Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul: Selected Studies in History and Archaeology, 1992-2009 (Brill's Series on the Early Middle Ages)

Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul

Brill’s Series on the Early Middle Ages (continuation of The Transformation of the Roman World)

Managing Editor

Bonnie Effros University of Florida

Editorial Board

Deborah Deliyannis, Indiana University Edward James, University College Dublin Walter Pohl, Austrian Academy of Sciences

VOLUME 18

Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul Selected Studies in History and Archaeology, 1992–2009

By

Guy Halsall

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010

Cover illustration: Brooch from the grave of King Childeric of the Franks (d. 481), misinterpreted/reconstructed by the excavator as a writing implement from Anastasis Childerici I Francorum regis, sive Thesaurus sepulchralis Tornaci Nerviorum effossus et commentario illustratus by Jean Jacques Chifflet. Antwerp: Plantin, 1655 (MARBL: Seydel Collection, DC66.C5). With kind permission of Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Halsall, Guy. Cemeteries and society in Merovingian Gaul : selected studies in history and archaeology, 1992-2009 / by Guy Halsall. p. cm. — (Brill’s series on the early Middle Ages, ISSN 1386-4165 ; no. 18) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17999-8 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Merovingians—Social life and customs. 2. Merovingians—Funeral customs and rites. 3. Merovingians—Antiquities. 4. Archaeology and history—France. 5. France— Antiquities. 6. Cemeteries—Gaul—History. 7. Burial—Gaul—History. 8. Funeral rites and ceremonies—Gaul—History. 9. Gaul—Social life and customs. 10. Community life—Gaul—History. I. Title. II. Series. DC65.H35 2010 944’.013—dc22 2009042048

ISSN 1878-4879 ISBN 978 90 04 17999 8 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

For Edward

CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables ................................................................ Abbreviations ..................................................................................... Acknowledgements ............................................................................ Publication Acknowledgements ......................................................

ix xi xv xvii

Introduction ........................................................................................

1

PART ONE: HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Chapter One. Archaeology and Historiography .......................... Commentary One: Archaeology and its discontents .....................

21 49

PART TWO: UN-ROMAN ACTIVITIES: CEMETERIES AND FRANKISH SETTLEMENT, 1992–2009

Introduction to Part Two .................................................................. Chapter Two. The origins of the Reihengräberzivilisation: Forty years on ................................................................................ Chapter Three. Archaeology and the Late Roman Frontier in Northern Gaul: The so-called Föderatengräber reconsidered ................................................................................... Commentary Two: Careful with that axe, Eugenius ..................... Chapter Four. Childeric’s Grave, Clovis’ Succession, and the Origins of the Merovingian Kingdom ....................................... Commentary Three: Once more unto Saint-Brice .........................

91 93

107 131 169 188

PART THREE: BURIALS, RITUALS AND COMMEMORATION: THE EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA, 1995–2009

Introduction to Part Three ................................................................ Chapter Five. Burial, Ritual and Merovingian Society ................

201 203

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contents

Chapter Six. Burial Writes: Graves, “Texts” and Time in Early Merovingian Northern Gaul ....................................................... Commentary Four: Ritual and Commemoration .......................... Chapter Seven. Examining the Christianization of the region of Metz from archaeological sources (5th–7th Centuries): Problems, possibilities and implications for Anglo-Saxon England ...........................................................................................

215 232

261

PART FOUR: AGE AND GENDER IN MEROVINGIAN SOCIAL ORGANISATION

Introduction to Part Four ................................................................. Chapter Eight. Female status and power in early Merovingian central Austrasia: the burial evidence ........................................ Commentary Five: Grave-Goods, Female Status and the Cemetery of Ennery ....................................................................... Chapter Nine. Material Culture, Sex, Gender, Sexuality and Transgression in Sixth-Century Gaul ........................................ Chapter Ten. Merovingian Masculinities ...................................... Chapter Eleven. Growing up in Merovingian Gaul ....................

287

323 357 383

Index ....................................................................................................

