An Environmental History of Medieval EuropeHow did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and try to handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This groundbreaking environmental history examines medieval relationships with the natural world from the perspective of social ecology, viewing human society as a hybrid of the cultural and the natural. Richard Hoffmann's interdisciplinary approach sheds important light on such central topics in medieval history as the decline of Rome, religious doctrine, urbanization and technology, as well as key environmental themes, among them energy use, sustainability, disease and climate change. Revealing the role of natural forces in events previously seen as purely human, the book explores issues including the treatment of animals, the 'tragedy of the commons', agricultural clearances and agrarian economies. By introducing medieval history in the context of social ecology, it brings the natural world into historiography as an agent and object of history itself. |
Contents
Long no wilderness | 21 |
culture and nature | 51 |
Humankind and Gods Creation in medieval minds | 85 |
Medieval land use and the formation of traditional | 113 |
Medieval use management and sustainability | 155 |
Medieval use management and sustainability of local | 196 |
This belongs to me | 241 |
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Common terms and phrases
adapted agricultural agroecosystems Alps animals anthropogenic arable areas biomass Black Death bloomeries bubonic plague called Carolingian cent central cereal chapter Christendom Christian Cistercian classical clearances climate colonized communities crop cultural disease diverse early medieval early modern ecological economic ecosystems elite endemic energy England environment environmental history epidemic erosion especially Europe’s farming fields fish flood forest fourteenth century Frisians fuel German God’s grain historians historical Holocene human hunting ice cores interaction Iron Age Italy kilometres labour land landscapes late antiquity late medieval later leprosy Little Ice Age livestock living lords malaria manorial material medieval Europe medieval Europeans Mediterranean metals metres Middle Ages mills natural sphere natural world northern numbers pasture pathogen pattern peasant plants plough population production programmes regional remained river Roman royal settlement social society soil thirteenth century transhumance trees twelfth century urban village western wood woodland