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Fifty Early Medieval Things: Materials of Culture in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Fifty Early Medieval Things explores objects and places for what they really are: the fabric of the world, the raw materials of life and history. This book begins with an extensive introduction to the historiography, an assessment of the methodological and epistemological implications of studying material culture and an exploration of the diverse facets of the human experience that the study of the material world can help to illuminate. Followed by fifty short chapters, each focused on a specific object and a glossary of key terms and concepts, Fifty Early Medieval Things invites students of early medieval history and material culture to engage with objects in new and exciting ways.
336 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2017
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September 9, 2022
Wonderful book! The reader will find therein brief (one- or two-page) discussions of 50 things from Europe/North Africa/Mid-East that are reproduced in photographs that give an insight into some aspect of late antiquity, or early Medieval life. There is a startling degree of regression revealed in some things, but some of the crudeness/sketchiness can be attributed to the reaction against paganism and its refinement and the identification of more primitive styles with Christian authenticity and rejection of earthly things, such as the naturalistic depiction of humans as opposed to a more schematized, simplified/telegraphic portrayal. On the other hand, these early Christian artists or artisans sometimes borrowed pagan motifs or schemata in their designs and artwork, as did the creators of early Islamic art and architecture. But in general, aside from some finely-wrought objects, from places as far afield as Mozarabic Spain, and an Avar-ruled area of Central Europe, the impression one gets is of artistic decline, perhaps intentional at first, relative to the naturalism and ebullience of the classical era.
The book is organized by century - from the Fourth Century through the Tenth Century - and artifacts, textiles, earthworks, sunken ship remains, all sorts of things of the very few things that remain from those centuries, are examined - with fresh and startling insights along the way. This era is not uniformly grim, backward, or a devolution from the refinement and organization of the Classical Era, although it did represent a reaction to paganism once Christianity began to dominate the Western world. The Christian zealots of the early Christian era obviously wished to banish the values of the past, replace them with an ascetic, simplified ethos, perhaps intentionally reverting to more primitive forms as if they were more authentic and true to the life of the people. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to explore this often overlooked historic period through its material remains.
Here are the quotes:
From the Introduction: ¨The late antique and early medieval periods were characterized...by sharp fluctuations in the power of rules and their governments, and ...the conversion of most people in western Eurasia and northern Africa to Christianity or Islam.¨ ¨...the third century...Roman Empire faced civil war, invasion, epidemic disease, and economic depression.¨ ¨...demographic decline (related to recurrent epidemics after 541), military reverses, and general impoverishment related to both of these, deprived eastern Roman government of capability.¨ ¨Rome´s tolerant, inclusive paganism ...allowed Christianity to survive, and then from the third century, to thrive.¨ ¨Monasteries, many...built as isolated rural retreats, played an important role in spreading Christianity ...[in rural areas]. Monasticism [arose] ...in the Egyptian wastelands around 300 partly as a critique of Christianity´s compromises with power.¨ ¨The aristocratic tenor of European monasticism circa AD 1000 mirrors the renewed ascendancy of elites in other Christian societies, [such as] Byzantium.¨ ¨...some historians note that the history of hoarding...barely [extends]...back past 1950. Though early medieval people did crate hoards....they generally did so in exceptional moments of stress, as when natural disasters or invading armies undermined the foundations of their lives and they feared losing the things they deemed most valuable...¨ ¨The modern hoarder...may be expressing anxiety about the impermanence of things and their apparent loss of value by clinging to them...¨ ¨Recent treatments of things...are largely indifferent to the premodern period... ...the supposedly unprecedented acceleration in the circulation of thing around 1450, the increased consumption levels that accompanied it, and the incipient scientific approach the physical world that render things worthy of study.