Exploring Diversity in Household Pottery Traditions in Crusader Greece: a Case Study from the City of Thebes,Boeotia

This paper provides new data on an under‐documented topic in Aegean archaeology, that of the impact of Latin–Greek cohabitation on craftsmanship, socio‐economic organization and household pottery traditions. The chosen approach is a petrographic study of the provenance and technology of 37 cooking pots, jugs, basins and storage jars from the city of Thebes, Boeotia. The ceramics span from the late 12th to the mid‐14th century and thereby cover the periods of Byzantine, Frankish and Catalan control over the city. The analysis indicates that most pottery products were not locally made during these periods. Pottery consumption at Thebes involved, in the 12th/13th century, regional products from northern Boeotia, while pottery supplies from Euboea that had developed under Byzantine rule continued into the 14th century, well after Boeotia and Euboea came into the hands of, respectively, Frankish and Venetian lords in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (1204). The petrographic analysis also allows for the characterization of Byzantine and Latin tempering practices of the pottery fabrics. These results highlight phenomena of regional economic reliance in central Greece and provide rare evidence for the cross‐cultural diffusion of technological knowledge in the late medieval Mediterranean.     

L'expansion occidentale dans le Levant: Les Vénitiens á acre dans la seconde moitié du treiziéme siécle

This case-study is the first attempt to examine a commercial outpost in the Crusader Levant within the context of the commercial and colonial expansion of its mother-city and in direct relation to its particular features. The Venetian quarter in Acre in the second half of the thirteenth century provided the physical setting for the exercise of authority by the state and a solid base for the expansion of its dominion. The Venetian administration there implemented the strict regulation of commerce and shipping enacted in Venice in this period, including several rules stemming from the particular needs of Acre. Various families of settlers from Venice, nobles as well as popolani, can be traced for several generations; the grant of Venetian status to natives of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, Latins oriental Christians, and Jews, enlarged the size of the Venetian population in Acre. The fate of the refugees who escaped from the city in 1291 is the last topic to be examined.     

L'expansion occidentale dans le Levant: Les Vénitiens á acre dans la seconde moitié du treiziéme siécle

This case-study is the first attempt to examine a commercial outpost in the Crusader Levant within the context of the commercial and colonial expansion of its mother-city and in direct relation to its particular features. The Venetian quarter in Acre in the second half of the thirteenth century provided the physical setting for the exercise of authority by the state and a solid base for the expansion of its dominion. The Venetian administration there implemented the strict regulation of commerce and shipping enacted in Venice in this period, including several rules stemming from the particular needs of Acre. Various families of settlers from Venice, nobles as well as popolani, can be traced for several generations; the grant of Venetian status to natives of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, Latins oriental Christians, and Jews, enlarged the size of the Venetian population in Acre. The fate of the refugees who escaped from the city in 1291 is the last topic to be examined.     

Politics, diplomacy and the cult of relics in Venice and the northern Adriatic in the first half of the ninth century

In early medieval Europe the cult of the saints emerged as a prominent focus for the construction of political identity. Corporeal relics became objects of importance, conferring status on their possessor; and, like other precious commodities, they frequently served as prestigious diplomatic gifts, useful for the fostering of political affiliations between donor and recipient. This strategic use of saints' cults is here examined with special regard to the region of the northern Adriatic. In the first decade of the ninth century, Byzantine attempts to maintain the allegiance of Venice and urban centres along the Dalmatian coast may have prompted the translations to the region of the relics of saints such as Anastasia, Tryphon and Theodore, all of whom became important civic patrons. Later in the century, the Byzantine mission to Moravia was focused on the relics of St Clement, while archaeological and other evidence suggests that Frankish missions into the Balkans may have stressed the cult of St Martin, a native of Pannonia. Ultimately, Venetian independence from both powers was made possible by their adoption of a new patron saint, Mark, whose cult arrived from Alexandria unencumbered by implicit political debts.     

Lawcourt proceedings in the Lombard kingdom before and after the Frankish conquest

The Frankish conquest of the Lombard kingdom in 774 is considered a basic event and even a turning point in the early medieval history of Italy. Lombard institutions are believed to have disappeared in favour of Frankish rules and customs. This article seeks to refute this view by demonstrating that there is a very great deal of continuity between the two periods for one of the most important judicial institutions, the trial. It will be shown that the different phases of court procedure remain nearly unaltered after the acquisition of Northern Italy by the Franks and that even the most striking difference between the Frankish and the Lombard trial, namely the distinction between judges and scabini, was not introduced in this part of the Carolingian Empire before 827. Even after that date the Frankish distinction was only applied in some trials, while the Lombard procedure remained the more common.     

