Foodways and Widows: Urban gardening in Early Medieval Italy,’ Leeds International Medieval Congress July 2016 (original) (raw)

Abstract

It is a commonplace assumption that the medieval cities were 'ruralised' by the presence of vegetable patches, fields, and livestock. Historians and archaeologists have often taken evidence for agricultural cultivation in urban spaces as indicators of the breakdown of medieval urban fabric and economies, but urban gardens were not simply byproducts of decline or devolution. They were created because people living in the city wanted fresh fruits and vegetables and made space to grow them, and because certain structures of property transfer permitted social promotion as well as safeguarded property and use of it for the future. . The evidence from Italy makes clear that residential properties with access to cultivated spaces were tightly controlled. The study of these urban vineyards, veg patches and fields, through their textual and archaeological records, provides us a small window onto shifting social structures within medieval cities, the rises and falls in small-scale markets, and emerging ideals of charity and beneficence.

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