¨ ¨The unspoken assumption...a time like the later first millennium, associated with otherworldliness and primitive living conditions, cannot offer much to the comprehension of things and material culture. We would [on the other hand] ...argue that these conditions provide an even more interesting case study about the relation of things to people.¨ ¨In the early seventh century, Isidore of Seville, a bishop and ...polymath, noted the atomist theories of ancient materialist philosophers.¨ ¨By the fifth century, relics--the corporeal remains of holy people or objects those people had touched---were [arguably]...the most potent things in the Mediterranean region.¨ ¨Zoroastrians in the Persian Empire were committed to advancing spirituality and restraining materiality both in [the] everyday [world]....and in the cosmic encounter between good and evil of which believers were earthly witnesses. Christian and Islamic asceticism derived from a more fundamental, scripturally sanctioned, suspicion of the material world ...¨ ¨...in their acceptance of matter as animate and in their suspicion of matter as spiritually corrupting, postclassical people [appear] ... to speak to contemporary concerns about relations between people and things.¨ ¨...the absence of imported wares, and many other signs of what [scholars]... consider a civilizational collapse that began in the forth century and was accomplished by the seventh.¨ ¨By the sixth and seventh centuries...the economy was smaller than it had been two centuries before and much smaller than it had been in the second century AD.¨ ¨...it is the poorer, less powerful members of societies whose entrapment is more total and whose dependency on things more inescapable.¨ ¨The...Crypta Balbi [garbage dump] ...lies in the center of early medieval Western Europe´s most populous city.¨ ¨In spite of ...declared hostility to the material world, Christian and Islamic institutions found it clung to them... To an extent, this was because ...both religious cultures [considered] the act of giving things away ...important, for ...individuals and religious structures. Numerous benefactors caused churches, monasteries, and mosques to amass landed property as well as ...things. Charitable redistribution of goods by religious foundations was expected, ...celebrated.¨ ¨...to [the authors]... all the things in these pages fuse matter and meaning usefully for any who want to understand the period 300-1000.¨ ¨Races typically featured chariots with a single driver pulled by a team of four horses, called a quadriga...¨ ¨...villas [owned by the early fourth century Roman elite were]....furnished with heating systems, bath complexes, ...large reception and dining halls, and decorated ...with marble, paintings, statues, ...mosaics.¨ ¨[Races] ...often accompanied by the distributions of food, money, and prizes to the spectators, were [a way] ...in which the ruling class--the empire´s ¨one percent¨ who controlled most of its wealth--gave back to the urban masses.¨ ¨...standard urban infrastructure [by the fifth century] included circuits of walls. ...these sometimes came in handy [in time of war] but mostly they reassured a community... They provided work for thousands of laborers [as well as] ...valuable backdrops for the lavish [spectacles] ...staged [by rulers] in order to appear grand and superhuman. [The Theodosian] ...walls [of Constantinople] ...were the most elaborate defensive structure of the late antique world.¨ ¨Close control over the production of ... [silver] plates [in fifth-sixth century Persia, depicting subjects such as royal hunts] suggests how important they were to the [Sasanian] dynasty´s self-image and in the propagation of its ideology. Unlike monumental rock carvings, the other major median of...propaganda, plates were portable.¨ ¨Coins are [a valuable] ...source of information about [all aspects of Roman civilization]... The ...government relied on the taxation of land, in coins and in kind, producing income ...spent on maintaining state infrastructure, ...the army, ...the judicial system, roads, and communications... To facilitate this system, the ...government minted quite uniform coins in gold, silver, and bronze....¨ ¨When ...kingdoms ruled by¨barbarian¨ kings replaced the Roman Empire in the West, the tax and coinage systems were radically transformed, and mints disappeared in many places.¨ ¨[Because] ...Rome [in the sixth century] was affected by many diseases...healing saints [were welcomed].¨ ¨[Although] Doctors had a bad reputation in early Christian circles, ...Cosmas and Damian, who cured people for free, out of charity, rehabilitated the profession.¨ ¨Growing chestnuts [does not require much] ...labor...and in the increasingly depopulated western Mediterranean [in the sixth century]...farmers and landowners embraced a plant that offered a lot of benefits without requiring much maintenance.¨ ¨The Temple Mount [was] the ...plateau on which the Hebrew Temple had stood until the Romans destroyed it in AD 70...