Spreading the benefits of heritage visitor quarters

Heritage has come to play a very significant, though largely unrecognised, role in the evolution of urban design. Central city heritage quarters are a major response to the development of the urban fringes, and have developed an internationally recognisable form. This paper examines the characteristics and assets of such quarters and also considers their impact on the urban populace, and their implications for future urban design work in the intermediate zone.     

Planning the Cultural Quarter in Birmingham's Eastside

Cultural planning and the development of cultural quarters has become a new orthodoxy in the revitalization of inner city industrial districts, yet this orthodoxy is now widely questioned as to whether it delivers on its promises. In Birmingham UK, the aim to create a new cultural quarter in the industrial inner city area of Eastside represents a unique opportunity for the city to examine and learn from past lessons of the “cultural turn” in urban policy. The article examines these lessons and whether the Eastside scheme is set to repeat the mistakes of the past     

Assessing the cities of Messenia in the newly-founded Greek Kingdom: the medieval walled town of Koroni based on early nineteenth-century architectural plans

Abstract

The article examines the fortifications and the settlement of Venetian and Ottoman Koroni (it. Coron), through the accurate record of early nineteenth century engineers of the newly-established Greek Kingdom. The basic plan was conducted in 1835 by the military engineer Metaxas, who recorded all the buildings, their function and current owners, including a proposal for the urban re-planning of the city. His work proved its usefulness, since an exact copy was made in 1856 by lieutenant colonel Manitakis. It was supplemented by a second plan produced in 1842 by the surveyor Friedrich Zerse who focused on the settlement beyond the walls. These plans are set within the framework of the administration's endeavours to assess and reorganize the cities of Messenia following wider town-planning aspirations and policies.     

Louis the Pious and the contours of empire

When the southern Iberian city of Mérida revolted against Umayyad control, the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious (814–40) sought to gain recognition there of his own political authority, probably in early 830. Motivated by a desire to project Frankish power after Umayyad intervention in Catalonia, the move was also in keeping with larger patterns of Carolingian expansion in the Iberian frontier zone. The incident is further revealing of Louis the Pious's wider imperial ambitions in the 820s, which early medieval conceptions of space allowed to be expressed over surprisingly long distances, well beyond the frontiers of the Frankish kingdoms.     

Assessing the local embeddedness dynamics of the Baumwollspinnerei cultural quarter in Leipzig: introducing the POSES Star Framework

This paper argues that it is important for urban scholars and practitioners to comparatively appraise the differential forms of local embeddedness of cultural quarters. Such appraisals can help to realize more sustainable practices of cultural quarter anchoring within neighbourhoods. The case study of Leipzig, Germany – a city that deploys both ‘creative city’ and ‘cultural industries’ models of urban development within a context of post-industrial, post-socialist transformation – is used to examine the adaptive re-use of a former cotton-spinning mill, the Baumwollspinnerei, into an internationally renowned cultural quarter. The POSES Star Framework is developed as an analytical tool to systematically outline multiple local embeddedness dynamics (political, organizational, social, ephemeral, and spatial) of a cultural quarter within a neighbourhood and within a specific urban planning and policy context. The application of the POSES Star Framework to the Baumwollspinnerei reveals that internal organizational concerns for site development and marketing are prioritized over external engagements with Leipzig's urban planning and cultural policy discourses.     

‘Garden City’ in the tropics? French Dakar in comparative perspective

The aim of this article is to examine the transmission of garden city notions into the colonial context by focussing on French Dakar, a key site of colonisation in West Africa. Although there is an abundance of literature on the diffusion of urban ideas in general and garden city notions in particular, publications about extra-European planning history, especially in the formerly colonised territories and sub-Saharan Africa, are scant. The article analyses the conception and communication of garden city schemes from late nineteenth-century Britain to early twentieth-century France in terms of cité-jardin applications within the colonial urban sphere of French West Africa. It will also be shown that in interwar Dakar, the practical and terminological usages of the cité-jardin served mainly to create a prestigious image for the designated residential quarters of administrative employees. As a result, unofficial class segregation within the expatriate society was enforced as was unofficial racial segregation between the colonisers and the colonised.     

