Fortified Settlements in Early Medieval Europe: Defended Communities of the 8th-10th Centuries

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· Oxbow Books
Ebook
352
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

Twenty-three contributions by leading archaeologists from across Europe explore the varied forms, functions and significances of fortified settlements in the 8th to 10th centuries AD. These could be sites of strongly martial nature, upland retreats, monastic enclosures, rural seats, island bases, or urban nuclei. But they were all expressions of control - of states, frontiers, lands, materials, communities - and ones defined by walls, ramparts or enclosing banks. Papers run from Irish cashels to Welsh and Pictish strongholds, Saxon burhs, Viking fortresses, Byzantine castra, Carolingian creations, Venetian barricades, Slavic strongholds, and Bulgarian central places, and coverage extends fully from northwest Europe, to central Europe, the northern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Strongly informed by recent fieldwork and excavations, but drawing also where available on the documentary record, this important collection provides fully up-to-date reviews and analyses of the archaeology of the distinctive settlement forms that characterized Europe in the Early Middle Ages.

About the author

Neil Christie is Professor of Medieval Archaeology in the School of Archaeology & Ancient History at the University of Leicester. He is author and editor of a number of books centred especially on late Roman to early medieval Mediterranean Europe, covering themes such as urban and rural change and defence.

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