¨ ¨[The city of] Recopolis [in Spain] ...the result and the proof of [Visigothic King] Leovigild´s success in establishing himself as the ruler of a centralized state. [The state provided] ...the infrastructure, logistical support, and...the money...from efficient taxation and tribute ... from subdued enemies, necessary to launch such an ambitious project [the construction of a city from scratch].¨ ¨Leovigild...later celebrated a victory over the Basques in the Pyrenees by forcing the losers to build another new city, Ologicus. All testify to the ...increasing symbolic and ideological prominence of cities in Visigothic Spain.¨ ¨In ...parts of Europe, the Roman quarrying, brick- and cement-making industries had disappeared after the fourth century, so those materials could only be obtained by reusing Roman materials from abandoned buildings.¨ ¨...in...Hungary...the Avar steppe nomad confederation ruled from the late sixth century until routed in the 790s by the armies of...Charlemagne (d. 814).¨ ¨....[Lynn] White [Jr. has] argued that the introduction of the stirrup to Francia around 730 made ¨mounted shock combat¨ possible for the first time in European history.¨ ¨...military historians have wondered how decisive the stirrup was to Frankish success.¨ ¨Stirrups have been found on numerous Balkan sites from around 600, and ...Byzantine troops ...used this...equipment.¨ ¨...a gorgeous [fibula] ...spoke to all who saw it about the economic, social, and technological resources of the woman...[who wore it].¨ ¨This [late sixth-early seventh century pilgrim´s] flask [from the Shrine of St. Menas, located in the Egyptian desert approximately 28 miles SW of Alexandria]...could only hold an ounce or two of liquid. Its value lay ...in the liquid it contained: Olive oil ...from lamps ...in the church built over the grave of Menas... The tradition of producing flasks... [for] liquids from Christian holy places...known from dozens of other shrines ...[began] in the fourth century.¨ ¨Beginning in the fourth century, [pilgrims] ...traveled in growing numbers to visit holy places, [especially] ...those [with]... bones and other relics of Christian saints and martyrs...and returned with souvenirs of their travels.¨ ¨Proximity to bones and other relics was thought to cure sickness, banish demons, and [establish] ... a direct ...[line] of communication between the living and the saints in heaven, for ....the saints were already at God´s side, even as they remained present at their early graves. They were intercessors who [helped] ...the living by conveying to God ...prayers voiced at their shrines.¨ ¨From at least the time of the emperor Constantine, ...people [supported]...the construction and decoration of churches... Donations of money and precious objects....by the seventh century were viewed as a way of accumulating merit for the soul in the afterlife.¨ ¨The [seventh century Spanish] Treasure of Guarrazar contained many crowns, hanging crosses, and pendant chains...almost certainly represent treasure from a church or churches of Toledo, the capital...of Visigothic Spain. It is usually suggested that the pieces were buried to hide them from the Muslim conquerors of Spain, who arrived...in 711.¨ ¨For [Lynn] White [Jr., the heavy plow, a N. European] ...innovation changed economy and society in Europe ...[robbing] the southern lands of their relative productive advantage over the north.¨ ¨...recently...[there is] more evidence that the transition to Muslim rule [in the Middle East] was a ...less traumatic process than was ... [previously] thought, and that the new rulers ...often ...emulated and assimilated elements of the Classical tradition.¨ ¨...one thing is clear: the transition...in the eastern Mediterranean did not provoke the wholesale collapse of classical urban culture, nor did Muslims prefer squalid villages to majestic cityscapes.¨ ¨...the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries ...saw the development of cloistered, Benedictine monasticism into one of the pillars of medieval Christian society.¨ ¨[Bells entered] ...into Christian [monastic] practice [by the 6th century], specifically to summon nuns or monks to prayer ([ Eastern monasteries] remained more attached to the wooden semantron for keeping the community´s schedule). Around ...606, the [Pope] ... enjoined all monasteries to mark the hours for prayer with bells, ...later in the seventh century Iberian rituals for the consecration of bells signal their growing acceptance.¨ ¨...Charlemagne ...promoted a cultural revival in his realm to surpass the glories of the Roman Empire. ...[He] gave [scholars and artists] ...jobs in the church or in his government. [His] ...ideal of rulership included patronage of books, buildings, and artworks, a vision continued by his successors and imitated by rulers in other parts of Europe.¨ ¨The temple-like structure [depicted on a Carolingian silver denarius of the 9th century] ...mimics pagan temples [seen on]... ancient Roman coins. The Carolingians replaced the goddess Roma, [usually seen] ...on the Roman coins amidst the columns, with a cross.