Archaeology, Theory and the Middle Ages: Understanding the Early Medieval Past (review)

Noting that his intention was not to write a work about archaeological theory but rather to address theory in practice, specifically as related to key issues in late antique and early medieval archaeology (3), John Moreland is a man of his word. In a text that is thoroughly informed by archaeological theory yet surprisingly accessible, Moreland juxtaposes historical and archaeological approaches in a refreshing manner that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each field. He has thought at great length about his subject and offers readers a vantage point from which to identify instances in which insufficient self-reflexivity has predisposed scholars to reifying assumptions about the late Roman and early medieval past.

In the first part of the book, Moreland sets out two central and closely related objectives. First, he advocates breaking down disciplinary autonomy to create “thick” descriptions of the period (12), and reintegrating ritual into scholars’ interpretive palette for material evidence. Second, by eliminating anachronistic distinctions created by the modern disciplines of “history” and “archaeology,” he suggests that it is possible to study entire systems of communications rather than incomplete ones broken down by genre. Moreland has confidence that we may see more of the people behind the objects (43–45). Although he acknowledges that the present is the only lens through which we may view the past, and that the situatedness of the scholar in history is undeniable (as he makes clear in his case study of Bradbourne Cross in chapter 8), the past still has relevance even in this imperfect state. Studying it remains for Moreland a meaningful exercise when done within the framework and methods of scientific inquiry. Moreland concludes the book (chapter 9) by making the case that the two epistemologically separate disciplines represent parallel sources of information about the past that are nonetheless absolutely integral to one another.

While the space allotted here is too limited to give in-depth attention to all of the worthy issues raised in the body of this collection, I want to draw attention to some of the more provocative contributions in the volume. Besides offering examples of the benefits to be gained by merging more closely the interpretive paradigms of archaeology and history, an important contribution of the book is to re-couple discussion of gift exchange with the actual discussion of production and consumption (chapter 2). Moreland argues that the concept of ranked spheres of exchanges has enhanced distinctions between what were once related aspects of the economy; his critique of recent interest in gift exchange is that it results in the marginalization of distant societies as non-capitalist and “primitive.” He suggests instead that the categories of gifts and commodities, like identity, were flexible and neither mutually exclusive nor developmentally successive categories. This point is raised again later in the book (chapter 6), in a response to the work of the Dutch archaeologist Frans Theuws, in which he integrates cosmological authentication into a discussion of emporia, a context in which he posits it was possible for exchanges to take place between groups that operated with divergent norms and value systems.

I also found Moreland’s critique of post-Roman “Dark Ages” (chapter 3) very useful; not only does he challenge typical assumptions of decline associated with the Younger Fill (silt found in river valleys of the Mediterranean), but he also seriously discredits depopulation theses popular for the late Roman period on the Italian peninsula by suggesting that archaeologists’ over dependence on evidence of African Red Slipware has led them to posit demographic decline rather than growing inaccessibility of long-distance trade in the period 400–900 CE. He concludes that looking at other types of ceramics may offer a solution, particularly as we now have well-stratified sequences of ceramics in certain parts of Italy like Monte Gelato and San Donato, a subject he takes up in more detail in a subsequent chapter (chapter 4). He applies a similar...