Food production and consumption on Durham Priory's estate, c. 1250-1500

在解释现代经济时，很少有哪个时期像中世纪晚期那样有争议，马克思主义者和新马尔萨斯主义者，以及研究商业化、性别和环境的历史学家长期争论不休。相比之下，在这些争论中，食物史在很大程度上被视为一个边缘领域，而实际上它是至关重要的。这一领域尤其受到一种过度倾向的阻碍，即一方面将食物解释为经济资源，另一方面将其解释为文化和社会象征。实际上，食物超越了这些范畴，它的经济特性与其文化共生地联系在一起。例如，市场在一定程度上是由品味决定的，而送礼和性别动态则会随着工资和经济衰退而变化。本论文将提供中世纪食品生产和消费的整体观点，并将重新校准中世纪食品历史的范围，方法和概念基础。这将通过对达勒姆修道院（Durham Priory）的研究来实现。达勒姆修道院是中世纪晚期英格兰最有影响力、记录最完整的家族之一，对东北经济至关重要。利用达勒姆修道院丰富而未被充分利用的记录，该项目将创建新的定量数据集，以评估该遗产的生产、价格、利润、市场关系、工资、礼物赠送和施舍等数据集。这将提供一个案例研究，在英国历史的两分法时期，经历了环境灾难、饥荒、疾病和经济衰退，但矛盾的是，文化的更新和重生。

Few periods have proved as contentious in explaining the modern economy as the late Middle Ages, long sparred over by Marxists and neo-Malthusians, as well as historians of commercialisation, gender and the environment. By comparison, food history has largely been seen as a peripheral area in these debates, when in reality it is of central importance. The field has been especially impeded by an excessive tendency to demarcate between interpreting food as an economic resource on the one hand, and a cultural and social symbol on the other. In reality, food transcended these categories, its economic character symbiotically connected to its cultural. Markets, for example, were shaped partly by taste, while gift giving and gender dynamics shifted according to wages and recession. This thesis will provide a holistic view of both the production and consumption of medieval food and will recalibrate the scope, methodology and conceptual underpinnings of medieval food history. This will be achieved through a study of Durham Priory, one of the most influential and well-documented households in late medieval England, and of vital importance to the north-eastern economy. Using the rich and underutilised records of Durham Priory, this project will create novel quantitative datasets to assess the estate's production, prices, profits, market relations, wages, gift giving and alms, among other datasets. This will offer a case study of the changing role of food during dichotomous period of English history, which experienced environmental catastrophe, famine, disease and recession butparadoxically also cultural renewal and rebirth.