Dealing with alum as a resource in the Early Middle Ages is not easy because of both the archaeological invisibility of the material remains of its production cycle and the difficulty in finding clear references to this type of production in documents. In this article this theme is therefore addressed by focusing attention not so much on direct material and documentary indicators, but by insisting on the presence or absence of essential conditions for this production cycle to be viable. The subject of investigation is the area of the Colline Metallifere (southern Tuscany) and its political and economic urban centre of reference, Lucca. In the first and second paragraph, different kinds of documentary sources are analysed in order to circumscribe in Lucca the possible commission related to the demand for this raw material and the technical environment able to transmit specific knowledge related to the use of alum. The Colline Metallifere and their alum deposits are at the centre of the third paragraph in which an attempt is made to reconstruct the political-economic framework and the technical environment that may have made possible the implementation of the alum production cycle, thanks to the most recent data acquired from archaeological research. In the conclusions of the contribution, the set of data exposed leads to the hypothesis of an early exploitation of alum, although originally confined to a specific production area with limited quantities for a long time. The Early Middle Ages, at least for the geographical areas analysed, may, therefore, have constituted an important and fundamental premise in which a process of exploitation began and probably continued in the following centuries, up to the substantial activities of the Early Modern period.
Risorse e contesti insediativi nelle Colline Metallifere altomedievali: il possibile ruolo dell’allume
Paolo Tomei
2020-01-01
Abstract
Dealing with alum as a resource in the Early Middle Ages is not easy because of both the archaeological invisibility of the material remains of its production cycle and the difficulty in finding clear references to this type of production in documents. In this article this theme is therefore addressed by focusing attention not so much on direct material and documentary indicators, but by insisting on the presence or absence of essential conditions for this production cycle to be viable. The subject of investigation is the area of the Colline Metallifere (southern Tuscany) and its political and economic urban centre of reference, Lucca. In the first and second paragraph, different kinds of documentary sources are analysed in order to circumscribe in Lucca the possible commission related to the demand for this raw material and the technical environment able to transmit specific knowledge related to the use of alum. The Colline Metallifere and their alum deposits are at the centre of the third paragraph in which an attempt is made to reconstruct the political-economic framework and the technical environment that may have made possible the implementation of the alum production cycle, thanks to the most recent data acquired from archaeological research. In the conclusions of the contribution, the set of data exposed leads to the hypothesis of an early exploitation of alum, although originally confined to a specific production area with limited quantities for a long time. The Early Middle Ages, at least for the geographical areas analysed, may, therefore, have constituted an important and fundamental premise in which a process of exploitation began and probably continued in the following centuries, up to the substantial activities of the Early Modern period.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
