This paper offers some analytical approaches to the social history of medieval walls around towns, castles, villas, monasteries, and fields, using the themes of symbolism, knowledge, constraint, power, and conflict. Walls separate space into the inside and outside, each rife with symbolic meaning, defining areas of authority or symbolizing possession. Walls constrain movement, and through the physical obstacle created, walls remove ambiguity from passage; they impart knowledge of “illegal” entry or exit. Such knowledge is power, but more power is conferred by the ability to control movement, whether of political foes or of merchants wishing to trade. Because walls symbolize authority and power to control or rights of ownership, they frequently are the center of social tension and conflict. These topics are discussed with the recurring subtheme of the relationship of feudal and capitalist political and economic systems to walls around towns and around fields.

Knowledge, constraint, and power in inaction: The defenseless medieval wall

This paper deals with the topography of medieval Dublin by carrying out a town‐plan analysis of John Rocque's Exact survey of the city and suburbs of Dublin in 1756. The complex structure of the to...

Medieval dublin: A topographical analysis

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Early Medieval Ireland: Archaeological Excavations 1930-2004

Essais d'explication des origines de Dublin en fonction de la geographie de la region. La ville gaelique et la ville scandinave.

The Topographical Development of Early Medieval Dublin

This paper looks at conventional views of Dark-Age towns: abandoned or underpopulated and lacking economic vitality. Archaeological and textual evidence is used to suggest that numerous urban churches were required to hold a large population that so many were outside the town walls because inside was heavily built up. The paper suggests archaeology can often accurately document the demise of Roman urban structures, but survival and upkeep leaves little archaeological record, and this 'negative' evidence requires especially careful evaluation.It suggests that archaeologists regularly assume that towns cannot exist without trade, that towns must provide 'functions' to the countryside to exist Moses Finley's view of the ancient economy is followed, and towns are seen as fuelled by the widespread exploitation of peasants by secular nobility and the Church. Much of that rural wealth was consumed in urban centres, indeed big monasteries formed the cores of many of our present towns.

Populous Dark-Age Towns: The Finleyesque Approach

This essay is based on empirical studies, and the analysis of actual ideas of towns is regarded as more important than the prescription of definite solutions. In an historical introduction the controversies are shown to be of professional, geographical and national origin. The theme is treated from three view‐points: (1) typology of towns; (2) definition of towns; and (3) approaches to the town in terms of ‘structures’ and ‘functions’.

Helmuth Schledermann

Papers

The idea of the town: Typology, definitions and approaches to the study of the medieval town in northern Europe