Research Catalog
An environmental history of medieval Europe
- Title
- An environmental history of medieval Europe / by Richard C. Hoffmann.
- Author
- Hoffmann, Richard C. (Richard Charles), 1943-
- Publication
- Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2014.
- Supplementary Content
Items in the Library & Off-site
Filter by
1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFD 15-4675 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- xvii, 409 pages : illustrations; 23 cm
- Summary
- "How did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and try to handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This groundbreaking environmental history examines medieval relationships with the natural world from the perspective of social ecology, viewing human society as a hybrid of the cultural and the natural. Richard Hoffmann's interdisciplinary approach sheds important light on such central topics in medieval history as the decline of Rome, religious doctrine, urbanization and technology, as well as key environmental themes, among them energy use, sustainability, disease and climate change. Revealing the role of natural forces in events previously seen as purely human, the book explores issues including the treatment of animals, the 'tragedy of the commons,' agricultural clearances and agrarian economies. By introducing medieval history in the context of social ecology, it brings the natural world into historiography as an agent and object of history itself"--
- Series Statement
- Cambridge medieval textbooks
- Uniform Title
- Cambridge medieval textbooks.
- Subjects
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references.
- Contents
- Introduction: Thinking about medieval Europeans in their natural world -- Long no wilderness : Natural dynamics in Holocene Europe ; Cultural adaptations and impacts up to the Roman Climatic Optimum ; Environmental precedents and legacy of classical Mediterranean civilization ; 'Barbarian' adaptations: the Iron Age in northern Europe -- Intersecting instabilities: culture and nature at medieval beginnings (ca.400-900) : Environmental relations in the decline of classical civilization ; The discontinuities of late antiquity, c.350-750 ; The pressure of a different climate ; Anomalous adaptations for anomalous times and ecosystems: Frisia and the origins of Venice ; The Carolingian age: window on a work in progress -- Humankind and God's creation in medieval minds : The White thesis, its critics and adherents ; The limits to basic medieval Christianization ; A hostile material world ; Nature as sign ; Partners: beneficent Natura and human collaboration ; Voices of experience ; Summation: hegemonies, diversities, and the gap between medieval ideas and action -- Medieval land use and the formation of traditional European landscapes : Bread and meat, power and numbers ; Medieval landscapes transformed: the great clearances ; Intensified cereal landscapes in Mediterranean Europe ; From wetlands and other deviant forms to grain lands ; Not by bread alone ; Environmental consequenceses of new anthropogenic ecosystems -- Medieval use, management, and sustainability of local ecosystems 1: primary biological production sectors : Sustainability in systems based on indirect solar energy ; Traditional European agroecosystems: the north ; Traditional European agroecosystems: the Mediterranean ; Pastoral connections ; Woodmanship ; Using wildlife -- Medieval use, management, and sustainability of local ecosystems 2: interactions with the non-living environment : The energy basis for medieval society ; Inorganic resources: mining, metallurgy, and other manufactures ; Urban ecologies ; Assessing historic sustainability -- "This belongs to me..." : How medieval men (and women) possessed the earth ; Commoners, communities, and lords ; Higher authority: the state, public rights, and the 'common good' -- Suffering the uncomprehended: disease as a natural agent : Pathogenic disease: introductory concepts ; Baseline disease conditions in pre-industrial Europe ; The 'Justinianic plague' ; Leprosy ; The Black Death ; English sweats ; Malaria -- An inconstant planet, seen and unseen, under foot and overhead : Subterranean violence ; Recapturing past planetary variability above and below ground ; Medieval European climates at the century scale ; Europe's 'warm' Medieval Climate Anomaly ; Transition to a 'little ice age' ; The little Ice Age ; Some case studies of climate, weather, and medieval cultures -- A slow end of medieval environmental relations : Ecological crisis?: Anthropogenic overshoot, slow chill, sudden natural shock ; By long-term cultural evolution? ; Unintended consequences form an anthropogenic shock: the Columbian encounter in European perspective -- Afterword.
- Call Number
- JFD 15-4675
- ISBN
- 9780521876964 (hardback)
- 0521876966 (hardback)
- 9780521700375 (paperback)
- 052170037X (paperback)
- LCCN
- 2013035617
- OCLC
- 858159365
- Author
- Hoffmann, Richard C. (Richard Charles), 1943-
- Title
- An environmental history of medieval Europe / by Richard C. Hoffmann.
- Publisher
- Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2014.
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Series
- Cambridge medieval textbooksCambridge medieval textbooks.
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references.
- Connect to:
- Research Call Number
- JFD 15-4675