Dark Age Economics: The Origins of Towns and Trade A.D. 600-1000 [2nd ed.] 0715616668, 9780715616666

Table of contents :
Preface to the second edition vii
Introduction 1
1. The Shadow of Pirenne 6
2. Trading Systems from Theodoric to Charlemagne 29
3. The Emporia 47
4. A Gazetteer of Emporia: in Ottar's Footsteps 66
5. Dark Age Argonauts and their Craft 87
6. The Objects of Trade 104
7. Subsistence Strategies 130
8. Systemic Change: the Ninth Century 151
9. Market Places and Principles 162
10. The Evolution of States 185
Notes 199
References 211
Index 224

Citation preview

Dark Age Economics •t t

r

The origins of towns and trade A.D.600-1000 Second edition

RICHARD HODGES

Duckworth

FORDEBBIE

Contents

Preface to the second edition Introduction This impression 2001 Second edition 1989 First published in 1982 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. 61 Frith Street, London WID 3JL Tel : 020 7434 4242 Fax: 020 7434 4420 Email: [email protected] www .ducknet.co.uk

© 1982, 1989 by Richard Hodges All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

1. The Shadow of Pirenne

vu

1 6

2. Trading Systems from Theodoric to Charlemagne

29

3. The Emporia

47

4. A Gazetteer of Emporia: in Ottar's Footsteps

66

5. Dark Age Argonauts and their Craft

87

6. The Objects of Trade

104

7. Subsistence Strategies

130

8. Systemic Change: the Ninth Century

151

9. Market Places and Principles

162

10. The Evolution of States

185

ISBN 0 7156 1666 8

Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Eastbourne

Notes

199

References

211

Index

224

Illustrations

I. Western Europe, c. BOO 2. Relationship of the Frankish denier to the Arabic dinar 3. Three regional models 4. Distance-decay models 5. Long-distance trade in north-west Europe, c. 490-830 6. Histogram of coins from Dorestad 7. Monastery of Kiltiernan, Co. Galway (aerial view) 8. Section through a sunken hut at Loddekopinge 9. Relief-band amphora 10. Tating ware jug 11. Model of a farmhouse found at Dorestad 12. Reconstruction of a Haithabu house 13. Comparison of emporia I 4. Location of Ipswich 15. Extent of Middle Saxon l pswich 16. Middle Rhenish imported pottery from Dorestad I 7. Wine-barrel re-used as a well-lining from Dorestad I 8. Location of Haithabu 19. Buildings and roads in Haithabu 20. Remains of a metalsmith's house at Helgo 21. Birka (aerial view) 22. Trade competition areas of the Frisians and Franks 23. The Utrecht ship 24. Changing technology in boat-building 25. The Bantry pillar stone 26. Diffusion of coinage 27. Organisation of coin production 28. Primary and secondary sceattas 29. Three early medieval kilns 30. The buddha from Helgo 31. Niedermendig lava quernstones 32. Distribution of Eife1 mountain quernstones 33. Farm-unit in Roman-period Holland 34. Excavations at Chalton, Hampshire (aerial view) 35. Economy of the Irish rath 36. Fauna! assemblage from Dorestad 37. Distribution of clasp buttons from Helgo 38. Ipswich ware vessels 39. Class 3 vessels from Hamwih 40. Estim.ated population of Anglo-Saxon England 4 I . Rankmg of Later Sax on mints 42. Middle Saxon pottery industry 43. Emporia and 'burgs' in northern Flanders 44. Schematic plan ofSouburg 45. Coopers' workshops at Coppergate, York

3 8

17 19 31 41 48

Preface to the Second Edition

51 58 59 61 62 64 71 72 76 76 79 80 83 84 93 96 99

102 106 107

113 119

121

123 125 133 134

137 143 145

146 148

164

167 169

174 175 184

The New Approaches in Archaeology series in which this book first appeared belonged to a spirited period in archaeology heralded by its editor, Colin Renfrew, as the 'Great Awakening'. According to Professor Renfrew there was a 'widespread new awareness of the need to examine more carefully the logical basis for statements made about the past and to examine the nature of the purported explanations put forward to account for the data pertaining to the human past. This was seen as demanding explicit and objective (i.e. interpersonally valid rather than purely individual and hence subjective) procedures of reasoning of the kind already clearly formulated for the natural and, especially, the physical sciences' (Renfrew 1982, 7). My aim in writing Dark Age Economics was to release the archaeology of the Dark Ages from the shadow of history, and in particular to show how anthropological models might suggest new questions to be asked about a critical phase in the creation of the European nation states. It was an ambitious, perhaps over-ambitious, aim. Inevitably parts of the book have become dated, while others retain the heady spirit generated by the teachings of Colin Renfrew and others. The most notable change is that the anthropological theme is now less fashionable. The 'great awakening' has been overtaken by deconstructionist, post-structuralist and postprocessual archaeology. The erosion of the New Archaeology,' claims I an Hodder (1987, ix), 'is a proper part of the maturing of the discipline.' Sadly, however, it seems to have diminished the sense of excitement and enquiry. Paradigmatic pluralism has left archaeology with theorists and practitioners who have precious little contact with each other. Contrary to what many reviewers believed, however, Dark Age vu

viii

Dark Age Economics

Economics is not a straightfo~ward text o~ th~ New Archaeology. It

challenges the ~al~ ecologtc~lly reductwmst perspectives advocated _by the prmCipal Amencan anthropological archaeologists (~f. Bm_for~ 1983, 214~32). Instead it emphasises the individual dimensiOn m the makmg of ~he M!ddle Ages. This, I suspect, caused ~anr Ne~ Archaeologists to Ignore the book, regarding it as too histoncal (1.e. as too closely concerned with individuals and eve~ts). Grenville Astill, on the other hand, in a wide-ranging review (1985), contended that it acted to the detriment of collectives ~nd ot?er groupings in early medieval society. New archaeologiCal evidence tends to confirm Astill's criticisms (cf. Hodges 1989). Then: h~ve been other changes too. Economic anthropology h~s ~ssimilated a good deal from European neo-Marxist histonans (cf. Wolf 1982). This, in turn, has lead to more robust models o~ production and distribution (Hodges 1988a) and co~sumptio~ (Hart 1983; Hodges 1988b). Similarly debates about social evolutiOn have been avoided as anthropologists, traditionally concerned with modern behavioural circumstances, appreciate more an? m?re the historical aspects of the taxonomies they were proposmg m the 50s and 60s (e.g. Wolf 1982; Sahlins 1985). Parts of the first chapter would therefore be harder to write I;tOW. Again, medieval archaeology has begun to lose its innocence. Of course the complaint baldly stated on page 11 that medieval archaeology has become a sterile synthesis can still be heard. But the publication of many excavation reports and the growing number of younger scholars in the discipline have opened up new research directions (e.g. Hooke 1988; Duwel et al 1987; Noye 1988; Randsborg 1989). The 'flood-tide of archaeology', to use Sir Moses Finley's phrase, has swollen further, so that certain details stand in need of revision, even if the book's thesis itself remains tenable. The discovery of the emporia at Quentovic (Hill & Barrett 1989), London (Hobley 1988) and York (Hall 1988), the Six Dials excavations at Southampton (Andrews 1988; Brisbane 1988) and the new evidence for the early history of Ribe in Denmark (Fransen & Jensen 1987) with its implications for Hedeby (cf. Hodg~s ~ 988b) add substantially to the thesis presented a decade ag? .. Similarly the greater understanding of coinage in the period, bnlhantly summarised by Grierson and Blackburn ( 1986) (see also Hendy 1988).' .marks an advance that will eventually lead to a complete revision of some parts of the book. Rural excavations too hav.e added to the picture presented in Chapter 7. Village excavations at Raunds (Northamptonshire) (Foard & Pearson 1985), Kootwyk in the Rhine delta (Heidinga 1987) and Vorbasse

Preface to the second edition

IX

in Jutland (H vass 1981 ), together with landscape analyses such as those of Peter Hayes (1988) and To~ Williamson (1988) i.n East Anglia and Frans Theuws (1986) m the Kempen region of southern Holland, offer a reliable stratigraphic sequence for the countryside which bears comparison with the better-known evidence from the urban settlements. Furthermore the archaeology ofthe monasteries, which was poorly understood ten years ago, has been advanced by the investigations at Mustair (Davis-Weyer 1987), Reichenau (Zettler 1988) and San Vincenzo al Volturno (Hodges 1990). The essence of the book would be destroyed, however, if these new aspects were introduced into the original text (see instead Astill 1985; Hodges 1988b, 1989; Lebecq 1986; Rands.borg 1989; Steuer 1987). Although it was criticised for breaking With the co~­ ventional analysis of the early middle ages, Dark Ag~ Economzcs offers an approach that still has much to commend It. Another decade may pass before a full-scale revision is called for , when the serious transition will be made by a maturing science from the 'great awakening' to a new millennium. R.H.

