Buildings of Medieval Europe: Studies in Social and Landscape Contexts of Medieval Buildings

This volume brings together an interesting range of papers discussing medieval buildings across Europe. They provide interesting insights to life in the medieval world in several understudied areas of Europe. The papers range from Croatia and Transylvania in the east, Scandinavia in the north and Britain in the west, providing insights into areas that are rarely discussed by books published in western Europe. There is comprehensive range in size and status of buildings, from the smallest, single-roomed house in Byzantine Serbia and rural homes in central Europe to churches in Sweden and monastic hospitals in England. Buildings of high status and low status are discussed, as well as those of a secular and ecclesiastic nature. Materials and craftspeople are considered through a study of brick makers and their identifying marks. This volume aims to open discussions about medieval buildings beyond simply architectural features and typologies, and furthers the discipline through this process. Buildings can reveal details of the lives of their occupants and therefore enrich our knowledge of life in medieval Europe.

Table of Contents:
List of figures List of contributors 1. Introduction Duncan Berryman and Sarah Kerr Part 1 Britain and Scandinavia 2. A key, an axe and a gridiron: Medieval Finnish brickmakers’ marks as symbols of identity Ilari Aalto 3. The medieval and early post-medieval weighing houses at Gammel Strand, Copenhagen, Denmark Stuart Whatley 4. Medieval roof trusses in the Swedish landscape of Västergötland Robin Gullbrandsson 5. The medieval hospitals of England: Structuring charity and faith through hierarchies of space Martin Huggon Part 2 Central and Eastern Europe 6. A house within the settlement: Early Byzantine ‘urban life’ in a small-scale house? Miriam Steinborn 7. Medieval churches in a borderland: The case of Transylvania Daniela Marcu Istrate 8. Petrapilosa: The architectural and historical development of the structure Josip Višnjić 9. The formation of the three-compartment rural house in medieval Central Europe as a cultural synthesis of different building traditions Pavel Vařeka

About the Author :
Duncan Berryman completed his PhD at Queen’s University Belfast in 2018. He is currently a researcher at Queen’s University Belfast. His main research interests are medieval buildings and medieval settlement in Britain and Ireland and has previously written on medieval agricultural buildings and Irish Tower houses. Sarah Kerr is a Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin. She held previously a Postdoctoral Research position at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven after completing her PhD in 2016 at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests include late medieval buildings and communal living in Western Europe and her publications include work on Irish round towers, feudalism and lodging ranges of English castles.

Review :
The papers bring to an English-speaking audience reports of new evidence from areas of which we may be ignorant [...] It also points us to new sources; how can we study 12th-century roofs now without including Swedish churches, or peasant settlements without considering the possibility of widespread eastern European ordering of houses and villages after 1300? The book gives us valuable examples and inspiration. In its totality, the book testifies to the richness of medieval buildings as a subject of study and provides many potential directions for future research...Berryman, Kerr, and their eight contributors successfully present new avenues through which we can think about medieval buildings, whether they are newly excavated or not.