CALOSEMA · Central Authority and Local Strenght in Early Middle Ages: Comparing social complexity in Northern Iberia and Central Italy (8th – 10th centuries)

Central Authority and Local Strenght in Early Middle Ages: Comparing social complexity in Northern Iberia and Central Italy (8th – 10th centuries)

Objectives The main objective of CALOSEMA grant agreement n. 748161 project is the analysis of social complexity in Early Medieval Southern Europe deepening our knowledge of weak-states as the political space in which local societies were structured, privileging a study of the types of political and social relationships between local elites (both lay and ecclesiastical) and different central authorities, which took place from the 8th to the 10th centuries with the intention of (a) to investigate social, economic and political complexities on a continental scale, with the main intention of interpreting social and political inequality in Northern Spain and Northern Italy from 8th to 10th centuries (b) to deepen the concepts of central authority and local agency in the historical evolution of societies and powers which must be always considered as processes in progress and, finally, (c) to create social theory which would allow the insertion of those two early medieval examples in the existing historiographical debates from sociology to anthropology. The regions studied have been carefully selected (Castile and Lombardy). In fact, in the past few decades, new critical approaches to their written sources and archaeological excavations has shed new light on the social and political complexities of both territories. Their comparative study is important for our society because it consent the interpretation of the ways in which social complexity was articulated within political formations that can be described as weak-states (the Carolingian Empire, in the case of Lombardy, and the kingdom of León, for the Castilian lands). The understanding and explanation of the processes and systems of governance in Southern Early Medieval Europe and their social complexity, from a comparative perspective, has permited to create theoretical proposals useful to the current debates on social and political complexity in Human History and to challenge the abuses of the past and its manipulation by nowadays political agendas.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union