Books by Caroline Goodson
An account of the excavations at Villa Magna, near Anagni, which revealed an imperial villa, buil... more An account of the excavations at Villa Magna, near Anagni, which revealed an imperial villa, built by Hadrian, with a magnificent winery, and its successive transformations: a late Roman and early medieval estate, a medieval village, monastery and cemetery, and a late medieval castrum. The publication is accompanied by exhaustive catalogues on the web.
Cities, Texts and Social Networks examines the experiences of urban life from late antiquity thro... more Cities, Texts and Social Networks examines the experiences of urban life from late antiquity through the close of the fifteenth century, in regions ranging from late Imperial Rome to Muslim Syria, Iraq and al-Andalus, England, the territories of medieval Francia, Flanders, the Low Countries, Italy and Germany. Together, the volume's contributors move beyond attempts to define 'the city' in purely legal, economic or religious terms. Instead, they focus on modes of organisation, representation and identity formation that shaped the ways urban spaces were called into being, used and perceived. Their interdisciplinary analyses place narrative and archival sources in communication with topography, the built environment and evidence of sensory stimuli in order to capture sights, sounds, physical proximities and power structures. Paying close attention to the delineation of public and private spaces, and secular and sacred precincts, each chapter explores the workings of power and urban discourse and their effects on the making of meaning.
The volume as a whole engages theoretical discussions of urban space - its production, consumption, memory and meaning - which too frequently misrepresent the evidence of the Middle Ages. It argues that the construction and use of medieval urban spaces could foster the emergence of medieval 'public spheres' that were fundamental components and by-products of pre-modern urban life. The resulting collection contributes to longstanding debates among historians while tackling fundamental questions regarding medieval society and the ways it is understood today. Many of these questions will resonate with scholars of postcolonial or 'non-Western' cultures whose sources and cities have been similarly marginalized in discussions of urban space and experience. And because these essays reflect a considerable geographical, temporal and methodological scope, they model approaches to the study of urban history that will interest a wide range of readers.
In the early ninth century, a critical time in Rome's transformation from ancient capital to powe... more In the early ninth century, a critical time in Rome's transformation from ancient capital to powerful bishopric to new state capital, Pope Paschal I undertook a building campaign to communicate his authority and Rome's importance as an ancient and contemporary seat of power. Combining analysis of contemporary chronicles and documents, architecture, mosaics and new archaeology of medieval Rome, Caroline Goodson examines Paschal's urban project, revealing new patterns of popular saint veneration in resplendent new churches built in traditional architectural vocabularies. These transformations connect the city and the pope to the past and the present, in the same league as the Byzantine and Carolingian capitals and their emperors. By examining the relationships between the material world and political power in early medieval Rome, this innovative study reveals the importance of Rome's sacred and urban landscape in constructing papal rule and influence both in the city and beyond.
Articles and Chapters by Caroline Goodson
Early Medieval Europe, 2019
This article will chart the usage of a rare term, uiridarium, in the documents of early medieval ... more This article will chart the usage of a rare term, uiridarium, in the documents of early medieval Italy in order to explore the history of decorative or pleasure gardens between c.600-c.1000. Property documents and placita, alongside a small body of archaeobotanical evidence, suggest a significant change in the planting of cultivated spaces in Italian cities during the early Middle Ages. A few charters refer to enclosed gardens called uiridaria attached to houses of the highest-status people in Italy: dukes, kings, emperors, and bishops. We have a glimpse of how they were used and this article makes the case that decorative gardens played a role in the urban performance of the highest echelons of power. * I am grateful to Wendy Davies for her perspicacity and advice on gardens, both modern and medieval, and to Patrick Geary, who refused to believe that there were no pleasure gardens in early medieval Italy and facilitated my spending time in Princeton as a visitor to the Institute of Advanced Study to find some in the libraries. I have benefitted from the suggestions of
The Aghlabids and their Neighbors, 2017
Buildings in Society: International Studies in the Historic Era, 2018
The recent excavations at Villamagna (FR), Italy, have revealed the monumental remains of a monas... more The recent excavations at Villamagna (FR), Italy, have revealed the monumental remains of a monastery and abbey
church of the tenth to thirteenth centuries, and the contemporary village where the monastery’s estate workers lived. These
were all situated within the ruins of a substantial imperial Roman villa known as Villa Magna, an ancient name preserved
through the middle ages. These different structures of medieval Villamagna provide a pertinent case study to explore how the
differing topography, construction technique and quality, and uses of buildings in a given community over time might have been
experienced by the people who lived there and used them. Italian medieval archaeology, as a discipline and community of scholars,
brings a Marxian approach to interpreting sites like these, and the assumptions brought to bear in Italian contexts might be
usefully juxtaposed with the approaches of other subsets of our disciplines.
