From Al-Andalus to the Americas (13th-17th Centuries). Destruction and Construcion of Societies offers a multi-perspective view of the filiation of different colonial and settler colonial experiences, from the Medieval Iberian Peninsula to the early Modern Americas. All the articles in the volume refer the reader to colonial orders that extended over time, that substantially reduced indigenous populations, that imposed new productive strategies and created new social hierarchies. The ideological background and how conquests were organised; the treatment given to the conquered lands and people; the political organisations, and the old and new agricultural systems are issues discussed in this volume. Contributors are David Abulafia, Manuel Ardit, Antonio Espino, Adela Fábregas, Josep M. Fradera, Enric Guinot, Helena Kirchner, Antonio Malpica, Virgilio Martínez-Enamorado, Carmen Mena, António Mendes, Félix Retamero, Inge Schjellerup, Josep Torró, and Antoni Virgili.

Twenty-three contributions by leading archaeologists from across Europe explore the varied forms, functions and significances of fortified settlements in the 8th to 10th centuries AD. These could be sites of strongly martial nature, upland retreats, monastic enclosures, rural seats, island bases, or urban nuclei. But they were all expressions of control - of states, frontiers, lands, materials, communities - and ones defined by walls, ramparts or enclosing banks. Papers run from Irish cashels to Welsh and Pictish strongholds, Saxon burhs, Viking fortresses, Byzantine castra, Carolingian creations, Venetian barricades, Slavic strongholds, and Bulgarian central places, and coverage extends fully from northwest Europe, to central Europe, the northern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Strongly informed by recent fieldwork and excavations, but drawing also where available on the documentary record, this important collection provides fully up-to-date reviews and analyses of the archaeology of the distinctive settlement forms that characterized Europe in the Early Middle Ages.

L'estudi de les pràctiques d'hidràulica agrària desenvolupades durant l'Edat Mitjana ha mostrat que no ens trobem davant fenòmens purament «etnogràfics» o solucions universals sense valor històric. En aquesta obra col·lectiva s'ofereixen, d'una banda, treballs representatius de regions on s'inicia l'expansió agrària en el marc de la cristal·lització del sistema feudal (Catalunya Vella, Llenguadoc, Borgonya) i, per un altre, diversos estudis sobre les transformacions produïdes en territori conquistats durant els segles XII (regió de Terol, vall del Segre), XIII (regne de València) i finals del XV (regne de Granada). A través de tots ells s'examina la diversitat de mitjans geogràfics (humits i àrids) on es despleguen tècniques hidràuliques aplicades al cultiu, els prats i la molineria.

This volume brings together 18 case studies investigating territory in the Middle Ages from an archaeological perspective. It offers contributions from prestigious professors, such as Flocel Sabaté and Jesús Brufal, and a selected set of young researchers. It promotes new perspectives on territory studies through innovative research methods. The case studies are organized chronologically from the end of the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages, focusing especially on cases in Portugal, Spain and Italy, in order to provide a Mediterranean perspective. The volume explores a range of topics, from aspects of methodological informatics in the valley of Ager in Catalonia, the evolution of prosperous cities in the Middle Ages (such as Braga, Pisa and Milan), the transformation of the early medieval rural space to the long evolution of island territories (Sardinia), and the influence of the military actions, the political power and the religious architecture on the landscape in the Iberian and the Italian Peninsula, among other topics. As such, this publication offers a variety of new insights into the study of medieval territory.

Through a series of case studies, this third volume in the Earth series deals with the technological constraints and innovations that enabled societies to survive and thrive across a range of environmental conditions. The contributions are structured into three sections to draw out particular commonalities and contrasts in the choices made by pre-industrial communities in the construction of varied landscapes and cultural heritage: Landnam, from the Old Norse for ‘taking of land’, deals with colonization, including the drivers and processes through which colonizers developed an understanding of the productive potential and limitations of their new lands. Fields and field systems: Field-walls are a distinctive and apparently timeless characteristic of many pre-industrial farming landscapes but they present many the challenges to their study, such as the effects of plowing, abandonment and land-use change and of urban development in fertile lowland zones which may eradicate, reduce or conceal past systems of land-use and division. The importance of indirect and proxy evidence is illustrated and the value of interdisciplinary and modeling approaches emphasized. Agro-pastoralism: focuses on the complex ‘time-space adaptations’ devised for managing cultivation and livestock production, particularly the need to prevent stock incursions into arable fields during the growing season whilst making effective use of seasonal grazing resources. The contributions focus on mountainous areas, where temporary migrations, in the form of transhumance, provided access to a diversity of resources based around seasonal constraints on their availability and productivity.