Week 2: rural world, trade and exchange

• Habitus


  Settlements part of long-term tradition and identity, habit
• Rural settlements were neglected, with primary attention towards early medieval cemeteries
• In the 1960s, the image changed as excavations happened on larger scales
• Village


  Better reserved for period after 1200
• Relation between dwellings and arable fields

  • Live + work together
  • Live apart, work together
  • Live together, work apart
  • Live + work apart
• Medieval settlements dynamics are difficult to fit into traditional historical periods
• Historical periods


  • Merovingian: 450-750
  • Carolingian: 750-900
  • High middle ages: 900-1250
  • Late middle ages: 1250-1500
• Incastellamento


  Nucleated hilltop settlements in Italy and southern France
• 7th/8th century = first occupation (wooden buildings), 10th/11th century = stone fortifications
• Concentration of habitation = nucleated settlement
• La mutation de l'an mil

  Concentration of habitation = 11th - 13th century (nucleated settlement)
• What was in a medieval settlement?

  • Houses
  • Stables
  • Sunken huts
  • Wells (common + hollowed out tree trunks)
  • Ditches
  • Pit
  • Boundaries
• Earth-fast buildings


  Roof-carrying posts, dug in the ground
• Non-earth fast


  13th century on padstones and sills
• Building types


  • Longhouse
  • One aisled
  • Two aisled
  • Three aisled
• Sunken featured building (SFB)

  Pithouse, typical Germanic, evidence from Germany and England
• Functional difference between western and eastern Europe

  • Western Europe: weaving hut, loom weights, disappear in 10th century
  • Eastern Europe: larger than Western, with hearths/oven, dwelling places, slavonic
• Sod walled building


  House with turf walls, only recently discovered in Netherlands but common in Iceland
• France = diverse, earth-fast combined with stone sills, England and central Europe = longhouses and halls developed from 7th century
• Infield-outfield system


  Infield: close to settlement, intensive use, Outfield: further away, extensive use
• Infield-outfield system disappeared in England c. 1700
• Sod-manuring


  Mixing of manure with heath sods which spread over arable fields, started after 1200, led to heightening of fields
• Sod-manuring only in north-western Europe, on Pleistocene sandy soils
• Rural technology developments from c. 900


  • Plough became more common, horse traction, crop rotation, introduction of three field system, reclamations
• Important parts of a plough

  Coulter, share, mouldboard
• Churches on rural settlements rare before 11th century, system of parishes established in 10th-12th century in western Europe and England, 13th century in eastern Europe
• Enclosures of medieval farmsteads sometimes reflected in field boundaries of modern period, settlements from after 1200 often less well-known than before 1200: village formations, non-earth fast buildings hard to find, modern villages make excavations harder
• Objects exchanged in middle ages

  • Barter
  • Tribute
  • Tools
  • Theft and plunder
  • Gift exchange
  • Inheritances
• State controlled supply ended in the Mediterranean, ceramics like amphorae and African Red Slip Ware indicate trade
• African Red Slip Ware disappeared from rural sites in 6th century and major cities in 7th century
• Amphorae


  The shape tells the origin
• Byzantine garrisons were isolated islands supplied by from northern Africa
• In 5th century only small currency bronze, few coins finds from 6th and hardly 7th century, after 1000 minting of bronze coins by Byzantines, most exchanges was barter
• Pirenne-thesis


  Dominant hypothesis for many decades, continuation of trade late antiquity to early middle ages, decline of trade caused by incursions of arabs in 7th century, Europe cut off trade with Mediterranean
• Arab expansion after Mohammed (570-632) in 7th century towards North Africa, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Persia, and Spain
• Precursors of major Mediterranean markets

  • Venice
  • Amalfi
  • Genova
  • Naples
  • Chersons
• Abstract market


  Price mechanism, supply and demand + competition determine price of goods
• Concrete market


  Real market which can be visited
• Valuable goods could travel far through gift exchange and relics
• Quern stones and soapstone were important trade objects in Northern Europe