Changing Appropriations of Nature in the Early Middle Ages: Salzburg in an European Context

Cultural landscapes have been shaped during a long history of interactions between society and nature. This project aims to elucidate an important fink in these interactions: It focuses on institutions. Institutions such as monasteries follow a specific plan With regard to the interventions they undertake in landscapes. This "masterplan" is shaped by their internal structure, aims and ideas, a bundle of internal features that shall be subsumed under the heading "internal logic". Institutional logic applied to landscape was always confronted with nature, with natural dynamics. The process of shaping nature caused experiences. These experiences influenced people, influenced individual and institutional thinking. Experiences influenced the access to nature. Knowledge derived from these reciprocal processes in turn was incorporated into the internal logic of institutions. Both, institutional logic and natural dynamics, develop co-evolutionary. The project will be a study in early medieval environmental history. The main focus of the proposed research is the study of land-use management as performed by ecclesiastical institutions. How did the actors perceive their environment and how did they want to organize it, to organize land and people the economy? Interaction between man and his environment in different regions of the Frankish empire, under different historical and natural conditions and prerequisites is the general focus of this project. Sources from regions which are part of the current Austrian territory, especially from the provinces of Salzburg, Lower and Upper Austria shall be investigated. The Austrian/Bavarian situation in the 8th and 9th centuries will be compared to other regions and structures in the Carolingian empire, and be reviewed in an European context. Analyzing institutions like monasteries and their internal logic concerning their use of nature in the Eastern provinces of the empire and comparing, it to those in its Western regions has never been done before and is a cornerstone in an environmental history of these regions and period.