1 - Urban Gardens and Gardeners

Summary

Reflection on food cultivation in modern cities opens up new lines of inquiry into the past, showing examples of civic authorities on the one hand, and community groups and individuals on the other, creating cultivated spaces for food production in periods of social and economic transformation. Examples from tenth-century Rome introduce the different kinds of evidence available for a study of the phenomenon, both material and textual. The material evidence of the cities of Italy (roads, houses, public buildings, and parks) provides the backdrop of urban change, the gaps in the urban fabric into which new gardens were placed. The available documentary evidence comprises charters of land sales, rents, and donations of urban properties, and there is discussion here of how those sources were produced and what they can tell us about the fabric of early medieval Italian cities as well as the people who lived in them. The chapter then sketches the historiographic landscape of the subject. Urban cultivation and gardening has long been recognised to have existed in early medieval Italy, but its relevance to broader pictures of social and economic history has not yet been evaluated.