‘The experience of architecture in a medieval Italian village: Villamagna,’ Buildings and Society in an Historical Perspective AD 500-1914: Contributions from Archaeology, History and Architecture. Belfast 18-20 June 2014. (original) (raw)

Abstract

Few excavated sites reveal the full extent of the built environment because of the necessarily incomplete nature of the excavation process; even fewer medieval sites are known in their entirety. Extensive excavations at Villamagna, in Central Italy, have revealed a village, monastery and church of the tenth to thirteenth centuries, all situated within the ruins of a substantial Roman villa, the name of which was preserved throughout the middle ages. Through the comparison of these different structures on the site as a case study, I will explore how the differing topography, technique and quality of construction, and uses of these buildings might have been experienced by the medieval community. The different scales of huts, compared to other huts and to contemporary monastic buildings gives a clear indication of hierarchy, but I argue that there are different ways in which we might understand how village societies organised themselves in their buildings. Through comparison with contemporary archaeological research (mostly in Italy of the Central Middle Ages) and analysis of textual records (both from the site of Villamagna and elsewhere in Italy), I will suggest some means by which we can understand the social hierarchy of the community articulated through the built environment. A structuralist interpretation seems applicable here, but other theoretical models (iconography of form, phenomenology of materials) will be explored.

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