Medieval Territories

This volume brings together 18 case studies investigating territory in the Middle Ages from an archaeological perspective. It offers contributions from prestigious professors, such as Flocel Sabaté and Jesús Brufal, and a selected set of young researchers. It promotes new perspectives on territory studies through innovative research methods. The case studies are organized chronologically from the end of the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages, focusing especially on cases in Portugal, Spain and Italy, in order to provide a Mediterranean perspective. The volume explores a range of topics, from aspects of methodological informatics in the valley of Ager in Catalonia, the evolution of prosperous cities in the Middle Ages (such as Braga, Pisa and Milan), the transformation of the early medieval rural space to the long evolution of island territories (Sardinia), and the influence of the military actions, the political power and the religious architecture on the landscape in the Iberian and the Italian Peninsula, among other topics. As such, this publication offers a variety of new insights into the study of medieval territory.

In recent political and constitutional history, scholars seldom specify how and why they use the concept of territory. In research on state formation processes and nation building, for instance, the term mostly designates an enclosed geographical area ruled by a central government. Inspired by ideas from political geographers, this book explores the layered and constantly changing meanings of territory in late medieval and early modern Europe before cartography and state formation turned boundaries and territories into more fixed (but still changeable) geographical entities. Its central thesis is that analysing the notion of territory in a premodern setting involves analysing territorial practices: practices that relate people and power to space(s). The book not only examines the construction and spatial structure of premodern territories but also explores their perception and representation through the use of a broad range of sources: from administrative texts to maps, from stained glass windows to chronicles.

A powerful analysis of regional power, filling a major gap in English language writing on medieval Germany.

Where does the nation-state end and globalization begin? In Territory, Authority, Rights, one of the world's leading authorities on globalization shows how the national state made today's global era possible. Saskia Sassen argues that even while globalization is best understood as "denationalization," it continues to be shaped, channeled, and enabled by institutions and networks originally developed with nations in mind, such as the rule of law and respect for private authority. This process of state making produced some of the capabilities enabling the global era. The difference is that these capabilities have become part of new organizing logics: actors other than nation-states deploy them for new purposes. Sassen builds her case by examining how three components of any society in any age--territory, authority, and rights--have changed in themselves and in their interrelationships across three major historical "assemblages": the medieval, the national, and the global. The book consists of three parts. The first, "Assembling the National," traces the emergence of territoriality in the Middle Ages and considers monarchical divinity as a precursor to sovereign secular authority. The second part, "Disassembling the National," analyzes economic, legal, technological, and political conditions and projects that are shaping new organizing logics. The third part, "Assemblages of a Global Digital Age," examines particular intersections of the new digital technologies with territory, authority, and rights. Sweeping in scope, rich in detail, and highly readable, Territory, Authority, Rights is a definitive new statement on globalization that will resonate throughout the social sciences.

In the last two decades, research on spatial paradigms and practices has gained momentum across disciplines and vastly different periods, including the field of medieval studies. Responding to this ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities, the essays collected here generate new ideas about how medieval space was defined, constructed, and practiced in Europe, particularly in France. Essays are grouped thematically and in three parts, from specific sites, through the broader shaping of territory by means of socially constructed networks, to the larger geographical realm. The resulting collection builds on existing scholarship but brings new insight, situating medieval constructions of space in relation to contemporary conceptions of the subject.

In the last two decades, research on spatial paradigms and practices has gained momentum across disciplines and vastly different periods, including the field of medieval studies. Responding to this ’spatial turn’ in the humanities, the essays collected here generate new ideas about how medieval space was defined, constructed, and practiced in Europe, particularly in France. Essays are grouped thematically and in three parts, from specific sites, through the broader shaping of territory by means of socially constructed networks, to the larger geographical realm. The resulting collection builds on existing scholarship but brings new insight, situating medieval constructions of space in relation to contemporary conceptions of the subject.

The papers in this volume are contributed by leading historians, art historians and archaeologists and focus on 5 key themes: the evolution of settlement patterns in the Byzantine empire; the impact of barbarian elites in Spain, Gaul, Italy and Pannonia; the role of the Church in the definition of new links between town and territories; the situation in culturally homogenous territories such as Constantinople and the minor Langbard polities; the situation in economically defined territories. Contributions include papers by Gian Pietro Brogiolo, Pablo C. Díaz, Michel Fixot, Gisela Ripoll and Javier Arce, Sauro Gelichi, Wolfram Brandes and John Haldon, Nancy Gauthier, Gisella Cantino Wataghin, Ross Balzaretti, Martina Caroli, Neil Christie, Bryan Ward-Perkins and John Mitchell.

Sacral Geographies explores the spatiality of reliquaries in early Ireland, and the intersections of devotional loca sancta with the territories of secular kingship, with the hierarchies of medieval monastic enclosures, and with modern, institutional spaces of knowledge. --Book Jacket.

Twelve literary scholars and historians investigate the ways in which space and place are politically, religiously, and culturally inflected. Exploring medieval texts as diverse as Icelandic sagas, Ptolemy's Geography, and Mandeville's Travels, the contributors illustrate the intimate connection between geographical conceptions and the mastery of land, the assertion of doctrine, and the performance of sexuality.

Roman identity is one of the most interesting cases of social identity because in the course of time, it could mean so many different things: for instance, Greek-speaking subjects of the Byzantine empire, inhabitants of the city of Rome, autonomous civic or regional groups, Latin speakers under ‘barbarian’ rule in the West or, increasingly, representatives of the Church of Rome. Eventually, the Christian dimension of Roman identity gained ground. The shifting concepts of Romanness represent a methodological challenge for studies of ethnicity because, depending on its uses, Roman identity may be regarded as ‘ethnic’ in a broad sense, but under most criteria, it is not. Romanness is indeed a test case how an established and prestigious social identity can acquire many different shades of meaning, which we would class as civic, political, imperial, ethnic, cultural, legal, religious, regional or as status groups. This book offers comprehensive overviews of the meaning of Romanness in most (former) Roman provinces, complemented by a number of comparative and thematic studies. A similarly wide-ranging overview has not been available so far.