January 1989 British School at Rome

References Andrews, P. 1988 (ed .) Southampton Finds, Volume 1: The Coins and Pottery from Hamwic, Southampton. As till, G. 1985 Archaeology, economics and early medieval Europe , Oxford journal of Archaeology 4, 215-31 . Binford, L.R. 1983 In Pursuit of the Past, London. Brisbane, M. 1988 Hamwic (Saxon Southampton): an 8th century port and production centre, in R. Hodges & B. Hobley (eds.) The Rebirth of Towns in the West AD 700-1050, C.B.A. Research Report 68 , 101-8, London. Davis-Weyer, C. 1987 Mustair, Milano e I'Italia carolingia, in C. Bertelli (ed.) Milano, una capitate da Ambrogio ai Carolingi, 202-38, Milan. Duwel, K. et al 1987 Untersuchungen zu Handel und Verkehr der vor- und friihgeschichtlichen Zeit in M ittel- und Nordeuropa: Teil IV. Der Handel der . . . Karolinger- und Wikingerzeit, Gottingen. Foard, G. & Pearson, T. 1985 The Raunds area proJect: first mtenm report, Northamptonshire Archaeology 20, 3-21. . . . Fransen, L. & Jensen, S. 1987 Pre-Viking and early V1kmg Age R1be. Excavations at Nikolajgade 8,journal of Danish Archaeology 7, 164-173. Grierson, P. & Blackburn, M. 1986 M edieval European Coinage: Volume 1, The . Early Middle Ages, Cambridge . Hall, R.A. 1988 York 700-1050, in R. Hodges & B. Hobley (eds.) The Rebzrth of Towns in the West AD 700-1050, C.B .A. Research Report 68, 125-32. Hart, K. 1983 On commodities, in E. Goody (ed.) From Craft to industry 38-49, Cambridge.

X

Dark Age Economics

Ha§'~~·-:.. P. 1988 Roman to Saxon in the south Lincolnshire Fens,

Anti(juity 62,

Heidinga, 1987 Medieval Settlement and Economy North of the Lower Rh· A M. 1988 ~r?m public to private: the Western Barbarian ~:·nas::~s a midrrRor o~ the dismt~gration of Late Roman state structures Viator kedieval an enazssance Studzes 19 29-7 8 ' · Hi~ n~:zquz~tyB a rr~tt, Dh. 19~9 preli~inary report on the excavation at Vismarest , .ort commg. ' Hoble~, B. 198~ Saxon London: Lundenwic and Lindenburh· two cities ~e;~~~:~r;Jo ~BR.AHRodges & B. Hobley (eds.) The Rebirth ofTow~s in the West . . . esearch Report 68 69-82 London Hodder, I. 1987 Reading the Past, Cambridg;. ' · Hodges, R. 1988a Primitive and Peasant Markets, Oxford. Hodg~s, ~· E1988b Charlemagne's elephant and the beginnings of commoditisauon m urope, Acta Archaeologica 59 Hodges, R. 1989 The Anglo-Saxon Achievement, London Hodges, R.. 1990 A Dark Age Pompeii: San Vincenzo 1 forthcommg a Volturno, London, Hooke, D. 1988 (ed.) Anglo-Saxon Settlements, Oxford.

Hen~y.

63

A

Hvj~~ia~d.~~;A~~:~~~;~a~~~ 1 J;~;~~-Age

settlement at Vorbasse, central

Lebecq, S. 1986 Dans l'eu~ope du nord des VIle- IXe siecles: commerce frison ou commerce franco-fnson? Annales ESC 41, 361-7. Noye; ?· 1988_ (ed.) Structures de !'habitat et occupation du sol dans les a s meL~'Eiter raFneens:.les methodes et l'apport de l'archeologie extensive Colle~i~n e co e rancazse de Rome I 05. ' Randsborg, K. 1989 First Mi~lenniu"!, .Cambridge. Renfrew, C. 1982 Explanation revisited, in C. Renfrew, M.J. Rowlands & BA S~graves (eds.) Theory and Explanation in Archaeology 5-20 New York · · Sahlms, M. 1985 Islands of Time, Chicago. ' · Steuer, H. 1987 Der H~ndel der Wi.kingerzeit zwischen Nord- und Westeuro a aufgrund archaologischer Zeugmsse, inK. Duwel et al (eds.), Untersuchuni:n ~ xandel und. Verkehr der vor- und friihgeschichtlichen Zeit in Mittel- und or. uropa: Tezl IV. Der Handel der Karolinger- und Wikingerzeit 113-97 Gottmgen. ' ' Theuw~, F. 1986 The integration of the Kempen region into the Frankish . e~pire (550-750): some hypotheses, Helinium 26, 121-36. Wilh~mson, T. 1988 Settlement chronology and regional landsca es: the evidence from the claylands of East Anglia, in D. Hooke (ed ) A ~ -S Settlements,153-75,0xford. · ngo axon Wolf, E.R. 1982 E'l!ro~~ and the People without History, Los Angeles. Zettler, A. 1988 Die fruhen Klosterbauten der Reichenau, Sigmaringen.

d

1

Introduction I hold it perniciously false to teach that all cultural forms are equally probable and that by mere force of will an inspired individual can at any moment alter the trajectory of an entire cultural system in a direction convenient to any philosophy. Convergent and parallel trajectories far outnumber divergent trajectories in cultural evolution. Most people are conformists. History repeats itself in countless acts of individual obedience to cultural rule and pattern, and individual wills seldom prevail in matters requiring alterations of deeply conditioned beliefs and practices. Marvin Harris 1

This book aims to meet an old challenge in new spirit. It begins by disputing the value of archaeology as a source for reconstructing the economy of Dark Age western Europe in the period 600-1000 A.D. Some claim that archaeology provides a new dimension to our understanding of the period, although this perspective is in fact derived from the synthetic framework, and the treatment of that framework, which are wholly the consequence of a new archaeological paradigm known informally as the 'New Archaeology'. The essence of this paradigm is embodied in Harris's thesis conveniently summarised by him in the quotation above. In this book, however, slightly at variance with Harris's beliefs, we shall ultimately attempt to examine the will of great men. and their relationship to the cultural rule. There are two threads: the descriptive theme based on an economic model expounded in Chapter I, and the analytical theme, seeking generalities to amplify and test the model. The area of study is roughly the northern half of France, much of present-day western Germany and the Low Countries, which were to form the Merovingian kingdoms and the later Carolingian Empire. Britain and Ireland and the western Scandinavian countries, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, are also included. However, I must stress that this is a stupendous challenge, if all the inter-disciplinary sources are to be examined, and must therefore make it clear that this book represents no more than a gleaning of sources familiar to the author, primarily in

2

Dark Age Economics

secondary form. I have not written a definitive or comprehensive work but an essay in interpretation. ' One serious problem is that the detail is complex and ranges across disciplines. The arc~aeologist, in particular, needs some simple historical structure from wh1ch to start. For the most part the details can be confined to footnotes, but ~brief introduction will help to set the scene for our future discussions. 2 In_brief, we_are aware of the continued inter-relationship between the provmces, w~1ch for four hundred years were part of the Roman empire, and the Mediterranean world. The migrations into and across Germany and France from the fourth to the sixth century, however, were destined to create a new socio-economic structure. As Tacitus showed in the first century AD., the Germans maintained an entirely different form of society, one effectively determined by chiefdoms. The new settlers did attempt to integrate, not least because the rich web of Roman civilisation was the goal which they had almost certainly intended to achieve. Clovis, in the late fifth century, established a new civilisation but its substan~e was slight. Successive Merovingian kings, wh~ commanded reg1ons of the continent, were internally divided; and under only a f~w leaders, notably Dagobert in the seventh century, did they even begm to emulate the socio-economic institutions they had sought to conquer. The transference from a Roman-dominated landscape to a landscape in which Germans were integrated with native populations was effected with the aid of continued Mediterranean contact. The Roman empire survived in powerful form in the east, in Constantinople. Yet this Byzantine power, which under the great emiX:ror Justinian was briefly t_o regain most ofNorth Africa and Italy in the sixth century, was short-hved. The rise of the Arabic civilisation during the course of the seventh century presented a massive buffer to the ambitions of the later Byzantine dynasty, which itself was frequently subject to internal fission. Byzantium, the inheritor of Rome's imperial ambitions, cannot be said to have disappeared; but it was a primary state on the far corner of the European world, and the subject, it appears, of pilgrimages rather than of fluid contact. It did, however, preserve the idea of imperialism, a notion which was almost certainly a strong influence, for example, on Charlemagne. Carolingia emerged as a new polity, comprising those parts of the Merovingian empire which had been only loosely fastened together (Fig. I). The structure had been slowly created by a series of powerful warrior-kings: Charles Martel, Pepin Ill and Charlemagne, who in the eighth century resisted the invasions of France by the Arabs and then began to extend their frontiers both to the north and to the south. When Charlemagne was crowned emperor in 800, he was emulating the achievements of the Romans, and he believed that he had restored western Europe to its proper course. But even before he died, in 814,

Introduction

3

Figure 1 Map of western Europe c. A. D. 800, showing the extent of Carolingia.

there were political rifts which showe? that his a_chievement was temporary. Louis, his son, maintained h1s po':"er unt1l abo~t 830, but after that no single king was to control the emp1re. The remamder of the ninth century witnessed the fragmentation of the regions that had been bonded together, and only in the tenth century did the powerful states emerge which encompassed much of present-day West Germany and France. In the central decades of the tenth century the German state under the command of a new emperor, Otto the Great, reasserted a European command akin to Charlemagne's, but Otto's Renovatio Imperii was based on a vastly reorganised society and lasted longer. Anglo-Saxon England developed from a patchwork of tribal units founded by migrants who crossed the North Sea between the fourth and early sixth century. They had vanquished a similar patchwork of s~b­ Roman units whose most illustrious leader had been the legendary kmg ' certain of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had begun to gro~ Arthur. By 600 and were establishing the trade-links to Merovingia, as we shall see m Chapter 2. These were perhaps encouraged by St. Augustine's Christian

