Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy Chestnuts, Economy, and Culture

About this book

This innovative environmental history of the long-lived European chestnut tree and its woods offers valuable new perspectives on the human transition from the Roman to the medieval world in Italy. Integrating evidence from botanical and literary sources, individual charters and case studies of specific communities, Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy traces fluctuations in the size and location of Italian chestnut woods to expose how early medieval societies changed their land use between the fourth and eleventh centuries, and in the process changed themselves. As the chestnut tree gained popularity in late antiquity and became a valuable commodity by the end of the first millennium, this study brings to life the economic and cultural transition from a Roman Italy of cities, agricultural surpluses and markets to a medieval Italy of villages and subsistence farming.

Contents

Introduction: trees, woods, and chestnuts in early medieval Italy

1. A natural history of the chestnut
2. The triumph of a tree
3. The poetics of the chestnut in the early Middle Ages
4. Chestnuts in medieval Campania
5. Chestnuts in the Po valley

Conclusion: Giovanni Pascoli and the old chestnut
Bibliography

Customer Reviews

Biography

Paolo Squatriti is Associate Professor of History and Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He specialises in the study of the pre-industrial environment and has published on ecological and landscape change in the 'Dark Ages'.