Bibliography
This is a bibliography in-progress of works specifically on medieval environmental history. There are, of course, many books and articles that touch on environmental history, but this list is for those most clearly within the discipline.
The list is by no means exhaustive and suggested additions are welcome. Make suggested additions with complete bibliographical info via the Comment function and Dolly will move it into the bibliography as soon as possible.
Arnold, Ellen. “An Introduction to Medieval Environmental History.” History Compass 6/3 (2008): 898-916.
Arnold, Ellen. “Engineering Miracles: Water Control, Conversion and the Creation of a Religious Landscape in the Medieval Ardennes.” Environment and History 13 (2007): 447-476.
Bowlus, C., “Ecological Crisis in Fourteenth Century Europe,” in L. Bilsky, ed., Historical Ecology: Essays on Environment and Social Change, 86-99. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1980.
Bradley, R. S., Hughes, M. K., and Diaz, H. F. “Climate in Medieval Time,” Science 302 (2003): 404–5.
Brázdil, R., et al. “Historical Climatology in Europe – the State of the Art,” Climatic Change 70 (2005): 363–430.
Broich, J. “The Wasting of Wolin: Environmental Factors in the Downfall of a Medieval Baltic Town,” Environment and History 7 (2001): 187–99.
Cunningham, A. “Science and Religion in the Thirteenth Century Revisited: the Making of St Francis the Proto-Ecologist.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 31/4 (2000): 613–43 and 32/1 (2001): 69–98.
van Dam, P. J. E. M. “Sinking Peat Bogs: Environmental Change in Holland, 1350–1550.” Environmental History 6/1 (January 2001): 32–45.
Fagan, B. The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
Fagan, B. The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
Galloway, J., Keene, D., and Murphy, M. “Fuelling the City: Production and Distribution of Firewood and Fuel in London’s Region, 1290–1400″. Economic History Review 49/3 (August 1996): 447–72.
Glaser, R. Klimageschichte Mitteleuropas: 1000 Jahre Wetter, Klima, Katastrophen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001.
Grove A. T. and Rackham O. The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001.
Guillerme, A. The Age of Water: the Urban Environment in the North of France. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1988.
Gunn, J. D., ed. The Years without Summer: Tracing A.D. 536 and its Aftermath, BAR International Series 87. Oxford: Archeopress, 2000.
Hanawalt, Barbara A. and Lisa J. Kiser, eds. Engaging with Nature. Essays on the Natural World in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.
Hartmann, Sieglinde. ed. Fauna and Flora in the Middle Ages: Studies of the Medieval Environment and its Impact on the Human Mind. Papers Delivered at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Publishing, 2007.
Hoffmann, Richard. “Carp, Cods, Connections: New Fisheries in the Medieval European Economy and Environment” in Mary J. Henninger-Voss, ed., Animals in Human Histories: The Mirror of Nature and Culture, 3-55. Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2002.
Hoffmann, Richard. “Chapter 3: Medieval Christendom in God’s Creation: Environmental Continuities, Coevolutions, and Changes,” in Tamara Whited et al., Northern Europe: An Environmental History, 45-72. Santa Barbara – Denver – Oxford: ABC-Clio, 2005.
Hoffmann, Richard. “Economic Development and Aquatic Ecosystems in Medieval Europe.” American Historical Review 101 (1996): 631-669.
Hoffmann, Richard. Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art: Tracts on Fishing from the End of the Middle Ages. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.
Hoffmann, Richard. “Footprint Metaphor and Metabolic Realities: Environmental Impacts of Medieval European Cities,” in Paolo Squatriti, ed., Natures Past: The Environment and Human History, 288-325. The Comparative Studies in Society and History book series. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.
Hoffmann, Richard. “Frontier Foods for Late Medieval Consumers: Culture, Economy, Ecology.” Environment and History 7 (2001): 131-167.
Hoffmann, Richard. “Medieval Europeans and their Aquatic Ecosystems” in Beiträge zum Göttinger Umwelthistorischen Kolloquium 2007-2008, , ed. Bernd Herrmann, 45-64. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2008.
