This volume explores the relationships and interactions between medieval urban populations and their rural counterparts across north western Europe from the seventh to sixteenth centuries. This theme has become increasingly fragmented in recent decades, resulting in scholars being largely unaware of developments outside their own areas. The present volume brings together historians and archaeologists in order to highlight the varied ways in which town–country interactions can be considered, from perspectives that include economy, politics, natural environment, material culture, and settlement hierarchy. As a whole, the papers offer innovative interdisciplinary perspectives on the topic that create a new platform from which to understand more fully the complex, bilateral relationships in which both urban and rural spheres were able to influence and challenge each other. Contributions are wide-ranging, from the activities of elite, aristocratic groups in and around individual towns, to large-scale surveys covering wide areas. With coverage from the North Sea to the western Baltic, the book will be relevant to a range of disciplines including archaeology, history, and geography, and is aimed towards both advanced students and established scholars.

Table des matières :

Alexis Wilkin et John Naylor – Introduction: Dynamic Interactions: Developing a Unified Approach to Urban-Rural

Part I: Social, Economic and Environmental Changes Developing and Renegotiating Urban-Rural Interactions

J. Crabtree – Urban-Rural Interactions in East Anglia: The Evidence from Zooarchaeology
Felix Biermann – Central Place and Periphery in Early and High Medieval North-Eastern German Territory
Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld et Frans Theuws – Early Town Formation in the Northern Low Countries: Roman Heritage, Carolingian Impulses, and a New Take-Off in the Twelfth Century
Jim Galloway – London and the Thames Estuary in the Later Middle Ages: Economic and Environmental Change
Ulrich Müller – Networks of Towns – Networks of Periphery? The Relations between the Hanseatic Medieval Town and its Hinterland

Part II: Noblemen and Entrepreneurs Mediating and Affecting Urban-Rural Relations

T. K. Moore – ‘Other Cities have Citizens, London’s are called Barons’: Connections between London and Essex during the Magna Carta Civil War (1215-17)
Christoph Krauskopf – Castles, Towns and Villages: An Archaeological and Historical Approach to Askanian Settlement Policy in Medieval Brandenburg
Antheun Janse – Noble Representation in an Urban society: The Case of Holland in the Fifteenth Century
Geir Atle Erlsand – Urban Land Ownership and Rural Estates: The Case of Three Scandinavian Medieval Towns
Paulo Charruadas – Urban Elites and Traditional Lords in Brussels (Twelfth-Fourteenth Centuries): Opposition or Convergence?

Peter Stabel – Conclusion: ‘Dynamic Interactions: Where do we go from here?’

Informations pratiques :
A. Wilkin, J. Naylor, D. Keene, A.J.A. Bijsterveld (eds.), Town and Country in Medieval North Western Europe. Dynamic Interactions, Turnhout, Brepols, 2015 (The Medieval Countryside, 11). Prix : 85 euros. X+323 p., 16 b/w ill. + 24 maps, 9 b/w tables, 156 x 234 mm. ISBN: 978-2-503-53387-2

Source : Brepols