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

这是一个为期四年的项目，旨在解释撒丁岛在中世纪地中海背景下的历史。我们是一个由具有跨学科技能的历史学家和考古学家组成的国际团队，他们将测试有关撒丁岛独特的政治发展、社会和过去对该岛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大型的中世纪撒丁岛历史展览。我们还将对较小的博物馆进行短期参观，预计项目期间将有超过30万游客参观，展览结束后将永久举办。该团队将研究四个相互交织的研究方向。第一个问题是该岛的“连通性”，这通常被用来描述中世纪地中海的特征。然而，地中海第二大岛——撒丁岛——也被认为是孤立的典范。显然，这两种观点不可能都是正确的。因此，我们将通过对撒丁岛地缘政治背景的新研究，重新评估撒丁岛与-à-vis其周边地区的关系。我们相信，一种全新的综合史学将解决撒丁岛作为“中心边缘”的悖论，重新定义我们理解岛屿及其地中海环境的方式。撒丁岛的历史一直被忽视，但这并不是因为它不重要。事实上，它作为地中海大国之间不可征服的边界政体的独特发展，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换的证据，表明穆斯林征服北非的动力与其他地方的动力有多么不同。我们将重新评估来自阿拉伯历史学家的证据，以及来自印章、硬币和铭文的新的考古证据，以确定“欧洲伊斯兰化”的最早阶段。我们还将通过早期宪章和教会记录研究700至1100年间出现的自治形式的岛屿治理。我们将引出统治者、农村精英、小地主和更广泛的人口之间的社会和政治关系，为权力和社会互动的网络化和协商模式提供新的多学科解释。将特别强调在岛上丰富的文献记录中提到的在农村有威望的亲属团体和行动者的身份。我们将使用科学的考古方法测试来自农村地区的坟墓物品，以确定硬币，陶瓷，武器和珠宝的来源，组成和政治，社会经济和社会功能。对这些数据进行比较、整合和细化，将使人们对撒丁岛社会的形成有新的认识，从横向和纵向上，跨越一个复杂的社会网络，从统治者到有权势的家庭，再到拥有土地和福利或提供劳务的人。最后，我们将在卡利亚里的国家博物馆组织一次大型的文献和文物展览。岛上从未有过如此规模和类型的展览，岛外也是如此。这次展览的一个特别之处在于，它强调从历史的角度来解释背景，而不是简单地断言这些藏品是什么。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能否在未来许多年里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.