Hermenegildo Fernandes

This paper aims to present an existing research strand at the Centro de História da Universidade de Lisboa (CH-ULisboa), which is based on several resources related to digital humanities. This broader research strand has three main axes: the study of the University of Lisbon per se, the mobility of Portuguese scholars in the medieval and early modern periods, and the funding and management of the medieval Portuguese studium, which together can help generate a general picture of the history of the university in Portugal.

These three axes are based on different field of digital humanities, such as databases and GIS, which we intend to merge and make available online in the near future. Two of these databases (the Magistri Database and the Peregrinatio Database) are presented here as case studies to discuss different issues derived from the use of the prosopographical method, as well as to address several technical issues.

We describe new finds of Herpestes ichneumon (Egyptian mongoose) from an archaeological context in Portugal, directly 14C dated to c. 800 AD. This is at least two centuries older than a previously reported find of this species from Andalusia (southern Spain; Riquelme-Cantal et al., 2008). Our finding provides further support to the hypothesis that the Muslims introduced this animal to the Iberian Peninsula. In particular, we suggest that Berber settlers might have brought it some time during the Umayyad conquest of Iberia or with the establishment of the Emirate of Córdoba.► We describe new finds of Herpestes ichneumon from an archaeological site in Portugal. ► Four bones of H. ichneumon were found in two of the Mesolithic shell middens of Muge. ► One ulna was directly 14C dated to 780–970 Cal AD. ► This is the oldest known directly dated fossil of H. ichneumon in Europe. ► We suggest that Muslims brought the species to Iberia during the Emirate of Córdoba.