La culture matérielle : un objet en question. Anthropologie, archéologie et histoire, sous la direction de Luc Bourgeois, Danièle Alexandre- Bidon, Laurent Feller, Perrine Mane, Catherine Verna et Mickaël Wilmart
This article reviews the state of research on medieval material culture in England. The particula... more This article reviews the state of research on medieval material culture in England. The particular history of early medieval England has created an emphasis on prestigious objects and sites mentioned in the few preserved texts from the period. Since the 1990s, the rise of commercial archaeology and a major digital database recording metal-detector finds have permitted a very different view of medieval England to emerge, with a very wide range of early medieval settlements engaged in production, and, in the later Middle Ages, a broad distribution of urban fashions and culture into the countryside. In the discipline of archaeology, there has been some reluctance to utilise some of the theoretical developments emerging in anthropological studies of material culture when considering the Middle Ages.
Archeologia Medievale, 2012
Rome: Continuing Encounters, eds. D. Caldwell and L. Caldwell, Ashgate: 2012.
Draft of piece published in Viator, 43 (2012)
Felix Roma : The Production, Experience and Reflection of Medieval Rome, eds. Éamonn Ó Carragain and Carol Neuman de Vegvar, eds. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 51–80., 2008
Early Medieval Europe, 2007
Examining Pope Paschal I's early ninth-century architectural project of S. Cecilia in Trastevere,... more Examining Pope Paschal I's early ninth-century architectural project of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome, brings to light the diversity of functions of tituli in early medieval Rome. Not only was the church a papal basilica and site of the stational liturgy of Rome, but it was also a shrine to the saint Cecilia, a popular Roman martyr. The architectural arrangement makes clear that the papal project incorporated both the papal cult and the popular cult of the saint by manipulating the archaeology of the site and translating corporeal relics to the urban church.
Uploads
Books by Caroline Goodson
The volume as a whole engages theoretical discussions of urban space - its production, consumption, memory and meaning - which too frequently misrepresent the evidence of the Middle Ages. It argues that the construction and use of medieval urban spaces could foster the emergence of medieval 'public spheres' that were fundamental components and by-products of pre-modern urban life. The resulting collection contributes to longstanding debates among historians while tackling fundamental questions regarding medieval society and the ways it is understood today. Many of these questions will resonate with scholars of postcolonial or 'non-Western' cultures whose sources and cities have been similarly marginalized in discussions of urban space and experience. And because these essays reflect a considerable geographical, temporal and methodological scope, they model approaches to the study of urban history that will interest a wide range of readers.
Articles and Chapters by Caroline Goodson
church of the tenth to thirteenth centuries, and the contemporary village where the monastery’s estate workers lived. These
were all situated within the ruins of a substantial imperial Roman villa known as Villa Magna, an ancient name preserved
through the middle ages. These different structures of medieval Villamagna provide a pertinent case study to explore how the
differing topography, construction technique and quality, and uses of buildings in a given community over time might have been
experienced by the people who lived there and used them. Italian medieval archaeology, as a discipline and community of scholars,
brings a Marxian approach to interpreting sites like these, and the assumptions brought to bear in Italian contexts might be
usefully juxtaposed with the approaches of other subsets of our disciplines.
The volume as a whole engages theoretical discussions of urban space - its production, consumption, memory and meaning - which too frequently misrepresent the evidence of the Middle Ages. It argues that the construction and use of medieval urban spaces could foster the emergence of medieval 'public spheres' that were fundamental components and by-products of pre-modern urban life. The resulting collection contributes to longstanding debates among historians while tackling fundamental questions regarding medieval society and the ways it is understood today. Many of these questions will resonate with scholars of postcolonial or 'non-Western' cultures whose sources and cities have been similarly marginalized in discussions of urban space and experience. And because these essays reflect a considerable geographical, temporal and methodological scope, they model approaches to the study of urban history that will interest a wide range of readers.
church of the tenth to thirteenth centuries, and the contemporary village where the monastery’s estate workers lived. These
were all situated within the ruins of a substantial imperial Roman villa known as Villa Magna, an ancient name preserved
through the middle ages. These different structures of medieval Villamagna provide a pertinent case study to explore how the
differing topography, construction technique and quality, and uses of buildings in a given community over time might have been
experienced by the people who lived there and used them. Italian medieval archaeology, as a discipline and community of scholars,
brings a Marxian approach to interpreting sites like these, and the assumptions brought to bear in Italian contexts might be
usefully juxtaposed with the approaches of other subsets of our disciplines.
Through the re-examination of existing evidence and new data emerging from archaeology, my current research reviews these paradigms from a comparative perspective and with particular attention to the built environment as material culture. The Papal State, the Southern Lombard duchies and the early Islamic powers of Sicily, Malta, Bari, Ifriqiya and the Maghrib all developed existing cities and urban networks: city walls, urban production centres, municipal amenities, invigoration of urban cult centres as well as some urban residences for rulers. Ninth-century urban structures—both material and political—are more than mere reflections of political, economic and social changes; I argue that they were the agents of those changes. Using case studies from Aghlabid Ifriqiya and contemporary polities, this paper will explore different processes of urban investment and changes in the built environment to develop new lines of thinking about the roles of cities in this part of the early medieval western Mediterranean.