Other (Environmental) Middle Ages

Paolo Squatriti is an early medieval historian whose work has focused on Italy and the Northern Mediterranean. His response to An Environmental History of the Middle Ages will be predicated on his expertise on water, forests and tree cultivation, and the role of climate in the early middle ages. Importantly, his work and interests are at the intersection of cultural and environmental history.  His focus on the often neglected earlier period of the medieval world that is before 1000 means that he also provides the perspective of having to work with highly limited sources.  His principal thrust will be to indicate how Hoffmann and other environmental historians have created a new field of study in medieval history and how the development has the potential for a reassessment of the understanding of the entire period.  Squatriti’s paper will reflect on how Hoffmann, an economic historian of the later Middle Ages by training, has succeeded in incorporating and exploring the “other”, that is the environmental middle ages into the larger framework of medieval history.