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Chargement... Aristocrats and statehood in Western Iberia, c. 300-600 C.E.par Damián Fernández
Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. Aucune critique
 This book--written by Damián Fernández, a professor of history at Northern Illinois University --is highly suggestive. There are several reasons for this, which we can group into three. The first is that it proposes a cross-sectional chronological study that reaches across the traditional dichotomy of the political and institutional end of the Roman Empire in the West. The second is that the central theme of the book is the aristocracy, conceptualized not in itself but rather in relation to the late Roman, Suevic and early Visigothic political frameworks in Iberia. The third is that the book focuses on the western part of Iberia, which allows the author to delve into detail in the specific cases he analyzes. In the last few decades, the transformations of landscapes between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages have been the subject of extensive research. In this work, evidence from the Iberian peninsula and, most of all, recent archaeological work have played an essential role in the shift from orthodox and reductionist assumptions towards a more diverse and complex panorama of this crucial period. Within this book, Damián Fernández, an expert on the society and economy of Late Antique and Early Medieval Iberia, successfully fulfils his aim of examining the distinctive nature of the aristocracy of Western Iberia, a distant corner of the late Antique world, from 300 to 600 C.E. Overall, the author’s magisterial combination of literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence is admirable.
In a distant corner of the late antique world, along the Atlantic river valleys of western Iberia, local elite populations lived through the ebb and flow of empire and kingdoms as historical agents with their own social strategies. Contrary to earlier historiographical accounts, these aristocrats were not oppressed by a centralized Roman empire or its successor kingdoms; nor was there an inherent conflict between central states and local elites. Instead, Damián Fernández argues, there was an interdependency of state and local aristocracies. The upper classes embraced state projects to assert their ascendancy within their communities. By doing so, they enacted statehood at the local level, bringing state presence to the remotest corners of Iberia, both under Roman rule and during the later Suevic and Visigothic kingdoms.Aristocrats and Statehood in Western Iberia, 300-600 C.E. combines archaeological and literary sources to reconstruct the history of late antique Iberian aristocracies, facilitating the study of a social class that has proved elusive when approached through the lens of a single type of evidence. This is the first study of Iberian elites that covers both the late Roman and the post-Roman periods in similar depth, and the chronological approach allows for a new perspective on social agency of late antique nobility. While the end of the Roman empire changed the political, economic, and social strategies of local aristocrats, the book also demonstrates a considerable degree of continuity that lasted until the late sixth century. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)305.5Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people ClassClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: Pas d'évaluation.Est-ce vous ?Devenez un(e) auteur LibraryThing. |
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