413

289 315

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Fig. 2.1 Analysis of the Origin of the ‘early Germanic’ burial customs ................................................................................ Fig. 2.2 Tutulusfibeln (aft er Böhme 1974, map 6) ................... Fig. 2.3 Germanic settlement? (After Böhme 1974, pp. 102–3) ....................................................................................... Fig. 7.1 Distribution of lavish male burials (with shield-boss, spur or horse-furniture) around Metz ....................................... Fig. 8.1 The Region of Metz: ‘Central Austrasia’ ...................... Fig. 8.2 Seriation of artefact-types: the example of Ennery .... Fig. 8.3 Artifactual sexing of graves: The example of Ennery ............................................................................................. Fig. 8.4 Gender associations of artefact-types in central Austrasia ......................................................................................... Table 11.1 Venantius’ epitaphs showing marital status and age at death .................................................................................... Table 11.2 Inscriptions from St-Matthias, Trier, mentioning marriage or children .....................................................................

96 100 102

274 291 295 296 297

411 412

ABBREVIATIONS

Previously published works Books BMRW EMCems S&S W&S

Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376–568 (Cambridge, 2007). Early Medieval Cemeteries. An Introduction to Burial Archaeology in the Post-Roman West (Glasgow, 1995). Settlement and Social Organization. The Merovingian Region of Metz (Cambridge, 1995). Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450–900 (London, 2003).

Papers reprinted in this volume AH

ALRF

BRMS

BW

CGCS

‘Archaeology and historiography.’ M. Bentley (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Historiography (London, 1997), pp. 805–27. ‘Archaeology and the late Roman frontier in northern Gaul: The so-called Föderatengräber reconsidered.’ Grenze und Differenz im früheren Mittelalter, ed. W. Pohl & H. Reimitz (Vienna, 2000), pp. 167–80. ‘Burial, ritual and Merovingian society.’ The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe, ed. J. Hill & M. Swan (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 325–38. ‘Burial writes: Graves, “texts” and time in early Merovingian northern Gaul’, in Erinnerungskultur im Bestattungsritual. Archäologisch-Historisches Forum, ed. J. Jarnut & M. Wemhoff (Munich, 2003), pp. 61–74. ‘Childeric’s Grave, Clovis’ Succession, and the Origins of the Merovingian Kingdom’, in R.W. Mathisen & D. Shanzer (ed.), Society and Culture in Late Roman Gaul. Revisiting the Sources (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 116–33.

abbreviations

xii FSP

ORz

‘Female status and power in early Merovingian central Austrasia: the burial evidence.’ Early Medieval Europe 5.1 (1996), pp. 1–24. ‘The origins of the Reihengräberzivilisation: Forty years on.’ Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity? ed. J.F. Drinkwater & H. Elton (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 196–207.

Other papers GEE M&S REMV

SC600

SISR

TSI

VPE

VSEMW

‘Gender and the end of empire’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34.1 (2004), pp. 17–39. ‘Movers and Shakers: The barbarians and the fall of Rome.’ EME 8.1 (1999), pp. 131–45. ‘Reflections on Early Medieval Violence: The example of the “Blood Feud”.’ Memoria y Civilización 2 (1999), pp. 7–29. ‘Social change around 600 AD: An Austrasian perspective’, in M.O.H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 265–78. ‘Social identities and social relationships in Merovingian Gaul’, in I.N. Wood (ed.), Franks and Alamanni in the Merovingian Period: An Ethnographic Perspective (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 141–65 (with discussion at pp. 165–75). ‘Towns, societies and ideas: the not-so-strange case of late Roman and early Merovingian Metz’, in N. Christie & S.T. Loseby (ed.), Towns in Transition. Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 235–261. ‘The Viking presence in England? The burial evidence reconsidered’, in D.M. Hadley, & J.D. Richards (ed.): Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Turnhout, 2000), pp. 259–76. ‘Violence and society in the early medieval West: an introductory survey’, in id. (ed.), Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 1–45.

abbreviations VTC

xiii

‘Villas, territories and communities in Merovingian northern Gaul’ in W. Davies, G. Halsall & A. Reynolds (ed.), People and Space in the Middle Ages, 300–1300 (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 209–31.

