ECOMEDS_Economic and cultural connections within Mediterranean ecosystems c.1250-c.1550

地中海横跨2500英里，包括3000多个岛屿，连接大西洋和印度洋的世界，在中世纪，地中海是一个巨大的交通，货物和思想的地方。地中海是穆斯林、犹太人、基督徒的家园，也是不同种族、语言和政治实体的家园，它们分布在无数的风景和海景中--在陆地上，它们居住着由火和对火的抵抗所定义的共同生物群落，在一个复杂而动态的生态系统中，它们包围着一个拥有巨大生物多样性的海洋。中世纪后期也是一个人口压力、定居点扩张和资源开采紧张的时期，背景是重大的气候变化。这是第一个大规模的研究，利用商品贸易，以了解经济，环境和文化之间的关系在地中海生物群落，c.1250-1550。它将汇集三个不同的研究领域：中世纪经济和交换网络的发展;环境历史和生态不稳定性和社区对商品生产的影响;以及基督教，犹太教和伊斯兰教的宗教，这些宗教塑造了世界观并为许多形式的接触，需求和消费设定了背景。四种商品将被检查：珊瑚，蜂蜜，柑橘和奶酪，每一个代表了这个环境的不同方面，每一个嵌入在地中海的文化和经济生活中，每一个都吸引了来自不同社区的生产者，商人和消费者的网络。这些商品将通过一种新的整体方法进行研究，该方法将来自多个地区的定性和定量证据与古气候数据相结合。其目的是撰写一部新的地中海环境史，与其经济活动和文化交流联系在一起，揭示我们今天居住的陆地和海洋景观的长期起源和管理。

Spanning 2500 miles, encompassing over 3000 islands, and connecting the worlds of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, in the Middle Ages the Mediterranean was a place of tremendous traffic in people, goods and ideas. The Mediterranean was home to Muslims, Jews, Christians, to diverse ethnicities, languages, and political entities spread across innumerable landscapes and seascapes - on land inhabiting a shared biome defined by fire and resistance to it, and encompassing a sea of enormous biodiversity, in a complex and dynamic ecosystem. The later Middle Ages were also a period of population pressure, settlement expansion and intense resource extraction, set against a background of significant climate change. This is the first large-scale study to use commodity trade to understand the relationships between economy, environment and culture within the Mediterranean biome, c.1250-1550. It will bring together three distinct strands of research: that of the medieval economy and the development of networks of exchange; environmental history and the impact of ecological instabilities and communal resiliencies on commodity production; and thereligions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, which shaped worldviews and set the contexts for many forms of contact, demand and consumption. Four commodities will be examined: coral, honey, citrus, and cheese, each representing a different facet of this environment, each embedded in the cultural and economic life of the Mediterranean, and each drawing together networks of producers, merchants, and consumers from different communities. The commodities will be studied via a new holistic methodology combining qualitative and quantitative evidence from multiple regions set alongside paleoclimatological data. The aim is to write a new environmental history of the Mediterranean, tied to its economic activity and cultural exchange, shedding light on the long-term genesis and management of the land- and seascapes we inhabit today.