Dark Age Liguria: Regional Identity and Local Power, c. 400-1020

(Paperback)

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Dark Age Liguria surveys the history of the Liguria region from c. 400 to c. 1050 AD, to provide a detailed case study of what happened here as Roman imperial rule ended. The book pulls together all the surviving evidence, written, archaeological, artistic and ecological, to propose that, in contrast with later periods, Ligurians looked north as much as they gazed out to sea. Genoese history under Byzantines, Lombards, Carolingians and Ottonians is compared with that of other coastal settlements, including Albenga, Noli, Perti and Savona and the less-studied but fascinating inland valleys, the Aveto, Polcevera, Stura and Vara. The book draws also on more than fifteen years of fieldwork in and around the small town of Varese Ligure (La Spezia province) to suggest some new methods for investigating the Dark Age past.

Reviews

The books strength is in the questions it asks and the possibilities it suggests for shedding light on the obscure corners of past landscapes. -- Enrico Giannichedda, Istituto di Storia della Cultura Materiale di Genova and Caroline Goodson, Birkbeck College, University of London * Landscape History Vol. 36, No. 1 *
In Dark Age Liguria, Ross Balzaretti provides a history of early Middle Ages Liguria, highlighting its role as a region "of transit" which mediated the relations between northern Europe and the Mediterranean, France and the rest of Italy * Medioevo Latino (Bloomsbury translation) *

Author Bio

Ross Balzaretti (University of Nottingham) has published widely in the field of early medieval history, especially of northern Italy. His most recent books are Ligurian Landscapes (2004, edited with Mark Pearce and Charles Watkins) and Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West (2006, edited with Elizabeth Tyler). He was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews in 2010-2011 where much of Dark Age Liguria was written.