Other Abbreviations AA ARC Arch. Méd. ASHAL BAR(B) BAR(I) BLAFAM Chron. EME Ep. Aust.

FotC GC

GM

JGlGA JR-GZM JRS Lex Ribv.

Auctores Antiquissimi Archaeological Review from Cambridge Archéologie Médiévale Annuaire de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie Lorraine British Archaeological Reports: British Series British Archaeological Reports: International Series Bulletin de Liaison de l’Association Française d’Archéologie Mérovingienne Chronicle Early Medieval Europe Epistulae Austrasiacae: MGH Epistolae vol. 3: Merovingici et Karolini Aevi vol. 1, ed. Gundlach, W. (Berlin, 1892), pp. 110–53. A translated selection is available on-line at http://tabula.rutgers.edu/latintexts/letters/ Fathers of the Church Gregory of Tours, Gloria Confessorum: B. Krusch & W. Levison (ed.), MGH. SRM 1, Part 2 (Hannover, 1969), pp. 744–820; R. Van Dam (trans.), (Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Confessors (Liverpool, 1988). Gregory of Tours, Gloria Martyrum: B. Krusch & W. Levison (ed.), MGH. SRM 1, Part 2 (Hannover, 1969), pp. 484–561; R. Van Dam (trans.), Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs (Liverpool, 1988). Jahrbuch der Gesellschaft für lothringische Geschichte und Altertümskunde Jahrbuch Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz Journal of Roman Studies Lex Ribvaria. F. Beyerle & R. Buchner (ed.). MGH Legum Sect. 1, vol. 3, Lex Ribvaria (Hannover, 1951); T.J. Rivers (trans.) The Laws of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks (New York, 1987), pp. 167–214.

xiv LH

abbreviations

Gregory of Tours, Libri Historiarum: B. Krusch & W. Levison (ed.), MGH SRM 1.1 (2nd edition; Hanover, 1951); L. Thorpe (trans.), Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks (Harmondsworth, 1974). Med. Arch. Medieval Archaeology MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica PLS The Pactus Legis Salicae: K.-A. Eckhardt, (ed.). MGH Legum, Sect. 1, Vol. 4, Part 1 (Pactus Legis Salicae) (Hannover, 1962), pp. 1–267; Rivers (trans.) The Laws of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks, pp. 39–144; K.F. Drew (trans.) The Laws of the Salian Franks (Philadelphia, 1991), pp. 59–156. RAE Revue Archéologique de l’Est et de Centre-Est RBPH Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire SRM Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum SS Scriptores TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society VP Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum: B. Krusch & W. Levison (ed.), MGH. SRM 1, Part 2 (Hannover, 1969), pp. 661– 744; E. James, Gregory of Tours. The Life of the Fathers (2nd edition; Liverpool, 1991). VSM Gregory of Tours, Liber de Virtutibus Sancti Martini: B. Krusch & W. Levison (ed.), MGH SRM Vol. 1, Part 2 (Hannover, 1969), pp. 134–211; R. Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1993), pp. 200–303.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is of course an enormous honour to be thought worthy of a collected essays volume such as this, even if the current volume actually contains significantly more by way of new thoughts on old topics than in terms of reprinted material. I should like to thank Dame Professor Jinty Nelson and Professor Chris Wickham for suggesting that I put it together and for their subsequent encouragement of the project. I would also like to thank Julian Deahl and Marcella Mulder at Brill for accepting it for publication, for their patience when it turned into something rather more than a simple reissue of previously published work and for their help with the publishing process. I must also sincerely thank Brill’s anonymous reader for toning down my polemic and excising my cattier barbs and more egregious self-indulgences. Many of the debts I have accumulated in the two decades or research and rethinking represented here can be found in the footnotes to the different chapters but a few people deserve to be singled out here. Professor Philip Rahtz, Dr. Tania Dickinson and Professor Julian Richards first taught me about early medieval burials as an undergraduate and inspired my interest in the topic. Over the years my conversations (in person and by e-mail) with Frans Theuws, Bonnie Effros and Philipp von Rummel have refined and corrected my views on the topics discussed here. Walter Pohl has been a constant source of encouragement in bringing my views on archaeology and ethnicity to a wider European audience. I must as ever thank my family, my friends and my students for helping in many and diverse ways, and especially Emma Campbell who has, besides keeping me focussed and continuing to brighten my life, helped me considerably with my discussions of gender and my reconsideration of the use of a textual metaphor for furnished burial. Above all, though, my thanks go to Professor Edward James who, as tutor and undergraduate supervisor, introduced me to the world of the Merovingians and to how one might study funerary archaeology alongside the documentary record to gain a rounded view of society in that era and, as my doctoral supervisor, encouraged my own forays into that area. It is still difficult to think of a better teacher or research supervisor. I learnt from him a great deal about how to teach history

