This is the blog of my project: “Landscapes of rights”
It examines common lands in Europe, that is to say lands whose uses are in part or wholly communal rather than private. A good example could be a medieval woodland, where timber might belong to a local lord but tenants also pastured their livestock and collected wood for fuel or fencing in it. All European countries have common lands and I have recently been studying their archaeology in upland regions thanks to a Marie Curie fellowship based at the University of the Basque Country. Negotiation of access rights to common resources was one of the foundations of the social organisation of rural communities until the end of the Ancien Régime, as testified by rural statutes and by centuries-long conflicts over common resources recorded in local and central archives.
In this new project, I would like to compare three jurisdictional conflicts on common lands and to illustrate the transformations of settlement and administrative patterns in rural areas which originate in changes in common access rights. Given that this is a topic of concern to anthropologists, social historians, historical geographers, archaeologists and lawyers, and there is an existing interest in the topic across several Durham departments, one of my goals is to organise seminars and workshops aimed at bringing together different perspectives. The objective of this blog is to provide an open access resource which links together people, projects and publications. With this aim, it would like to be a place where scholars from different backgrounds can speak about their approach to commons. It will be composed by posts and podcasts.
The project is being carried out in the framework of the COFUND Senior Fellowship Scheme Durham International Fellowships for Research and Enterprise (DIFeREns2), cofunded by the University of Durham and the European Union and managed by the Institute of Advanced Studies. The project is hosted by Chris Gerrard from the Department of Archaeology and my host college is Van Mildert College.
Landscapes of rights 