4

Dark Age Economics

mission to England, which had arrived in 597 and by the early eighth century had brought the. entire community into the Christian orbit. Bede has f~rtunately provided us with a detailed account of the seventh and early eighth centuries which, with the later Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the first laws and charters, documents the rise first ofKent and the~ of East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. By the eighth c~ntury the nub of power in central England was in the Mercian kmgdom, whe.re one powerful king, Aetheibald, in 757 left a great asce~~ailt terntory to an equally aggressive chieftain, king Offa. Offa am~Itlously sought. the grandeur which he knew that Charlemagne had achie~ed! and aspired, to c~nnect his family through marriage to the Carohngians. B~t Offa s achievement scarcely survived his death in 796 th~ugh paradoxically he provided the institutional platform on which~ senes of West Saxon ki~gs, including Egbert, Aethelwulf and Alfred, we~e to construct a nation. The West Saxons were the dynasty which u!ttmately ~temmed the incessant tide of Viking attacks that so dtsrupted moth-century England; and after 878, under king Alfred, th~y were to rec~nquer the lands - the Danelaw - ceded to the Viking mi~ants. Al~red s greatness was in part that he bequeathed a strong terntory to hts son Edward the Elder, who with his own son Athelstan forged the English nation. In 954, the Viking king Eric Bloodaxe deserted York, thus leaving a nation in the control of the West Saxon dynasty. England during this period generated great wealth, and this was to be the target of a second series of Viking raids which coloured the reign of Ethelred the U nready in the late tenth century and the first two decades of the eleventh. By contrast, for much of this time the history of the North Sea littoral and Scand!navia is obscure .. T~e Frisian archipelago was quite different topographtcaJJy from what It IS now. In the Roman period it had been de~sely populated, as it was to be again during the early medieval penod as th~ ~ounded settlements of the period, the terps, indicate. 3 The ~erovmgians annexed it in the seventh century, though they consohda~ed their conquest only after 719, as we shall see in Chapter 5. Much of Its northern extent ':"as t~e.n broug~t within the Carolingian C~a~lem~gne, and this pohti~al dommance was reinforced by fold Enghsh miSSionanes who had been active throughout the eighth century to the north of the Rhine. 4 ~enr,nark, however, remained defiantly outside this world. Like Fnsia, It had experienced major migrations from the fourth to the sixth century, and its depopulated communities had gradually adapted to a restructur~d framework. Wh~n we firs! view Denmark it is through the eyes of a moth-century Fran~Ish chr~mder. The nation is loosely joined ~ogether under the leadership of a kmg Godfred in part to counter the I~perial ambitions of Charlemagne. Godfred's rule was short-lived and hts successors pursued a vicissitudinous policy of negotiation and' raid

?Y

Introduction

5

with Carolingia over the following half-century. This enabled the missions to penetrate the Baltic countries, and Ansgar's biographer, Rimbert treats us to a brief account of his ninth-century travels from Denmark to central Sweden. In their footsteps passed Ottar, a Norwegian fur-trader, and Wulfstan, an. Englishr_nan, both of wh~m visited the court of king Alfred and told him of their adventures, which he recorded. The history of the early tenth century is vague. A Swedish dynasty may have exerted some control over sou.t hem Jut~and, as for a seco!"d time the Viking communities engaged m long-distance contact with Byzantium and Asia Minor. The end of this contact w~s to be the stimulus in part for Harald Bluetooth and OlafTryggvason m Denmark and Norway to instigate the formation of states. Harald's son Sv~in Forkbeard, with Olaf, also pirated silver from England to estabhsh communities which, by the ele~enth century, brought pe~ce to a people . traditionally infamous for their ravages of other countnes. Ireland was a country with a rich historical and archaeological heritage. The early acceptance of Christianity, tho~gh in a ~o?TI that was consistent with an Iron Age culture, has thrown hght on this Isolated Celtic community. Its lists of kings are adequately documented, and .its own fate at the hands of the Vikings during the ninth and tenth centunes is equally well established. Few ~Teat kings were. to emerge before the later tenth century, and no pohty was to persist before the AngloNormans invaded the island in 1169 and discovered traditions that dated back to the first millennium B.C. Yet Ireland underwent a cultural flowering in the seventh century, when its churchmen were the pride of Europe and monasteries were ~s~~blished on th~ C_?~ti~ent and on rocky Scottish islands. Its art was CIVIlised, but the civihsatiOn soon proved abortive, as we shall see in Chapter 10. . This is the very barest outline of the European commumty through four hundred years- years which have largely determined the .landscape we now see. The Dark Ages are traditionally the bleak penod after a civilisation. But we can claim that there was no air of destitution in early medieval Europe, with the possible exception of the Merovingia.n period. 5 The collapse of the Roman civilisation may well. be a clas~tc systems collapse - a consequence of ecological, demographi~ and soc_1al stress 6 - yet the invading communities were destined to rebmld the rums that were left. The immediate interest is that they undertook the reconstruction on their own terms, thus giving the medieval world a different cultural character from the Roman one. But they also conformed to processes which are embodied .in tr~ectories found throughout history, throughout the w?rld. Thei~ achievement was a socio-economic structure that has persisted to this day.

The Shadow of Pirenne

7

The essence of Pirenne's ideas was published in his Princeton lectures, Medieval Cities, and subsequently in a longer volume issued posthumously, fittingly entitled Mohammed and Charlemagne. Pirenne's great

Chapter 1

THE SHADOW OF PIRENNE

Gre~ ~chohlarsll' lfcike other great men, cast long shadows, Pirenne held the

wor

m t ra

or half a century.

A R. Bridbury 1

T?e

greatest and most awful scene in the history of man accordin t 0 Gibbon, was the decline and fall of the Roman Empire' G'bb g fascinated b th 1 d · b · I on was {; . Y e sow an mexora le decay of the rich fabric that w or him the essence of civilisation. The barbarians moreover as unleashed to create a new Europe. One crucial elem;nt in this ci~i~~;~ who~ld had bee~ the markets which the imperial legions established in t eir new colomes. For whatever view we take of the pre Ro b · · · h · . - man ur an ms~Ituyons t at exist~d ~ north-west Europe, we cannot deny that the u?IqUitou~ market prmciple was a force planned by the Romans in their bid to articulate the Iron Age economies on a new scale Th k b h h' · · e mar ets were ot sop Istlcated and highly vulnerable and when th 1 · teparted to Italy and the civilisation crumbled 'they met a pr:di~f~~7: ate. The economy ~fpost-Roi?an north-west Europe quite simply had to adapt to new socio-economic forces. T~e decli~e o~ the Roman institutional fabric and the emer ence of me~Ieva~ society IS a phenomenon that has long engaged the ima:ination of his~onans. Perhaps the fi.rst major treatise on the subject was b the Austnan professor Dopsch m the early years of this cent B .Y the great Bel · h' · H ury. ut It was . gian. Istnan enri Pirenne who galvanised the interests of most medieval histonans on the question Pirenne's bio h that as e 1 1910 h . . · grap er asserts £ ar Y as e was ralSlng the issues that have made h · amou~,. n~mely the nature of the imperial decline and the nort~~ r~concil~ation ~o the cessatio? of contact with the Mediterranean world. Pirenne s thesis was as radical as the one propounded b h' contem B .I M . y IS nearolo porary roms aw alinowski in the field of economic anthrop gy .(se~ belc;>w). In both areas of research the significance of e~on~mtcs m social contexts was being formally recognised for the first time.

studies were concerned with the Merovingian and Carolingian empires and the economic trends that determined the half-millennium after the decay of Roman civilisation. Pirenne argued that the Roman economic institutions were largely maintained until the seventh century. It was the impact oflslam on the Mediterranean in the course of that century that destroyed north-west Europe's connections with the Mediterranean world. The Merovingian courts were cut off from their gold supplies in Africa and were compelled to accommodate a new economy- one which was primarily self-sufficient or natural, and in which the small part played by commerce was articulated by a modest silver currency. Pirenne believed that this world operated most successfully under the emperor Charlemagne in the last decades of the eighth and the first fourteen years of the ninth century. Yet Charlemagne's policies were cast in a mould determined by Mohammed. It was the ultimate wave of migrations from the north and east that proved to be the catalysts of change and that were instrumental in the emergence of a new urban society, the impact of which can only be compared perhaps with the industrial revolution nine hundred years later. This thesis is one of the most celebrated in the annals ofhistoriography, and its importance can be judged by the economic literature it has stimulated. 3 Fifty years later, it has been pointed out, historians are still arguing in Pirenne's terms.• One obvious reason is that the documentation central to his model is limited and, to some extent, ambivalent. Thus the same detail has been used to support, modify and attack the argument. During the 1930s the debate took a new direction. Pirenne was interested in coins, as a result of his friendship with Prou, the doyen of Merovingian numismatics. 5 But it was Sture Bolin who first mobilised the massive amount of numismatic data to examine the questions posed by Pirenne and his critics. Bolin's thesis itself was not widely disseminated, but the papers he derived from it have been influential. Moreover besides advocating coins as a major source material, he drew attention to Scandinavia, beyond the boundaries of Carolingia, and to its extensive trade contacts established by the ninth century. 6 The history of coinage is abundantly rich in source material- coins and coin-hoards by the thousand . . . It may therefore appear that an examination of the hoards from Carolingian times will show fairly directly how close the connexions were between the Frankish and Arab worlds and whether trade within the Frankish Empire increased or declined ... by studying the composition of the coin-hoards found in western Europe and the radius of circulation of the coins, it would seem possible to determine the main lines of the development of internal trade. 7

