STORIA DEGLI INSEDIAMENTI MEDIEVALI

The course aims to provide students with the major research topics related to the history of rural and urban settlements in the medieval Mediterranean context with reference to the new acquisitions of archaeological research. Next to the analysis of the transformation processes affecting the West medieval, pay special attention to rural and urban reality within the Islamic world and the Byzantine, as essential components of the medieval Mediterranean reality and reference points for the understanding of the dynamics that occurred in the early medieval Sicily.

A. Features of Medieval urbanism (1CFU)

Towns and commerce in Mediterranean area from Late Antiquity to Early Middle Age

From Pirenne’s Thesis to Goitein’s Mediterranean Society

Emporia and wiks beetween Adriatic and Northen Sea

B. Origins of medieval town (3 CFU)

The end of classical towns

The construction of medieval city

a. The contexts of the Western European area

b. The contexts of the Mediterranean area (area Byzantine and Islamic)

Early medieval towns in Sicily. Palermo, Catania

C. The rural world. Incastellament (2 CFU)

The diversification of the territories in early medieval Italy.

The institutional organization of the territory

a. Jurisdictions public

b. Religious geography

c. Lay and monastic seigneurial powers

Rural settlement in Sicily in the Early Middle Age