GALLERY XXIV
The Little Ice Age
A few degrees of cooling shortened growing seasons and lengthened wars.
ON THE FLOOR
Charles Horton Cooley
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“You learned who you are by watching what other people reflected back at you. The mirror, it turns out, was people all along.”
ON THE FLOOR
Edward Soja
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“Space is not the stage the story happens on - it is one of the actors. Ask WHERE, and half the mystery answers itself.”
ON THE FLOOR
George Herbert Mead
Theorist designate - flagged from the theory registry (#8494)
“The self is a conversation: the I speaking, the Me listening with everyone else's ears. You rehearse society every time you think.”
WH4-076 · The Little Ice Age — Open the drawer
Oak beam salvaged from London's medieval fortifications, its growth rings and tool marks a physical record of climate stress and urban defense priorities during the onset of cooling.
WH4-077 · The Little Ice Age — What is this thing?
Oak beam from the rebuilt London city wall, cut and fitted circa 1270–1290, showing growth rings compressed by cooler climate and the labor investment required to fortify cities against resource scarcity and conflict.
WH4-078 · The Little Ice Age — Read the source
A merchant's letter describing the Thames frozen solid enough for markets and fairs, written during the Little Ice Age's coldest decades, revealing assumptions about climate, trade disruption, and social order.
WH4-079 · The Little Ice Age — Map it / time it
A representative merchant or municipal account book recording wheat and rye prices across decades of the Little Ice Age, enabling students to map price spikes against cold periods and conflict chronologies across regions.
WH4-080 · The Little Ice Age — Two sources disagree
A merchant's record of wheat prices across the 1590s famine years, showing price spikes that correlate with harvest failure and social unrest, yet silent on climate causes.
WH4-081 · The Little Ice Age — State the claim
A merchant's price record from northern Europe tracking wheat and rye costs across decades of climate volatility, showing sharp spikes during documented cold periods and harvest failures.
WH4-082 · The Little Ice Age — Take the other side
A merchant's record of wheat and rye prices across a decade of climate stress, showing volatility that governance choices—not temperature alone—shaped through taxation, trade policy, and war requisitions.
WH4-083 · The Little Ice Age — Weigh it
Royal decree rationing grain and regulating prices during crop failure, showing state response to climate-driven scarcity. Evidence that governance—not cold alone—determined who starved.
WH4-084 · The Little Ice Age — Build the answer
A reconstructed price series tracking rye and wheat across Northern Europe during the Little Ice Age, showing decade-by-decade volatility tied to harvest records and archival merchant accounts rather than temperature alone.
WH4-085 · The Little Ice Age — For the file
A merchant's account book tracking wheat and rye prices across northern Europe during the Great Famine, showing price volatility tied to harvest failure and revealing how trade networks and governance choices shaped survival.
WH4-086 · The Little Ice Age — Go and look
A cross-section of terminal moraine deposits from a Little Ice Age alpine glacier, showing layered sediment and embedded organic material that marks the glacier's maximum advance during the coldest decades of the postclassical period.
WH4-087 · The Little Ice Age — Now, today
A merchant's record of wheat and rye prices during the Great Famine, showing price spikes that correlate with harvest failures across northern Europe during the onset of the Little Ice Age.
WH4-088 · The Little Ice Age — Teach it back
A manorial steward's record of grain collected as church tax during the Great Famine, showing harvest shortfalls, price inflation, and the gap between expected and actual yields that triggered social strain.
WH4-089 · The Little Ice Age — The other place
A 16th-century administrative record documenting tax grain collection across a Chinese prefecture during the Little Ice Age, revealing how state capacity and bureaucratic continuity shaped responses to climate stress differently than in Europe.
WH4-090 · The Little Ice Age — One object, close
Pieter Bruegel the Elder's oil painting depicts a winter landscape with hunters returning to a Flemish village during the Little Ice Age's most severe decades, recording both climate and social order.
From the gallery’s own wall — “WH4-076 · The Little Ice Age — Open the drawer”.
🎧 A moment to consider
What will you carry out of this room?