Hoffmann, Richard. “Medieval Fishing” in Paolo Squatriti, ed., Working with Water in Medieval Europe: Technology and Resource Use, 331-393. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
Hoffmann, Richard “Recommended Readings: a sixteenth-century exemplar and source,” Environmental History, 16:4 (October 2005), 689-691. [treats Conrad Gessner’s Historia animalium as a document for environmental historians]
Howe, J. and M. Wolfe, eds. Inventing Medieval Landscapes: Senses of Place in Western Europe. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2002.
Jordan, W. C. The Great Famine. Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Jørgensen, Dolly. “Cooperative Sanitation: Managing Streets and Gutters in Late Medieval England and Scandinavia.” Technology and Culture 49 (2008): 547-567.
Kirby, K. J. and C. Watkins, eds. The Ecological History of European Forests. New York: CAB International, 1998.
Kiser, L. J. “The Garden of St. Francis: Plants, Landscape, and Economy in Thirteenth-Century Italy.” Environmental History 8/2 (2003): 229–45.
Laszlovsky, J., and P. Szabo, eds. People and Nature in Historical Perspective. Budapest: Central European University Department of Medieval Studies and Archaeolingua, 2003.
Leguay, J. La pollution au moyen age: dans le royaume de France et dans les grands fiefs. Paris: Editions Gisserot, 1999.
Magnusson, R. Water Technology in the Middle Ages: Cities, Monasteries, and Waterworks after the Roman Empire. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
McCormick, M., et al. “Volcanoes and the Climate Forcing of Carolingian Europe, A.D. 750–950.” Speculum 82 (2007): 865–95.
Pluskowski, Aleksander. Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2006.
Rackham, O. Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape: The Complete History of Britain’s Trees, Woods, and Hedgerows. London: J. M. Dent, 1990.
Rohr, C. “Man and Natural Disaster in the Late Middle Ages: The Earthquake in Carinthia and Northern Italy on 25 January 1348 and its Perception.” Environment and History 9 (2003): 127–49.
Salisbury, J. E., ed. The Medieval World of Nature: A Book of Essays. New York: Garland Publishing, 1993.
Salisbury, J. E. The Beast within: Animals in the Middle Ages. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Squatriti, P. Water and Society in Early Medieval Italy, 400–1000. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Squatriti, Paolo, ed. Working with Water in Medieval Europe: Technology and Resource Use, 331-393. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
Squatriti, P. “Offa’s Dyke between Nature and Culture.” Environmental History 9/1 (January 2004): 37–56.
Squatriti, P. “Moving Earth and Making Difference: Dikes and Frontiers in Early Medieval Bulgaria,” in F. Curta, ed., Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis. Frontiers in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 59-90. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005.
Szabó, Peter. “Medieval Trees and Modern Ecology: How to Handle Written Sources.” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 46 (2002): 7–25.
Szabó, Peter. Woodland and Forest in Medieval Hungary. Oxford: British Archaelogical Reports, 2005.
Szabo, Vicki. “‘Bad to the Bone?’ The Unnatural History of Monstrous Medieval Whales,” The Heroic Age 8 (2005). Online.
Szabo, Vicki. Monstrous Fishes and the Mead-Dark Sea (Brill, 2008).
TeBrake, W. H. “Air Pollution and Fuel Crises in Pre-Industrial London, 1250–1650.” Technology and Culture 16 (July 1975): 337–59.
TeBrake, W. Medieval Frontier: Culture and Ecology in Rjnland. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1985.
Unger, R. “Energy Sources for the Dutch Golden Age: Peat, Wind and Coal.” Research in Economic History 9 (1984): 221–53.
White, L. T., Jr. “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155/3767 (March 10, 1967): 1203–7.
Wickham, C. “European Forests in the Early Middle Ages: Landscape and Land Clearance,” in L’Ambiente Vegetale Nell’Alto Medioevo; 30 marzo–5 aprile 1989, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’alto Medioevo, 37/2, 479-545. Spoleto: Presso la Sede del Centro, 1990.
Williamson, T. Shaping Medieval Landscapes: Settlement, Society, Environment. Macclesfield, Cheshire: Windgather Press, 2003.
Zupko, R., and Laures, R. Straws in the Wind: Medieval Urban Environmental Law, the Case of Northern Italy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.