Potteries reveal the complex organisation of the El Argar society 4,000 years ago

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

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https://bit.ly/UAB_AlfareriasArgar_MapaTopographic map of the southeast of the Murcia region showing different locations of the Betic mountain range: (1) Sierra de Carrascoy; (2) Sierra del Algarrobo; (3): Sierra de las Moreras; (4): Sierra de Almenara; (5): Loma de Bas; (6): Sierra de Enmedio; (7): Sierra de las Estancias; (8): Sierra de la Tercia; (9): Sierra Espuña. The legend shows the settlements and clay deposits studied. Credit: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)

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Credit: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)

The production of El Argar pottery was organized in specialised workshops located next to specific clay deposits, far from the main centres of power. This production model reinforces the existence of a complex, hierarchical, supra-local organisation in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula during the Bronze Age.

Most of the pottery recovered from political and administrative centres in El Argar (2200-1550 BCE), such as Tira del Lienzo and Ifre, located in the province of Murcia, was not produced locally, but rather at sites located in the coastal mountains of the southeastern peninsula. This is the conclusion reached by a research team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in a study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, which analyses the composition and circulation of the raw materials used to produce the characteristic pottery of El Argar.

The study contradicts the prevailing idea that each community produced its own pottery using materials available in its immediate surroundings, and reinforces the idea of a complex and hierarchical social and economic system.

“Most pieces, especially the more standardised forms such as cups and jars, were made from red clay formed by the climatic alteration of metamorphic rocks or schists during the warm Pliocene period, and found in the coastal mountains of Murcia, Almeria, and Granada", explains David Gomez, researcher in the Department of Geology and co-author of the study. “Pottery made from this very distinctive type of clay became exclusive from 1900 BCE onwards, when El Argar reached its peak in terms of territorial expansion and economic development”, says Carla Garrido, predoctoral researcher in the Department of Prehistory and first author of the paper.

“Our petrographic studies confirm that the red clays that best match El Argar pottery are found in Pleistocene deposits located on the northwestern slopes of the Almenara mountain range, in the Murcia province, in the area of the current municipality of Lorca”, notes Marta Roigé, geologist at the UAB who also participated in the research. "A whole series of small settlements have been documented in this area, located on the plain above this type of clay, which seem to have specialised in the production of large jars and typical El Argar cups. These settlements are very different from the large hilltop settlements, and were located decades ago precisely because of the amount of pottery found on the surface", explains Adrià Moreno, researcher at the State Archaeological Service of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany, who has studied the circulation of these pottery pieces to the borders of El Argar.

To carry out the study, researchers surveyed an area of 5,200 square kilometres and analysed the sedimentary and petrographic composition of more than 140 original raw material deposits, comparing them with objects recovered from four main settlements in El Argar: Tira de Lienzo, Ifre, Zapata, and Cabezo Negro, located in the southern part of the province of Murcia. In addition, they developed spatial models of geographic information to assess the relationships between pottery, raw materials, and regions.

The results, researchers point out, reinforce the interpretation of the El Argar system as a complex and regionally interconnected economy with empirical data that shows a structured organisation of ceramic production.

“The technological and compositional homogeneity observed among different settlements suggests planning and control of production processes beyond the strictly domestic sphere. This implies supra-local coordination in the management of resources, technical knowledge, and product distribution, in line with the dynamics of centralisation and specialisation characteristic of the El Argar state model almost 4,000 years ago", argues Roberto Risch, researcher at the UAB Department of Prehistory and coordinator of the study.

Pottery, key evidence of regional and economic interactions

One of the archaeological characteristics differentiating El Argar, which came to occupy the entire southeast of the Iberian Peninsula (from Alacant to Granada and Jaén), is its pottery. This pottery produced only eight types of vessels in the span of more than 600 years, although some forms range from small cups, such as the typical cup unique to the Iberian Peninsula, to large vessels with a capacity of more than 250 litres.

Although there are not many interdisciplinary studies on El Argar pottery, the prevailing idea until now was that it was produced domestically or, at most, locally—each community and settlement produced its own pottery. The uniformity of production and the virtual absence of decoration over such a long period of time was considered to be an expression of the uniformity of social practices involved in the use of this pottery in El Argar settlements.

