Technology, Society, and Culture in Late Medieval Renaissance

This work presents an overview of technology as intrinsic to the culture of late medieval and Renaissance Europe. It includes discussion of agriculture, textiles such as wool, crafts such as ceramics and leatherwork, painting, architecture, mining and metallurgy, printing, military technology, and clocks. It discusses the details of both traditional and innovative technological processes. It also treats the relationships of technology to labor, class, gender, and other aspects of society. It points to significant historiographic issues and includes a bibliography.

Pamela O. Long is a historian of technology who has taught at Barnard College, St. Mary's College of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University. She has published extensively on late medieval and Renaissance technical authorship. She is the author of Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).