A Mongolian-German project is investigating abandoned early modern military and monastic sites in central Mongolia, including how the ruins of these urban nodes continue to shape cultural memory within nomadic society. Initial excavations have revealed a previously unknown site type, interpreted as garrisons from the period of Manchu rule (AD 1636–1911).

This article explores the Central Asian adaptation of the ʿAqāʾid al-nisāʾ which has survived as a single copy within a manuscript codex located at the Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent (Uzbekistan). Not only does the Central Asian adaptation of the ʿAqāʾid al-nisāʾ lift ‘the iron curtain’ from the little-known world of rituals and customs practised by women in early modern Central Asian societies, it also serves as an important source to balance the androcentric view of gendered history of the early modern Persianate world, while challenging the preconceived notions of women's agency and authority in pre-modern Muslim societies.

This article presents a preliminary survey by which to track, in the longue durée, the path of the nail of the Gran Bestia (great beast), a remedy that appeared in therapeutics on both sides of the Atlantic. The Gran Bestia is mentioned in the natural histories, books of remedies, and medical handbooks that proliferated in the Old World and European settlements from the seventeenth century onwards. From the point of view of global history, it is a revealing case from which to investigate, first, how the transfer of a name between continents involved the associated transfer of medical virtues and properties and, second, long before Linnaeus, how the commerce in medicines, skins, and other animal products contributed to associating different animal kinds from different cultural worlds. Far from human universals, the history of the great beast seems to refer to common meanings created by commerce. This article therefore argues for a new investigation into the global and transdisciplinary dimension of objects that is not limited to exclusively local traditions, and may instead reflect the living remains of a long history of exchanges, translations, and transfers that de- and re-functionalized nature in evolving geographies over several centuries.

In Central Europe, medieval and early modern burials sometimes contain iron sickles placed on the body or in direct contact with the deceased. Previous interpretations have considered them as markers of social status or occupation, or as magical and apotropaic. Detailed analysis of sickle burials from a cemetery at Drawsko in Poland leads to a discussion of demonology beliefs, dual faith and a resurgence in paganism following the Counter-Reformation. The results illustrate how the sickle might have served as an indicator of social identity, the nature of the individual's death and the way the deceased was perceived within their community.

In this article I present new calculations for the evolution of prices and standards of living in Seville from 1521 to 1603. Using new data on prices and new research on changes in nutrition and consumption, I improve the consumer price index. Two major improvements can be highlighted: the inclusion of rented housing prices and the use of three baskets of goods, according to the transformations identified in the consumption patterns. As a result of these improvements, the new data show that prices increase more (336%) than previously estimated by Hamilton (155%) and when using the Allen method (234%). Consequently, real wages decrease more with the new index (32%).

The decline of interest rates during the early modern period is considered an important factor in the subsequent rise of capitalist society. This article uses unique empirical material based on bills of exchange in Stockholm between 1660 and 1685 to estimate underlying ‘shadow interest rates’. It shows that annual rates ‘according’ to Stockholm were very high, mostly above 10 per cent, an indication of underdeveloped financial integration between Stockholm and the main European centres. There are also indications of a decline in these rates during the period studied, reflecting improved efficiency in Swedish financial markets.

The author shows how houses in the northern Baltic were constructed using two realities: the reality of timber and the equally potent reality of spirits supporting and controlling the fate of structures. Excavations in seventeenth-century Tornio (now in modern-day Finland) showed that houses were furnished with special offerings when founded and refurbished, while evidence from living folklore suggested that the houses themselves were originally given spiritual personalities and were treated as members of the family. As more modern thinking took hold, this spirituality was transferred to the more mobile and skittish household sprites.