Based on material evidence, the study published by UAB researchers contributes to consolidating the role of pottery as a key marker of the regional and economic interactions of the El Argar system. "Although the social and political hierarchy of El Argar is an accepted fact, our results add value by showing how this hierarchy is also manifested in pottery techniques and the organisation of material production. Pottery ceases to be merely a consumer object and becomes a means of tracing mechanisms of control, circulation, and ideological cohesion within the territory," concludes Carla Garrido.

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Journal

Journal of Archaeological Science

DOI

10.1016/j.jas.2025.106394 

Archaeology: Digital map increases Roman Empire road network by 100,000 kilometers

 

A new high resolution digital dataset and map — named Itiner-e — of roads throughout the Roman Empire around the year 150 CE is presented in research published in Scientific Data. The findings increase the known length of the Empire’s road system by over 100,000 kilometres.

At its height in the second century CE, the Roman Empire included over 55 million people and stretched from modern day Britain to Egypt and Syria. Although a network of roads throughout the Empire facilitated its development and maintenance, it remains incompletely mapped and existing digitisations are low resolution.

Tom Brughmans, Pau de Soto and Adam Pažout and colleagues created Itiner-e using archaeological and historical records, topographic maps, and satellite imagery. The dataset includes 299,171 kilometres of roads — an increase from a previous estimate of 188,555 kilometres — covering almost four million square kilometres. The authors attribute this increase in road coverage to higher coverage of roads in the Iberian Peninsula, Greece and North Africa and to the adapting of previously proposed road routes to fit geographical realities. This includes allowing roads crossing mountains to follow winding paths rather than direct lines. Itiner-e comprises 14,769 road sections, with 103,478 kilometres (34.6%) classified as main roads and 195,693 kilometres (65.4%) as secondary roads. The authors report that the precise locations of only 2.7% of the roads are known with certainty, while 89.8% are less precisely known, and 7.4% are hypothesised.

The authors suggest that Itiner-e represents the most detailed and comprehensive openly accessible digitisation of the Empire’s roads and that it also highlights gaps in current knowledge of the road system. They note that Itiner-e cannot show changes in the road system over time and that future research is needed to investigate this throughout the Empire. They propose that Itiner-e could be used in future research investigating the influence of Roman roads on connectivity, administration, migration, and disease transmission in the Empire.

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Journal

Scientific Data

DOI

10.1038/s41597-025-06140-z 

Indigenous Peoples have thrived in the southwestern Amazon for more than 1,000 years

by Prof Carla Jaimes Betancourt

In September 2021, a multidisciplinary expedition explored one of the least-known regions of the Bolivian Amazon: the Great Tectonic Lakes of Exaltación in the department of Beni. Organized by the Grupo de Trabajo para los Llanos de Moxos (GTLM), the mission brought together researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the National Museum of Natural History, the Institute of Ecology, the Biodiversity and Environment Research Center , the Aquatic Resources Research Center, and the Department of Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn.

Landscapes as Living Archives

In southwestern Amazonia, the great tectonic Lakes Rogaguado and Ginebra in Bolivia reveal a profoundly human landscape, a living archive of adaptation and creativity. Beneath the grasslands and shallow waters lie monumental earthworks, raised fields, and complex canal systems that attest to millennia of human–environment interaction.

The lakes lie within the Municipal Protected Area of Grandes Lagos Tectónicos de Exaltación and form part of the Río Yata Ramsar wetland complex, recognized by UNESCO for its ecological and cultural significance. Situated in the Llanos de Moxos, a vast mosaic of savannas, gallery forests, and floodplains, the largest wetland in the Amazon basin, this landscape has long inspired fascination, even evoked in ethnohistorical account of the fabled ‘Land of Paititi.’ Yet its deeply human history is only now coming into focus.

Through survey, excavation, and LiDAR mapping, we documented several archaeological sites — Paquío, Coquinal, Isla del Tesoro, and Jasschaja — each representing a different chapter in the long history of settlement in this region.

Radiocarbon dates show successive occupations from about 600 to 1400 CE, and research revealed how communities repeatedly reshaped these wetlands. At Paquío, an early phase around 600 CE was followed by a more intensive occupation between 1000 and 1200 CE, marked by shell middens, dense ceramic deposits, and an elaborate network of canals and raised fields associated with maize-based agriculture. In contrast, Jasschaja, dated to 1300 to1400 CE, shows broader landscape transformations and greater plant diversity, pointing to intensified forest and crop management.

