INTRODUCTION

Most standard prehistories of Europe end with the Roman conquest of central and western Europe in the last two centuries b.c. and the first century a.d. We have decided to extend our coverage of prehistoric and early historic Europe to approximately a.d. 1000 for several reasons. First, the Romans conquered only a part of temperate Europe. While the Romans controlled southern Britain, Gaul, Iberia, the Mediterranean, and parts of east-central Europe, Roman political and military domination never extended to Ireland, Scandinavia, Free Germany (those areas of Germany outside the borders of the Roman Empire), and all of northeastern Europe. Regions such as Ireland and the portions of Germany that bordered the Roman Empire certainly were affected directly by Roman trade, religion, and military activities. However, there were substantial continuities between the Early (or pre-Roman) Iron Age and the Roman Iron Age in many regions of northern and eastern Europe.

Second, the Roman political, military, and economic domination of many parts of western Europe lasted for only about four hundred years. Archaeologically, Britain is the most studied of all the Roman provinces in western Europe. Major programs of excavation in York, Winchester, and London have shown that Roman towns and cities experienced severe depopulation in the fifth century a.d. and that large-scale production of commercial goods such as pottery had ceased by about the year 400. The Roman military withdrew from the province of Britain in the early fifth century, and the residents were forced to see to their own defenses. Similar patterns of political, urban, and industrial decline have been documented throughout the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century. Long before the final Western Roman emperor was deposed in a.d. 476, many of the hallmarks of Roman civilization—military control over a well-defined territory, urbanism, industrial production and exchange, coinage, and literacy—had effectively disappeared in many of the western provinces.

Third, by the sixth century a.d., a series of small successor kingdoms had been established within the boundaries of the former Western Roman Empire. These new rulers modeled themselves on the former Roman emperors. Many, including the Frankish King Clovis, adopted Christianity, and some had served as mercenaries in the Roman army. However, the rulers themselves were drawn from barbarian tribes whose homelands lay outside the boundaries of the former Roman Empire. Moreover, the polities they ruled—Merovingian France, Anglo-Saxon England, Visigothic Spain—were substantially different from the Roman provinces that had existed in these regions a century or two earlier. These Dark Age societies were rural rather than urban. They have much more in common with the barbarian societies of Iron Age Europe than with the Roman societies that immediately preceded them. Since literary evidence and written records are limited, nearly all our information about daily life in these successor kingdoms has been discovered through archaeological research.

CHRONOLOGY

This volume covers only a portion of the European Middle Ages. Traditionally, the medieval period begins with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century a.d. and ends with the European voyages of discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. While we begin our coverage of the Early Middle Ages in the early fifth century, we have chosen to end our coverage of medieval archaeology at about a.d. 1000. Archaeological and historical records provide clear evidence for the formation of states in Scandinavia and Poland around this time. With the establishment of institutionalized governments organized on territorial principles, many of the societies of northern Europe no longer can be considered barbarian. In addition, at about this time Christianity was adopted and literacy became widespread in several regions of northeastern Europe, including Poland and Scandinavia. As a result, written records are far more common. The archaeology of the High Middle Ages (c. a.d. 1000–1500) is truly a form of historical archaeology, where documents and material evidence have equally important roles to play.

MIGRATION

Migration or population movement is a well-documented feature of ancient Europe. At the end of the Ice Age (eleven thousand years ago), hunters and gatherers moved into areas of Europe that had been glaciated during the Pleistocene. Both archaeological and skeletal evidence indicates that migration played a role in the establishment of the first farming communities in central Europe. Archaeological, place-name, and literary evidence shows substantial population movements in central Europe during the later Iron Age.

Population movements are also well documented throughout the Early Middle Ages, and the period from a.d. 400–600 often is referred to as the Migration period. In the fifth and sixth centuries a.d., barbarians from outside the Roman Empire—Visigoths, Angles, Saxons, Franks, and others—moved into many regions of western Europe. The nature of these migrations has been debated by both archaeologists and historians for decades. Do they represent large-scale population movements, or are they small migrations of a military and political elite who dominated the local sub-Roman (early post-Roman, non-Saxon) populations and initiated changes in material culture and ideology? Today, many archaeologists would favor the latter explanation. This chapter profiles many of the Migration period peoples who are known to us through the archaeological record and through historical sources.

Perhaps the best known of the early medieval migrations is the Viking expansion (c. a.d. 750–1050). Eastern Vikings from Sweden established colonies in Russia and the Baltic and conducted trade in distant eastern lands such as Mesopotamia. Western Vikings, from Norway and Denmark, established colonies in Britain, Ireland, Orkney, and Shetland. In addition, Viking colonists settled Iceland in the ninth century and Greenland in about 985. These settlements represent the frontiers of European colonization in the Early Middle Ages. Archaeologists have made extensive studies of the colonial settlements established by both the eastern and western Vikings.

THE REBIRTH OF TOWNS AND TRADE

In a.d. 600 Europe was primarily a rural society. Although many former Roman towns continued to serve as political and ecclesiastical centers, their populations were substantially reduced, and the towns no longer served as major centers of manufacturing and trade. Recent archaeological research in the Mediterranean regions of Europe and North Africa indicates that long-distance trade had declined well before the Islamic conquests of North Africa and Spain in the seventh century a.d.

Beginning in the seventh century a.d. a number of emporia—centers of both long-distance and regional trade—were established along the North Sea and Baltic Coasts from Hamwic (Anglo-Saxon Southampton) in England to Staraya Ladoga in Russia. Major programs of archaeological research have been carried out at these emporia. For example, the Origins of Ipswich project traced the development of this emporium from its establishment in the early seventh century. Ipswich produced pottery, known as Ipswich ware, that was formed on a slow wheel and kiln-fired. This pottery was traded throughout East Anglia, and it also appears at royal and ecclesiastical centers in other parts of England. The trade networks that were established in the Early Middle Ages are entirely different from those that existed during the Roman period. Many Roman trade networks centered on the Mediterranean; early Medieval networks centered on the Baltic and North Sea. Some archaeologists have argued that the establishment of these emporia may be closely related to state formation and the emergence of complex societies in several regions of northern Europe, including England, France, and Scandinavia.

CONCLUSION

Between a.d. 400 and 1000, the European continent was transformed politically, socially, and economically. The breakup of the Western Roman Empire created a power vacuum that was filled by a series of barbarian successor kingdoms. In a period of only six centuries urbanism was established in Europe, both within and outside the former Roman Empire; new patterns of long-distance and regional trade developed centering on the Baltic and the North Sea; and states formed in many regions of Europe. These transformations laid the foundation for the later medieval and modern European worlds.

Pam J. Crabtree