Archaeology, Medieval

Defining Medieval Archaeology

The European Middle Ages or Medieval period begins with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE and ends with the European voyages of discovery in the 15th century CE. The millennium-long era starts with the Migration period (ca.400–600 CE), sometimes known as the “Dark Ages” due to the paucity of written historical sources from this time. During the Migration period, barbarian Germanic tribes overran much of the Western Roman Empire. Roman towns and cities declined, and many Roman industries, such as the pottery industry in Britain, ceased to function. Roman imperial rule was replaced by a series of smaller successor kingdoms. These early successor kingdoms should probably be viewed as chiefdoms rather than small states. Outside the former Western Roman Empire, in regions such as Poland and Scandinavia, an Iron Age way of life continued until about 800 CE. Beginning around the 8th century CE, many regions of medieval Europe underwent substantial social, political, and economic transformations. Both local and long-distance trade networks expanded; new towns and cities were established; and by about 1000CE, early states were founded in many parts of northern Europe. The study of these processes is of particular interest to anthropologists, since they parallel the processes by which complex societies developed in other parts of the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.

The History of Medieval Archaeology

Unlike European prehistory, whose roots can be traced back to the early antiquarians of the 17th and 18th centuries, the modern discipline of European medieval archaeology did not develop until the years immediately following World War II. Many European cities, including London, England, and Cologne, Germany, are built on medieval foundations. The destruction caused by bombing during the Second World War made it possible to explore the medieval cores of many modern cities for the first time.

Medieval archaeology in Europe developed from two very distinct and different scholarly traditions. Early medieval archaeologists who worked on the Migration period and other early medieval sites were generally trained as prehistorians. Since written records for the early Middle Ages are often quite limited, Dark Age archaeologists rely almost exclusively on the analysis of material remains, such as artifacts, ecofacts, and features, to reconstruct the lifeways and culture history of the early medieval inhabitants of Europe. For example, the early medieval (ca. 420–650 CE) village of West Stow in eastern England was discovered by a local archaeologist in1940. The site does not appear in any historical records. Large-scale excavations, which were carried out at the site by Stanley West between 1965 and 1972, were designed to reconstruct the settlement patterns, subsistence practices, and day-to-day lives of the early post-Roman inhabitants of southeastern Britain. Spatial analysis of the houses, outbuildings, ditches, and pits was used to reconstruct the settlement pattern of the village, and studies of the agricultural and animal husbandry practices carried out there were based on detailed analyses of the floral and faunal remains. The methods and techniques used in the excavation and analysis of the West Stow village were those of European prehistory.

...