The Importance of Documentary Evidence of Environmental Practices

Picking up on a major theme in medieval history and in pre-modern environmental history, Constance Berman’s response will address the issue of how administrative and documentary evidence is used to reconstruct the medieval environmental past, what can and cannot be understood from them, and how these sources appear and are incorporated into Hoffman’s work. This response will be grounded in her own work on land and water management, investment in agriculture and the history of milling in France, all based heavily on the use of a standard source for medievalists: monastic cartularies,. Berman expertise is in the productive agricultural heartland  of high medieval France and within that kingdom  labor organization on Cistercian abbeys, the development of water power and monastic administration of natural resources.)  Her fields of research make her an ideal counterfoil to Hoffmann’s expertise in fishing, Eastern Europe, and governmental regulation of resource use.  Her contribution will explore source problems along with the intersections and overlaps of her work and that of Hoffmann as well as other environmental historians.