A Model for Measuring the Sustainability Level of Historic Urban Quarters

The main aim of this paper is to propose a model for measuring the sustainability level of historic urban quarters and to indicate an appropriate strategy for their revitalization. Based on this aim, this study first presents the theoretical review on the concept of “revitalization”, and its relationship with sustainability; next, it introduces the characteristics, role, selection process and scaling method of sustainability indicators, which are essential for measuring the level of sustainability. The paper then, as the main contribution of this paper, proposes the model for measuring the level of sustainability in historic urban quarters and determines some proposals to achieve revitalized and sustainable historic urban quarters. Depending on the proposed model, there is a direct relationship between type and the level of obsolescence (revitalization) and the level of sustainability in the physical, economic and social structures of a particular area. Therefore, when the level of sustainability is high in any one of these three structures, it means that the level of obsolescence is low in the same structures of an historic urban quarter. The result of this paper leads us to say that, the level of sustainability is a new (additional) input in the strategic planning process of revitalization and sustainable urban revitalization of historic urban quarters. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief summary on the general arguments of the paper.     

Of burning monks,unidentified churches and the last Cistercian foundation in the East: Our Lady of Camina in the principality of Achaia

The existence of the monastic church of Camina in Frankish Morea has long been noted by historians of Frankish Greece, but its history has never been thoroughly investigated and its location remains unknown. Moreover, some of the documents pertaining to this church have not been published while others have been published in faulty editions that have obscured their full significance. In the present study the surviving documents are edited and the church's history is reconstructed and its location identified. It is suggested that some of the original Benedictine inhabitants of Camina were the only Latin religious to have been burnt at the stake for heresy in medieval Greece. It is also argued that Camina was the last Cistercian abbey to be founded in the Latin East, and that it may be identified as the present monastery of Our Lady of Blachernae near Glarenza (Killini).     

William of Malmesbury's Carolingian sources

In his great history of England, the Gesta regum Anglorum, completed in 1125, William of Malmesbury included digressions on continental affairs. One of these, on the Merovingian and Carolingian monarchs, provides an interesting study of William's historical method. His Frankish sources are difficult to identify, but we are helped by the survival of the late twelfth-century English MS. Oxford, Bodleian Library Lat. class d.39. This book contains, inter alia, a collection of chronicles and short pieces on Frankish history. We attempt to show that it was copied from a MS. made by or for William, and that his own notes were recopied into its margins. Moreover, it seems probable that he himself compiled the collection of chronicles in it. This discovery enables us to identify most of William's Frankish materials, to draw important conclusions about his manipulation of them, and so advance our knowledge of twelfth-century historiography generally.     

The bishoprics of Saxony in the first century after Christianization

The eighth and ninth centuries witnessed the foundation of many new bishoprics in the territories on the fringes of the Carolingian Empire. Saxony was one such region. This article seeks to understand the political status of these new bishoprics during the first century of their existence, from their foundation to the end of Carolingian rule in east Francia (805–911). The religious history of the Saxon province, and the Carolingians' lack of interest in this region after its forcible conversion, had a significant effect on the status of its bishoprics during the ninth and early tenth centuries. This study assesses the evidence for both the land-holdings of this new episcopal church and the activities of its bishops, and concludes by arguing for the distinctive position of the Saxon bishoprics within the Frankish and east Frankish churches of this period.     

William of Malmesbury's Carolingian sources

In his great history of England, the Gesta regum Anglorum, completed in 1125, William of Malmesbury included digressions on continental affairs. One of these, on the Merovingian and Carolingian monarchs, provides an interesting study of William's historical method. His Frankish sources are difficult to identify, but we are helped by the survival of the late twelfth-century English MS. Oxford, Bodleian Library Lat. class d.39. This book contains, inter alia, a collection of chronicles and short pieces on Frankish history. We attempt to show that it was copied from a MS. made by or for William, and that his own notes were recopied into its margins. Moreover, it seems probable that he himself compiled the collection of chronicles in it. This discovery enables us to identify most of William's Frankish materials, to draw important conclusions about his manipulation of them, and so advance our knowledge of twelfth-century historiography generally.     

