Origins of a new economic union (7th-12th centuries). Preliminary results of the nEU-Med project: October 2015-March 2017

Origins of a new economic union (7th-12th centuries). Preliminary results of the nEU-Med project: October 2015-March 2017
Author: Giovanna Bianchi
Publisher: All’Insegna del Giglio
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2018-10-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 8878148806

The nEU-Med project is part of the Horizon 2020 programme, in the ERC Advanced project category. It began in October 2015 and will be concluded in October 2020. The University of Siena is the host institution of the project. The project is focussed upon two Tuscan riverine corridors leading from the Gulf of Follonica in the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Colline Metallifere. It aims to document and analyze the form and timeframe of economic growth in this part of the Mediterranean, which took place between the 7th and the 12thc. Central to this is an understanding of the processes of change in human settlements, in the natural and farming landscapes in relation to the exploitation of resources, and in the implementation of differing political strategies. This volume brings together the research presented at the first nEUMed workshop, held in Siena on 11-12 April, 2017. The aim of the workshop was to draw up an initial survey of research and related work on the project, one and a half years after its inception. The project is composed of several research units. Each unit covers an aspect of the interdisciplinary research underpinning the nEU-Med project, each with their own methodology. For this first volume of results, it was decided not to give an account of all the work carried out within all the units, but to select those lines of investigation which, at the end of the first year and a half, have made it possible to articulate and develop an interdisciplinary research strategy.

The nEU-Med project: Vetricella, an Early Medieval royal property on Tuscany’s Mediterranean

The nEU-Med project: Vetricella, an Early Medieval royal property on Tuscany’s Mediterranean
Author: Giovanna Bianchi
Publisher: All’Insegna del Giglio
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2020-04-20
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 8878149888

The nEU-Med project is part of the Horizon 2020 programme, in the ERC Advanced project category. It began in October 2015 and the University of Siena is the host institution of the project. The project is focussed upon two Tuscan riverine corridors leading from the Gulf of Follonica in the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Colline Metallifere. It aims to document and analyze the form and timeframe of economic growth in this part of the Mediterranean, which took place between the 7th and the 12thc. Central to this is an understanding of the processes of change in human settlements, in the natural and farming landscapes in relation to the exploitation of resources, and in the implementation of differing political strategies. This volume presents the multi-disciplinary research focussed upon the key site of the project, Vetricella, and its territory. Vetricella is thought to be the site of Valli, a royal property in the Tuscan march. It is the only Early Medieval property to be extensively studied in Italy. Located on Italy’s Tyrrhenian coast, the archaeology and history of this site provide new insights on estate management, metal production and wider Mediterranean relations in the later first millennium. Apart from reports on the archaeology, the finds from excavations and environmental studies, three essays consider the wider European historical and archaeological context of Vetricella. Future monographs will feature studies by members of the project team on aspects of Vetricella, its finds and territory.

Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000-1250

Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000-1250
Author: Lorenzo Tabarrini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2023-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198875177

This book examines the forms of estate management in the countryside of Florence and Lucca between the eleventh and the middle of the thirteenth centuries. It argues that their change reflects wider transformations of medieval economic patterns, and specifically the surge in overall demand that occurred in the decades bridging the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries. The reasons for a comparison between the Florentine and the Lucchese countryside lie in the alleged differences of their historical evolution—as it has been outlined by scholars so far. The so-called manorial system (sistema curtense) is believed to have ceased to exist in the Lucchesia around the beginning of the tenth century, whereas in the Fiorentino its disappearance can be dated to the early thirteenth century. Similarly, the Florentine countryside is generally regarded as the birthplace of a particular type of sharecropping regime, the mezzadria poderale, which spread over much of central Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and would later become an essential component of Italian agrarian identity. On the contrary, the mezzadria poderale is thought to have never developed at any point in the history of medieval and early modern Lucchesia—and this was indeed the case with all the coastal areas of Tuscany. The book endeavours to examine the characteristics of estate management in the central Middle Ages in their own right; that is to say, by detaching those transformations from any teleological view, and by placing them within the economic and sociopolitical context of the period 1000-1250.