8

The Shadow of Pirenne

Dark Age Economics

Bolin wa_s concerned to demonstrate that 'one may reiterate Pirenne's par~dox wttho~t ~oh~m~~d, no Charlemagne, but in disagreement, not m accord with hts VI_ews . H~ showed how the design, the weight and th~ value of the F~ankish denarzus was dominated by the Islamic silver comage of the penod, and concluded that Carolingia followed rather than shunne~, Moh~mm~d. Bolin's famous graph sought to p;ove his fine metrological pomt .(Ftg. 2), and he soon gained adherents from the Gram

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925

9500:1

A.D. F tgure 2 The relationship of the Frankish denier to the Arabic dinar The chan ·

' h ' ts 'h gmg tof h t ed emer s own as a dotted line and that of the dinar as a· solid line (after

wet~

Bohn)

ranks _ofhistori~ns in~erested in the debate. Karl Morrison, however, an Amer~c~n numismatist, has taken a view almost diametrically opposed t Bolm_ sand or~e that supported P_irenn~'s c~itics also. 'Concerning the ct~culatiOn of com? there Is no numtsmattc evidence of extensive contact With peo~les outside the Carolingian empire; there is no support for theses whtch allege preponderent Arab influence on the Carolingian On ~he ?t~er hand, the evidence clearly suggests free crrc:!lat10n ?f com wtthm the dosed ~ommercial structure of the empire Mornson asser~s that the com alloy changes during the ninth centu~ were de~e~med n_ot the Arab revisions to their metrology but. by mternal ci;tii wars wtthm the Carolingian empire. Furthermore, whtle there are literally thousands of Arabic coins from Scandinavia very few have _be~n found in Carolingia. (Morrison notes in this respect that the Carohngtans t~nded to ~~It down foreign currency, but he fails to. ~raw proper attention to this Important fact in the context of his cnt1que of Bolin. It is a significant flaw in his paper.) e~onomy.

?Y

9

Morrison's views on the circulation of coins within the empire have recently been elaborated by D. M. Metcalf in a series of pape_rs. In . t IO particular, Metcalfsought to quanti'fy t he cams exta~t at any on~ tme. The attempt was laudable, but his method remams contentious. In essence he calculated the number of coins that might theoretically be minted' by each of the mint-dies ~ecorded. Th~ qua?tity per mi~t was comage: arrived at by using a formula devised for Enghsh Elizabethan 11 the estimation was based on the maximum use of each die. The very considerable numbers of coins, running into many millions, both for Anglo-Saxon and for Carolingian coinage have been_us~d by ~etcalfto illustrate the prosperity of north-west Europe at thts time. Hts papers have provoked a sharp resPnse from Phi~ip Griersn who, like Marc Bloch before him was at pams to emphasise the social rather than the2 economic import~nce of coinage during the e~ghth and ~inth c~nturies ..I Grierson proposed much lower fig~res, wht~h are bnefly dtcussed m Chapter 6. His study was part of his extenstve work on the ~ature of trade and exchange in the Dark Ages. The celebrated paper deh;t~red to the Royal Historical Society, 'Comm_e~ce in the l_)ar~ Ag~;: a cntiq~e of the evidence', is perhaps his most ongmal c?ntnbuuon. It effect~vely introduced the growing literature of economic ant?ropology to medieval history. In particular, Grier~on w~s profoundly mfluenced by Marcel Mauss's Essai sur le don, pubhshed m 1925, and he was l_ate~ to b~ much interested by Malinowski's Argonauts• of the Western14 Pacific G. m ,which the first major account of the Kula rmg appears. . nerso~ s was an attempt to move attention away from. the ~eemmgly msuperable problems raised by Pirenne towards consideratiOn of t~e character ?f exchange. He chose to emphasise the importanc_e of gift-exchange m particular, diminishing the role of other mechamsms. . . In the last ten years the main issues of the debate raised by Pirenne have seldom been examined. An area of common consent may hav_e been formed. If such a consent exists in our history faculties, it IS probably at variance with the views of Pirenne, ~li~ an~ perhaps even Grierson. In fact it might be argued that most htstonans m recent years have avoided the issue where possible. 15 This attitude can hardly be applauded, for the sources available to the historian, commanding the 'mansion of history', are growing greater. It was Grierson, somewhat of a revolutionary in his field, who wrote: 'It has been said that the spade cannot lie, but it owes this merit in part to the fact that it cannot speak.' 16 Such powerful condemn~tion. of archaeology in the contex_t of Dark Age trad~ -a most obsc~re htstoncal problem, to paraphrase S1r Frank Stenton- IS more than. a httle rem~rk­ able. Yet a dutiful silence was observed by archaeologists at the time. The silence needs to be briefly appraised, for it is symptomatic of the condition of medieval archaeology. Perhaps the youth of the discipline deterred its exponents from replying to Grierson; perhaps many of them believed the statement to be a harsh but realistic one. After the death of

10

Dark Age Economics

Gordo~ Childe in 1957 British archaeology tended towards a state of theoretical apathy. Release from this condition, as we shall outline belo~, was not apparent until the late nineteen-sixties. Yet the fo~~Ida.ble record o.f archaeological research into trade and urban on?ms m ~arly me?Ieval Europe was well established when Grierson dehvered his paper m 1958. Such silence, it may be concluded is witness to the role that. me?i.eval archae?logists believed their disci~line must adopt -: as the Illegitimate offspnng of Prehistory and History. As ~~renne ~cknowled~ed,. the impressive grave groups dating from the VIkmg penod from Birka m central Sweden shed considerable light on Dark Age trade. H. Stolpe excavated these between 1871 and 1895 though it was not until 1940 that the finds were published by Arbman. I7 Indeed they were to. fi~d a ce?tral place in Arbman's great synthesis, Schweden und das karolzngzsche Rezch, published in 1937 which was much concerned ~ith Baltic trade. IB Yet by this time a nurr:ber of excavations of the emporza referred to by the medieval monkish chroniclers were in progress, or had even been completed. Holwerda had undertaken extensive excavations at Dorestad soon after the First World War-I9 the results, quickly published, were impressive. So were the res~lts of Ja?kuh?'s first campaign at Haithabu, one of a series of settlements of this penod ~xcavated by the Ger:mans i? the 1930s, who were among the f~w _to consider the arc?aeological evidence for urban origins and its significance for long-diStance trade. 20 Blindheim has written that excavations at Skirringssa~ (Kaupang) in Norway, were seriously contemplated as early as this, so that some comparison might be made b~~ween a Norwegian and ajutish _site of the sameperiod: sites allegedly VISlted by Ottar, the renowned nmth-century VISitor to king Alfred's court. The excavations at Kaupang, however, were not begun until the 1~50s, though the finds from the associated cemeteries, excavated in the nmet:ent? century, had by then been subjected to a preliminary exammat1on. 2 I 1':1 England the enormous urban destruction caused by bombing

d~nng t~e Second World War provided an opportunity to explore hitherto. Im~enetra~le areas of our past. Besides the well-publicised

excavatiOns m the City of London, there were those in a slum suburb of

~outhampton. 0. G. S. Crawford drew attention to the likelihood of an Important Saxon predecessor of the medieval town in the area of St Mary's, a district to the east of Southampton and on the banks of th~ R_iver ltchen. Evidence of_ such a si~e had been found during the mneteenth ce?tury when bnck-e~rth diggers, operating behind some of the houses, discovered Saxon cams. 22 Excavations from 1946 onwards reveale? th_e rich pits whi~h were dated to the eighth century and later and which Illustr~ted. considerable trading connections (see Chapter4). Perhaps the real sigmficance of this discovery is the slowness with which the data came to be integrated into the literature of the time Only Gerald Dunning apparently was in command of this newly foun.d data

The Shadow of Pirenne

11

and its implications, and it was in the Festschrift for E. T. Leeds, Dark Age Britain, that he first discussed the trade ro~tes of th~ later Saxon period. 23 His revision of this thesis for the Norwich sym~smm on An~lo­ Saxon pottery in 1958 was an invaluable paper that laid the foundation for new data accumulated over the next decade. 24 In fact the 1950s saw considerable advances in the field of Dark A~e trade in archaeology, and not only in north-western Europe. In Russia excavations on a mighty scale were taking place at Novgorod to investigate the origins of the Rus. E~cavations at Kaupang and Helgo were begun in the 1950s, and at Haithabu were s_oon to. be resumed on an even larger scale. Cumulatively the ~rchaeok~gical evtdence for trade was substantial when Grierson read hts paper m 1958. Since then much has happened. To quote Mart~n Biddle: 'In_ t_he second half of the 'sixties urban sites became a maJor field of Bnush archaeological activity and a good deal of this effort h~ been di~ected to pre-Conquest problems. '~ 5 Indeed, as we shall discu~s, this was a significant period for archaeology generally: _one that ~1tnessed a new theoretical paradigm. Yet few can den~ th_e shghtly ~tenle. nature ~f the synthesis in medieval archaeology at this ttme - a pomt raised by B1ddle • • in his recent appraisal of the Anglo-Saxon town. 26 Medieval archaeology has been too much concerned with Its role. as an appendage to 'history' and too little with its role in archaeology. Like Classical archaeology it has been left stranded, most often. Il_lerely illustrating the facts. Too much emph~sis has been placed on artistic and architectural questions, and in certam cases there has been ~n exaggerated interest in topography. Moses Finley has summ.ed up tht.s m~tually acceptable belief: 'It is self-evident that the potential contnb~tlon (of archaeology) to history is, in a rough way, mversely proportionate to the quantity of the available written sources. ' 27 This in one sense is a truism. Yet archaeology and documentary history draw on very different sources, and it can justifiably be argued that arc?a~ology has a more explicit role in well-documented contexts. Th1s m no way diminishes its potential contribution, however, and could well serve to underline its importance. The failure to understand this relationship has, of course, e':llarg~d.the gulf between the two areas of research, and as a result there IS a d1stmct danger of medieval archaeology becoming an academic ba~kwater as the humanities seek to be more scientific. In the reconstructiOn of past behaviour patterns, the fields of an~hropology and geography. have an enormous contribution to make to h1stoncal archaeology and vice versa. Yet there has been an intense shyness and a strong concern to up~10ld .the good traditions based on observational values. A new htstoncal paradigm is long overdue, and its creation may b~ accelerated by references to the theoretical concepts that archaeologists, anthropologists and geographers have been sharing. . Before discussing some of these theoretical concepts it is appropnate to

