the Third Crusade. Responding to the Pope’s call, a fleet of crusaders embarked from the River Weser in Northern Germany travelling via England along the Atlantic seaboard, heading for Jerusalem and the Third Crusade. Arriving in Lisbon, they heard of previous battles for Silves, and at the request of the King of Portugal, the fleet set sail for the Algarve.
Hundreds of years later, in 1837, an Italian academic bought a battered and anonymous text in a market in Aix-en-Provence, France, a text that would become known as the Codex of Aix. Written in medieval Latin, the text told the story of ‘The Siege and Conquest of Silves.’ Jonathan Wilson has now translated the Codex of Aix into English and will present an illustrated story of this momentous event in the history of the Algarve.
Jonathan Wilson was born in 1962 and is a barrister, formerly practising commercial law in London, before moving to the Algarve in 2000. Since then he has devoted his time to journalism, translation, photography and principally to the study and research of Portuguese Medieval and Islamic history. Originally from Birkenhead in the county of Merseyside, England, he holds degrees in the Universities of Wales, London and Cambridge. He lives in Silves city centre.
Tuesday, 06 April 2010 – Prof Peter Drewett - Digging up Neolithic Hong Kong
The ten years or so prior to Hong Kong returning to the Peoples Republic of China saw massive development including the construction of a new airport just off Lantau Island. Many important archaeological sites were scheduled for destruction and international teams were invited to excavate key sites. Professor Peter Drewett was invited by the Antiquities and Monuments Office of the Hong Kong Government to undertake the excavation of the major Late Neolithic site at Sha Lo Wan. This talk will look at the excavation of this site in the context of Neolithic Hong Kong. The Neolithic in mainland China was well established by 6000 BC although the Neolithic in South China and particularly the coastal fringe is somewhat later. The settlement and ritual site at Sha Lo Wan dates to about 2900-2200B.C. On a promontory overlooking the South China Sea the site contained timber buildings, graves and many deliberately buried whole pots and polished stone tools. From these remains we can build up a good picture of the everyday life of peoples in Neolithic Hong Kong.
Peter Drewett read Anthropology at University College London and completed a PhD on the Neolithic and Bronze Age of Sussex at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London. He then worked as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments in the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works before teaching field archaeology and prehistory at University College London for 33 years. He recently retired and was appointed Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Sussex. During his career his main centres of field research have been Sussex, the Caribbean and Hong Kong. He has also worked alongside Professor Luiz Oosterbeck (coincidentally to be the AAA speaker in June) digging in Portugal as part of a long running Erasmus exchange. He is now actively involved in Sussex archaeology again as President of the Sussex Archaeological Society and in Barbados archaeology where he has just returned from setting up an exhibition in the National Museum based on his 25 years digging on the island. He is the author of over 100 books and articles including the standard text for archaeology students 'Field Archaeology: An Introduction' (Routledge) of which he is currently writing a second edition.
Tuesday, 04 May – John Moreland - Landscape and belief in medieval England
Dr. Moreland will present his work on reconstructing patterns of belief in the Derbyshire Peak District of England between the 6th and 12th centuries AD. In essence, it includes a look at the burial mound at Wigber Low (with some Germanic weapons' burial and what I think is an Anglo-Saxon 'cunning-woman' (a kind of cross between a sorceress and wise-woman!), the cross at Bradbourne (with some reflections on angels, demons and medieval theories of vision), and the monastic farm at Roystone Grange (with discussion of cures for elf-shots (prehistoric arrowheads), urology ... and some Christianity too).
John Moreland BA PhD is a lecturer at the department of Archaeology and Prehistory at Sheffield University. His research interests include the relationship between archaeology, history and theory, and he has carried out fieldwork related to this in medieval archaeology in Britain and the Mediterranean. His specific areas of interest include the use of writing in past societies – both as a technology of oppression and as a means of empowerment, the role of images (particularly the Cross) in medieval and early modern societies and the transition from late Antiquity to the middle ages in Europe (particularly in the Britain and the Mediterranean). In addition to the field work in the Peak District in England, in recent years he has been involved in a Middle Ages site in Central Italy and as Co-Director of the Butrint Project in Albania. He is the author of "Archaeology and Text" (2001) and the recently released “Archaeology, Theory and the Middle Ages”, published in the Duckworth Debates in Archaeology series.
Tuesday, 08 June – Luiz Oosterbeek – Evidence of Complexities of Prehistoric Farming Societies in Brazil
(PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A CHANGE TO THE SECOND TUESDAY AS 1ST JUNE IS A PUBLIC HOLIDAY IN SÂO BRÁS!!
European approaches to Southern American archaeology have been largely focused in the major Meso-American and Andean civilisations. As a consequence, the popular perception of the early contacts between Europeans (Portuguese) and indigenous populations in Southern America is marked by a consideration of a very low level of social complexity of the latter. Yet, Brazil and Southern America in the dawn of the XVI century were the stage for numerous and different human groups. The talk will put forward evidence of the complexities of these groups.
Luiz Oosterbeek is a graduate in History (Lisbon, 1982), PhD in Archaeology (London 1994, Porto 1995), Professor at the Instituto Politécnico de Tomar (IPT), guest lecturer in several universities in Europe and Brazil, Director of IPT’s International Relations Bureau, Secretary General of the International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (CIPSH/UNESCO), Vice-President of HERITY International, member of the Science and Society Committee of CYTED, Co-ordinator of research, teaching and Heritage management projects in Portugal, Brazil, Colombia, Senegal and Angola. He is currently Director. Co-ordinator of Master and PhD programmes and of several EU projects in the fields of prehistory, archaeology, landscape and heritage management. Responsible of the “Quaternary and Prehistory group of the Geosciences Centre” (R&D unit 73 of the Portuguese National Scientific System). Author of circa 20 books and 200 papers.