Monasteri e attività mineraria nell’Italia alto medievale. Suggerimenti e problemi

The paper attempts to investigate, through the study of iron production, particularly in central and northern Italy, the development of the historical forms of property in close relationship with the unraveling control of the elites on the countryside. The entire set of sources (both archaeological and written), for the period under examination, seems to indicate that production was now strongly oriented/focused to meet the overriding interests of large landed property, a process to which the economic reorganization of the monasteries was certainly not alien but, on the contrary, it appears to have played a key role in the definition of new ways to control access to raw materials and to the territory in general.