¨ ¨...both the [Arab empire] Abbasids [ruling from Baghdad] and the [Persian-speaking Muslim] Samanids [who ruled a territory stretching from E. Iran through Central Asia into Pakistan from Bukhara, a city in modern Uzbekistan] minted far more coins than any of their contemporaries, including the Byzantines (and the Franks...) [because of] ... their control of Eurasia´s richest silver mines in eastern Iran and the Caucasus.¨ ¨By 1000...[in Germany] ... the landscape was organized around [settlements] .... consisting of a fortification and its associated villages.¨ ¨In ...988, Vladimir, prince of Rus´, a ...state centered on Kiev....was baptized a Christian. The ritual was performed by the Greek bishop Theophylact, dispatched ...by the Byzantine emperor Basil II and consecrated the first archbishop of Rus.´¨
The book is organized by century - from the Fourth Century through the Tenth Century - and artifacts, textiles, earthworks, sunken ship remains, all sorts of things of the very few things that remain from those centuries, are examined - with fresh and startling insights along the way. This era is not uniformly grim, backward, or a devolution from the refinement and organization of the Classical Era, although it did represent a reaction to paganism once Christianity began to dominate the Western world. The Christian zealots of the early Christian era obviously wished to banish the values of the past, replace them with an ascetic, simplified ethos, perhaps intentionally reverting to more primitive forms as if they were more authentic and true to the life of the people. I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to explore this often overlooked historic period through its material remains.
Here are the quotes:
From the Introduction: ¨The late antique and early medieval periods were characterized...by sharp fluctuations in the power of rules and their governments, and ...the conversion of most people in western Eurasia and northern Africa to Christianity or Islam.¨ ¨...the third century...Roman Empire faced civil war, invasion, epidemic disease, and economic depression.¨ ¨...demographic decline (related to recurrent epidemics after 541), military reverses, and general impoverishment related to both of these, deprived eastern Roman government of capability.¨ ¨Rome´s tolerant, inclusive paganism ...allowed Christianity to survive, and then from the third century, to thrive.¨ ¨Monasteries, many...built as isolated rural retreats, played an important role in spreading Christianity ...[in rural areas]. Monasticism [arose] ...in the Egyptian wastelands around 300 partly as a critique of Christianity´s compromises with power.¨ ¨The aristocratic tenor of European monasticism circa AD 1000 mirrors the renewed ascendancy of elites in other Christian societies, [such as] Byzantium.¨ ¨...some historians note that the history of hoarding...barely [extends]...back past 1950. Though early medieval people did crate hoards....they generally did so in exceptional moments of stress, as when natural disasters or invading armies undermined the foundations of their lives and they feared losing the things they deemed most valuable...¨ ¨The modern hoarder...may be expressing anxiety about the impermanence of things and their apparent loss of value by clinging to them...¨ ¨Recent treatments of things...are largely indifferent to the premodern period... ...the supposedly unprecedented acceleration in the circulation of thing around 1450, the increased consumption levels that accompanied it, and the incipient scientific approach the physical world that render things worthy of study.¨ ¨The unspoken assumption...a time like the later first millennium, associated with otherworldliness and primitive living conditions, cannot offer much to the comprehension of things and material culture. We would [on the other hand] ...argue that these conditions provide an even more interesting case study about the relation of things to people.¨ ¨In the early seventh century, Isidore of Seville, a bishop and ...polymath, noted the atomist theories of ancient materialist philosophers.¨ ¨By the fifth century, relics--the corporeal remains of holy people or objects those people had touched---were [arguably]...the most potent things in the Mediterranean region.¨ ¨Zoroastrians in the Persian Empire were committed to advancing spirituality and restraining materiality both in [the] everyday [world]....and in the cosmic encounter between good and evil of which believers were earthly witnesses. Christian and Islamic asceticism derived from a more fundamental, scripturally sanctioned, suspicion of the material world ...¨ ¨...in their acceptance of matter as animate and in their suspicion of matter as spiritually corrupting, postclassical people [appear] ... to speak to contemporary concerns about relations between people and things.