The landscape, like many across the Llanos de Moxos, is marked by geometrically shaped relief that resolves, upon examination, into circular and quadrangular ditches, drainage canals, raised fields, and clusters of mounds form an intricate system of water control and cultivation. These earthworks were carefully engineered to manage floods, channel water, and create habitable and cultivable spaces within a seasonally inundated environment. Their variety, from geometric enclosures to elongated cultivation platforms, suggests not a single plan but centuries of local experimentation and adaptation to changing ecological and social conditions. Together, they reflect the cultural diversity and long-term resilience of the peoples who shaped them.

Excavations at Paquío and Jasschaja also revealed a remarkably diverse pre-Hispanic diet, showing how ancient societies utilized the resources of a dynamic wetland. Fish such as wolf fish, peacock bass, and South American lungfish dominated the assemblages, complemented by reptiles like caimans and turtles, and mammals such as capybaras, pacas, and armadillos. Botanical evidence indicates the use of maize, legumes, and several palm species — moriche palm, corozo palm, cumare palm, totai palm, palmita, and peach palm. Together, these findings depict a mixed economy of fishing, hunting, gathering, and cultivation.

Biocultural Heritage and Collaboration in the Field

The Cayubaba and Movima communities continue to inhabit these landscapes, where exceptional biodiversity is interwoven with deep cultural history. Their long-standing presence and knowledge sustain a unique form of biocultural heritage, where ecological and cultural diversity have coevolved through centuries of interaction.

During the post-Covid-19 field seasons, collaboration was grounded in dialogue and respect. Representatives of the Cayubaba Indigenous Council, encompassing 21 Cayubaba and Movima communities, helped identify research areas, guided access to culturally significant sites, and requested that certain places remain untouched. Although contact was necessarily limited for health reasons, this coordination ensured that the research aligned with community priorities and contributed to a broader understanding of the region’s living heritage.

Through the GTLM, scientists and Indigenous representatives are creating a platform that connects archaeological and ecological research with conservation. The project highlights that the Llanos de Moxos is not only a biodiversity hotspot but also a landscape profoundly shaped by human history, while supporting ongoing efforts to strengthen the management of the Yata River Ramsar site and the protected areas with which it overlaps.

Why the Past Matters for the Future

At a time when deforestation, industrial agriculture, and climate change threaten the Amazon’s integrity, the landscapes of Rogaguado and Ginebra offer more than archaeological insight: they offer lessons in sustainability. Archaeological evidence reveals long-term traditions of diversified livelihoods integrating farming, fishing, and forest management in flexible and adaptive ways. Rather than seeking to dominate nature; ancient Amazonians worked with its rhythms, transforming seasonal floods into opportunities. Although the construction and use of raised fields eventually ceased—likely as a consequence of demographic collapse and social disruptions following European colonization—this does not diminish the sustainability of their practices. For centuries, these societies maintained productive systems through their understanding of the dynamic wetlands. Their legacy challenges modern assumptions about ‘development’ and reminds us that resilience often arises from diversity: from species, knowledge, and ways of life.

Safeguarding this biocultural heritage has become a global responsibility. As the wetlands of the Llanos de Moxos continue to store carbon, regulate water, and sustain biodiversity, their conservation must also honor the people who have long cared for them. In this sense, archaeology becomes more than the study of the past: it is a bridge linking the knowledge embedded in ancient landscapes with today’s urgent conversations on sustainability and justice.

The Llanos de Moxos remind us that the Amazon has always been a biocultural landscape, dynamic, inhabited, and full of memory. Its monumental earthworks, forest islands, and living traditions reveal that the key to our shared future may lie in listening to these landscapes that remember.

 

“Ideas about Vikings today can often not be verified scientifically”

Reports and Proceedings

Cluster of Excellence "Religion and Politics"

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Poster for the conference “Imagining Nordic Paganism: Cultural Memories and Scholarly Thought Since the Middle Ages”

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Credit: Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”

According to scholars of Scandinavian studies, ideas about Vikings and pagan Norse mythology today can often not be verified scientifically. “They are based essentially on reports written by Christian scholars in the High Middle Ages well over a century later, since, besides brief runic inscriptions, no written texts from the original period have been preserved”, says  Scandinavian scholar Roland Scheel from the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics” at the University of Münster announcing the international conference “Imagining Nordic Paganism” from 6 to 7 November. “Many people now have a relatively clear image of the Viking period, defined today as lasting from the 8th to the 11th century, and of pre-Christian Nordic mythology, this image deriving from numerous Viking films, series, video games and museums. This includes the stereotype of the brave explorer, strong warrior and seafarer. But what we know about this period is not so clear-cut.” According to Scheel, key research narratives on paganism, including in some exhibitions and media reports, continue to obscure the fact that the texts they refer to comprise “memorialised history” only.

