URCAD Selfie Contest Winner: India Kelly

Tue, 23 Apr 2024 09:32:11 -0400

India and her mentor, Dr. Michael Lane are a mirror image in this winning selfie from URCAD! India will receive a $50 gift card tot he UMBC Bookstore.

When Puigpardines was Lord of Karditsa

India Kelly, Ancient Studies
Mentor: Michael Lane, Ancient Studies

In “When Puigpardines Was Lord of Karditsa,” I aim to understand what life was like in Frankish Greece under the rule of Catalonian Lord Pedro de Puigpardines. The circumstances surrounding Puigpardines’s rule were peculiar: there are no traces of his residence, no administrative records left behind, and only a single ruined church left to suggest his possible alliance with a particular French knight. Focusing on the relationship between Lord Puigpardines, the existing Frankish nobility, and the Greek peasantry, this project argues that Puigpardines was an absentee landlord who, astonishingly, allowed the enemy he once fought in battle to retain control over his territory in the province of Boeotia. This project draws information from secondary sources written in English, Greek, and Catalan and relies on local informants and material culture sources during my visit to the town of Karditsa (now Akraifnio). I also employed online mapping to find possible areas for Puigpardines’s castle. As few primary sources exist about the period of Catalonian Rule during the Duchy of Athens, this project will be the first work specifically about the lordship of Karditsa during the period, and one of the few works other than “The Chronicle of the Morea” on Frankish Boeotia.

This work was funded, in part, through an Undergraduate Research Award from the UMBC Division of Undergraduate Academic Affairs.