The 8th and last session of the 2024 Medieval Studies Seminar will be held online via Zoom on dezember 11, 2024, at 4:00 p.m.
This session, which will feature a presentation by André Evangelista Marques, is dedicated to the theme “Quando a paisagem é texto: que lugar para as fontes documentais no estudo da paisagem medieval?”
Landscape study has transformed into a markedly interdisciplinary field over the last few decades. A history of the landscape based mainly on written and cartographic sources and dominated by the methods of regressive analysis of historical geography was replaced by a new paradigm in which archaeology and paleosciences stand out. This resulted in constructing a complex material record that forces us to rethink the status of written sources and, above all, their operability within the framework of this new paradigm. Starting by reflecting on the relationship between the various disciplines and records involved in the study of landscape, this seminar will seek to address the multiple forms of documentary representation of space and the informative potential of different types of texts, to finally suggest concrete ways of working that allow the integration documentary sources in necessarily interdisciplinary investigations into the medieval landscape.
André Evangelista Marques received his PhD in History from the University of Porto (2012) and subsequently joined the Instituto de Estudos Medievais at NOVA as a research fellow (2013-2022). Having swapped academia for a post at the Portuguese Embassy in Copenhagen, he carries on his research as an independent scholar now.
He is a historian of early medieval Iberia with a special focus on Portugal and a comparative interest in northern Europe. His research has focused initially on land use and landscape representation, then on justice and the settlement of disputes. More recent work includes topics such as maritime communities, parish formation, and the production and transmission of early medieval charters. He has completed a catalogue of pre-1100 charters extant in Portuguese archives, which shall in due course be converted into an online searchable database and full-text edition.
Main publications: O casal: uma unidade de organização social do espaço no Entre-Douro-e- Lima (906-1200) (Noia, 2008), Da representação documental à materialidade do espaço. Território da diocese de Braga (séculos IX-XI) (Porto, 2014); and (as co-editor) Livro de Mumadona: Cartulário do Mosteiro de Guimarães: Edição crítica (Lisbon, 2016), Records and Processes of Dispute Settlement in Early Medieval Societies: Iberia and Beyond (Leiden, 2023).
