Framing the early Middle Ages

Oxford University Press

2005

3468 p.

Includes bibliographical references and index

9786610756667

1. Introduction ; Part I. States ; 2. Geography and politics ; 3. The form of the state ; Part II. Aristocratic power-structures ; 4. Aristocracies ; 5. Managing the land ; 6. Political breakdown and state-building in the North ; Part III. Peasantries ; 7. Peasants and local societies: case studies ; 8. Rural settlement and village societies ; 9. Peasant society and its problems ; Part IV. Networks ; 10. Cities ; 11. Systems of exchange ; 12. General conclusions

The Roman empire tends to be seen as a whole whereas the early Middle Ages tends to be seen as a collection of regional histories, roughly corresponding to the land-areas of modern nation states. As a result, early medieval history is much more fragmented, and there have been few convincing syntheses of socio-economic change in the post-Roman world since the 1930's. In recent decades, the rise of early medieval archaeology has also transformed our source-base, but this has not been adequately integrated into analyses of documentary history in almost any country.

Английский