Theory Thursday | Academic/Professional History Free-for-All

by AutoModerator

Previous weeks!

This week, ending in September 22 2016:

Today's thread is for open discussion of:

  • History in the academy

  • Historiographical disputes, debates and rivalries

  • Implications of historical theory both abstractly and in application

  • Philosophy of history

  • And so on

Regular participants in the Thursday threads should just keep doing what they've been doing; newcomers should take notice that this thread is meant for open discussion only of matters like those above, not just anything you like -- we'll have a thread on Friday for that, as usual.

grantimatter

Have any of you peeked into the AskScience AMA about the new technique used to decipher the En-Gedi Scroll?

Is it as cool/radical/game-changing as it seems?

ReaperReader

I'm not sure if this is the right space. I was reading the threads about feudualism and how that term is, shall we say, doubtful in its usefulness for describing economic relations in say mediaeval Europe. This led me to wonder: how do historians now describe economic relations in mediaeval Europe? Do they see significant differences between say 11th century and the 17th century in Europe?