Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy: Chestnuts, Economy, and Culture. By PaoloSquatriti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013. 248 pp., 4 maps. £60. ISBN 9781107034488.

Abstract

Finally, the early chapters on the timing and locations of assemblies finds another similarity with continental experience in the extent to which even the most powerful kings ruled from Wessex and rarely ventured beyond the Thames save in the exceptional circumstances of campaigns and treaties, this an indicator of the thinness of 'fiscal' lands outside Wessex. Within Wessex assemblies were predominantly held in royal vills, outside Wessex in civitates. Interestingly, in neither case were locations chosen for their ecclesiastical significance. The key desiderata were ease of access via the road system and the ability of a site to support an extended visit by some 200-600 attendees.For the most part I have cavils not criticisms and even then not many. I was struck by the lack of discussion of the extent to which tenth-century Anglo-Saxon assemblies were or were not grafted onto or modelled on ecclesiastical councils. And I remain somewhat unconvinced by Roach's tendency to minimize the importance of specific borrowings between England and the Ottonians, the Flemish, and the West Frankish Carolingians. Roach rightly points out that whereas historians usually see England as borrowing from the continent, the reverse might also have been true (as, perhaps, in Fleury's liturgical dramatizations). But Edgar's reign does mark a sharper break in political discourse than one might glean from Roach's account, and that discourse is unimaginable without This book is an absolute treat, delicious in its detail, surprising in just how much a tree's view of medieval history can reveal about people. Paolo Squatriti's research on the rise of the chestnut, a tree little cultivated in the Roman period yet a major crop for medieval Italy, identifies the convergences between the worlds of men and woodlands. It is written with humour and intelligence, and nearly each page contains a discovery about botany, biology, cuisine or legal practice.Squatriti's expertise in the social and political value of natural resources, developed over many years working on water, shines here in the study of the culture of the chestnut. In his preface (pp. x-xi), he describes this book as microhistory, taking a small subject and seeing how it sheds light on 'old chestnuts' of Italian social and economic 378 Book reviews Early Medieval Europe 2015 23 (3)

The Falerii Novi Project

“…While urban spaces for agriculture are less traditionally the focus of urban archaeology, recent work shows their importance to city life (e.g. Goodson, 2021; Dodd and Van Limbergen, in press b).…”