Power, society, and (dis)connectivity in medieval Sardinia

这是一个为期四年的项目，以解释撒丁岛在中世纪地中海背景下的历史。我们是一个国际团队的历史学家和考古学家与跨学科的技能谁将测试有关撒丁岛的独特的政治发展，以及它的社会和岛上已经在过去的理解方式的关键假设。我们将与11个国际合作伙伴机构一起，在卡利亚里的国家博物馆举办一个关于中世纪撒丁岛历史的大型新展览。此外，我们还提供小型博物馆的短期图尔斯参观活动，预计在项目期间参观人数将超过30万人，在项目结束时，展览将永久举办。第一个涉及岛屿的“连通性”，这通常被用来描述中世纪的地中海。然而，地中海第二大岛撒丁岛也被视为孤立的典范。显然，这两种观点不可能都是正确的。因此，我们将通过对其地缘政治背景的新研究，重新评估撒丁岛维斯周边地区。我们相信，一个新的和综合的史学将解决撒丁岛的悖论“边缘的中心”，重新定义我们理解这个岛屿和它的地中海环境的方式。撒丁岛的历史被忽视了-但不是因为它不重要。事实上，它作为地中海主要大国中一个不可征服的边缘政体的独特发展为欧洲-地中海历史的形成阶段提供了重要的新视角。例如，拜占庭僧侣、士兵、官员和贵族从北非迁移到撒丁岛，为阿拉伯征服和穆斯林-基督教边界的建立提供了范式转变的证据，表明穆斯林征服北非的动力与其他地方的动力截然不同。我们将重新评估来自阿拉伯历史学家的证据，沿着来自印章、硬币和铭文的新考古证据，以证明“欧洲伊斯兰化”的最早阶段。我们还将通过早期的宪章和教会记录，考察700年至1100年之间出现的岛屿治理的自治形式。我们将引出统治者、农村精英、小土地所有者和更广泛的民众之间的社会和政治关系，为权力和社会互动的网络化和谈判模式提供一个新的多学科解释。将特别强调查明岛上丰富的文献记录中提到的农村地区有声望的亲属群体和行为者。我们将使用科学的考古测量方法来测试来自农村地区的墓葬物品，以确定硬币，陶瓷，武器和珠宝的来源，成分和政治，社会经济和社会学功能。通过对这些数据的比较、整合和阐述，我们将从横向和纵向两个方面对撒丁岛社会的形成有新的认识。撒丁岛社会是一个复杂的社会网络，从统治者到强大的家族，再到那些拥有土地和封地的人，或者提供服务的人。最后，我们将在卡利亚里的国家博物馆举办一个大型的文献和手工艺品展览。这种规模和类型的展览在岛内和岛外都从未有过。这次展览的一个特别之处是，它强调从历史的角度解释背景，而不是简单地断言组合是什么。一些物品将使用尖端的建模技术进行复制：全尺寸，高质量的铭文，硬币，印章复制品以及关键文件的复制品，包括用撒丁岛方言撰写的宪章。通过衡量“影响”，我们将看到这种类型的博物馆展览是否可以从根本上改变学术界和广大公众对历史的理解。

This is a four-year project to explain the history of Sardinia in its medieval Mediterranean context. We are an international team of historians and archaeologists with transdisciplinary skills who will test key hypotheses about Sardinia's unique political development as well as its society and the ways that the island has been understood in the past. With our eleven international collaborating partner institutions, we will establish a major new exhibition of medieval Sardinian history at the Museo Nazionale in Cagliari. With short tours to smaller museums too, we expect more than 300,000 visitors during the project itself, at the end of which the exhibition will be hosted on a permanent basis.The team will study four interwoven research strands. The first deals with the island's 'connectivity', which is often used to characterise the medieval Mediterranean. However, the second largest island in the Mediterranean--Sardinia--is also understood as a model of isolation. Clearly, these ideas cannot both be correct. We will thus re-evaluate Sardinia vis-à-vis its surrounding regions through a new study of its geopolitical context. We believe that a new and integrated historiography will resolve the paradox of Sardinia as 'the periphery at the centre', redefining the ways we understand the island and its Mediterranean setting.Sardinian history has been overlooked - but not because it is unimportant. Indeed, its unique development as an unconquered liminal polity among the major powers of the Mediterranean offers important new perspectives on formative phases of Euro-Mediterranean history. For example, the migration of Byzantine monks, soldiers, officials and nobles from North Africa to Sardinia provides paradigm-shifting evidence for the Arab Conquests and the creation of Muslim-Christian frontiers, showing how the dynamics of the Muslim conquest of North Africa were very different to those elsewhere. We will re-assess evidence from the Arab historiographers along with new archaeological evidence from seals, coins and inscriptions for the earliest phase of the 'Islamisation of Europe'.We will also examine the autonomous forms of insular governance that emerged between 700 and 1100 through early charters and church records. We will elicit the social and political relations between the rulers, the rural elites, small landholders, and the wider population to offer a new multidisciplinary explanation of networked and negotiated modalities of power and social interaction. Particular emphasis will be laid on the identification of prestige kin-groups and actors in the countryside mentioned in the island's rich documentary record. We will test grave goods from rural parts using a scientific archaeometrical approach to establish the provenance, composition and political, socio-economic and sociological functions of coins, ceramics, weapons, and jewellery. Comparison, integration and elaboration of the data will give new insights into the formation of Sardinian society, both horizontally and vertically, across a complex social network from its rulers to powerful families, and to those holding lands and benefices or giving labour in services.Finally, we will assemble a major exhibition of documents and artefacts at the Museo Nazionale in Cagliari. There has never been an exhibition of this size and type on the island, nor outside it. An exceptional feature of the display is its emphasis on explaining contexts from a historical perspective, rather than plainly asserting what the assemblages are. Some objects will be reproduced using cutting-edge modelling techniques: full-size, high-quality replicas of inscriptions, coins, seals as well as facsimiles of key documents including charters written in Sardinian vernacular. By measuring 'impact', we will see if a museum exhibition of this type can fundamentally transform understandings of the history for both academics and the wider public for many years to come.