Historiography and the Hills: environmental thought and history-writing in western Britain during a long twelfth century (c.1070-1230)

My project examines historicising environmental thought in medieval historiography (c.1070-1230) from western Britain, by analysing these texts and constructing case studies to contextualise environmental thought. 'Environmental thinking' is thought about (wild or tamed) non-humans from animals and plants to landscapes and climate. By focusing on historicising thought I will analyse thought about the dynamic connections between non-humans, and with humans, over time. I address this through these research questions:

1. How did high medieval authors imagine their environments as historical products, and how did this change? 2. What is the relationship between the historicised and contemporary environments of these authors? 3. What was the relationship of historicisations of environment and landscape to theological thought?

4. How did manuscript, genre, and linguistic contexts influence how authors historicised their environments?

Whilst 'western Britain' (South West England, Wales, North West England and South West Scotland) is a synthetic region, it has internal coherence as a context for research. A shared history-writing culture linked centres within and outside the region. Environmentally, a shared climatic influence from oceanic and atmospheric systems provided unity, mediated through diverse microclimates.

Additionally, post-glacial topography underlaid the unities that have been recognised in landscape categorisations.

I will address Questions 1, 3, and 4 textually using a broad set of historiography written c.1070-1230 in 'western Britain'. This includes Hagiographies (such as lives of Ninian and Kentigern, and the Gotha, Llandaf, and Vespasian lives of Welsh and Cornish Saints), and Chronicles and Histories (such as Brut y Tywysogion, the work of William of Malmsbury, and Walter Map).

Additionally, I will use manuscript contexts to draw out connections with other sources, like the charters in the Book of Llandaf, that also historicise environments.

I will address questions 1, 2 and 4 by moving beyond these texts, choosing specific case studies to work with paleoenvironmental data (which is patchy and needs to be applied with care) and records, like charters, to contextualise these understandings within their material environment. The case study focus of this work makes detailed analysis manageable for the timeframe of the project within the regional scope.

Using historiography to access environmental thought is a novel approach, that will reveal a richly entangled high medieval historical culture in its natural context. My approach will give a temporally nuanced contribution to enviro-cultural historical knowledge, unpacking what was the environment 'now' and 'then' for authors and the uses of these differences.

Recognising these entanglements casts new light on these sources and the societies that produced them, impacting the study of both. This is historical work that responds to the challenges of the twenty-first century.