Workshop: Material History: the Middle Ages

The workshop aims to introduce students to the knowledge of medieval material sources, with a view to fostering dialogue with historical research. The main objective is to provide theoretical and interpretative frameworks for reading all the data which, alongside written documents, allow for the investigation and reconstruction of a specific moment in the past.
Through an introduction to the fundamentals of archaeological research methodology, combined with the analysis of concrete case studies from the Middle Ages, the workshop seeks to equip students with both content-based and methodological tools to engage effectively with the material past of the medieval period and with the proper use of the relevant scholarly literature.

Throughout the course, by encouraging a seminar-style approach, students will practice critically integrating different types of sources and content from an interdisciplinary perspective. By the end of the workshop, participants will have gained familiarity with the main themes and sources of medieval material history and will be able to engage with them in a critical and informed manner. They will develop the ability to identify, understand, and interpret sources of various kinds — ranging from artifacts, burials, architecture and urban development — and to use them coherently within a historical research framework. These skills, particularly valuable for the centuries of the Early Middle Ages — when written documentation is scarcer — but equally important whenever such documentation is available, will enrich future research prospects in any chosen direction.