The Court and the Monastery Complexes as Centers of Craft Production in Medieval Serbia

Being important economical centers on the territory of medieval Serbia and places that in the division of power into sacral and secular stood out, the court and the monastery were the central places of the manor but also first grade centers i.e. urban settlements within boundaries or fence-encircled areas. This was especially the case with the court of the ruler or the head of the church. Thus, in parallel with the craftsmen who were working for the sovereign, landlord or for the monastery on the territory of the manor – the craftsmanship activity was also taking place within the court or monastery complex - on the territory of physically or imaginarily enclosed economic space - the immediate courtyard. Unlike monasteries whose yard had been encircled and so there is no doubt to whom the workshop actually belonged, in the case of the fortified capital cities, it is difficult to make a distinction between the lord and city workshops. This is especially the case when there are no written sources or systematic archaeological excavations. Based on current knowledge it can be assumed that within the palace complex there were a blacksmith, a goldsmith, a mint, a potter and a tailor, and very likely shoemaker workshops. They were appropriately employing blacksmiths, weavers, gunsmiths, goldsmiths, jewelers, potters, craftsmen who worked on the production and decoration of clothes and shoes, and probably persons practicing the fine crafts, such as engraving. In the case of monasteries, there were blacksmith, goldsmith and potter workshops, and based on the tools it can be assumed that leather production was also present. Workshops with artisans for the production of the essential elements of books, especially within the scriptoriums, should be added to this list as well. Among them, the most skilled ones were certainly the craft masters. The monastery and church circle were common to found in the working role of craftsmen in a secular environment, as well as secular persons working in the monasteries. Apart from the craftsmen who lived continuously in the complexes, there were also those who traveled with their masters, or stayed within the complexes for a prolonged time due to their working obligations. In that case and where the work was related to a large construction project, some of them stayed within the complexes for years.

Central Sites and the Development of Rural Settlements from the Middle to Late La Tène Period in Central Moravia

At a certain point in time, there were two central places in central Moravia: an older unfortified central agglomeration near the present-day village of Němčice nad Hanou and a younger oppidum at Staré Hradisko. Each of this centres had its own approach to raw materials, orientation of the socio-economic contacts, and possibly political focus as well. Němčice, being located at one of the main branches of the Amber Road, connected the Middle Danube area from the Mediterranean to the Adriatic; Staré Hradisko eventually expanded these contacts into a systematic trade network, being under the strong influence of the Bohemian region with links to Bavaria. During the LT C2, in addition to the location of the central place, changes took place in terms of material culture and settlement strategies in the region. This was further accentuated in LT D1 by the shift of settlements towards the west, to the vicinity of the oppidum and, at the same time, vacation of the corridor around the Morava River. In an attempt to chronologically assess the settlement pattern, it became evident how important it is to define, as precisely as possible, the dating of individual sites. This was only possible thanks to the detailed and extensive study of the material available (Čižmář 2018). Thanks to precise dating of settlements and classification based on the new chronology, the seemingly illogical group of settlements in central Moravia revealed a distinct settlement network which, in particular during the period contemporary with the oppidum, allows us to see the significant changes in the number of sites and in the orientation of long-distance contacts that were possibly associated with historical events.

The Contribution of Spatial Interaction Modelling to Spatial History: The Case of Central Places and their Hinterlands in the Territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Research on spatial history can be enriched by using approaches from quantitative geography. We analyse an historical regional system and highlight three basic assumptions, building upon Christaller’s central place theory: cities do not stand alone in space, they interact with their hinterlands, and they are hierarchically organised. We investigate the relative position of central places in space and define their hinterlands using a spatial interaction modelling approach. We present the example of functional regional taxonomy in past environments, which therefore has a higher degree of uncertainty in the results and in their interpretation. We use a variant of Reilly’s model to define the functional regions in Austria-Hungary at the beginning and at the end of the 20th century. We present a possible interpretation of the model results based on the identification of the major factors responsible for developments in the urban and regional systems of Austria-Hungary over 100 years. We conclude that the development of urban and regional systems in the territory of the former Austria-Hungary was not considerably affected by the role of political-economic systems, the administrative organisation of states, nor by the different stages in economic development of its formerly constituent territories.

Early States and Power in the Baltic Sea Region (8th–11th Centuries): A Comparative Study

The aim of the article is to trace the emergence and the development of the early states of the Scandinavians, the Polabian and the Pomeranian Slavs and to investigate their main power centers. The author relies on previous research, uses theoretical achievements of historical anthropology and combines them with comparative methodology to study both archaeological and written sources. This approach allows to establish distinct political typologies in the region, namely various types of chiefdoms and principalities. The paper illuminates similar and mostly simultaneous trajectories of the evolution of those polities, emphasizes the role of central places in the respective political systems and in the governing mechanisms. During the late 8th – the early 11th centuries there had existed complex chiefdoms and chiefdom confederacies, which slowly declined towards the end of the period.