12

Dark Age Economics

emphasise briefly the evolution of archaeolo ' . past decade the discipline has moved fi I gy s ne~ par~digm. In the Illustrator of facts and has ac u. d ~ y a~ay rom Its role as an literature. Indeed its concer:! t:e a~ ~mresstve body of theoretical disciplinary means has grown centexf au~ uman. processes by interB T · ra to Its pursuit foll:~~:e ngger has summarised this archaeolo~ical revolution as Not long ago the theoretical literature in h . excavation techniques and the proce . arc ;eo1ogy deal~ mamly with recent years, the successful real' . ssmg o archaeological data. In Isatmn of many of th .. . . o b~ectJVes, plus a rapidly increasing co fd ese e'?pincal younger generation . . . to investi ate rpus o ata, have motivated a are involved in the explanation olth dmore cdarefully the problems that e ata an the study of h· · general. (They) are attempting (a) to inv . h pre Istory m of prehistoric archaeology (b) to fi e~ugate t . e theoretical structure interpretation of archaeol~gical da~;n(u)a~e a .ngorous canon for the analysis. 28 ' c o pioneer new methods of

The primary thrust of this 'new arch I 'h ae;? ogy as been the search 'for scientific achievement'· a deep . · concern 10r expla t · · , David Clarke has termed this a 'I f. na ,IOn m ~an s past. coincides with a eater em h . oss o mn.ocence ' and It certainly archaeolo Th 1~60 p asis on the Inter-disciplinary role of to archaeSo~istsein th: g:~~g!~~;~~ol~~~~ in scientific aids available ~uter revolution, when an ~rchaeolo eist s were the er~ of the comn_gorously than was hitherto possibleg Thcoul~ analyse his data more vided the means by which human la . ese evel~pm.ents have proformulated draw•"ng on th . 'I fiws and generalisatiOns have been ' e Simi ar ervo f · · · anthropology and geography as 11 fubr. o activity m the fields of · . , we as o 10logy and b M arvm Harris's quotation at th b . . cy ernetics (cf. Th. ' e egmnmg of the Preface) 29 Is new archaeology' has been forged in the hi hi c. .. anthropology departments of the U.S.A .g y ompet~tiVe archaeology faculty in England Le . B..' ;s wdehll as m the Cambndge · wis Inior as been the h f . t he A mencan cause to the effect that ' h . prop et o is nothing' and that' we should be 'th. 'i:'·c ae~Iogy IS anthropology or it cultural systems'. 'As archaeolo ists :t~nt o ou~ data in terms of total history as our "Iabo t " g ' t e entire span of culture and ra ory , we cannot afford t0 k h · heads buried in the sand •3o I C b 'd . eep our t eoretical compendium Analytical Archae~lo a~:Sii ge It was Da~id Clar~e'.s great empirical discipline', that initi~d gned to se~e an ~ndiS~Iplined studies, it bridged the past and th new paradtgm. Like Bmford's outdated. In particular Clarke's utu~e ~~? wa~ consequently soon on entities has perhap~ been over~:;;~Jca Jscusston ?f mo_dels based th by ~he Amenc~n mterest in processes ofhuman behaviour N tme~ican archaeologists are ·se:.;rng et~w~~d:r~!:~~ ~~mg, as Anglorom Ideas to facts or observations and in turn h w ohne moves ' , owonemayt enrelate

t: t

The Shadow of Pirenne

13

the empirical findings back to ideas in an evaluative manner'. 31 The archaeological laboratory has also seen a revolution. Urban and rural redevelopment in western Europe, as well as in the U.S.A., have provided the impetus for field-work on an enormous and diverse scale. The growth in numbers both of archaeologists and of the projects in which they are involved has meant a rapid escalation·ofthe literature. In north-west Europe this research has been at its greatest, of course, in the matter of urban origins and development. It is high time that the questions raised by Pirenne should be examined, not only in the light of this new information, but also in terms appropriate to a discipline that can no longer be accused of finding explanation impossible. Let us now consider the models of trade and exchange that have been adopted by archaeologists in the past decade. After this we must examine briefly what is meant by urbanism, and finally we shall allude to the social implications of trade and urbanism, which will be the subject also of the final chapter.

Trade and exchange models Trade and exchange have become one of the principal research areas in contemporary archaeology. The objects of trade are often found, and by the use of modern characterisation techniques their point of origin can be traced. Moreover quantitative methods developed by geographers and, to a lesser extent, by anthropologists permit generalisations about the distribution patterns of traded commodities. Trade also implies organisation, which necessarily regulates 'human activities both in terms of procurement (movement of goods including raw materials) and of social relations (human encounters with exchange of information and goods)'. 32 It can be argued that the degree of organisation may be understood in the light of the exchange pattern within that society. Little discussion of primitive economics had taken place before Malinowski visited the Trobriand Islands during the First World War. In Argonauts of the Western Pacific he described the Kula Ring, a cyclical exchange network that operated in these islands, and discussed the economic, and to a lesser extent the social, implications of this famous system. 33 Soon after the publication of this case study came Marcel Mauss's Essai sur le don, in which this exchange mechanism was discussed in cross-cultural terms using data gleaned from ancient and medieval history as well as anthropology. The importance of these books lay in their successful propagation of the need for scientific examination of primitive economics, which had hitherto been the subject of 'bourgeois ethnocentrism'. 34 Just as Pirenne has been attacked by fellow medieval historians, so the school initiated by Malinowski has come under fire from anthropologists. As a result two camps of economic anthropology have emerged. The camp directly influenced by, among others, Malinowski and Mauss,

14

known as the substantivists, firmly believes that modern economic theory is inappropriate to the study of primitive exchange systems. Consequently the substantivists have formulated a conceptual framework with its own terminology for use in these circumstances. The opposing camp, known as the formalists, guided by the tenor of modern economics, believe that the primitive economy is only a less complex system and is thus as valuably analysed by the methods of contemporary mirco-economics. They maintain that the substantivists have a nineteenth-century impression of the noble savage, while the substantivists counter by pointing out the impossibility of reckoning supply and demand curves when social values are so powerfully embedded in the exchange system. The debate has real implications for archaeologists and historians, who have largely followed the substantivists. In the words of Marshall Sahlins, 'no ground for happy academic conclusion that the answer lies somewhere in between' seems to exist. 35 The substantivist case is most clearly illustrated by the work of Karl Polanyi, the doyen of this thesis, by Marshall Sahlins whose Stone Age Economics in particular has been of central importance in recent archaeo. Jgical discussions of primitive exchange, and by George Dalton who has furthered the anthropological analysis ofexchange in complex societies. 36 The work of these three scholars is the foundation stone of this book though, as we shall see, more recent explicitly archaeological studies of exchange networks are also important. Polanyi wrote a series of seminal papers on the subject, the most eminent of which was 'The economy as instituted process'. Here he presented his substantive definitions of the terms economic, external trade, money and markets. These he contrasted with the economy of industrial contexts. In a famous statement he characterised the three different means of moving cultural items: 'Reciprocity denotes movements between correlative points of symmetrical groupings: redistribution designates appropriational movements towards the centre and out again: exchange refers to vice-versa movements taking place between "hands" under a market system. ' 37 This threefold typology has been revised in subsequent decades, but it remains the core of substantivist economics. Marshall Sahlins has discussed the nature of reciprocity as the distance between kin increases. In the sectors he has defined lies the Domestic Mode of Production. In particular he terms the household level of exchange/transfer as generalised reciprocity, the lineage and village sectors as balanced reciprocity and the tribal/inter-tribal exchange sectors as negative reciprocity. 38 Neil Smelsner qualified Polanyi's definition of redistribution, interposing what he termed a mobilisation economy between redistribution and market exchange. This he believed was a system that utilised redistribution to further the ends of its elite only; in effect it is a stratified redistributive system. 39 Recently Timothy Earle has reappraised the

15

The Shadow of Pirenne

Dark Age Economics

t of redistribution and defined a four-part typology which we concep d . h. book 40 It is schematically defined as follows: have use m t ts · Redistribution

