Medieval rural settlement

Rafał Kubicki (University of Gdańsk)
Water mills and rural settlement in the Dominion of the Teutonic Order in Prussia
The study is devoted to the closer discussion of the issue of location, economic function and the legal status of water mills in the Dominion of the Teutonic Order in Prussia. The aim of it was also to indicate factors having the largest impact on the shape of the water mills network existing here in the Medieval period. The situation in Prussia was determined by the policy of the Teutonic Order. The Order not only did it control the right for building water mills in knight’s estates but also, except in several cases, constituted the sole owner of water mills situated in towns. It was indeed possible only due to the fact that the Teutonic Order, as the biggest land owner in the state, had water regale at its own disposal. It would give it the opportunity to plan a network of mills relevant to the needs of the settlement network in foundation.
The location of a watermill resulted above all from the real occurring economic needs and adequate water conditions. Authorities tried to keep the largest possible influence on the decisions on locating new buildings. Owing to that, on one hand, in the content of documents detailed provisions banning constructions of new mills in a given distance from the already existing ones would be included, and on the other, a system of incentives was applied in the form of milling coercion enforcing specific settlements to use only the designated mill. Town and villages location laws are abundant with references to the existence of mills or, even more often, just the plans of building them. The Order, bishops and chapters, while issuing the documents, often reserved for themselves the right to construct such a machinery, excluding parts of the terrain needed for that purpose from general location laws. Issuing a permit to build and utilise water mills in exchange for rent and the system of reservation, had a considerable impact on the way mill networks were created and the rules of their functioning. Planning the economy of rural area in terms of water mills allocation was also manifested by establishing separate mill hamlets, which enjoyed the status of independent settlement units.
Water mills constituted an important element of the economic infrastructure of rural areas, and that their functions were closely related to the organisation of villages as well as the farms production profile, thus with the scale of grain cultivation in juxtaposition to animal husbandry. It also meant that millers had to cooperate closely with the village community, sometimes by means of regulations included in mill laws and location documents of individual settlements. Within the framework of colonisation campaign conducted by the Teutonic Order in Prussia, based on locating towns and villages, also a development of a whole economic infrastructure commenced, of which an important part, the water mill was. Attempts to control that process occurred already at the stage of town or village location, which is indicated in the mentioned clauses of reserving the places for anticipated milling facilities. Later, analogical control was exercised over newly built or redeveloped mills. The economic crisis of the state observed in the middle of the 15th century, indicated by the phenomenon of desolation of villages, would also result in water mill network regression.

The paper presents the settlement structure of the Zgornja Gorenjska region in the Middle Ages. It begins with
the period immediately preceding the Slavic settlement, continues with describing the early Slavic settlement and
concludes with the colonisation during the high Middle Ages, which mainly concentrated on lowland areas. The 13th
century witnessed the settlement of economically less favourable areas in valleys and at higher elevations. The paper
contains two tables indicating the numbers of farms in villages that appear in written sources for the period of around
1330 and for the end of the 15th century. The paper also provides a total number of farms in the area under discussion
and attempts to give an approximate number of the population. The table referring to the end of the 15th century, in
particular, is more representative and realistic.

Starting with 2010, the Museum of National History and Archaeology
from Constanţa marked in its work plan to extend the excavations from Ulmetum also in extra muros area, one objective being to identify a possible Early Medieval settlement. The urgent beginning of the research in the new sector, conventional called ”Cartaş-cuptor Panaitescu” and situated S-W of the Roman-Byzantine fortress, was determined by the
state of the land, which was presenting as a shore rift that slowly broke down due to rainwater and frost, the fallen earth containing archeological artefacts. In the three campaigns of systematic research from this sector, for Early Medieval period were recorded two dwellings and a household waste deposit area. The density of material discovered here determined us, in this stage of the research, to consider that in this period here was a settlement, of which exact location remains to be established in the future. Most of the material discovered is represented by pottery, divided in four main categories: I - pottery made of common paste, oxidant burned (the majority of findings); II - pottery made of fine paste, oxidant burned; III - pottery made of kaolin, oxidant burned; IV -
pottery made of fine paste, reductant burned. On categories, were identified the following shapes of pottery: I - pot without handle and buckets with interior handles; II - jug with handles which ends with an extension in relief, jug with handle with two raised grooves and bowl with spheroidal body; III - pot without handle, buckets with interior handles and bowl; IV - pot without handle, pot with handles, provision pot, jug with trilobite mouth and bucket. Besides pottery, were also discovered a spindle whorl burned reductant, a bone awl, small disks made from the wall of reductant and oxidant burned pottery, bigger disks made of bricks or from the wall of large supply vessel, circular weights made of antic bricks, sandstone, a few iron objects (knife blades and arrowheads), horns and bones of animals. The characteristics of the ceramic material, supported by similar findings, but also by the existence of other elements (like the bucket fragment, the trilobite rim from the grey jar, base of the handle of pink-orange jar, which ends with an extension in relief, rim from a bowl with a spheroidal body, reddish-brown, fragments from buckets with interior handles) or the lack of others (as ceramics with olive green enamel; impressions made with toothed wheel, amphorae or monetary pieces) determine us to propose, as a provisional date, subject to future researches, the end of 8th century A.D. as the inferior limit, respectively, probably, first part of 10th century A.D., as the superior limit of habitation for the settlement from Pantelimonu de Sus.

