Charles of Anjou's conquest of the Sicilian Regno in 1266 transformed relations between France and the kingdom of Sicily. This original study of contact and exchange in the Middle Ages explores the ...significance of the many cultural, religious and political exchanges between the two countries, arguing that the links were more diverse and stronger than simply the rulers' family connections. Jean Dunbabin shows how influence flowed as much from south to north as vice versa, and that France was strongly influenced by the experiences of those who returned after years of fighting in the Regno. As well as considering the experiences of notable crusading families, she sheds new light on the career of Robert II d'Artois, who virtually ruled the Regno for six years before returning to France to remodel the government of Artois. This comparative history of two societies offers an important new perspective on medieval Western Europe.
Within the field of ancient bilingualism, Sicily represents a unique terrain for analysis as a result of its incredibly rich linguistic history, in which 'colonial' languages belonging to branches as ...diverse as Italic (Oscan and Latin), Greek and Semitic (Phoenician) interacted with the languages of the natives (the elusive Sicel, Sicanian and Elymian). The result of this ancient melting-pot was a culture characterised by 'postcolonial' features such as ethnic hybridity, multilingualism and artistic and literary experimentation. While Greek soon emerged as the leading language, dominating official communication and literature, epigraphic sources and indirect evidence show that the minority languages held their ground down to the fifth century BCE, and in some cases beyond. The first two parts of the volume discuss these languages and their interaction with Greek, while the third part focuses on the sociolinguistic revolution brought about by the arrival of the Romans.
With thousands of migrants attempting the perilous maritime journey
from North Africa to Europe each year, transnational migration is a
defining feature of social life in the Mediterranean today. On ...the
island of Sicily, where many migrants first arrive and ultimately
remain, the contours of migrant reception and integration are
frequently animated by broader concerns for human rights and social
justice. Island of Hope sheds light on the emergence of
social solidarity initiatives and networks forged between citizens
and noncitizens who work together to improve local livelihoods and
mobilize for radical political change. Basing her argument on years
of ethnographic fieldwork with frontline communities in Sicily,
anthropologist Megan Carney asserts that such mobilizations hold
significance not only for the rights of migrants, but for the
material and affective well-being of society at large.
Sicily has been the fulcrum of the Mediterranean throughout history. The island’s central geographical position and its status as ancient Rome’s first overseas province make it key to understanding ...the development of the Roman Empire. Yet Sicily’s crucial role in the empire has been largely overlooked by scholars of classical antiquity, apart from a small number of specialists in its archaeology and material culture. Urbanism and Empire in Roman Sicily offers the first comprehensive English-language overview of the history and archaeology of Roman Sicily since R. J. A. Wilson’s Sicily under the Roman Empire (1990). Laura Pfuntner traces the development of cities and settlement networks in Sicily in order to understand the island’s political, economic, social, and cultural role in Rome’s evolving Mediterranean hegemony. She identifies and examines three main processes traceable in the archaeological record of settlement in Roman Sicily: urban disintegration, urban adaptation, and the development of alternatives to urban settlement. By expanding the scope of research on Roman Sicily beyond the bounds of the island itself, through comparative analysis of the settlement landscapes of Greece and southern Italy, and by utilizing exciting evidence from recent excavations and surveys, Pfuntner establishes a new empirical foundation for research on Roman Sicily and demonstrates the necessity of including Sicily in broader historical and archaeological studies of the Roman Empire.
A general historical introduction to the Muslims of Medieval Italy which presents specific information regarding social, religious, administrative, political, cultural, artistic and intellectual ...questions.
This book is centered on the Venetian humanist Pietro Bembo (1470–1547), on his stay in Sicily in 1492–4 to study the ancient Greek language under the Byzantine émigré Constantine Lascaris, and above ...all on his ascent of Mount Etna in 1493. The more particular focus of this study is on the imaginative capacities that crucially shape Bembo’s elegantly crafted account, in Latin, of his Etna adventure in his so-called De Aetna, published at the Aldine Press in Venice in 1496. This work is cast in the form of a dialogue that takes place between the young Bembo and his father, Bernardo (himself a prominent Venetian statesman with strong humanist involvements), after Pietro’s return to Venice from Sicily in 1494. But De Aetna offers much more than a one-dimensional account of the facts, sights, and findings of Pietro’s climb. Three mutually informing features that are critical to the artistic originality of De Aetna receive detailed treatment in this study: (i) the stimulus that Pietro drew from the complex history of Mount Etna as treated in the Greco-Roman literary tradition from Pindar onward; (ii) the striking novelty of De Aetna’s status as the first Latin text produced at the nascent Aldine Press in the prototype of what modern typography knows as Bembo typeface; and (iii) Pietro’s ingenious deployment of Etna as a powerful, multivalent symbol that simultaneously reflects the diverse characterizations of, and the generational differences between, father and son in the course of their dialogical exchanges within De Aetna.
