This volume largely stems from the 2018 European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) annual meeting in Barcelona. The editors have obviously taken great care in compiling a cohesive and comprehensive collection of papers that work towards providing a new academic narrative in the area – an achievement that is to be commended as, unfortunately, that is not always the case with conference volumes.
While each paper is primarily a case study of a particular medieval church, parish, or monastery – ranging from Ireland to Transylvania and many places in between – the main focus is not on the individual institutions but instead on how they fit within their wider context, how they both shaped and were shaped by their surrounding landscapes. The overall aim is to provide a foundation for a next generation of ecclesiastic studies that works on providing a bigger picture of the medieval Church and its impact across the whole of medieval Europe, particularly making a point of bridging the academic divide that is often inadvertently created between Eastern and Western Europe.
Review by KK.
Ecclesiastical Landscapes in Medieval Europe: an archaeological perspective, José C Sánchez-Pardo, Emmet H Marron, and Maria Crîngaci Țiplic (eds), Archaeopress, £40, ISBN 978-178969541
