Paesaggi minerari toscani nel Medioevo: dal quadro indiziario e comparativo a un possibile modello storico / Tuscan mining landscapes in the Middle Ages: from circumstantial and comparative evidence to a possible historical model

Using the findings from the latest research into mining landscapes in Tuscany, this article seeks to outline a model of production for the Early and Late Middle Ages, with special reference to the Upper Maremma area. For the Early Middle Ages the largest amount of information we have relates to the exploitation of iron-bearing minerals, and the available data points to a highly centralised form of control that was reliant on the central powers (royal or margravial). Production was linked to a system centred around the great rural public courts, in turn connected to larger or smaller site contexts, including a number of urban centres such as Pisa. In the transition period, between the second half of the 11th and the 12th century, at a time when the public powers were on the wane, and coinciding with the crisis of the March of Tuscany, the bishops in this territory are the most frequent political figures who featured prominently in the handover of mining rights from the public sphere to the private sphere For the Late Middle Ages, on the basis of the new findings that have emerged in recent projects, a new date is put forward for the peak in the development of mining castles in Tuscany, including Rocca San Silvestro itself, which can now be circumscribed to the late 12th century. This chronology places these settlement and production sites in a contemporary, more complex system, now completely controlled by the leading cities, as in the case of Pisa, which had also become an important centre for the production and distribution of metallurgical items.