According to the "suppliche" of the Venetian archives (that is the formal appeals of various nature which the mercenary cavalry of the 16th century called stradioti addressed to Venetian authorities), Napoli di Romania (nowadays Nafplio) was their "ancestral homeland". However, most of these people were not natives but settlers, of Greek or Albanian ethnotic origin. They settled in Venetian occupied territories of Peloponnese  in exactly the same way their ancestors had colonized the lands which once upon a time constituted the domain of the Despotate of Morea, in the early 15th century. The settlement of this type of emigrants from which the Venetians could recruit mercenary troops of the light cavalrymen type, served as a tool for fiscal and security purposes. By combining the pieces of information that the Venetian archival sources give us, we make an effort to unveil the ways by which the sense of the “homeland” is evolved. Since the ethnotic identity was not absolute and the relevant ethnotic groups were not stable as far as their composition was concerned, the process of integration was facilitated by the open, extroverted orientation of the Albanian origin ethnotic groups as well as promoted by the struggle of gaining land in order to survive in the first place; in a second level, the sense of "homeland" was evolved as a point of self determination, a  myth of descent which was inevitably accepting other groups as well.
We follow the examples of certain types of stradioti, such as those coming from the social class of the "nobili" (Mormori, Paleologi, Boccali) as well as those who are the leaders of the Albanian origin tribes and the local stratiotai, people coming from the lower social groups who were entering the Venetian army hoping to end up well respected farmers. Social alliances and internal conflicts in the micro-community of the stradioti concerned always land possession. As time went by, it was that feeling of belonging to a place that nourished the sense of “home” for these people who started as adversaries but ended up compatriots of a lost land -in other words, ended up forming a new ethnotic identity which encluded the locals and referred to the common experience.

Seit dem Mittelalter erfolgt die Düngung von Feldern durch Mistauftrag. Dafür wurden nicht nur tierische sondern auch menschliche Ausscheidungen gesammelt und zusammen mit anderen Abfällen im Winter auf die Felder und Hausgärten verbracht. Zu diesem Zweck scheint man Gruben in Hausnähe angelegt zu haben, die als jährlich geleerte Latrinen gedient haben.
Da mit den Fäkalien auch Hausmüll entsorgt wurde, findet sich in ländlichen Siedlungen des Mittelalters kaum keramisches Fundmaterial. Der Aufsatz beleuchtet die Schwierigkeiten, solche fundarmen Siedlungsplätze vor dem auf den Äckern zu beobachtenden Dungschleier mit Mitteln der Prospektion zu entdecken.

1. Ubicazione dell'area. L'area di studio che qui si presenta si trova nella porzione centro-meridionale dell'isola, in quella che nel Medioevo era la frontiera del Regno di Cagliari con quello di Arborea. All'interno del Regno calaritano costituivano le due circoscrizioni amministrative denominate Curatoria di Trexenta e Curatoria di Siurgus. 2. Metodologia integrata. Lo studio dei paesaggi e degli insediamenti medievali e moderni necessita di un approccio integrato. Questa ricerca si concentra sul periodo VI-XV secolo d.C., pur essendo necessaria un'analisi delle dinamiche insediative di epoca precedente. Questo studio ha avuto inizio con la raccolta e l'analisi delle fonti documentarie, sia edite che inedite reperite negli archivi. I documenti pubblicati sono stati completamente rivisti per assicurarsi di utilizzare tutte le informazioni che offrono su borghi, paesaggio, società, economia e luoghi di culto. Testimonianze letterarie e fonti orali completano il quadro delle informazioni. I dati cartografici raccolti sono composti da carte geologiche in scala 1:100000, IGM in scala 1:25000, CTR in scala 1:10000, carte UTE pianificate nel XIX secolo, quadri d'unione del medesimo periodo, in scala 1:5000 e 1:2000 e mappe di impianto dei primi del XX secolo, alla medesima scala. Mediante GIS sono stati messi a sistema tutti questi dati cartografici,

Through the study of the written records preserved in local archives of the eastern Álava, and in particular the local archive of Salvatierra, this chapter intends to interpret the process of depopulation of the village of Zornoztegi during the Late Middle Ages. A complex process that seems to be more related to the emergence of new logics around the old village than with the foundation of Salvatierra as a town in 1256. Thus, observing the written references to Zornoztegi and interpreting the social and political context of Álava in the Late Middle Ages this essay will try to interpret the rhythms and causes of the depopulation and the new rol played by Zornoztegi within the rural communities active around Salvatierra.

This bachelor degree thesis covers the medieval colonization within the upper reaches of the Bělá river situated in the Orlické mountains. It describes the evolution of the settlement within the broader area of the Orlické mountains and the foothills since the prehistoric times and the successive heading to a selected microregion. The first part describes the situation on the east border of the princely region with its center in Hradec Králové. It also describes the early colonization based on the domicile structure and preserved relics together with the subsequent process of the colonization height. It observes the arrival of particular feudal houses and Cistercian monks’ friary. The second part follows the relics of the colonization process within the monitored microregion marked off by the headwaters of the Bělá river and the region alongside the Kněžná river around Uhřínov pod Deštnou aimed mainly on localization of perished medieval village Tisovec together with the description of the feudal domicile - Hlodný castle.

The work is a study of the settlement landscape of the upper and central Oława river basin, i.e. the area of south-east (Lower) Silesia (Poland). It is an area with three towns – Strzelin, Ziębice and Wiązów, which are located at a slight distance from each other. For centuries, the Oława river – the axis of a rich hydrological system – was an important element of the local landscape, which was conducive to settlement through afforestation, soil fertility, natural resources and land relief (finally, over 190 villages operated on almost 715 km²).

The paper deals with the issue of continuity or discontinuity of early medieval burial sites in the central part of Great Moravia.
The authors focus mainly on the issue of transformation of burial rites from cremation to inhumation before the origins of the Great Moravia and describe significant changes in the structure of settlement after the collapse of the Great Moravia on the occasion of funerals but also settlements.