The term “Viking” now has mainly positive connotations, says Scheel. “Pre-Christian Scandinavian society is credited, for example, with a special warrior culture, an exceptionally good position for women compared to the Middle Ages, and freedom from religious constraints.” The positive image of Scandinavian paganism continues to shape identities to this day. “One example are neo-pagan groups, a religious and cultural current based on pre-Christian paganism whose followers see themselves as living Scandinavian paganism – often in contrast to monotheistic religions such as Christianity.” As Scheel explains, the view of pre-Christian paganism today pays little heed to negative aspects such as the brutality of the Vikings’ raids. This strikingly positive view contrasts with how other medieval phenomena are seen, such as the Crusades, which today evoke images of violence and religious repression. “Ideas about the Vikings can be seen in pop culture, advertising and even politically motivated projects. One example is the Council of Europe’s Viking Cultural Route, which includes numerous historical sites and presents the ‘Viking heritage’ as a unifying element of European identity.”

“Richard Wagner’s character Valkyrie is also a stereotype”

Scandinavian studies scholars Roland Scheel and Simon Hauke are investigating at the Cluster of Excellence how today’s image of the ‘pagan North’ originated in the Middle Ages, and how it has developed over time. They point out that ideas about Scandinavian paganism have been passed down over the centuries, being constantly reworked from different perspectives and motives in the process. This ranges from literary works such as the 13th-century “Edda” by the Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson, which retells the sagas of gods and heroes, to Jacob Grimm, who drew upon medieval Scandinavian texts, and to Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), who referred to the “Edda” in speeches to the Reichstag. “What is true for all periods is that studying how people imagined Scandinavian paganism in their particular time and how they sought to convey this image to others – this speaks volumes about their goals and mindsets. Our research allows us to peek behind the scenes of our own knowledge – or of what we think we know.”

According to Scheel, the image of the ‘pagan North’ has often been exploited for political purposes. “The clearest negative example is how the Volk movement and the National Socialists exploited Norse mythology, misusing medieval written sources to underpin their racial ideology.” While there are still links to right-wing extremism today, the overall reception is now much more heterogeneous and covers a very broad spectrum of interests and forms. The field of neo-pagan groups is also heterogeneous.

Ideas about Norse mythology have also been taken up in art and literature. “One further example is Richard Wagner’s opera ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’”, explains Simon Hauke. “Many of the ideas we have today about Norse mythology come from this opera’s premiere, including the figure of the Valkyrie, whom Wagner clothed as a decidedly feminine warrior. Wagner’s image of the Valkyrie is often adopted today, for example on album covers of metal bands and Yu-Gi-Oh! Cards.” According to Hauke, though, this image is true to the actual source material to a limited extent only. “Valkyries assume very different roles in Old Norse sources. Besides selecting the fallen in battle and transporting them to Valhalla, and playing the role of lover to a human hero, they also serve as barmaids in the afterlife. In the textual sources, Valkyries often intervene in human battles, but it is unclear what exactly their role was in the original mythology and whether they were seen as warriors – the only thing that is certain today is that this was just one of many facets of a character whom later interpretations reduced to her femininity and warriorhood.”

Roland Scheel and Simon Hauke’s research project is entitled “Paganisations: Memorialised paganism as an element of Scandinavian and European identities”. The conference “Imagining Nordic Paganism: Cultural Memories and Scholarly Thought Since the Middle Ages” focuses on the historical reception of Scandinavian paganism. “We cover a broad range of topics, such as the relationship between gender and paganism, the spatial dimension of its reception, and not least the identity-giving recourse to paganism in historiography and the history of Scandinavian studies. This reveals the great temporal depth of the reception of Scandinavian paganism from the first sources in the Middle Ages to research and literature today”, explains Scheel. The conference will feature lectures by international researchers from Scandinavian studies and related disciplines, including scholar of Scandinavian studies Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir (Oslo), runologist Alessia Bauer (Paris), scholar of Scandinavian studies Jonas Wellendorf (Berkeley), and scholar of Islamic studies Philip Bockholt from the Cluster of Excellence. (fbu/vvm)

