Course Description

Prerequisite:

Admission open to all students with an interest in medieval history and archaeology. Students are recommended, but not required, to take EUH-3182 (Medieval Archaeology) in advance.

Enrollment:

For a summer period of six weeks, the course enrollment is no more than 10 students. Students taking this course cannot re-take it for more academic credit.

  

Credit

This course is offered for six (6) semester hours of coursework. The credit for these hours is to be applied entirely to History (EUH-4186). The course is offered in cooperation with the 
José María Martin Civantos from the University of Granada and will take place in Guadix. Classes will be taught , using lectures and class discussions, supplemented by on-site visits, laboratory work and fieldwork. Participation in an ongoing research excavation will be an integral part of the course. Two week-end field trips are included in the course schedule. For more details, see the handout.

Textbooks:

• Kevin Greene and Tom Moore. Archaeology. An Introduction. 5th edition. London/New York: Routledge, 2010 [hereafter Greene]
• Coursepack
• (optional) James L. Boone, Lost Civilization. The Contested Islamic Past in Spain and Portugal (London: Duckworth, 2009)
  

Assignments:

There is no attendance policy, but you are responsible for attending all lectures and reading the required texts. The basis for evaluation of performance will be class participation, one exam, and satisfactory fieldwork. The exam will consist of  two parts: an identification and/or multiple-choice part, and a short essay, in which you will be asked to synthesize your knowledge of the topic, dropping in facts to show that you understand the concrete aspects of that topic. Make-up exam will be given for very serious reasons, in which case you will have to produce some official proof. The exam counts for twenty percent of the final grade. The fieldwork component will count for 70 percent, of which forty percent represents the journal kept during the four weeks of fieldwork. The remaining ten percent of your overall grade is for participation in class discussions.  

Course weekly schedule:

I. Fieldwork 

Introduction.  What is medieval archaeology?

• Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo, "Medieval archaeology in Spain," in Reflections: 50 Years of Medieval Archaeology, 1957-2007, edited by Roberta Gilchrist and Andrew Reynolds (London, 2009) pp. 174-189 (Coursepack)

• Greene 8-36

• Greene 159-184
• Mark Gardiner and Stephen Rippon, "Looking to the future of medieval archaeology," in Reflections: 50 Years of Medieval Archaeology, 1957-2007, edited by Roberta Gilchrist and Andrew Reynolds (London, 2009) pp. 65-75 (Coursepack)

Excavation and interpretation

• Greene 37-100

• Greene 101-129
  

• Johnny de Meulemeester, "Granaries and irrigation: archaeological and ethnological investigations in the Iberian peninsula and Morocco," Antiquity 79 (2005), no. 305, pp. 605-615 (Coursepack)
• Thomas Glick and Helena Kirchner, "Hydraulic systems and technologies of Islamic Spain: history and archaeology," in Working with Water in Medieval Europe. Technology and Resource Use, edited by Paolo Squatriti (Leiden, 2000), pp. 267-326 (available as e-book through Library West)

• Manuel Acién Almansa, "Settlement and fortification in southern al-Andalus: the formation of a land of Ḥuṣūn," in The Formation of al-Andalus. Part 1: History and Society, edited by Manuela Marin (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 347-376 (Coursepack)
• Thomas F. Glick, "Tribal landscapes of Islamic Spain," in Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place in Western Europe, edited by John Howe and Michael Wolfe (Gainesville, 2002), pp. 113-135 (Coursepack)

• Vicente Salvatierra Cuenca, "The origins of al-Andalus (the eighth and ninth centuries): continuity and change," in The Archaeology of Iberia. The Dynamics of Change, edited by Margarita Diaz-Andreu and Simon Keay (London, 1997), 265-278 (Coursepack)
•  José Cristóbal Carvajal López and Miguel Jiménez Puertas, “Studies on the early medieval pottery of al-Andalus,” in Early Medieval Europe 18 (2010), no. 3, forthcoming (Coursepack)
• see an introduction and samples of medieval pottery

• José Maria Martín Civantos, "Working in landscape archaeology: the social and territorial significance of the agricultural revolution in al-Andalus," Early Medieval Europe 18 (2010), no. 3, forthcoming (Coursepack)
• Christopher Gerrard, "Opposing identity: Muslims, Christians and the military orders in rural Aragon," Medieval Archaeology 43 (1999), 143-160 (Coursepack)

Airfare tickets, passports, visas, adequate medical insurance (including emergency repatriation insurance), and other travel expenses are the responsibility of students. Upon request, assistance with group rates for airfare may be provided.

The excavation site is located in Guadix, which is 30 miles to the east of Granada, in southern Spain. Housing and meals will be offered at Hotel Comercio in Guadix, in a walking distance from the archaeological site. There will be field trips in the area, to Granada, Seville, Cordoba, to the Sierra Nevada and the Costa del Sol, and a mini-van will be rented at a rate included in the total cost above.
 
 

© 2009 Florin Curta