Late Antiquity and the Islamization of the Landscape

Abstract

Studies on the Middle Ages are most often analyzed from the his­tory of Christianity, in which Islam is considered a separate area of inquiry. The research developed by Islamic archeology raises new questions for the analysis of this period from a history that has not been told, but which is present in the Middle Ages in several aspects, including in its material culture. If medieval archeology is a new discipline, the interest in an Islamic archeology is more recent, since it took place from the end of the nineteenth century. The new archeological evidence provides information that questions what has been considered up to now regarding relations between the different monotheistic religion groups, Jewish, Christian and Muslim during the Middle Ages, in its Eurocentric sense of the term, and opens up new perspectives for a history which was left aside. The text seeks to clarify the use of the medieval term in the studies of Islamic culture, the history of the archaeological researches of the same area and the importance of the investigations of the landscape archeology for the paradigm shift in the analysis of the processes of Islamization of the landscape occurred between the VIIth and XIIth centuries.