Die Vielschichtigkeit der Straße

This volume comprises papers from a cultural-historical congress about ‘The Street in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period’, organized by the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture in Krems/Austria in the year 2007. The main aim of this congress was to gain a deeper insight into the process-related nature of traffic structures. Road networks are not static but, in their shape and development, they are interacting with changing social and political conditions in time and space. As a result of the dynamic quality of streets, various perspectives onto the street and from the street might be emerging. They are closely related to the patterns in which social space could be perceived and arranged in historical contexts. With the street in the center of attention, it is therefore essential also to consider the people present there, their actions and movements, as well as the ways in which their communication structures were being transformed or transmitted via different media. Due to the cross-disciplinary approach of material culture studies, this volume consists of contributions from a broad range of fields in the arts and humanities: the papers by Thomas Szabo, Friedrich Wolfzettel and Gertrud Blaschitz are highlighting different types of ‘realities’ of streets and bridges that are being generated by written sources. Mihailo Popovic and Alan Murray are investigating into the ongoing use of ancient road systems in the medieval Danube region. Peter Johanek and Stephan Hoppe are arguing for an understanding of streets as resources for and spatial signs of manorial sovereignty. Jean-Pierre Leguay’s contribution is dedicated to the study of streets and places in urban regions of medieval France. In its broad multi-disciplinary spectrum of different scholarly perspectives, this volume offers new methodological approaches to the ‘Street as a living space’ in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period.