This edited volume originated from a conference related to the project "Petrifying Wealth. The Southern European Shift to Masonry as Collective Investment in Identity, c. 1050-1300", funded by an ERC Advanced Grant. [1] The ten articles in English, Castilian and Italian depart from the project's main interest in how the investment in stone buildings shaped and reflected political and social identities. Instead, the book investigates the increasing construction of durable buildings and material structures linked to agriculture, production or trade. It aims at understanding these building activities as both foundations and expressions of economic growth in Southern Europe from the late 11th up to the 14th century.

Here, "Southern Europe" mainly refers to Italy, its northern and central regions in particular, and the Crown of Aragon on the Iberian Peninsula. Unfortunately, the editors omit to mention how these territories compare to other regions in the South and also the North of Europe. Nevertheless, focusing on various types of buildings such as cereal storage, barns, mills, canals, iron workshops, bridges or ports, the contributions throw light on a number of important themes. Mostly based on a combination of material, archaeological and written evidence, they discuss materials and techniques, investors and workers, motives for construction as well as relations to wider economic, social and political developments. As Alessio Fiore notes in his introduction, these topics have been more closely studied for the late rather than the central medieval period, largely due to the availability and nature of sources. The book thus presents a welcome addition to recent studies on economic developments before 1300. [2]

The first section dedicated to "Farming" comprises half of all articles. Lorenzo Tabbarini focuses on different rural estates (casali, cassine, grange, and poderi) in the Regnum Italiae and the papal territories between 1150 and 1250. Urban merchants - and Cistercians regarding the granges - constituted the majority of investors who increasingly spent money to construct infrastructure and buildings to enhance production and / or serve as residence for agricultural workers. Future studies could analyse these developments in conjunction with the evolution of the credit market, he suggests. Víctor Farías Zurita presents an in-depth case study of how the Benedictine abbey of Sant Cugat del Vallès in Catalonia reorganised its vast domains in units of mansi from the middle of the 12th century onwards. Both new infrastructure and novel administrative routines served to maximize profits. This process of seigneurialization, he argues, created a stable and creative system of subsistence and residence for peasant families on the one hand and exploitation and income for the lordship on the other.

The section's remaining essays shift the focus to specific types of constructions. Giovanna Bianchi traces the evolution of silos and granaries in Northern Italy and Sicily from the Early to Central Middle Ages. Positioning cereal storages at the nexus of royal power, noble lords and local communities, she teases out their functions as both symbols of prestige and economic buildings, whose construction, building method and materials depended on a territory's political and fiscal structures. Josep Torró examines the development of hydraulic systems in Valencia during its transition from Islamic to Christian rule between 1170 and 1300. In an effort to reclaim land and expand irrigated farming, existing hydraulic works were modified or enlarged and more canals built in areas where Christian settlers replaced Muslim communities. The main goal, Torró concludes, was to generally increase population and wealth, thus benefitting seigneurial rents while connecting royal authorities, lords and communities through shared interests. The building of canals is also at the centre of Fabrizio Pagnoni's chapter on the Po valley. Especially from the 12th century onwards, the construction of a network of canals was fostered by urban communes and rural aristocracy to serve agricultural purposes, power manufacturing activity and facilitate the transport of commercial goods. The growing number of engineering experts and the circulation of hydraulic know-how was an important part of these transformations.

Jordi Morelló Baget's exploration of hydraulic mills for flour and cloth in Catalonia between 1050 and 1299 leads into the book's next section on "Manufacturing". He shows that the number of mills increased, stone became more common as a building material and the mills generally grew in size and had more sophisticated machinery from the 12th century on. While rural lords held the ownership over water rights and gave permission for construction, a variety of different entrepreneurs assumed responsibility for the building costs and hiring the workforce. Marina Elena Cortese turns to iron production in the Alps and Tuscany, mainly driven by valley communities and urban communes. While both regions saw increases in mining and technical improvements related to machinery powered by water in the earlier 12th century, the 13th century brought fundamental innovations in production methods and equipment. They were accompanied by investments in more complex iron workshops, led to a lowering of costs and stimulated an increase in the quantity and quality of iron work. Alessio Fiore delineates the economic functions of residential buildings in cities of Central-Northern Italy, especially Genoa, between the late 11th and the early 13th century. Starting in the mid-12th century, dwellings were increasingly built from stone. This necessitated new kilns, quarries and joineries as well as craftspeople specialised in construction work. As places of both living and working, residential properties frequently included specific areas for manufacture or trade. Additionally, they themselves were objects of economic transactions that people invested in, sold and rented out.

In the last section titled "Connecting", Paolo Tomei analyses the building of stone bridges in the rivers Arno and Serchio in Northern Tuscany, which gained momentum during the 12th century and complexity after 1200. As important nodes and sources of income, bridges did not only connect infrastructural elements, actors and areas, but were also points of political and economic competition over land, custody and management or buildings in their vicinity. The seaports, including shipyards and naval arsenals, in the Mediterranean examined by Pinuccia F. Sumbula were similarly important nodal points. While the first more elaborate port constructions can be detected in 12th-century Pisa and Genoa, expansive harbour building or renovating programmes - including a differentiation of roles for workers and entrepreneurs engaged in shipbuilding - generally took off in the wake of political, nautical and commercial evolutions in the following century.

Tying together the chapters' results, a conclusion by Sandro Carocci considers the different investors of building projects and the chronological dimensions of economic growth between 1050 and 1300. He underlines that more lay social groups than ever before invested in construction, but cautions against overemphasizing the role of cities prior to 1200, for example. While investments were certainly crucial, another aspect worth mentioning is the growing circulation of expertise by increasingly specialised craftspeople and workers, as documented in a number of articles. Overall, the book provides ample, well-researched evidence for a multiplication of buildings related to economic activities and the manifold actors involved in shaping this construction boom, particularly from the 1150s onwards. Individually and as a whole, the articles testify not only to the economic importance of building activities but also to their broader, political, social and cultural implications.

Notes:

[1] See the project website: https://www.petrifyingwealth.eu/.

[2] Most notably, e.g.: Chris Wickham: The Donkey and the Boat. Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180, Oxford 2023.

Eva Cersovsky