Drawing on untapped archival records, this book provides new insights into lord-tenant relations, state formation, social inequality, political participation and everyday life in rural societies. ...This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
The "glorious house" of the senatorial family of the Flavii Apiones is the best documented economic entity of the Roman Empire during the fifth through seventh centuries, that critical period of ...transition between the classical world and the Middle Ages. For decades, the rich but fragmentary manuscript evidence that this large agricultural estate left behind, preserved for 1,400 years by the desiccating sands of Egypt, has been central to arguments concerning the agrarian and fiscal history of Late Antiquity, including the rise of feudalism.
Wine, Wealth, and the State in Late Antique Egyptis the most authoritative synthesis concerning the economy of the Apion estate to appear to date. T. M. Hickey examines the records of the family's wine production in the sixth century in order to shed light on ancient economic practices and economic theory, as well as on the wine industry and on estate management. Based on careful study of the original manuscripts, including unpublished documents from the estate archive, he presents controversial conclusions, much at odds with the "top down" models currently dominating the scholarship.
In the1990s, the team around Karl Härter and Michael Stolleis at the Max PlanckInstitute for European Legal History (today: the Max Planck Institute for LegalHistory and Legal Theory) developed a ...four-tier taxonomy to tag policeordinances in the Holy Roman Empire. This taxonomy contained some 1,200keywords, divided into 5 societal sectors, 25 regulatory areas, and c. 200police matters. The goal of this taxonomy was to enable comparative,interterritorial research. In our present research, we took this taxonomy,designed for princely legislation and ordinances promulgated in imperial towns,and applied it to a corpus of 109 medieval and early modern police regulations,containing thousands of legal provisions on all aspects of daily life in manorsin the county of Flanders. While the taxonomy was very helpful for analysingthese provisions, there were also some challenges related to the fact that wewere applying the taxonomy to another region and to another normative sourcetype. Given the continuing process of elaborating the taxonomy and the translation from Germaninto different languages, we argue that some coordination is necessary to avoidthat the meaning of the keywords gets lost in translation. Applying thetaxonomy is not a self-evident process. It is indispensable to have a users’guide and careful decision about translations to guarantee that the taxonomycan become a standard tool for tagging normative sources and enabling thecomparison of norms across territorial and linguistic borders.
The Low Countries-an area roughly embracing the present-day Netherlands and Belgium-formed a patchwork of varied economic and social development in the Middle Ages, with some regions displaying a ...remarkable dynamism. Manors and Markets charts the history of these vibrant economies and societies, and contrasts them with alternative paths of development, from the early medieval period to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Providing a concise overview of social and economic changes over more than a thousand years, Bas van Bavel assesses the impact of the social and institutional organization that saw the Low Countries become the most urbanized and densely populated part of Europe by the end of the Middle Ages. By delving into the early and high medieval history of society, van Bavel uncovers the foundations of the flourishing of the medieval Flemish towns and the forces that propelled Holland towards its Golden Age. Exploring the Low Countries at a regional level, van Bavel highlights the importance of localized structures for determining the nature of social transitions and economic growth. He assesses the role of manorial organization, the emergence of markets, the rise of towns, the quest for self-determination by ordinary people, and the sharp regional differences in development that can be observed in the very long run. In doing so, the book offers a significant contribution to the debate about the causes of economic and social change, both past and present. Available in OSO: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/history/9780199278664/toc.html
This report outlines investigation of the early manor at Guiting
Power, a village in the Cotswolds with Saxon origins, lying in an
area with interesting entries in the Domesday Survey of 1086.
...Excavation has shown that, during the later Saxon period, a lightly
defended compound contained a principal area of habitation, with an
adjacent, more open 'working area' partly divided by ditched
sub-enclosures, perhaps related to subsidiary settlement, or other
economic activity. This complex may have formed the main
estate-centre for a more extensive land-holding, scattered over the
northern Cotswolds, and leased from the king, its last Saxon tenant
being one 'Alwin', as sheriff of the county a thegn of
some standing. During the major economic and social changes
following the Conquest, under a change to Norman lordship, the
manorial perimeter was reinforced, and a small apsidal church was
constructed within it, now restored as a standing monument.
Subsequently, a new complex of manorial buildings was established
on a fresh site within the enclosure, the precursor of the present
parish church was constructed nearby, with further development of
manor and village into the full medieval period.
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