The 5 to 9 centuries are a period of British archaeology which is trapped between disciplines. In effect, the period is pre-historic until the early 8 century, when Bede provides the first contemporary account of the region, from the perspective of a Northumbrian monk living on an island which was politically, ethnically and religiously divided. However, the archaeology of the period has never ...

The Mongol invasion of Eastern Europe, and especially its sudden withdrawal from Hungary in 1242 CE, has generated much speculation and an array of controversial theories. None of them, however, considered multifaceted environmental drivers and the coupled analysis of historical reports and natural archives. Here we investigate annually resolved, absolutely dated and spatially explicit paleocli...

Terminal Time is a machine that constructs ideologically-biased documentary histories in response to audience feedback. The audience answers multiple-choice questions via an applause meter. The answers to these questions influence which historical events are chosen from a knowledge base, how these events will be slanted to embody the bias implied in the audience's answers, and how the events wi...

Historical records provide direct information about the climatic impact on society. Especially great natural disasters such as river floods have been for long attracting the attention of humankind. Time series for flood development on the Rhine branches Waal, Nederrijn/Lek and IJssel in the Dutch Rhine Delta are presented in this paper. In the case of the Waal it is even possible to compare his...

This descriptive study explores deliberate barriers to user participation on the long-lived discussion site Metafilter.com. Metafilter has been in continuous operation since its founding in 1999, and at the time of this writing has around 12,000 active users. While many newer online sites appear eager to eliminate barriers to participation and recruit as many new members as possible, Metafilter...

In recent decades, Iranian villages have experienced an increasing transformation culturally and environmentally due to the social changes. In pre-modern period (about half a century ago), villages were known as the production sources and had an important social and economic credit as cities foundation. However, a number of changes occurred in the rural “lifestyle” resulting from development of...