Isabelle Dolezalek is the recipient of the 2018 ICMA Annual Book Prize. Roger II’s famous mantle and other royal garments from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Sicily prominently display Arabic ...inscriptions. While the phenomenon is highly unusual in the context of Latin Christian kingship, the use of inscriptions as a textile ornament was common and imbued with political functions in the Islamic courts of the medieval Mediterranean. This case study of the inscribed garments from Norman Sicily draws attention to the diverse functions of Arabic textile inscriptions using various contextual frames. Such a contextual approach not only highlights the specificities of the Norman textile inscriptions and emphasises the practical and political choices underlying their use at the Sicilian court, it also pinpoints the flaws of universalising approaches to transcultural ornamental in circulation in the medieval Mediterranean. This new perspective on the royal garments from Norman Sicily draws from a variety of disciplines, including Islamic and European art history, the history of textiles, epigraphy, legal history and historiography, and aims to challenge established notions of cultural and disciplinary boundaries.
Sicily is a lush and culturally rich island at the center of the Mediterranean Sea. Throughout its history, the island has been conquered and colonized by successive waves of peoples from across the ...Mediterranean region. In the early and central Middle Ages, the island was ruled and occupied in turn by Greek Christians, Muslims, and Latin Christians.
InWhere Three Worlds Met, Sarah Davis-Secord investigates Sicily's place within the religious, diplomatic, military, commercial, and intellectual networks of the Mediterranean by tracing the patterns of travel, trade, and communication among Christians (Latin and Greek), Muslims, and Jews. By looking at the island across this long expanse of time and during the periods of transition from one dominant culture to another, Davis-Secord uncovers the patterns that defined and redefined the broader Muslim-Christian encounter in the Middle Ages.
Sicily was a nexus for cross-cultural communication not because of its geographical placement at the center of the Mediterranean but because of the specific roles the island played in a variety of travel and trade networks in the Mediterranean region. Complex combinations of political, cultural, and economic need transformed Sicily's patterns of connection to other nearby regions-transformations that were representative of the fundamental shifts that took place in the larger Mediterranean system during the Middle Ages. The meanings and functions of Sicily's positioning within these larger Mediterranean communications networks depended on the purposes to which the island was being put and how it functioned at the boundaries of the Greek, Latin, and Muslim worlds.
The aim of this work is to define reliable susceptibility models for shallow landslides using Logistic Regression and Random Forests multivariate statistical techniques. The study area, located in ...North-East Sicily, was hit on October 1st 2009 by a severe rainstorm (225mm of cumulative rainfall in 7h) which caused flash floods and more than 1000 landslides. Several small villages, such as Giampilieri, were hit with 31 fatalities, 6 missing persons and damage to buildings and transportation infrastructures. Landslides, mainly types such as earth and debris translational slides evolving into debris flows, were triggered on steep slopes and involved colluvium and regolith materials which cover the underlying metamorphic bedrock. The work has been carried out with the following steps: i) realization of a detailed event landslide inventory map through field surveys coupled with observation of high resolution aerial colour orthophoto; ii) identification of landslide source areas; iii) data preparation of landslide controlling factors and descriptive statistics based on a bivariate method (Frequency Ratio) to get an initial overview on existing relationships between causative factors and shallow landslide source areas; iv) choice of criteria for the selection and sizing of the mapping unit; v) implementation of 5 multivariate statistical susceptibility models based on Logistic Regression and Random Forests techniques and focused on landslide source areas; vi) evaluation of the influence of sample size and type of sampling on results and performance of the models; vii) evaluation of the predictive capabilities of the models using ROC curve, AUC and contingency tables; viii) comparison of model results and obtained susceptibility maps; and ix) analysis of temporal variation of landslide susceptibility related to input parameter changes. Models based on Logistic Regression and Random Forests have demonstrated excellent predictive capabilities. Land use and wildfire variables were found to have a strong control on the occurrence of very rapid shallow landslides.
•Multivariate statistical susceptibility models for very rapid shallow landslides•Sample size and type of sampling influence results and performance of models.•Logistic Regression and Random Forests proved excellent predictive capabilities.•Land use and wildfires have a strong control on rapid shallow landslide occurrence.