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2.75-million-year-old stone tools show hominin response to a hostile climate

 

Tools recovered from three sedimentary layers in Kenya show continuous tool use spanning from 2.75 to 2.44 million years ago in the face of environmental changes.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Arkansas

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Amelia Villaseñor, assistant professor of anthropology

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Credit: University Relations

Someone born near the start of the 20th century could have witnessed the dawn of commercial flight, the creation of nuclear weapons, the moon landing and even the early growth of the internet. Technology did not always progress so fast, however, especially not for hominins, our distant human ancestors. In fact, despite major environmental change, a tool technology roughly equivalent to a Swiss army knife was associated with hominin occupation for more than 300 thousand years. 

New findings out of Kenya by an international team of researchers, including Amelia Villaseñor, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas, reveal profound consistency in the use of stone tool technology over time. Stone tools recovered from three distinct layers of the Turkana Basin, representing three time periods, show a tradition of continuous tool use spanning roughly 300,000 years, from 2.75 to 2.44 million years ago. This dates the tools to close to the beginnings of Oldowan technology, the earliest widespread stone-tool tradition made by striking flakes off a stone core to create sharp cutting edges.  

The tools were recovered from a site on the northeast side of Lake Turkana called Namorotukunan, which preserves three discrete layers dated to about 2.75, 2.60, and 2.44 million years ago. These layers each preserve different snapshots of environmental conditions from humid floodplains to arid riverine settings. This is the earliest Oldowan record yet reported from the Koobi Fora Formation and among the oldest worldwide.  

David R. Braun, at professor of anthropology at George Washington University and the Max Planck Institute, who led the study, said the site “reveals an extraordinary story of cultural continuity.” 

Villaseñor describes herself as a paleoecologist. She studies paleoenvironments by looking at non-hominin fossils, such as animals or plants, to gain insight into the environments in which fossils lived. For this study, Villaseñor analyzed pedogenic carbonates. These small nodules provide signals from ancient plant roots found in the soil from which stable isotope signals can be identified. 

“Put simply, these signals tell us whether there were grasses or whether there were trees,” she explained.  

More importantly, this research can also tell us whether the environment changed over time. In fact, field and lab work from Villaseñor and her colleagues confirmed that hominin tool use weathered major climate swings over the 300,000-year period of the study. Plant microfossils, plant chemistry and traces of natural fires, along with chemical and magnetic properties of the ancient river muds and sands, show habitats shifted from palm-dotted wetlands to drier, open grasslands and semideserts, yet the toolmaking persisted. 

“I try to relate changes in the environment to changes in behavior,” Villaseñor said. “In Ethiopia, the oldest stone tools were recovered during an arid period. The fact that these early stone tools in Kenya are found in sites that preserve everything from micro charcoals — potentially representing fire — to droughts, and other signs of aridity is fascinating. It connects tool use and environmental change across eastern Africa in a really interesting way. Hominins likely utilized stone tools to access new resources to survive.” 

The study shows that toolmakers preferred a raw material called chalcedony, a rare and tough, fine-grained stone, pointing to deliberate material choice and practiced skill. Cut-marked bones, especially those dated to around 2.58 million years ago, link the flaked stones directly to butchery, marking an early shift toward animal foods.  

“Namorotukunan offers a rare lens on a changing world long gone — rivers on the move, fires tearing through, aridity closing in — and the tools, unwavering,” said Dan V. Palcu Rolier, a geoscientist with the University of São Paulo and GeoEcoMar who was a co-author on the paper. “For approximately 300,000 years, the same craft endures — a declaration of independence that may mark when technology first put our ancestors at the helm of their evolution. 

As the landscape dried, rivers may have become predictable lifelines, providing water, raw materials and feeding opportunities. Early hominins kept returning to these ancient rivers, accessed food using Oldowan technology, and left behind the more than 1,200 artifacts found today. 

Ultimately, Namorotukunan reveals an enduring tradition, not a moment: human ancestors made the same types of tools for hundreds of thousands of years.  

“This study, linking a simple tool kit to human ingenuity, reminds us that our ancestors have successfully confronted and survived environmental challenges,” Villaseñor suggested. “We can survive whatever the future throws at us; we may just need to look into the ancient past.” 