Public Space as Infrastructure of Care

Our contribution puts forward an examination of public spaces as infrastructures of care. The eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the “social distancing” measures imposed by several governments around the world, transformed the very use and conceptualization of urban public spaces. In Athens, Greece, public space, which had already been in different ways at the forefront of multifarious crises since 2010, reemerged, once again, as a critical site of sociopolitical antagonism. Public spaces, such as squares, became central places where people could come together to share knowledge and emotions, collectively alleviate anxieties, and thus (re)negotiate their positionality in the city. Such formations and enactments of social connection, affectivity, and antagonism, reflect the entanglement between everyday life and the political, and also draw attention to the association of public space with practices of care for collective well-being during precarious times. During the ever-increasing securitization and policing of urban spaces in Athens, in which everyday life has come to be ever more permeated by precarity and uncertainty, public spaces have been reenacted as safe and more inclusive environments where people can be and act together. Our contribution also employs a video to render more intelligible the affective interconnectedness of sounds, images, bodies, materialities, and practices in public space. By attending to the affective dynamics of a public square in central Athens, we examine the entanglements between the sociopolitical production of public space and forms of care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Understanding Town Centre Performance in Wales: Using GIS to Develop a Tool for Benchmarking

Welsh Government policy establishes town centres as central places of community activity and local prosperity, recognising the positive impact towns have on the local economy and the well-being and cohesion felt amongst local communities. In light of this, recent declines in the usage of town centres are a major cause for concern. These have not been experienced uniformly across all towns, with some towns out-performing others. This paper applies principles outlined in Welsh Government’s Planning Policy Wales to develop a tool which classifies a sample of 71 towns and cities in Wales based on their centre and catchment characteristics. Catchment areas have been delineated using a Spatial Interaction Model to account for complex consumer behaviours and competition between centres. The tool identifies six distinct types of towns alongside key socio-economic catchment area characteristics. Once developed, we demonstrate our tool’s application by exploring variations in town centre performance between and within each town type. Case study examples exemplify how policymakers may use this tool to benchmark between towns, evaluating the suitability of a town’s retail offering based on its performance relative to the benchmark, guiding decisions relating to the types of businesses and uses a town should pursue to improve its appeal to its catchment community. In conclusion, several recommendations to policymakers are suggested.

Mythosemantics of Abraham image in the art world of I.A. Bunin

The article in the historical, literary and philosophical and cultural aspects analyzes the mythosemantics of the image of Abraham, which occupies one of the central places in the artistic world of I.A. Bunin. On the material in the essay and prose of the writer, the mythosuggestive potential is revealed not only of the precedent phenomenon, which is the very name of the Hebrew forefather, but also of the biblical text about the ancestor of all peoples as a whole. Accumulating sacred meanings associated with the Old Testament patriarch in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, I.A. Bunin actualizes various mythosugets and mythomotifs dating back to the Holy Scriptures: the marriage of Abraham and Sarah, projecting on the history of Adam and Eve, Abraham’s good news about the birth of Isaac Particular attention is paid to the comprehension of the meal of Abraham — the Old Testament Trinity, which was extremely important for I.A. Bunin.

The urban networks of Anglo-Norman Meath and the Teutonic Order's Kulmerland: a comparative analysis

This article presents comparative research on the role of towns and urban networks in the process of constructing space during conquest and colonization in selected ‘non-Roman’ regions of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It focuses on Kulmerland in Prussia and Meath in Ireland. In both regions, the creation of urban networks and new regional spaces entailed the use of pre-existing settlement. However, reception intensity was determined by both the state of preservation of the earlier settlement and the needs of territorial authorities. This comparison shows ways of using symbolic potential (names, central places) and former settlement points for the construction of cities. In both territories, the functions of central places were particularized due to subinfeudation.

Simulation of urbanization process of Shymkent city

The article examines the process of urbanization in Shymkent and identifies the factors influencing the process of urbanization in Shymkent. Modern models of studying the process of urbanization are analyzed: the theory of urban settlements, differential urbanization, and the theory of central places. The analysis showed that the urbanization system of Kazakhstan is developing in the context of the planned transition to a market economy, which can serve as a platform for testing the functioning of the economy. Also, a mobile application has been developed to track urbanization processes in Shymkent.