Scalar Responses to Production and Extreme Conditions in the Southern Borderlands of Aragon between AD 1248 and 1559

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Property Regimes" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Alfonso I took Daroca, an important city in the Upper March of Al-Andalus since the ninth century, by conquest in AD 1120. He granted the city a large rural territory that evolved by AD 1248 into a new property regime called the Comunidad de Aldeas de Daroca. Four such entities emerged in the southern borderlands of Aragon independent of the control from (if not always the influence) of the city; they took their name from and having the royal privilege of self-governance. The Comunidad de Aldeas de Daroca eventually comprised 96 co-equal villages spatially organized into five districts (sesma) and politically organized into a quasi-sovereign council of villages. The Comunidad had usufruct over a shifting mosaic of managed forests, grazing lands, and croplands across ca. 5,000 km2 subject to a Mediterranean climate regime. Most importantly, the member villages controlled up to 203 wood-pastures (dehesas) to which the Council of Villages negotiated use-contracts with the Cattleman’s Association of Zaragoza. The region experienced a succession of extreme environmental and socioeconomic conditions beginning middle of the thirteenth century, yet the Comunidad de Aldeas de Daroca was buffered by scaling responses among the coalition of equal villages according to their location and context.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Property Regimes   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39522.0