~h

. . Levellmg mec amsms

I

In~ani•m• \ Householding

1

Share-out Mobilisation

Earle argues that the levelling mechanisms, lsu:h as ~sseml~~i~; r:!~tt~~~ fi 1 d on counteract the accumu atlOn o wea unera .s an. s~ont~asts with the other three parts of his typology. ~~~~~ho~~~~g share-out and mobilisation are aspects of prhoductl~~ andf . . . '. h" h up Householding relates to t e poo mg o dlstnb~uon wit m t de ·gr~he ~ uivalent of Sahlin's domestic mode. of domestl~ produce an t ~~s the ~llocation of goods from co-operative production. Share-ou Mobilisation is the recruitment of goods and labo·~:ssf~~~h~sb~~~A~· of an elite stratum. T~e d~v~lopment of chie[dom

~~~~~~~~1~~~ tt;:~~;~i~;:ti:!~~tt~~~~;~e:;~i·~;:~~~~=~co:;~la~r~~

I i

I

wealth. e Dalton with Bohannan, has elaborated Polany~'s b~ief Georg . itive markets. In their edited volume Marke~s zn .Afn_ca, rBefehrences to:;•;alton establish the distinction between the mstltuuon o annan a . 1 f k t hangeof the market place and the princ•p e o mar e exc . The market place is a specific site where a grou~ of~uye7 a~d a ~r~up of ellers meet The market principle is the determmauon o pn~es Xorces ~f supply a~d demand regardless of the site of the transactions.

They then establish the existence of three societies in which the principle exists: (1) Societies which lack market places, and in which the market

principle if it appears, is but weakly represen~ed; h . . t" f the . '. .h . heral markets - that IS, t e msutu mn o (2) socteues w1t penp h k · "pie does not determine l · nt but t e mar et pnnc1 "::ar:i~~ti~~~~ ;~:sr~~nce or the allocation of land and Ia?our resou~ces; ~ societies dominated by the market principle and the pnce mechamsm.

(3

These studies have proved a powerful

as~~ssmen:hof ~::u~;~~l~~kets.

G.D;,intk~~~elr:~~ t~::~;f;,e ;~~~~:~ ~e~~~arc~y of five orders of

17

Dark Age Economics

The Shadow of Pirenne

markets in China. 42 At the lowest level lies the minor or incipient sta~dard market, a green vegetable market which specialises in 'the hon.zontal exc~ange of peasant produced goods' and handles virtually no Imported Items. Next comes the standard market which is the starti.ng-poi~t for the upward flow of agricultural ~oods and the termmal pomt for the downward flow of imports. Next is the intermediate market - an institution that functions in between the standard and centr~l market. The central market lies strategically on the transportation networks and possesses an important wholesaling f~nction. Final!y t?ere is the re~ional market at the apex of the hierarchy, dommatmg the marketmg of a vast area. At the same time geographers in Africa emphasised the significance of the periodic market, as well as the rings of week-day markets. Markets and fairs have been viewed as instrumental in establishing a hierarchical system of markets of the kind recognised by Skinner. B. W. Hodder has argued that the periodic markets in the Y oruba country of west Africa are effective for selling .locally produced goods into the distributive network. 43 These function as green vegetable markets with the intention of concentrating both sellers and buyers, notably outside the house or palace of the first or most powerful ruler of a settlement. Only now are ~hese periodic markets being replaced by daily ones, as market intensity m creases. Car~! Smith, in an important recent study, has attempted to survey the regiOnal character of these different modes of distribution. 44 She also tries to account for the fact that modes of production vary more than modes of social stratification. She argues that one should be able to predict the spatial distribution of the elite from the organisation and spatial extension of the distributional system. She therefore constructs a typology of different distribution systems which we have summarised in Fig. 3. Her spatial patterns can be summarised as follows:

(elf) Interlocking central-place system, fully commercialised competitive market.

16

(a) An extended network system where exchange is direct and wholly uncommercialised in usually independent tribal societies. (b) A bounded system where exchange is direct and uncommercialised in feudal or chiefdom contexts, and where a few scarce resources exist. (c) A solar central-place system where partially commercialised exchange operates through an administered market: usually in incipient states or empires where these centres are principally bureaucratic nodes. (d) A dendritic central-place system in which there is a partially commercialised though monopolistic market which usually exists on the periphery of a modern economic system. In this there exists high stress because of limited internal specialisation.

Several recent authors have drawn attention to these concepts in the early medieval period, and there. ~an be little doubt that they have considerable value. 45 The dendnt1c central-place system, the solar central-place system and competitive markets are terms which abound in this book, for Smith's typology is an underlying framework for our interpretation. Yet we have also been forced to modify some of her conclusions. The market forces in the dendritic and solar central-place systems are apparent with some qualification, as we shal_l demonstrat~ in Chapte~ 3. Furthermore, there is good ground for refinmg her colomal perspecu~e of the dendritic central-place system, for this is clearly generated m circumstances where primary states are attempting to acquire scar.ce commodities from satellite areas. However, only the level of social organisation in both areas will d~termine whether t~a?ers from. the satellite territory, as its monopolistic market and dendnt1c ~roductiOn­ distribution system increases in scale, also travel to the pnmary one.

b

Figure 3 Three of the regional models proposed by Carol Smith: (a) a dendritic central,place model; (b) a sol~r central-place model; (c) an interlocking central-place system

All these are the descriptive models of distribution. The movement from one system to another has been largely determined as a case of gaining control over resources. 46 This, according to Hodder, appears to have occurred either as a response to the need for local exchange when the division of labour had attained a critical role in society, thus stimulating long-distance trade networks, or as markets arose directly as 47 • d. a consequence oflong-distance trade. The arguments are examme m Chapters 9 and l 0.

18

These are models derived from economic anthropology and geography, and to a large extent their descriptive worth is limited in prehistory. As a result archaeologists have been trying to develop means of identifying the behavioural patterns which are the correlates of reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange. To some extent this has been achieved by isolating the character of the settlement pattern, or by analysing the processing of energy or information required to construct parts of the settlement pattern. 48 These kinds of model are of critical value, but their limitations too are more than apparent when, for example, monumental buildings do not even exist. Colin Renfrew has therefore developed a most useful series of distance-decay models which are intended to permit a greater understanding at least of the organisational forces operating on the distribution of artifacts. 49 In a recent paper he has termed this distance-decay property 'the law of monotonic decretement'. 'In circumstances of uniform loss or deposition and in the absence of highly organised directional (i.e. preferential, non-homogeneous) exchange, the curve of frequency or abundance of occurrence of an exchanged commodity against effective distance from a localised source will be a monotonic decreasing one. ' 50 From this basis he has developed the following form (Fig. 4): Down-the-line trade (Fig. 4.1) is the result of a large number of successive exchanges of material from a source point: 'Individual sites do not in general stand out as receiving unusually large quantities of material: this argues against organised or preferential shipment. The simplest way of visualising this transfer is to postulate a chain of villages, equally spaced. Each village down the line would receive the obsidian through exchange from its neighbour near the source, and pass on a given proportion, say half or two thirds. ' 51 Renfrew has also modelled this exchange network mathematically, so that quantified data can ultimately be evaluated in this respect. When preferential nodes appear in a down-the-line network, however, Renfrew identifies two major effects. First, the emergence of central places ensures movement between only those sites, and thus these cultural elements will pass on down the spatial hierarchy only in reduced quantities. Secondly, there is a reduction of trade to lowerorder sites in the hierarchy: 'For whereas these were formerly symmetrically placed with respect to one another, this is no longer the case. Those within the sphere of influence of a given central place are now linked primarily through that place. ' 52 In what Renfrew has termed the prestige chain network (Fig. 4.2) nearly all the goods received are ultimately sent on down the line, with the result that the cultural element is only slightly less abundant at considerable distances from the source. Renfrew considers it to characterise ceremonial gift exchange of the kind Malinowski observed in the Trobriand Islands. In effect, this network too operates between central places or persons.

19

The Shadow of Pirenne

Dark Age Economics

2

100

....c

Q)

()

... tf '----"~.._~_.-... sookm.

Distance from source

Distance from source

4

3

100

....c Q)

()

...

Q)

Q..

!

'l I

!

A

t

Fi

II

I I !

i

I I

sookm.

Distance from source

L.,_..._~...a..-,._,J~.- soo km .

A

Distance from source .

re 4 Distance-decay models (after Renfrew). (I) down-the-line trade; (2) prestlge~ain trade; (3) directional trade (redistribution); (4) free-lance trade

Redistribution I directional trade is a modific~tion of fthe hieralrcfically .ne trade where the existence o a centra p ace or arrange cl clown- the -ll ' · 4 3) M'ddl erson serves to concentrate cultural elements (Fig. . : t ~an p d' (F' 4 4) however affects the pattern more radic_ally. Any tra_ ~~{em~~- h;s ;n effectiv~ area of operation, outside of which he d~es mi ll travel Within this area, in the absence of any prefe~ential not ~orma y . laces the fall-ofT of the commodity with distance sfervice for ce~ltlrabel pmuch 'less rapid. •53 Only at the boundary of his area rom source wi of operation will the fall-ofT be extreme. 54 . . be Renfrew himself has begun to revise these models, _but It can stated with some confidence that their value has been COfo!Siderable and a stimulating contribution to our un~erstanding of ~radmg systems. Before considering further theoretical aspects which are fund~m~t~l to this book, it is worth repeating a statement recently made by . c .

20

Dark Age Economics

Adams on the question of trade. Adams has grown slightly sceptical of the archaeological conclusions drawn by some, and in response he writes: 55 Trade and exchange are time-bound phenomena, the character of which is best understood when the standards of exchange value governing individual transactions can be related directly to those transactions .. . if trade is generally the dynamic, unstabilising force that the ethnographic record seems to suggest, wide fluctuations over short intervals are to be expected in the geographical range of trade, in the extent of local participation in trading networks, and in the selection of trading partners. Yet the archaeological record is characteristically an aggregative one, difficult to connect with short or precise time intervals. While the record of archaeological progress during recent years suggests that these difficulties will not prove as intractable as they might seem at present, at the very least it would appear that important conceptual advances in the study of trade are more likely to emerge and be adequately tested in the fields in which archaeological remains can be joined to a historical chronology and written economic records. This is surely a rationale for this book. The tendency to aggregate patterns can only be overcome by testing the appropriate archaeological . models against dated, historical horizons. Furthermore, there is the danger that archaeology presents 'time-slices', and it is by comparing one time-slice with the next that the trajectory a system takes is determined. Fred Hamond has recently shown that alternative processes and patterns can lead to identical outcomes. Indeed, simulation studies are reinforcing Adams's viewpoint and are encouragement to generalise from the archaeological data where there is tight chronological control. 5 6

Urbanism and medieval towns Nucleated settlements, urban complexes or market-places are the nodes in the exchange networks discussed above. The concept of urban ism has been a central topic of discussion in this particular field of medieval history as well as in general areas of archaeology, geography and sociology. We shall approach the question from the two viewpoints central to this book. Maitland in 1897 answered his own rhetorical question about the medieval borough, stating that it was a legally defined concept. In effect, this repeated Aristotle's definition of the city-state. The view was upheld by Pirenne, Rorig and Stephenson in their studies of aspects of west European urbanism during the 1920sand 1930s. But when Vogel briefly counterattacked, warning against this legalistic approach, we can see the limited parameters within which these early twentieth-century historians - even Pirenne - were working. 57 In their opinion, towns in

21

-The Shadow of Pirenne

the early medieval period existed ~nly in ~arlingia; . the a~se~ce of r f documentation argued agamst their existence ~.n Ang o~ axon 1ega IS IC . . r eastern Germany. This thesis must m part Englan?, St~~~I~~;I~~zi-propagated belief that it was the Germans have ~tim~ a d the town as such to central and eastern Europe: who mtrcol~~~sation was seen as a prime mover in the formation ofth~ ~:rv7ca~ates.sa English historians may dis~iss the preju_dices o~th~:aZI d. t torship but they were in fact harnessmg scholarship of a si~ I :can} ~c a . , . human cause It may have been in part as a reJeCtion o k~~d to th~;~~hat post-war historians like Ennen and Schlesinger have t IS ~~:o define a town from a broader conceptual base, and th:s n? soug .dentif it as an isolated economic feature, but one t at IS