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-025-64244-x 

Myths about rapid spread of the Black Death influenced by single “literary tale”

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A page from Ibn Abi Hajala's (d. 1375) Dafʿ al-niqma bi-l-ṣalāh ʿalā nabī al-raḥma (‘Repelling the Trial by Sending Blessings Upon the Prophet of Mercy’). This plague treatise contains four maqamas, three of which were composed in Syria during the 1348/9 Black Death outbreak. (Image credit: MS Laleli 1361, Süleymaniye Library, Istanbul, personal photo).

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Credit: A page from Ibn Abi Hajala's (d. 1375) Dafʿ al-niqma bi-l-ṣalāh ʿalā nabī al-raḥma (‘Repelling the Trial by Sending Blessings Upon the Prophet of Mercy’). This plague treatise contains four maqamas, three of which were composed in Syria during the 1348/9 Black Death outbreak. (Image credit: MS Laleli 1361, Süleymaniye Library, Istanbul, personal photo).

Myths about how the Black Death travelled quickly across Asia, ravaging Silk Route communities, date back to a single fourteenth-century source, experts have found.

Modern portrayals of the plague quickly moving across the continent, following the course of traders, have been incorrect because of centuries of misinterpretation of a rhyming literary tale.

This “maqāma”—an Arabic genre of writing often focusing on a traveling “trickster”—was written by the poet and historian, Ibn al-Wardi in 1348/9 in Aleppo but was later mistaken for a factual description of the plague's movement.

The pathogen that gave rise to the Black Death most likely had its origins in Central Asia. Some geneticists, drawing on the narrative found in Ibn al-Wardi’s tale, still believe the pathogen was only displaced from there in the late 1330s, moving overland from an origin in Kyrgyzstan to the Black and Mediterranean seas in less than a decade, resulting in the massive pandemic in Western Eurasia and North Africa of the late-1340s. This ‘Quick Transit Theory’ is built primarily upon the literal reading of Ibn al-Wardī’s maqāma.

This notion that a lineage of this bacterium moved over 3,000 miles overland within a few years and established itself sufficiently to cause the devastating Black Death of the Middle East and Europe from 1347 to 1350 is severely called into question in the new study.

In his tale Ibn al-Wardi personifies plague as a roving trickster who, in the course of 15 years, decimates one region after the next starting from unknown regions outside of China, to China, across India, central Asia, Persia and finally entering the Black Sea and Mediterranean to wreak havoc on Egypt and the Levant. But it was taken as the truth because he also quoted selections of this tale in his historical work.

The study, by Muhammed Omar, a PhD candidate in Arab and Islamic Studies, and Nahyan Fancy, a historian of Islamic medicine from the University of Exeter, shows how this story began to be taken as fact by 15th century Arab historians and subsequent European historians.

Professor Fancy said: “All roads to the factually incorrect description of the spread of the plague lead back to this one text. It’s like it is in the centre of a spider’s web of the myths about how the Black Death moved across the region.

“The entire trans-Asian movement of plague and its arrival in Egypt prior to Syria has always been and continues to be based upon Ibn al-Wardī’s singular Risāla, which is unsubstantiated by other contemporary chronicles and even maqāmas. The text was written just to highlight the fact the plague travelled, and tricked people. It should not be taken literally.”

The maqāma form was invented in the late-10th century, but really took off from the twelfth century onwards. Fourteenth-century Mamluk literati particularly prized this form of writing, and several of their maqāmas, including on plague, are to be found in manuscripts in libraries across the world.  Maqāmas were designed to be read aloud completely in one session.

Ibn al-Wardī’s Risāla was one of at least three maqāmas about plague composed in 1348-9. The study shows how this writing has huge potential to show how communities at the time coped with the catastrophic events.

This frees historians up to examine the significance of earlier plague outbreaks (such as the 1258 outbreak in Damascus, or the 1232–3 outbreak in Kaifeng), their impact on those societies, and how experiences in those outbreaks and their memories were recalled and revisited by later scholars.

Professor Fancy said: “These writings can help us understand how creativity may have been a way to exercise some control and served as a coping mechanism at this time of widespread death, similar to the way people developed new culinary skills or artistic skills during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“These maqāmas may not give us accurate information about the how the Black Death spread. But the texts are phenomenal because they help us see how people at the time were living with this awful crisis.”

 

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Journal

Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies

DOI

10.5617/jais.12790