¨ ¨...the absence of imported wares, and many other signs of what [scholars]... consider a civilizational collapse that began in the forth century and was accomplished by the seventh.¨ ¨By the sixth and seventh centuries...the economy was smaller than it had been two centuries before and much smaller than it had been in the second century AD.¨ ¨...it is the poorer, less powerful members of societies whose entrapment is more total and whose dependency on things more inescapable.¨ ¨The...Crypta Balbi [garbage dump] ...lies in the center of early medieval Western Europe´s most populous city.¨ ¨In spite of ...declared hostility to the material world, Christian and Islamic institutions found it clung to them... To an extent, this was because ...both religious cultures [considered] the act of giving things away ...important, for ...individuals and religious structures. Numerous benefactors caused churches, monasteries, and mosques to amass landed property as well as ...things. Charitable redistribution of goods by religious foundations was expected, ...celebrated.¨ ¨...to [the authors]... all the things in these pages fuse matter and meaning usefully for any who want to understand the period 300-1000.¨ ¨Races typically featured chariots with a single driver pulled by a team of four horses, called a quadriga...¨ ¨...villas [owned by the early fourth century Roman elite were]....furnished with heating systems, bath complexes, ...large reception and dining halls, and decorated ...with marble, paintings, statues, ...mosaics.¨ ¨[Races] ...often accompanied by the distributions of food, money, and prizes to the spectators, were [a way] ...in which the ruling class--the empire´s ¨one percent¨ who controlled most of its wealth--gave back to the urban masses.¨ ¨...standard urban infrastructure [by the fifth century] included circuits of walls. ...these sometimes came in handy [in time of war] but mostly they reassured a community... They provided work for thousands of laborers [as well as] ...valuable backdrops for the lavish [spectacles] ...staged [by rulers] in order to appear grand and superhuman. [The Theodosian] ...walls [of Constantinople] ...were the most elaborate defensive structure of the late antique world.¨ ¨Close control over the production of ... [silver] plates [in fifth-sixth century Persia, depicting subjects such as royal hunts] suggests how important they were to the [Sasanian] dynasty´s self-image and in the propagation of its ideology. Unlike monumental rock carvings, the other major median of...propaganda, plates were portable.¨ ¨Coins are [a valuable] ...source of information about [all aspects of Roman civilization]... The ...government relied on the taxation of land, in coins and in kind, producing income ...spent on maintaining state infrastructure, ...the army, ...the judicial system, roads, and communications... To facilitate this system, the ...government minted quite uniform coins in gold, silver, and bronze....¨ ¨When ...kingdoms ruled by¨barbarian¨ kings replaced the Roman Empire in the West, the tax and coinage systems were radically transformed, and mints disappeared in many places.¨ ¨[Because] ...Rome [in the sixth century] was affected by many diseases...healing saints [were welcomed].¨ ¨[Although] Doctors had a bad reputation in early Christian circles, ...Cosmas and Damian, who cured people for free, out of charity, rehabilitated the profession.¨ ¨Growing chestnuts [does not require much] ...labor...and in the increasingly depopulated western Mediterranean [in the sixth century]...farmers and landowners embraced a plant that offered a lot of benefits without requiring much maintenance.¨ ¨The Temple Mount [was] the ...plateau on which the Hebrew Temple had stood until the Romans destroyed it in AD 70...¨ ¨[The city of] Recopolis [in Spain] ...the result and the proof of [Visigothic King] Leovigild´s success in establishing himself as the ruler of a centralized state. [The state provided] ...the infrastructure, logistical support, and...the money...from efficient taxation and tribute ... from subdued enemies, necessary to launch such an ambitious project [the construction of a city from scratch].¨ ¨Leovigild...later celebrated a victory over the Basques in the Pyrenees by forcing the losers to build another new city, Ologicus. All testify to the ...increasing symbolic and ideological prominence of cities in Visigothic Spain.¨ ¨In ...parts of Europe, the Roman quarrying, brick- and cement-making industries had disappeared after the fourth century, so those materials could only be obtained by reusing Roman materials from abandoned buildings.¨ ¨...in...Hungary...the Avar steppe nomad confederation ruled from the late sixth century until routed in the 790s by the armies of...Charlemagne (d. 814).¨ ¨....[Lynn] White [Jr. has] argued that the introduction of the stirrup to Francia around 730 made ¨mounted shock combat¨ possible for the first time in European history.