~~~fo~aily inte~rated. Hence Schlesinger, fo~e~ar;p~~~ :a::.~~:~~~!~~ inte ate the trading settlements, or empona, m o.

,

59

th~i~~!~~~i~;~;~~~h~:~i~~~~::;~~~~· ~~:~:~1n~:~~~~~:dle 0

f . . , . to the discussion. 60 Like Pausamas defimng Panopeus, a o. cntena , m . find M W. Beresford defining a town as follows: ~Ity of t~~~~~~ns~s;e~ one of the following tests: Had it. a borough ~ny p? .d it ha~e burgages? Was it called burgus in the Assize Rolls, or c ar~er. 0 I tel taxed as a borough? Did it send members to any wasd_It selpParal'amyent?•6J With this analytical method strongly paralleled me Ieva ar I · · · · · t find b Childe's analysis in prehistory (see below), It I~ n~t surpns~nfi o . 1

md~edie":al adrocchuameoel~f~~e ~::STo:~ife ~~~~~p~b~rsi~~~:a~~~n~~heu~;;~~. lSCUSSIOn 62

lists the criteria for a medieval town as follows: 8. a diversified economic base 1. defences 9. plots and houses of urban 2. a planned street-system types . . 3. a market (s) 10. social differentiation 4. a mint 11. complex religious organisation 5. legal autonomy a judicial centre 12. 6. a role as a central place 7. a relatively large and dense population . . Th l' t 'llustrates the topographical features and_ institutions which arc~a~sol~gists then believed it possible to identify ~1th so un~.d~cu~en­ k complemented by open-area excavatiOns. ts Imita IOn~, ~a~~e~eo;, are more than obvious now when such enormous research IS

1

simply not feasible. . · hl · 'fi h • roach to urbanism IS a hig y scient! IC one The g~ogr·~h c~~p~~Jissues. Wheatley's contribution to an ar~haeo­ f~;i~:~ns:m~~ar on the problem sums up his view of a protean Issue: It is impossible to do more than characterise the ~oncep~ ?furbanism ~ compounded of a series of sets of ideal-types SOCial, pohtical, economic

22

Dark Age Economics and other institutions which have combined in different ways in different cultures at different times. 63

Wheatley's

pe~simism

may have .been stimulated by previous attempts in an Important paper published in 1950, also considered the issue in t~rms of a bundle o! criteria. ~he direct influence upon him was the nineteenthcentu~y thmker Lewis Henry Morgan, rather than Pausanias, but the resultmg attempt was much the same. Childe's criteria were: 64

?Y archaeologtsts to quahfy their terminology. Childe for one

I. population 6. writing 2. craft specialisation 7. exact and predictive sciences 8. naturalistic art 3. central authority 4. monumental ~rchitec~ure . 9. residence rather than kinshipS. developed soe1al stratlficatwn based communities Childe's diagnostic criteria were, of course, features exhibited by the settlements that he had already designated as urban in the Near East. Furthermore, they were criteria that aptly fitted his then current Marxist perspective of social evolution - criteria which have been in part reintroduced by Jonathan Friedman and Michael Rowlands in an ambitious epigenetic appraisal of social systems and their evolution. 65 ~enfr.ew has to ~o.me ext~nt echoed Childe's criteria, although in a more simphfied defimtwn designed by Clyde Kluckholn: 'city dweller' and 'urban' loosely designate societies characterised by at least two of the following features:

1. towns upward of, say 5,000 inhabitants 2. a written language 3. monumental ceremonial centres Renfrew adds: opera~ional de~n~t~on ~ embraces .all those early cultures which are ~sually des1.gn~ted civihsatlons. And 1t excludes societies with only a ~mgle astomshmg !'eature, like Stonehenge, or the temples of Malta, or

[This

mdeed the Tartana tablets of Romania. 66 In an impressive study of settlement sizes, Renfrew then utilises this ?efinit.ion ~o estab.lish the Minoan settlement hierarchy and the manner I~ ~hich It f~nctloned. Yet for reasons more than apparent this has hmit~d value ~n wes~ern European pre- and proto-history before the late medieval penod (with some Imperial Roman exceptions). Indeed it is not s? far removed from the. legalistic view developed by historians such as Pirenne and, other~ ~hich has already been discussed, though of course R~n!~ew .s defimtion has ~eneral applicability to what have been termed c.Ivihs~tions - the question he was then examining. We might m fact agree that we cannot expect to find uniformity in

The Shadow of Pirenne

23

urbanisation, owing to the different socio-cultural an? e~vironmental backgrounds of the human groups concerned. Ther~ IS su:nply no case for this argument, for if we can discern the networks m which the nodes are present, as Carol Smith, for example, has done, we sho';ll? equally be able to define the characteristics of the nodes. (Of course, It Is a separate question whether we can identify th.ese archaeo~ogically-) We must begin by asking precisely what IS urbamsm? Charles Redman answers as follows: Urbanism implies the characteristics that distinguish cities from simpler community forms; it also refers to the organisation of an entire urban society, which includes not only cities, but also towns and villagesY This is a fair assessment of its commonplace meaning, though hardly a definition. Gideon Sjoberg, an urban sociologist, has formulated a definition in his book on the pre-industrial city: a community of substantial size and population density that shelters a 68 variety of non-agricultural specialists, including a literate elite. The Polish urban archaeologist Witold Hensel has adopted a similar definition in his studies on Slavic towns, though he omits the necessity of a literate elite. 69 A more satisfactory definition would embrace elements of Redman's and Sjoberg's comments. An urban community is a settlement of some size and population which is markedly larger than communities concerned with subsistence alone; the majority of its inhabitants, moreover, are not engaged in full-time agrarian pursuits. Such a community should include the presence of more than ~n.e institution so that a monastery or palace can only be termed urban If It is the focu~ of more people than merely monks or ministers and royalty. It is not possible to sustain proto-urbanism: a site is either urban or it is not. In this book several types of urban communities are described and discussed: fairs, emporia, trading stations, monastic and royal communities which are the foci of periodic markets, and a hierarchy of market-places. To comprehend these partic~lar types satisfactorily within our general framework we must first review three classes of urban community that have a global presence. . The port of trade is a phenomenon that resembles, superficially at least several of these early medieval urban types. It was defined by Pola~yi in his 195 7 paper on exchan~e m~chanisms cite? above::. In the words of two archaeologists recently: (This] construe~ will remam a d~us ex machina. ' 70 Polanyi regarded the port of trade as often a neutrahty 71 device a derivative of silent trade ... and of the neutralised town'. The si~e in his view offers security to the foreign trader, facilities of anchora~e and debarkation, storage,and the benefit ofjudicial authority and agreement on the goods to be traded. Renfrew has stressed the

24

neutrality element when examining the spatial implications of the port of trade 72 while Rathje and Sabloff have defined the port of trade as: 73 l. being at a transition zone 2. being a small political unit 3~ having a large population 4. being little concerned with retail distribution within the port's surrounding area. In fact it has recently been argued that Polanyi was referring to a much wider range of sites than these very particular models. His essay on the port of trade includes examples drawn from early medieval Europe. The sites he discusses here may be broadly defined as: 74 l. those where buyers are absent but sellers are resident. 2. those where buyers are resident, but which sellers visit for varying lengths of time. This confusion suggests that the particular model correctly interpreted by Renfrew, Rathje and Sabloff is a rare occurrence, and that we should honour the goals Polanyi initiated by seeking a less ambiguous and more functional terminology. One recent paper provides just such an alternative. K. G. Hirth has drawn attention to the gateway communities previously discussed by geographers. 75 He has tried to define them so that they can be utilised in prehistoric contexts. There is much here that is reminiscent ofPolanyi's term, but it has greater clarity and is consequently a more functional concept. Hirth writes that 'as collection, preparation and movement of goods between regions became more complex, greater sophistication was required to divert economic activities. It was at this point that longdistance exchange began to figure prominently in the process of cultural evolution. The intensification of inter-regional exchange stimulated the emergence of new forms ofsocio-economic organisation. Trade specialists appeared and certain communities located along key trade routes prospered with increased inter-regional exchange. 76 'These communities flourish at the passage points into and out of distinct natural or cultural regions ... and link their regions to external trade routes.' He adds that they are 'structurally similar to dendritic market networks'. 77 He suggests that these communities functioned to satisfy demands for commodities through trade and were located to reduce transportation costs. Furthermore, they operate as commercial middlemen, concerned principally with wholesaling, in contrast to the retailing activities of a central-place system. Finally he examines the development and transmutation of these communities when competing places arise. At this juncture the gateway community declines to the level of its new competitors, though it will retain some control of its former hinterland and may evolve more complex forms of socio-political authority with which to combat increased economic competition.

