Early Medieval Settlements: The Archaeology of Rural Communities in North-West Europe 400-900 (review)

The five centuries after 400 A.D. are a dark hole in European history, marked by a serious lack of written sources, especially as far as farming communities are concerned. For generations, historians have assumed that subsistence farmers of the time lived in isolated, self-sufficient communities. As Hamerow points out in this well-documented synthesis, such perspectives, which relied a great deal on the writings of the Roman author Tacitus, place rural life on the periphery of history. Farmers only assume the limelight in times of famine or poor harvest. In recent years, archaeology has begun to transform our knowledge of household and community through the excavation of buildings and large portions of individual settlements. Much of this research has resulted from large-scale investigations in advance of industrial development in northern Europe and smaller-scale digs in Britain. To a great extent, the massive excavations on the continent are a product of the sandy soils that make mechanical excavation and the exposure of large areas of post-holed subsoil possible. This is truly history wrought with the spade.

Hamerow brings together a complex patchwork of archaeological evidence from both sides of the North Sea, first describing findings from the continent, then comparing them with what is known from Britain. She undertook this work in the context of her own extensive research at the Mucking Anglo-Saxon settlement in eastern England. In an introductory chapter, she reviews the history of research, including the Dutch archaeologist A.E. van Giffen's pioneering excavations at Ezinge in the northern Netherlands that revealed a village on an artificial mound occupied for more than ten centuries. Today, the emphasis has shifted from excavation to regional surveys that are revealing a far more complex rural landscape than that described by earlier generations.

Five chapters then discuss different aspects of rural society, starting with buildings, houses, and households. Hamerow shows how architectural links across the North Sea weakened during the seventh and eighth centuries while other connections strengthened. "Settlement Structure and Space" discusses the archaeological evidence for defining and regulating space within communities and some of the differences that marked the areas of more important individuals and families.

Hamerow next moves to territorial issues. Archaeology chronicles increasing sophistication in rural life, a sign of the abandonment of tribal ties and an awareness of a wider world. Hamerow describes the intensification of crop and animal husbandry, though, surprisingly, she makes no mention of the new evidence for climatic change from tree rings and other sources that may throw light on changing medieval subsistence-farming practices. An important chapter on trade and exchange reveals a greater complexity of such activities and of nonagricultural production than was hitherto suspected.

Archaeology shows that the so-called "long eighth century" (630 to 830 A.D.) encompassed more profound economic, social, and political change than traditional historical scholarship would have us believe. The amount of adequate data is still small, but a fuller understanding of the intricate dynamics between settlement across the landscape and those of political power during a little-known period of European history does not seem so remote anymore. This short, clearly written book, the first of a series on medieval society, is sometimes heavy on detail, but useful to archaeologists and historians alike.