Chapter Introduction

Abstract

This introduction defines the concept of “political landscapes” as the spatialisation of political action through the creation of territories. In the early Middle Ages, elites and states played a lesser role than in the Roman Empire or the Central Middle Ages in the construction of those “political landscapes”. However, social agency of local communities and “micropolitics” increased their centrality and they coexisted with elite initiatives. Finally, the arguments that organise the book are presented: residences, territories, “central places” and churches as places that focused the local arenas.