The Medieval Globe, Volume 4.1 (2018)

By Brigitte Bedos-Rezak

Special Issue: Seals: Making and Marking Connections across the Medieval World, edited by Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak. By placing medieval sealing practices in a global and comparative perspective, the essays gathered in this issue challenge the traditional understanding of seals as tools of closure and validation in use since the dawn of civilization. Far from being a universal technique, sealing is revealed as a flexible idiom, selectively deployed to mediate entangled identities: the introduction of Buddhism in early medieval China; the Islamization of Sasanian and Byzantine cultures; the balancing of Christian orthodoxy against classical and Muslim science; the development of civic consciousness in Byzantium; the efforts of tradesmen to brand merchandise for export; and the advancement of diplomacy from northern Europe to Indonesia. This examination of documentary seals, archaeologically recovered seal dies, and commercial and conceptual seals from cultures across the medieval world shows how skillful manipulation of their iconography, inscriptions, technology, and metaphorical meanings disseminated information, negotiated influences, asserted hegemony, and forged connections. The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusing on convergence, movement, and interdependence. Contributions to a global understanding of the medieval period (broadly defined) need not encompass the globe in any territorial sense. Rather, TMG advances a new theory and praxis of medieval studies by bringing into view phenomena that have been rendered practically or conceptually invisible by anachronistic boundaries, categories, and expectations. TMG also broadens discussion of the ways that medieval processes inform the global present and shape visions of the future.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1641893028
• ISBN13: 9781641893022
• Release Date: December 2018
• Publisher: ARC Humanities Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.1"