Donne, famiglie e patrimoni a Genova e in Liguria nei secoli XII e XIII: ragioni e scelte di una ricerca collettiva

The article introduces the collection of studies which focus on the management of family assets by women in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Liguria, a context with strong investigative potential thanks to the precocity, quantity and quality of extant sources. The co-authors have adopted four basic choices: firstly, to scrutinize attentively notarial registers; secondly to favour a qualitative rather than quantitative approach; thirdly, as far as possible, to consider of the entire region of Liguria; fourthly, to pay specific attention to the interrelationship between local law and practice, in both the short and the medium term.