Urban Studies Archive
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Environs and hinterland: Cologne and Nuremberg in the later middle ages
Posted on May 20, 2012 | No CommentsPursuing the question of economic development and its spatial articulation with reference to the two most important German cities and their hinterlands during the transition from the middle ages to the early modern period is a double-edged venture. -
The burh of Wallingford and its context in Wessex
Posted on May 20, 2012 | No CommentsThere are many reasons for holding that the 31 burhs listed in the Burghal Hidage constituted a system in its fullest sense. One of the most telling of these is that the burghal territories of these burhs – the areas assigned to them for their upkeep – form a spatial jigsaw whose individual elements interlock with each other within the shires or their precursors. -
A Merchant’s Franklin’s Tale
Posted on May 2, 2012 | No CommentsExamines Geoffrey Chaucer's The Franklin's Tale, found in The Canterbury Tales, and a 15th century exemplum known as A Good Matter of the Merchant and His Son. -
Imagining the Metropolis on the Islamic Periphery: Commerce, Scholarship, and Architecture in 15th c. Bidar and Timbuktu
Posted on April 13, 2012 | No CommentsIn this paper I wish to explore the similarities and differences that these two cities exhibit in terms of their evolution, their relationship to political power, and most importantly, the ways they imagined themselves in relation to metropolitan centers in the Islamic heartland. -
The Viking Cities of Dublin and York: Examining Scandinavian Cultural Change and Viking Urbanism
Posted on April 10, 2012 | No CommentsDubh Linn and Jorvik, as Dublin and York were known in the Viking Age, both experienced enormous change during their time as Viking colonial centers. -
Walking in the Shadows of the Past: The Jewish Experience of Rome in the Twelfth Century
Posted on March 19, 2012 | No CommentsDuring this pivotal century and within the special microcosm of Rome, Jews and Christians experienced unusually robust cultural and social interactions, especially as the Jews increasingly aligned themselves with the protective power of the papacy. -
Jewish Communal Organisation in Sixteenth-Century Polish Towns
Posted on March 18, 2012 | No CommentsTherefore, this essay will deal not only with the structures of Jewish communal organisation proper, but also with the question of its emergence and development in the context of its non-Jewish environment. -
Medieval Guildhalls as Habitus
Posted on March 13, 2012 | No CommentsThis chapter will be concerned with the archaeological and theoretical interpretation of York’s medieval guildhalls. -
Great Sites: Hamwic
Posted on March 12, 2012 | No CommentsHelena Hamerow on excavations at Southampton, which reshaped our views of the origins of English towns and of long-distance trade in the 8th/9th centuries. -
Public Health and the Pre-Modern City: A Research Agenda
Posted on March 12, 2012 | No CommentsMedieval cities are often viewed as environmental accidents waiting to happen. ‘The visual virtues of medieval towns', reckons one textbook, 'were grimly offset by the dismal ineptitude of public health services and municipal control over the environment ... Squalor, dirt, discomfort and disease were the accepted lot of medieval man.' -
Guilds in late medieval Flanders: myths and realities of guild life in an export-oriented environment
Posted on March 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe opinion of historians on the social and economic role played by guilds in late medieval and early modern cities has changed considerably throughout the last century. -
The Urban Structure of the Jewish Quarter of Girona
Posted on March 11, 2012 | No CommentsThe studies that have been carried out to date on the tenth and eleventh-century Jewish community are rather few, in contrast to research done on the community in the twelfth century and thereafter, where documentary and archaeological sources abound. -
From illicit usurers to magnificent statesmen: Florence’s dynamic perceptions of wealth, economics and banking from the 13th to the 15th century
Posted on March 6, 2012 | No CommentsFlorence’s impact on the commercial revolution of late medieval and early Renaissance Europe was unique in several ways. A landlocked republic, by all appearances it would seem to have been at a geographical disadvantage compared to major port cities such as Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, which participated in trade by both land and sea, across the Mediterranean and the Levant. -
What price a roof? Housing and the cost of living in 16th-century Toledo
Posted on March 6, 2012 | No CommentsData on housing costs and rental markets for the early modern period are notoriously scarce. We build a database of rent paid on 183 properties belonging to the Cathedral Chapter of Toledo between 1489 and 1600. -
Reputation and Economic Performance: The Competitive Strategies of Medieval English Town
Posted on March 6, 2012 | No CommentsThe focus of the research will be on evidence relating to London, Norwich, Great Yarmouth, Colchester, Exeter, Bristol, Leicester, Nottingham and York during the period 1250-1500.
