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

地中海绵延2500英里，包括3000多个岛屿，连接着大西洋和印度洋的世界，在中世纪，地中海是一个人员、货物和思想大量流动的地方。地中海是穆斯林、犹太人、基督徒、不同种族、语言和政治实体的家园，分布在无数的风景和海景中--在陆地上，居住着由火和对火的抵抗定义的共享生物群，并在复杂和动态的生态系统中包含了巨大的生物多样性海洋。中世纪后期也是人口压力、定居点扩张和资源开采紧张的时期，背景是显著的气候变化。这是第一次利用商品贸易来理解地中海生物群内经济、环境和文化之间关系的大规模研究，公元1250-1550年。它将汇集三个不同的研究方向：中世纪经济和交换网络的发展；环境历史以及生态不稳定和社区复原力对商品生产的影响；以及基督教、犹太教和伊斯兰教的宗教信仰，它们塑造了世界观，并为许多形式的接触、需求和消费奠定了背景。将考察四种商品：珊瑚、蜂蜜、柑橘和奶酪，每一种商品都代表着这种环境的不同方面，每一种商品都嵌入了地中海的文化和经济生活，每一种商品都聚集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，该方法结合了来自多个地区的定性和定量证据以及古气候数据。其目的是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土地和海景的长期成因和管理。

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.