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This chapter provides an interdisciplinary, scene-setting review of the current state of knowledge in the field of early medieval social complexity and sets out an agenda for future work in this topical area. While much previous work in this field tends to focus on comparisons with the classical world, this contribution emphasises the uniqueness of early medieval modes of social organisation. Introductions are provided to the study of geographies of power through archaeological analyses, vocabularies of power drawing on place-name evidence and notions of law and its enactment at assembly sites from written sources. It is argued that places where power was enacted in a period of non-urban social and administrative complexity must be understood on their own terms. The robusticity and flexibility of early medieval networks of power is also emphasised in the context of a comparative discussion ranging across the European area.

Wales provides a rare opportunity to explore the development of an early medieval socio-political landscape in a part of the Western Roman Empire that was not subject to Germanic incursion before the 11th century. South-East Wales is particularly important in this respect as it lies within the Romanised zone of lowland Britain. A lack of early evidence, however, has led scholars to construct anachronistic interpretations overly dependent upon evidence drawn from lawbooks of the 13th century. Archaeological evidence and documentary sources from South-East Wales do, however, afford an opportunity to explore the organisation and exploitation of the early medieval landscape independently of the lawbooks. This chapter examines territorial organisation, central places and long-term political continuity in early medieval South-East Wales. It concludes by considering some of the contrasts between patterns of power in South-East Wales and Anglo-Saxon England.

Thanks to the inscriptions on early medieval coins, the locations where they were made—mints—are among the best-recorded selections of places in Europe. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that the establishment of mints at particular times and places depended above all on contemporary governmental and social conditions. The later Roman Empire had emphasised the centrality of a few large mints closely tied to the fiscal system, but its successor kingdoms in England, Francia, Italy and Spain followed different criteria. Production was often organised on a more personal than institutional basis through the mediation of moneyers, and commercial activity, administrative functions or military/political significance could all dictate the production of coin. It is essential to consider the interaction of these and other factors in shaping the role of a mint, as well as the diversity in function and scale that could apply within even one territory.

In early medieval Italy, some settlements were anchored on Roman sites which provided authority and legitimacy for their post-Roman inhabitants. This chapter examines the use and reuse of an ancient imperial site through the case study of Villamagna, near Anagni in Central-Southern Italy. We argue that the estate of Villa Magna, founded in the 2nd century, remained an imperial property through the 7th century and was transferred to the bishopric of Rome before the 9th century. The history of the estate between the late 5th and the 12th century and the evidence for changes of ownership is discussed. The use of the villa’s physical structures, the maintenance of its agricultural terrain and the remains of its architectural materials to project power over the surrounding landscape can be seen as a case of imperial ownership, over time, providing an unbreakable stability and anchoring a centre of power even through changed historical contexts.

Across the North Sea from England was a land that was known in the early Middle Ages, as part of it is today, as Frisia. This largely marshy land was a good place to live for those who managed to adjust to its potentially extreme but fertile habitat. Despite many archaeological observations and finds, our view of their social organisation is not very clear, and in part derived from better-documented parallels elsewhere. This chapter will first briefly describe the former landscape and its archaeological record, before dealing with the organisation of Frisia. Its focus will be on the northern part of Frisia. The aim of the chapter is to offer a general picture, based on recent research, of this country oriented towards the North Sea and its maintaining of close links to early medieval England.

This chapter explores the development of a kingdom of Munster through the lens of the evolution of the Rock of Cashel, Co. Tipperary. Traditionally regarded as the provincial capital of Munster from at least the beginning of the early medieval period, it is argued instead that the provincial status of the Rock emerged out of political discourses associated with the creation of a kingdom of Munster during the 7th to 9th centuries. Alternative seas of kingship, rivals to Cashel and the politics associated with these early centres of kingship are explored with reference to their wider implications for provincial models of later prehistoric and early medieval Ireland.

Monasteries in early medieval Ireland resembled nothing so much as slightly miniaturised villages. By the 7th century, there were many places resembling this general description, so successful had Christian evangelism been. A handful were women's monasteries, and one at least was a double house. Though the sources on large female monasteries are patchy, a good deal can be gleaned: the rules, daily activities, ministry to the laity, as well as attitudes on nuns' chastity. This chapter looks at nuns in large women's monasteries in Kildare, Killeedy, Killevy, and Clonbroney. Ceremonials in large Irish nunneries are also discussed, along with claustration, and the openness of nunneries in the 7th to 9th centuries.

