Sutri (Sutrium) (Notes on Southern Etruria, 3)

1958 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 63-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Town

The modern town of Sutri lies 50 km. north of Rome, beside the Via Cassia, on the site of the ancient Sutrium (pl. X, a, b). It was already in existence in Etruscan times, passed to the Romans at the beginning of the fourth century b.c., was twice colonised by them and reached a peak of prosperity under the early Empire. It continued to flourish in the early Middle Ages, but a rapid decline set in after the fourteenth century and the town to-day is comparatively modest and unimportant.The following report is concerned mainly with the ancient town and with a typical area of the surrounding countryside (7 km. × 12 km. in extent), as it was in Etruscan and Roman times (fig. 1, p. 64). It is chiefly a record of the archaeological remains found in the area during five months' fieldwork in the winter and spring, 1957–1958, undertaken as part of the British School's current programme of survey in southern Etruria, which is designed to record permanently such remains before they disappear for ever, as they are fast doing.The antiquities of the ancient town itself are already well known and have been described several times in the past. But, apart from occasional references to isolated finds and an attempt towards the end of the last century to map the ancient roads, the countryside outside the town has never been properly explored. The bulk of the original work, therefore, lies in sections III and IV. The Etruscan and the Roman roads have been located, as far as is possible, and all the sites which are still to be found have been recorded. In certain areas present-day woodland concealed a few, notably round the small town of Bassano di Sutri and towards the summit of M. Calvi, south of Sutri, and cultivation in the immediate vicinity of the modern towns may have destroyed a few more, especially near Ronciglione; but at the most it is probable that only about 20 sites were lost or missed in this way, as opposed to a total recorded of some 220. Except for woodland, all the ground within the limits of the area chosen was walked over and examined.

An English small town in the later Middle Ages: Loughborough

Urban History ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Postles
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Urban Decline ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Substantial Decline ◽  
Property Holding ◽  
The Town

The thesis of ‘urban decline’ in the late Middle Ages has been largely based on changes within incorporated boroughs. Loughborough was a small town in Leicestershire, closely involved in intra-regional exchange between three different farming regions. By the late fourteenth century, if not before, its central precinct had a definite urban form, including a specialized marketing form. Indicators (such as demographic estimates, litigation, and property-holding) suggest that the town did not suffer any substantial decline in the late Middle Ages. Structural changes in the countrysides, with a greater emphasis on specialization of production, may have maintained the town as a centre of exchange and consumption.

The Fate of Small Towns, Hilltop Settlements, and Elite Residences in Merovingian-Period Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-640
Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Many

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.

VII. The Papal Palace and other Fourteenth-Century Buildings at Sorgues near Avignon

Archaeologia ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 161-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. T. Luttrell ◽  
T. F. C. Blagg
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Major Tributary ◽  
John Xxii ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Town ◽  
Old Roman

John XXII, elected as the second of the Avignon popes on 7 August 1316 at the age of seventy-two, built extensively in the territories around that city as well as initiating works in Avignon itself. In 1318 he began the construction of a palace on the edge of the small town of Sorgues, situated some nine kilometres north of Avignon at a point on the line of the old Roman road to Orange where there was a bridge across the river Ouvèze, a major tributary of the Rhône. This paper considers the evidence for the palace, including the surviving remains of the structure which are published here for the first time, and for certain contemporary buildings in Sorgues, in particular the house at 27 Rue de la Tour in which a series of late fourteenth-century frescoes was uncovered in 1936. These researches began with an architectural study of this ‘Maison des Fresques’, but it soon became clear that such investigations raised wider questions involving the interpretation of documentary and archaeological evidence relevant both to the palace and to the medieval topography of the town.

The Cult of Relics in the Letters and ‘Dialogues’ of Pope Gregory the Great: A Lexicographical Study

Traditio ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. McCulloh
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Gregory The Great

Late antiquity and the early Middle Ages witnessed a change in the Christian attitude toward the remains of the saints. Holy bodies came to be treated less and less as normal corpses, worthy of special veneration but still subject to many of the laws and customs which had regulated the treatment of human remains in pagan Antiquity. They came rather to be viewed as cult objects which could be moved or even divided up according to the demands of religion with little regard for earlier prohibitions of these practices. This change occurred relatively early in the Greek, eastern portion of the Roman Empire. In the mid-fourth century the Caesar Gallus translated a saint's body from one tomb to another, and less than two centuries later Justinian asked Pope Hormisdas for portions of the bodies of the apostles. Despite some outstanding exceptions such as the translations performed by St. Ambrose, the Christians of the West were more conservative in these matters. Nevertheless, by the ninth century at the very latest, western Christians had followed the lead of the eastern church in both translating and dismembering holy bodies.

scholarly journals Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos on Croats in Early Medieval Southern Pannonia (DAI, c. 30, 75–78): A Note on Concept and Method of Byzantine History Writing

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-43
Author(s):  
Hrvoje Gračanin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Device ◽  
C 30 ◽  
The One

The paper endeavours to discuss anew a scholarly puzzle related to the Croatian early Middle Ages and centred on a few lines from Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos’s De administrando imperio, which in English translation are as follows: And of the Croats who arrived to Dalmatia one part separated and ruled Illyricum and Pannonia. And they also had an independent ruler who was sending envoys, though only to the ruler of Croatia from friendship. Taking a different approach from the complete dismissal of the two sentences as a pure fiction or a mere literary device, the paper instead attempts to trace the concept behind this account as well as its underlying meaning. On the one hand, it seeks to detect the methods or strategies used by the royal compiler in trying to elucidate the past. On the other hand, it aims to provide a thorough historical analysis and offer a possible interpretation in opposition to the view, still largely extant in the Croatian scholarship, that this account is an evidence for an early presence of the group called Croats in southern Pannonia.

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