ABSTRACT
In some parts of Europe, particularly in the British Isles and in Germany, archaeologists have been hard at work dealing with the artifacts that demonstrated highly organized and very expensive governmental control of fortification strategy. Walter Schlesinger established an important paradigm for synthesizing both historical and archaeological sources to develop a comprehensive model of the physical structure, purpose, and use of royal palaces, many of which were also fortresses. From an archaeological perspective, Escalona does not explain whether the making of Old Castile was done on the basis of already existing strongholds that were reused or through largely new construction. Escalona’s treatment of military organization suffers from the voluminous efforts by Claudio Sanchez-Albornoz to place Spanish military institutions within the now-discredited Germanic freeman model, which supposedly developed over time into the equally discredited European-wide feudal model.