Capturing the Senses

Capturing the Senses
Author: Giacomo Landeschi
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2023-06-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031231333

This open-access book surveys how digital technology can contribute effectively to improving our understanding of the past, through a sensory engagement based on the evidence of material culture. In particular, it encourages specialists to consider senses and human agency as important factors in studying ancient space, while recognising the role played by digital tools in enhancing a human-centred form of analysis. Significant advances in archaeological computing, digital methods, and sensory approaches have led archaeologists to rethink strategies and methods for creating narratives of the past. Recent progress in data visualisation and implementation, as well as other nascent digital sensory methods, means that it is now easier to explore and experience ancient space from a multiscalar perspective, from the individual body or single building to the wider landscape. The chapters in Capturing the Senses: Digital Methods for Sensory Archaeologies present innovative methods for representing an embodied experience of ancient space, simulating (but not recreating) ancient behaviours and social interaction. Chapters cover topics including the potentials and pitfalls of visualising, recreating, and re-enacting/experiencing the senses in Virtual Reality environments and also digital reconstructions and auralisations of ancient spaces to study sound sensory perception. Overall, the book demonstrates that multisensory approaches can give a new perspective on how ancient spaces were intended to be used by inhabitants to fulfil a series of purposes including conveying messages and regulating movement. This is an open-access book.

Bounded Wilderness

Bounded Wilderness
Author: Kathryn Jasper
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2024-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501777610

In Bounded Wilderness, Kathryn Jasper focuses on the innovations undertaken at the hermitage of Fonte Avellana in central Italy during the eleventh century by its prior, Peter Damian (d. 1072). The congregation of Fonte Avellana experimented with reforming practices that led to new ways of managing property and relations among clergy, nobles, and the laity. Jasper charts how Damian's notion of monastic reform took advantage of the surrounding topography and geography to amplify the sensory aspects of ascetic experiences. By focusing on monastic landscapes and land ownership, Jasper demonstrates that reform extended beyond abstract ideas. Rather, reform circulated locally through monastic networks and addressed practical concerns such as property boundaries and rights over water, orchards, pastures, and mills. Putting new sources, both documentary and archaeological, into conversation with monastic charters and Damian's letters, Bounded Wilderness reveals the interrelationship of economic practices, religious traditions, and the natural environment in the idea and implementation of reform.

Between Town and Monastery. Peasant economy in the first millennium AD

Between Town and Monastery. Peasant economy in the first millennium AD
Author: Luigi Pinchetti
Publisher: All'Insegna del Giglio
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2021-10-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 889285075X

Approaches to early medieval peasantry are often polarized, either enhancing the benefits brought by the weakening of aristocratic dominance or emphasizing the limited prospects for peasant development in the absence of a solid extra-regional trade network. This study offers a long-term overview of the peasant economy throughout the 1st millennium AD in the Upper Volturno Basin, between the town of Isernia and the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno. The reader is presented with data collected from two archaeological surveys, and is invited to scrutinize changes in settlement patterns, ancient land use and ceramic distributions while the main economic center shifted from town to monastery. These proxies of economic performance offer a vantage point to reconstruct the history of agrarian production and of exchange networks in Central Italy, opening a novel outlook on peasant social dynamics at a time when the Roman economic system transitioned into the feudal system. The results show that the “golden age of peasants” was an age of experimentation, forcing to reconsider the role of the peasantry in the making of the feudal economy.

Paleoethnobotany

Paleoethnobotany
Author: Deborah M. Pearsall
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2013-10-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 148328896X

This book describes the approaches and techniques of paleoethnobotany--the study of the interrelationships between human populations and the plant world through the archaeological record. Its purpose is twofold. First, it assembles in one volume the three major methods of paleoethnobotany, the analysis of macroremains, pollen analysis, and phytolith analysis, for the student or professional interested in the field. Second, it presents on paleoethnobotanist's view of the discipline: its past, present, and future, its strengths and weaknesses, and its role in modern archaeology.ï A comprehensive reference work for archaeologists and paleobotanists interested in reconstructing interrelationships between humans and plants from the archaeological recordï The first general of work theory and methods to emerge from this subdiscipline which has developed during the past twenty yearsï Makes the approaches and techniques of this field more accessible to the general anthropological and botanical audiencesï Offers archaeologists a handbook of field sampling and flotation techniques as well as an introduction to methods of analysis and interpretation in paleoethnobotany

Humanitarianism in the Modern World

Humanitarianism in the Modern World
Author: Norbert Götz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2020-07-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108493521

A fresh look at two centuries of humanitarian history through a moral economy approach focusing on appeals, allocation, and accounting.