25

The Shadow of Pirenne

Dark Age Economics

's definition has much to offer, for the com~unity ~istin?uishes Thl d d bt the emporia which are to figure prommently m thls book. beyon ffiou "dance on how the competing markets of Europe It also 0 ers some gm . h h of course it provides no explanatiOn. . . ar~~e \h~~J global institution, which has already been dlsc~sse~m so~e . . h market-place. First, we should add, a port o tra e an a deta~als ~o~munity are clearly often, though arguably, not al~~ys, gate y l Th" b ok "ollows Bohannan and Dalton s defimtwn, market-paces. IS o 1' • • h" h lread cited, where the distinction between ~ so~le~y m "': IC ~ a Y · · heral and a society in which It Is dommant IS ma~:~t-p~:~hi~sfs~~·.P Secondly, it is apparen~ that ~ertain gat~~ay use y .. . rth-west Europe functioned, m a penod of transitiOn, commumues m no d h 1 tralas monopolistic markets in a dendritic system_, an ~en ~ss~ a~~e~ ay place markets. Distinctions are not always easily .":'a e, ut a e m help to illuminate the relationship of the defimtiOns. Table 1 Dalton and Bohannan

'Medieval

Smith

Polanyi

Solar central-

tra\ de

Hirth

historians'

Fair Peripheral MarkFts d . . Port of Gateway__ Emporia t.,___Oen r1t1c--

place Society dominated-- Interlocking central- by market principle place

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ Medieval town

· hich can be used in conWe believe that these are pragmatiC terms w . . tion with the network models that economic geographers and ;n {~~~ olo ists have developed. In particular, there should no las attributatle to the lack of documentation, as the settle_ment hlera~c~y o~ constellations of cultural material wi_ll prove the existence, anr wi;c:n likelihood the character, of the nodes m the networks. Moreove, .

?e

1

concurbwotihthseSnas~~~~ ~~~i~~~~~t;~:~;~~e~~~:fc ~:~ ;~~~i ;j

fully centres are , 78 structure and actual mechanisms of that change .

State formation · · l edieval The formation of the state has received little ~ttenti?n m e~rly m . l d . h Id been considered m spatia , soCJa an history. ~~liucal ~h:e:ar~:~~rr~:ies themselves are still badly_define~, 1 :~~;h: ~a:~~~fkingship, while superlatively discussed as~ ph1losohph1b osed to the neo-evoluuonary t eses ~~~:~f:~~,h~:;osl~;i~~ r:;~exception at present is the attempt of

oe:;

26

Dark Age Economics

Aidan SouthaJI, who compares the formation of the Alur state to that better documented for Saxon-Norman England. 79 A further attempt is that of Robert Carneiro, who uses Anglo-Saxon England as a funda~ental state in an ~ffort to mea~ure cultural development in many different c.ontexts, usm.g Guttman. s scalogram analysis. 80 Both analyses are essentially perceptiVe but penpheral to the goals of this book. The discussion of this socio-political organisation is the subject, in part, of Chapter 10, so we shall leave the thrust of the current debate on state formation until then. There remains, however, to review briefly the contemporary models of social organisation. Trigger, in a brief but lucid essay, has identified the various threads that have come to concern social archaeology in the last decade or so. 8 I Darwinian evolutionists who proclaimed man's power to select and rationalise his human progression were largely refuted in a formidable reaction in the earlier part of this century. Childe, however, re-asserted the new evolutionary theses in a series of studies engendered in part by ?is Mar~ist conception of the past. He believed that major technological mnovatJOns were made only once and were then diffused from a common centre. Progress emanated from this point, though it was subject to environmental, socio-economic and spiritual parameters. Childe's model has been a central feature in British archaeology, but it has been generally refuted in America. There the school led by Leslie White and Julian Steward effectively denied the significant role to human actors; instead man was a dependent variable. White emphasised technology as an important variable, and Steward ecology. Both believed that there were developmental regularities which could be retrieved from the material record with which archaeologists work. This Americ~? school has developed. Elman Service, notably, has proposed a umhnear sequence of human organisation, and Morton Fried (and latterly Friedman and Rowlands) have provided an 82 alternative sequence. Here it is only apposite to sketch the features of Service's and Fried's accounts as they affect this book. ~ervice has suggested a sequence that develops from band, tribe, chiefdom and state. It has been popular with archaeologists because of its simplicity. A chiefdom, in Service's view, comprises several groups (tribes) organised into a hierarchical social unit. There is variation in rank, but the hierarchy focuses on a single central person, the chief. There is usually some craft specialisation and perhaps some agricultural specialisation, and the economic mode of redistribution is a fundamental basis of the system (cf. Earle's analysis discussed earlier in this chapter). But there are regulating mechanisms that delineate the powers of the chief, and as a result his authority tends to be based on the presence of sumptuary rules. The state, by contrast, has a well-defined political organisation and, as we shall see in Chapter 10, the leadership is no longer fettered by regulations - or at least not in theory. Fried's typology is less particular than Service's, but perhaps

The Shadow of Pirenne

27

therefore not so generally valuable. Fried's lowest stag~, egalita~ian "ety embraces Service's bands and to some degree Simpler tnbal SOCI . ,ations· next ranked society embraces tnbes . an d Iesser c h"1ef.ganlS or ' • h ·· 8 doms. 3 Ranked societies have a hierarchy of status, a?d t e tran~Itlon. to such a level usually occurs simultaneously with the shift from recipro~~ty to redistribution. ·Authority, however, is still focused on famihal arrangements. The next level is a stratified society in which mer:nbers have unimpeded access to the ~ame. funda~ental.resour~es, previOusly denied or restricted and stratification facilitates mcreasmgly complex divisions of labour~ The state emerges from this last level almost unannounced and 'was hard at work concentrating its power.on specific cases long before any reflective individual took the effort to Isolate and • identify the novelty'. 84 , · In this book we have conformed loosely to Service s framework, though we are mostly interested in advanced chiefdoms, which tend to be cyclical and may best be defined as s.tratified soc.ieties. (~ervice's terminology certainly seems more appropnate to d~cnbe th~ kmgs and chiefs of early medieval Europe.) Therefore, to avOid confusio~, I ha~e resorted to the term 'cyclical chiefdoms', partly to emphasise .t~eir transient status, which is often conjoined with their honorary pohtical status as overlords. . On the other hand we must consider how we are to recognise a chiefdom or the creation of the state in the archaeological record, even when the archaeology is reinforced by documentary ~ources. Several archaeologists have applied themselves to. the que~t.IOn. The~ h~ve demonstrated that in certain cases the evolution of political orgamsation can be identified, though the results often app.ear ~s a series of stages open to the kind of criticism discussed earlier m this chapter. The nature of the ranking within the settlement pattern ha~ b~en greatly emphasised, as well as th~ distribution. ~f cr~ft-speCial!sts. Emphasis has also been put on the ev~de?ce ~f admmistrative matenals, and the organisational correlates of distnbutiOn patterns (of goods) have been studied. 85 Models of these kinds are easier to test where st?n.e buildings, including monumental structures, are to_ be found, so .I t IS no coincidence that settlement analyses and studies of productiondistribution patterns in prehistory have been focused on the so-called civilisations. . . William Rathje has also proposed a cost-control model which ai.ms to monitor the relative changes in quality and quantity of production. 86 The essence of this model is that a complex society will invest time and labour in the generation of prestige objects and monuments for social purposes. Once the state has been form~d, however, there will be a shift towards mass production of standardised goods and monument~ to generate wealth from all parts of the territ?ry. Ther~ are obvious economic benefits from this policy, but Rathje also beheves that t~e products will be a facet of the information processing necessary to unify

28

Dark Age Economics

t~e new entity. ~ta~dardis~tion, however, inevitably leads to simplification and a declme m quahty as more goods are produced.

Chapter 2

This book sets out to reveal the processes of urbanisation in north-west Europe after the decay of Roman civilisation. It is a well-worn track but I h~ve. tried to ~void the footsteps of the travellers described a; the begmnmg· of thts chapter. In particular, emphasis is placed on the emergen.ce, devel?pment and a?andonment of the emporia, for these are. the st.tes t? whtch archaeologtsts have paid special attention and with whtch have .been .less concerned · Moreover b y exammmg · · h fi htstonans · t ese rom ~tffe:ent vtewpomts, we can discern the socio-economic processes whtch mterest us.