Archaeology of Public Estates: Origins of Economic Growth in a Mediterranean Region (9-11th Century)

This study examines public estates in Tuscany's Maremma region from the 9th to 11th centuries, identifying material markers of royal properties. It explores the role of public lands, local aristocracies, landscape transformations, production, exchange, and rural economic growth before the 12th century.

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Archaeology of Public Estates draws on the results of research conducted in the last few years in Tuscany’s Maremma region as part of an ERC-Advanced project, nEU-Med, at the same time as reinterpreting previous findings from the last few decades, with the aim of identifying the material 'markers' of royal properties, and understanding how they took shape and were managed between the 9th and 11th centuries. The theme, public lands and property, which has been of special interest in recent years to historians of documentary sources, and which here is viewed through the lens of material findings.



The results of research seen from a new perspective help to identify a possible key for interpreting historical institutions and agents in this part of the Mediterranean, one capable of generating answers that are bound up with larger issues: the role of the public hand (the publicum) in relation to local aristocracies and communities; transformations in the anthropic and natural landscape; the specific features of production and exchange; the timeframe and process of castle formation; and the economic growth of rural areas prior to the great leap forward in the 12th century.