'Landscapes and Societies in Medieval Europe East of the Elbe' presents the results of the fourth international conference of the interdisciplinary project 'Gentes trans Albiam – Europe East of the Elbe in the Middle Ages,' held in 2010 at York University, Toronto. The fifteen essays included in this collection examine how historical landscapes were perceived, experienced and transformed in the middle ages, in a region that stretched from the lands of the western Slavs in the Elbe area to Livonia and Staraia Ladoga in the northeast and Hungary in the south. The book is organized into four parts, each covering a different region and era: Central Europe in the early middle ages; Wagria in the central middle ages; Silesia, Poland and Hungary in the high middle ages; and, lastly, the Baltic Sea area in the high and late middle ages.
Drawing on evidence from the fields of archaeology, history, palaeobotany and palaeozoology, the case studies in this book offer a close look at the many environments of Europe east of the Elbe, and at the continuing interaction between natural landscapes and their conceptual and cultural counterparts. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the collection highlights the impact of changes of patterns of settlement during both the transition from late antiquity to the early middle ages and the arrival of settlers from western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Over these historical periods, human beings transformed the physical landscapes – hydrological, zoological, botanical and epidemiological – at the same time as they reshaped the human geography of the region. 'Landscapes and Societies in Medieval Europe East of the Elbe' shows the growing importance of environmental history to understanding medieval Europe.
Author(s): Sunhild Kleingärtner, Timothy P. Newfield, Sébastien Rossignol, Donat Wehner (eds.)
Series: Papers in Mediaeval Studies, 23
Publisher: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
Year: 2013
Language: English, French
Commentary: "Index" (p. 397 ff.) is missing
Pages: XIV+396
City: Toronto
Foreword ix
Contributors xi
Sunhild Kleingärtner, Sébastien Rossignol and Donat Wehner / Introduction: Perceptions, Reconstructions, and
Interdisciplinary Research 3
I. Central Europe in the Early Middle Ages
Artur Błażejewski / Cultural Changes in the Upper Basin of the Odra River at the Close of Antiquity 27
Martin Gravel / Distances, communications et expansion territoriale dans l’Empire carolingien 42
Ulrich Schmölcke and Hauke Jöns / Livestock in Early Medieval Ports of Trade on the Baltic Sea: The 'Emporium Reric' and Other Northern German Sites 54
Timothy P. Newfield / Early Medieval Landscapes of Disease: The Origins and Triggers of European Livestock Pestilences, 400–1000 CE 73
II. Wagria and the Polabian Slavs in the Central Middle Ages
Magdalena Wieckowska-Lüth / The Settlement History of the Ostholstein Lakeland Area in the Middle Ages, as Revealed by Palynological Records 117
Sarah Nelly Friedland / Network Analysis in Slavic Archaeology: An Example from the Plön Area in Wagria (Schleswig-Holstein) 139
Ingo Petri / Metal Production and Metalworking in Eastern Schleswig-Holstein in the Slavic Period 171
III. Silesia, Poland and Hungary in the High Medieval Transformation Period
Przemysław Wiszewski / Politics and Change: The Silesian Dukes and the Transformation of the Land in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries 183
Piotr Górecki / People, Land, and Settlement 'East of the Elbe,' 1150–1310: A Very Large Subject in a Very Small Place 204
Krzysztof Fokt / Archaeological Remarks on High and Late Medieval Rural Landscapes in Silesia and Upper Lusatia 226
Tomasz Gidaszewski, Marta Piber-Zbieranowska, Jarosław Suproniuk and Michał Zbieranowski / Transformations of the Natural Landscapes of the Middle Noteć Region from the Tenth to the Sixteenth Century 245
Cameron M. Sutt / 'The Empty Land' and the End of Slavery: Social Transformation in Thirteenth-Century Hungary 274
IV. The Baltic Sea Area in the High and Late Middle Ages
Heidi M. Sherman / Staking the Novgorodian Frontier: Ladoga's Twelfth-Century Churches as Landscape Markers 291
Ülle Sillasoo / A Cultural History of Food Consumption in Medieval Livonian Towns 316
Daniel Zwick / Dynamics for Cultural Change in the Baltic Sea Region in the Age of the Northern Crusades: A Maritime Perspective 329
Sébastien Rossignol / Concluding Remarks and Thoughts for Future Research 379
Index 397
