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Tin-glaze technology was introduced early in the Iberian Peninsula and developed further in the Valencian region. Manises lusterware on tin-glazed wares became, from the 14th century onward, a widely exported and socially recognized prestige product, although it declined in later centuries and was replaced by other productions, such as polychrome earthenwares from Alcora or Valencian tilework, that enjoyed a worldwide distribution. The aim of this article is to review the long evolution of this Eastern technology, introduced almost simultaneously with its development in the Middle East, analyzing how the technique and the ceramics produced with it were adapted to changing societies and to the aesthetic keys of each historical moment through to the 18th century. This first occurred because of the admiration it generated in European feudal society when the technique was transferred by the integration of the Muslim population in the expanding kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula, and then by crossing oceans and reaching America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the first results of charcoal analyses carried out at Cova des Moro (Manacor, Mallorca, Spain) are presented. This cave is an archaeological but also palaeontological site that provides information on endemic fauna (the extinct caprine Myotragus balearicus) before the arrival of humans and, later, the relationship between the first farmers and the landscape. Several human occupations in the cave have been documented, from the Chalcolithic (end of the 3rd millennium cal BC), the Bronze Age (2nd millennium cal BC) and, finally, the Almohad period (13th century AD), during which the cave was used for different purposes. The first results of charcoal analyses at Cova des Moro provide information about the natural plant communities exploited by humans for comparison with later sequences, enabling us to evaluate how humans managed this territory over time. The results point to the exploitation of Mediterranean woodlands with wild olive (Olea europaea), mastic (Pistacia lentiscus), green olive tree (Phillyrea), Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis), rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), juniper (Juniperus) and rockrose species (Cistus), among others; these taxa would become the main elements of Mallorca's coastal landscape in later times, and it has been proven that they would already have been present as the island's natural flora at the time humans arrived there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excavation of the mid-fifteenth-century castle of Pieter Bladelin, a high-ranking Burgundian official, in the village of Middelburg-in-Flanders, near Bruges (Belgium), has unearthed a remarkable series of blue and white painted and glazed floor tiles. Post-excavation archival and heraldic inquiries into the tiles has led to a deeper understanding of the role that gift exchange of luxury objects played within the diplomatic network of Alfonso V “the Magnanimous”, King of Aragon, and Philip “the Good”, Duke of Burgundy, in shaping a shared chivalric and crusading culture between Burgundy and Aragon. The study demonstrates the added value of the integration of archaeological and historical data in studying economic, political and cultural processes for the later medieval or early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]