¨ ¨...military historians have wondered how decisive the stirrup was to Frankish success.¨ ¨Stirrups have been found on numerous Balkan sites from around 600, and ...Byzantine troops ...used this...equipment.¨ ¨...a gorgeous [fibula] ...spoke to all who saw it about the economic, social, and technological resources of the woman...[who wore it].¨ ¨This [late sixth-early seventh century pilgrim´s] flask [from the Shrine of St. Menas, located in the Egyptian desert approximately 28 miles SW of Alexandria]...could only hold an ounce or two of liquid. Its value lay ...in the liquid it contained: Olive oil ...from lamps ...in the church built over the grave of Menas... The tradition of producing flasks... [for] liquids from Christian holy places...known from dozens of other shrines ...[began] in the fourth century.¨ ¨Beginning in the fourth century, [pilgrims] ...traveled in growing numbers to visit holy places, [especially] ...those [with]... bones and other relics of Christian saints and martyrs...and returned with souvenirs of their travels.¨ ¨Proximity to bones and other relics was thought to cure sickness, banish demons, and [establish] ... a direct ...[line] of communication between the living and the saints in heaven, for ....the saints were already at God´s side, even as they remained present at their early graves. They were intercessors who [helped] ...the living by conveying to God ...prayers voiced at their shrines.¨ ¨From at least the time of the emperor Constantine, ...people [supported]...the construction and decoration of churches... Donations of money and precious objects....by the seventh century were viewed as a way of accumulating merit for the soul in the afterlife.¨ ¨The [seventh century Spanish] Treasure of Guarrazar contained many crowns, hanging crosses, and pendant chains...almost certainly represent treasure from a church or churches of Toledo, the capital...of Visigothic Spain. It is usually suggested that the pieces were buried to hide them from the Muslim conquerors of Spain, who arrived...in 711.¨ ¨For [Lynn] White [Jr., the heavy plow, a N. European] ...innovation changed economy and society in Europe ...[robbing] the southern lands of their relative productive advantage over the north.¨ ¨...recently...[there is] more evidence that the transition to Muslim rule [in the Middle East] was a ...less traumatic process than was ... [previously] thought, and that the new rulers ...often ...emulated and assimilated elements of the Classical tradition.¨ ¨...one thing is clear: the transition...in the eastern Mediterranean did not provoke the wholesale collapse of classical urban culture, nor did Muslims prefer squalid villages to majestic cityscapes.¨ ¨...the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries ...saw the development of cloistered, Benedictine monasticism into one of the pillars of medieval Christian society.¨ ¨[Bells entered] ...into Christian [monastic] practice [by the 6th century], specifically to summon nuns or monks to prayer ([ Eastern monasteries] remained more attached to the wooden semantron for keeping the community´s schedule). Around ...606, the [Pope] ... enjoined all monasteries to mark the hours for prayer with bells, ...later in the seventh century Iberian rituals for the consecration of bells signal their growing acceptance.¨ ¨...Charlemagne ...promoted a cultural revival in his realm to surpass the glories of the Roman Empire. ...[He] gave [scholars and artists] ...jobs in the church or in his government. [His] ...ideal of rulership included patronage of books, buildings, and artworks, a vision continued by his successors and imitated by rulers in other parts of Europe.¨ ¨The temple-like structure [depicted on a Carolingian silver denarius of the 9th century] ...mimics pagan temples [seen on]... ancient Roman coins. The Carolingians replaced the goddess Roma, [usually seen] ...on the Roman coins amidst the columns, with a cross.¨ ¨...both the [Arab empire] Abbasids [ruling from Baghdad] and the [Persian-speaking Muslim] Samanids [who ruled a territory stretching from E. Iran through Central Asia into Pakistan from Bukhara, a city in modern Uzbekistan] minted far more coins than any of their contemporaries, including the Byzantines (and the Franks...) [because of] ... their control of Eurasia´s richest silver mines in eastern Iran and the Caucasus.¨ ¨By 1000...[in Germany] ... the landscape was organized around [settlements] .... consisting of a fortification and its associated villages.¨ ¨In ...988, Vladimir, prince of Rus´, a ...state centered on Kiev....was baptized a Christian. The ritual was performed by the Greek bishop Theophylact, dispatched ...by the Byzantine emperor Basil II and consecrated the first archbishop of Rus.´¨
February 23, 2019
I found this a little dull. There are 50 short essays on objects, each with a reference to any further sources on the subject. I didn’t really see the point, despite the introductory essay.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews