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230 UlrichMüller
against their environment. The port is an urban subspacewith a very unique face. It is a hub
ofmultiple flowsofpeople,objectsand ideas thataremore than justanexpressionofeconomic
relationships.Portsarehubs forglobalcommercialandsocio-cultural relationships– this isnot
only true for our modern societies, but also for their pre-modern forebears.5 As intersections
betweenwater and land– seas and rivers on the one hand, and cities, roads and hinterlands
on the other – they have always facilitated local and long-distance transportation, as well as
the trading andmovement of goods, knowledge, and people. ‘Harbourscapes’ are understood
in the following text as spaces formed by action (‘doings’), perceptions and interpretations
(‘sayings’).6Thematerial and immaterial ‘Designs’ resulting fromthisprocesscanbeexplained
as theconsequencesofpracticalneedsandlifestyles, that for theirpartarebasedonbothhabits
of perception and historical constellations.7 Haithabu, Schleswig, Lübeck are all three typical
portsof their time.At thesame time, they representuniversaldimensionswhicharebest repre-
sentedby the concept of ‘scapes’.
‘Scapes’ is anomnipresent term in cultural studies andmedieval history.8 Thus terms such
as ‘urbanscapes’, ‘riskscapes’, ‘heritagescapes’ or ‘commodityscapes’ are common.9Despite all
theirdifferences, theyshareacapacity toputour relationalviewsof,on,andconcerningatopic
into perspective. ‘In analogy to the notion of landscape, the new terminology carries a spatial
connotation that points to the ambiguity and fluidity of social phenomena. Against the back-
drop of increasing global connectivity and flows, it conceives of space in terms of relations’.10
The concepts of the Indian anthropologist Arjun Appadurai form a direct or indirect point of
referenceforvarious ‘scapes’.Appaduraidescribesglobalisationintheformofdynamiccurrents
of people, technologies, finances, media, and ideas (‘ethnoscapes’, ‘technoscapes’, ‘finance-
scapes’, ‘ideoscapes’, ‘mediascapes’).11 At the same time, these five currents of globalisation
are also components, just as individuals and groups of people construct a notion of their own
movements in theglobal context: ‘worlds thatareconstitutedby thehistorically situated imagi-
nationsofpersonsandgroupsspreadaroundtheglobe’.12AsconsistentlyasAppaduraiempha-
sises these relationships in aglobal society, his concepts cannot simplybeappliedunmodified
to pre-modern societies: it is especially difficult to find evidence of his postulated separation
of the nominated fields.13 In archaeological scholarship, Appadurai’s approachhas beenmost
significantly receivedwith aparticular focus onmethods of attribution, aswell as being taken
up in thecourseofnetwork-turnsandmodified in theserviceofassemblage theory.14Adetailed
discussion of Appadurai’s concept for archaeology is definitely still pending, but – and here
lies its epistemological value – this concept can help us to emphasise the interconnectedness
of global (cultural) landscapesand local (commercial) spaces in the senseof aglocalisation. In
timesofmedieval globalizationandcomplex connectivities, habourscapes are anexample that
5 Cf.North 2016; Borgolte – Jaspert 2016; Blockmans et al. 2017; vonCarnap-Bornheimet al. 2018; Elvert –Elvert
2018. For a comparative approach, seeStanley et al. 2012.
6 Christophersen 2015, 125–128;Brugger et al. 2018.
7 In the following text, the term ‘harbourscapes’will be used to express themeaning of a harbour in away that
reaches beyond its function as amooring place for ships, and into themultiplexity of the whole harbour area.
Because of the commonly made, but only loosely defined differentiation between ‘harbour’ as the mooring
grounds, and ‘port’ as thewiderarea, theprecise termusedshouldbe ‘portscapes’. ‘Harbourscapes’ isusedabove
all as a concept in current city planning, cf. Russo 2016.
8 For example, Fouquet et al. 2018;Kooij 2018.
9 Forexample,Knox1995,6: ‘Commodityscapesproducedby flowsofmaterial culture thatencompasseverything
fromarchitecture and interior design through to clothes and jewellery’.
10 Müller-Mahnet al. 2018, 195.
11 Cf. here Appadurai 1990, 329–331. For criticism of the concept, see for example Heymann – Campbell 2009,
134–139.
12 Appadurai 1996, 33.
13 Müller 2017a, 17–21.
14 Müller –Schurr 2016, 218–220.
The Power of Urban Water
Studies in premodern urbanism
- Titel
- The Power of Urban Water
- Untertitel
- Studies in premodern urbanism
- Autoren
- Nicola Chiarenza
- Annette Haug
- Ulrich Müller
- Verlag
- De Gruyter Open Ltd
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-3-11-067706-5
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 28.0 cm
- Seiten
- 280
- Kategorie
- Technik