Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Given the abundance of organic matter in cess-pools, but also the waste and
feces on city streets cities stank badly. Of course this stench was not uniform all
over the city; representative squares and streets were kept cleaner and were also
frequently paved, but the fact of stench, linked with particular high incidence of
diseases and fatalities in those places with particular bad smells, caused contem-
poraries to develop etiological theories linking stench with disease. The bad smell,
called
by contemporary experts, was seen as direct cause of diseases, akin
to an understanding of poisoning. By the late 18th and early 19th century the
'
miasma
'
ght
against stench and for cleanliness acquired a new sense of urgency and signi
cantly
contributed to the broad sweep of urban sanitary reforms in the second half of the
19th century.
32
6.7 Cities in the Wood Age
For the development of pre-industrial cities wood constituted a basic resource
which could not be substituted except at unreasonable expenses. The forest con-
stituted in multiple ways the economic foundation of medieval cities.
33
By the year
1000 large tracts of the European landscape north of the Alps were still covered by
forests. These forests provided for cities and other human settlements a broad range
of functions: they offered wood for domestic and industrial fuel, for construction
purposes and as material for the production of tools, instruments, furniture and all
artifacts of daily life. But forests were also
for the people living
close by. In them residents could collect berries, mushrooms and spices, set up bee
hives to gain honey, the only sweetener available before the import of cane sugar
from the Americas. Forests also supported cattle, pigs, sheep or fowl, provided
habitats for game and although hunting was a seigniorial privilege, sources which
report about poaching are abundant.
34
Medieval cities, at least north of the Alps, were predominantly wooden cities:
since wood was the cheapest building material, most easily available and most
easily handled, the large majority of urban houses were of timber and building
techniques with wood became increasingly sophisticated. The timber-frame house
used signi
“
nutrition forests
”
cantly less wood than the original log house. Only selected buildings
such as churches, monasteries and, by the late middle ages, the guild houses were
built in masonry fashion. Roofs were covered in wooden tiles, straw or thatch.
Since in all house-holds and work-shops open
res were almost constantly burning,
such a
res were among
the most frequent causes of large scale disasters which struck cities.
35
'
wooden city
'
stood of course in very high risk of
re; city
32
Hamlin (
1998
).
33
Schubert (
1986
).
34
ster (
1998
).
35
Boockmann (
1994
), Zwierlein (
2011
) and Schott (
2013
).
Lorenz (
1993
) and K
ü
