Aristocratic land ownership. Land ownership between the centre and the hinterland as represented in the language of notarial deeds.

The system of land ownership between the 9th and 10th centuries was significantly influenced by a series of environmental and cultural factors mediated by the customs of those notaries tasked with certifying and registering property deeds. The language used in notarial deeds to describe real estate in the areas of Venice and Milan will be analysed here in order to reconstruct the forms that the organisation of landed property took, together with the agrarian landscape of the time, and to ascertain what resources were actually available and utilised during that historical period. In doing so, evidence will be offered of the many similarities between properties, deriving from the notaries' ability to define land organisation in a similar manner through their use of a standardised language of property ownership.