ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to provide an overview of the range of gardens, garden plants and garden work to be found in early medieval Spain and Portugal, as also of the kinds of relevant source material available and of the principal problems that such a study poses. It deals with the whole of Iberia, with written and material sources and with the early Middle Ages up to about AD 1000, although in practice the focus will be on the ninth and tenth centuries. Iberia is a very large peninsula and is geographically extremely diverse, with high flat plateaux, high mountain ranges, rolling hills, forest cover, and coastal lowlands. The main difference indicated between ‘Islamic’ and ‘Christian’ sites, and between southern and northern Iberia, are the higher proportions of fruit than cereals in the totality of assemblages in the south and the higher proportions of cereals than all other remains in the totality of assemblages from ‘Christian’ sites.