Chemical analysis of 17th century Millefiori glasses excavated in the Monastery of Sta. Clara-a-Velha,Portugal: comparison with Venetian and façon-de-Venise production

A set of ten Millefiori glass fragments dating from the 17th century, originated from archaeological excavations carried out at the Monastery of Sta. Clara-a-Velha (Coimbra, Portugal), were characterized by X-ray electron probe microanalysis (EPMA), Raman microscopy and UV–Visible absorption spectroscopy. All glasses are of soda-lime-silica type. The use of coastal plant ash is suggested by the relatively high content of MgO, K₂O and P₂O₅, as well as by the presence of chlorine. Tin oxide or calcium antimonate were the opacifiers used in the opaque glasses, cobalt in the blue glasses, copper in the turquoise glasses, iron in the yellow and greenish glasses, and iron and copper were found in the opaque red and aventurine glasses. Based on the concentrations of alumina and silica four different sources of silica were identified, allowing the classification of the glasses into the following compositional groups: low alumina (<2 wt%), which includes a sub-group of cristallo samples with SiO₂ > 70 wt%, medium alumina (2–3 wt%), high alumina (3–6 wt%) and very high alumina (>6 wt%). Comparison with genuine Venetian and façon-de-Venise compositions showed that two fragments are of Venetian production, one of Venetian or Spanish production and the remaining are of unknown provenance. In two fragments the glass of the decoration is probably Venetian or Spanish but the glass used in the body is also of unknown provenance.     

Trauma in the Crusader period city of Caesarea: a major port in the medieval eastern Mediterranean

Caesarea is the first fortified city to undergo palaeopathological analysis of its Crusader period inhabitants. This study of the 12th and 13th century population aims to determine the major types of trauma present, whether from weapon injuries or accidents. Since the Crusades were known for the significant number of battles and raids that took place, weapon injuries were expected to be common. Thirteen cases of trauma are described and a highly unexpected pattern has come to light. These cases do not include one single example of weapon‐related trauma. Every fracture is of a type expected from accidents or interpersonal violence without weapons. Possible explanations include the location of the city deep within Frankish territory and the robust city walls giving effective protection to the inhabitants, and also that the population were involved in activities that left them prone to accidents but not weapon injuries. The other important finding from this study was that the cases of lower limb long bone spiral fractures had healed in a near‐anatomical alignment. This is not what we would expect, as a proportion of these injuries would normally have been unstable and tend to heal poorly aligned. The good position could have resulted from surgeons' use of splints to immobilise the bones while they healed. This suggestion is supported by laws of the kingdom of Jerusalem, which stated that surgeons were to be punished if they allowed such fractures to heal at an angle. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gregory the Great, the Rule of Benedict and Roman liturgy: the evolution of a legend

This paper relates the evolution of Gregory the Great’s reputation as creator of the Roman liturgy to the slow process by which the Rule of Benedict acquired authority within monasticism in the seventh and eighth centuries. It argues that Gregory composed the Dialogues to promote ascetic values within the Church, but that this work did not begin to circulate in Spain and then Gaul until the 630s, precisely when Gregory’s known interest in liturgical reform is first attested in Rome. The letters of Pope Vitalian (657-72) provide hitherto unnoticed testimony to the theft of Benedict’s relics by monks of Fleury c.660, marking a new stage in the evolution of monastic culture in Gaul. The paper also argues that the Ordo Romanus XIX is not a Frankish composition from the second half of the eighth century (as Andrieu claimed), but provides important evidence for the Rule being observed at St Peter’s, Rome, in the late seventh century. While Gregory was interested in liturgical reform, he never enforced any particular observance on the broader church, just as he never imposed any particular rule. By the time of Charlemagne, however, Gregory had been transformed into an ideal figure imposing uniformity of liturgical observance, as well as mandating the Rule of Benedict within monasticism. Yet the church of the Lateran, mother church of the city of Rome, continued to maintain its own liturgy and ancient form of chant, which it claimed had been composed by Pope Vitalian, even in the thirteenth century.     

Remote sensing applications and archaeological research in the Northern Lagoon of Venice: the case of the lost settlement of Constanciacus

“Vicus Constanciacus” is a project for the recovery, protection and evaluation of the historical and archaeological heritage of Constanciacus, an ancient small group of islands in the Northern Lagoon of Venice, of which currently just two emerged strips survive, namely: the abandoned islands of Sant’Ariano and La Cura. Exploring the area lying between the mainland and the lagoon represents an important opportunity for reconstructing the history of Venice before the well known medieval city and market arose. Through survey and excavations of the Constanciacus area, the project aims to shed new light on early patterns of occupation in the Northern Venetian Lagoon; to explore the communication network between the mainland and the sea; and to examine the evolution of settlements along the commercial routes of the Lagoon through time.