Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment, and Demonology

Heckscher, William S.; Bernheimer, Richard

doi:10.2307/3047496

Cited by 23 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The club, together with hairiness and nakedness, signified his wildness and the antithesis of civilization. The wild man and wild woman were very popular figures, appearing not only in medieval literature and art, but also in various carnivals (Bernheimer, 1952), and they undoubtedly contributed to later ideas about prehistoric "cavemen" (Stoczkowski, 2002:79-82).…”

Section: The Club As a Weapon Of Prehistoric People: The History Of T...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Use of Wooden Clubs and Throwing Sticks among Recent Foragers

Hrnčíř

2023

Hum Nat

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There is a popular idea that archaic humans commonly used wooden clubs as their weapons. This is not based on archaeological finds, which are minimal from the Pleistocene, but rather on a few ethnographic analogies and the association of these weapons with simple technology. This article presents the first quantitative cross-cultural analysis of the use of wooden clubs and throwing sticks for hunting and violence among foragers. Using a sample of 57 recent hunting-gathering societies from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, it is shown that the majority used clubs for violence (86%) and/or hunting (74%). Whereas in hunting and fishing the club usually served only as a secondary tool, 33% of societies used the club as one of their main fighting weapons. The use of throwing sticks was less frequent among the societies surveyed (12% for violence, 14% for hunting). Based on these results and other evidence, it is argued that the use of clubs by early humans was highly probable, at least in the simplest form of a crude stick. The great variation in the forms and use of clubs and throwing sticks among recent hunter-gatherers, however, indicates that they are not standardized weapons and that similar variation may have existed in the past. Many such prehistoric weapons may therefore have been quite sophisticated, multifunctional, and carried strong symbolic meaning.

show abstract

Section: The Club As a Weapon Of Prehistoric People: The History Of T...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Use of Wooden Clubs and Throwing Sticks among Recent Foragers

Hrnčíř

2023

Hum Nat

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

The Shakespearean Forest

Barton¹

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Shakespearean Forest, Anne Barton's final book, uncovers the pervasive presence of woodland in early modern drama, revealing its persistent imaginative power. The collection is representative of the startling breadth of Barton's scholarship: ranging across plays by Shakespeare (including Titus Andronicus, As You Like It, Macbeth, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Timon of Athens) and his contemporaries (including Jonson, Dekker, Lyly, Massinger and Greene), it also considers court pageants, treatises on forestry and chronicle history. Barton's incisive literary analysis characteristically pays careful attention to the practicalities of performance, and is supplemented by numerous illustrations and a bibliographical essay exploring recent scholarship in the field. Prepared for publication by Hester Lees-Jeffries, featuring a Foreword by Adrian Poole and an Afterword by Peter Holland, the book explores the forest as a source of cultural and psychological fascination, embracing and illuminating its mysteriousness.

show abstract

The Wild Man in the Forest

Barton¹

2017

The Shakespearean Forest

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Wild Men in the Middle Ages: A Study in Art, Sentiment, and Demonology

Cited by 23 publications

References 0 publications

The Use of Wooden Clubs and Throwing Sticks among Recent Foragers

The Use of Wooden Clubs and Throwing Sticks among Recent Foragers

The Shakespearean Forest

The Wild Man in the Forest

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About