What did early medieval authors think about when they thought about peace? Early medieval political culture is impossible to understand without a full awareness of the foundations upon which it was constructed, and the inherited thought and imagery with which it was built. Briefly discussing the linguistic issues involved in the subject, this chapter uses Bede's famous image of the peace of King Edwin of Northumbria's reign as a means to explore the various currents that fed into the early medieval political imagination. Biblical material, and the forms of its re‐use in early medieval culture is addressed — with emphasis upon the treatment of Solomon — as is the legacy of antiquity through an examination of the late history of the ara pacis of Augustus and the reconfiguration of Rome's central precincts. Byzantine, Augustinian, early Irish, and ‘Germanic’ notions of peace also come under scrutiny.

This chapter looks at the ease with which the ancient pagan culture was adopted and adapted to fit into a Christian world (without in many cases being actually Christianized) during the Early Middle Ages. In writing which was not strictly theological or philosophical, early medieval scholars used ancient models and language freely within a Christian context. They took the compatibility of pagan culture and Christian belief so much for granted that the Problem of Paganism did not arise; and the same is true for their predecessors in the sixth and seventh centuries as for some tenth- and eleventh-century writing. This broad, unproblematic acceptance of classical culture set what would remain the mainstream view throughout the Middle Ages. The chapter also looks at how Christian Europe came about only as the result of a long process.

Since the end of the 19th century, Italian historiography concerning the beginnings of the ‘comune’ has identified the expression ante ecclesia in convento, from chapter 343 of the Lombard Edict of Rothari, as evidence of an early medieval communal organisation based on earlier Roman structures. This interpretation is of significance not only for the history of cities, but also for the countryside and the organisation of commons. This chapter explores the function of churches and their surroundings as places of assembly, analysing other Italian written sources that mention meetings of a non-ecclesiastical character in relation to these buildings, and introduces the archaeological evidence to identify where exactly these meetings could have been conducted

The preface sets out the historical questions pursued through the rest of the book: what did it mean to talk about peace in the centuries following the end of the Roman Empire in the West? What role did it play in the wider conception of rulership? Beginning with a single case‐study — the coronation of Charles the Bald in Metz in 869, and the poetry written for the occasion by Sedulius Scottus, an Irish scholar — this opening sketches the modes by which early medieval kings and their theorists worked. Competing treatments of peace in the same year are explored, as are the means of making peace (oaths, hostages, treaties) to reveal the diversity of attitudes even within a single year. Peace in wider time and space is addressed. So, too, is earlier scholarship on the field. The chapter closes with an investigation of the place of peace in the early medieval imagination more broadly (Beowulf, the Waltharius).

If the Irish attitudes were increasingly mixed on the subject of men and women sharing space in the religious life, this ambivalence is nowhere clearer than in one new and most extraordinary type of narrative. It both epitomises the issues and reveals the underlying common lines of thinking and rationalisation. The Irish consort stories have perplexed historians for nearly a hundred years, and the discussions have so far produced no plausible explanation. In 1968, Roger Reynolds suggested that it was likely for female consorts to live with holy men in early medieval Ireland. According to Reynolds, Celtic syneisactism represented one of the most primitive aspects of Christianity to survive in medieval Western Europe. This chapter discusses cohabitation between female consorts and holy men in early medieval Ireland, the crackdown on nicolaitism, and clerical marriage.

This lecture discusses the intellectual and textual systems within which Ælfric and his Carolingian models were working. It focuses on Ælfric's cultural context, compositional process, and his interaction with his textual community. The sources are considered to be simply forms of evidence for interpretation. The author uses two main investigation procedures: a critical examination of the efficacy of the models of interpretation used in modern source-study scholarship, and an analysis of the construction of the early medieval system of intertextual discourse.

The chapter considers the different senses of ‘Britain’. ‘the Britons’, ‘the Welsh’, and ‘Cymry’ in the early medieval period. It also surveys the lands that remained British up to c. 600. These extended southwards from the Firth of Forth (which divided the territory of the Picts to the north from the British people known as the Votadini, later Gododdin) and proceeds from one people and kingdom to another down the west side of Britain, including the Isle of Man, to Wales, Dumnonia and Cornwall in the south‐west, and across the sea to Brittany.