xvi

acknowledgements

and I continue to attempt to model my pedagogic style on his. I know I tried his patience as a more than usually bumptious graduate student, yet even where we disagreed he was never less than supportive and encouraging. With Edward there was never a ‘party line’ to be toed, only views with which to engage. Many of the ideas expressed in these essays and commentaries originate in those discussions; many more, as I see now even if I did not at the time, can be traced to points Edward himself made in his own writings. This volume is therefore dedicated to the master with many thanks and much admiration and affection from his most devoted, if also doubtless (at least at times) his most difficult, student!

PUBLICATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Chapter 1, ‘Archaeology and Historiography’, first published in M. Bentley (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Historiography (London, 1997), pp. 805–27, and reprinted courtesy of Routledge. Chapter 2, ‘The origins of the Reihengräberzivilisation: Forty years on’, first published in J.F. Drinkwater & H. Elton (ed.), Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity? (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 196–207, and reprinted courtesy of the syndics of Cambridge University Press. Chapter 3, ‘Archaeology and the late Roman frontier in northern Gaul: The so-called Föderatengräber reconsidered’, first published in W. Pohl & H. Reimitz (ed.) Grenze und Differenz im früheren Mittelalter (Vienna, 2000), pp. 167–80, and reprinted courtesy of the Österreichische Akadamie der Wissenschaften. Chapter 4, ‘Childeric’s grave, Clovis’ succession and the origins of the Merovingian kingdom’, originally published in R.W. Mathisen & D. Shanzer (ed.), Society and Culture in Late Roman Gaul. Revisiting the Sources, (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 116–33, and reprinted courtesy of Ralph Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer. Chapter 5, ‘Burial, ritual and Merovingian society’, originally published in J. Hill & M. Swan (ed.), The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 325–38, and reprinted courtesy of Brepols academic publishers. Chapter 6, ‘Burial Writes: Graves, texts and time in early Merovingian northern Gaul’, originally published in J. Jarnut & M. Wemhoff (ed.), Erinnerungskultur im Bestattungsritual. Archäologisch-Historisches Forum (Munich, 2003), pp. 61–74, and reprinted courtesy of Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Chapter 8, ‘Female status and power in early Merovingian central Austrasia: the burial evidence’, originally published in Early Medieval Europe 5.1 (1996), pp. 1–24, and reprinted courtesy of Blackwells publishers and the editors of Early Medieval Europe.

INTRODUCTION

This book concerns two problems, one general and one specific. The general question is that of how one might use written and excavated material together. The more specific issue is how one makes the evidence extracted from the cemeteries of Merovingian northern Gaul talk about world views and the social structures they produced. Seven of these eleven chapters are papers originally published elsewhere between 1992 and 2003, which—gratifyingly—it was felt could usefully be brought together in one place; some have not been particularly accessible. These were written to be read individually in other contexts and this book is possibly still best approached as a series of stand-alone essays. Inevitably, therefore, if reading this volume, or a part of it, ‘from cover to cover’, areas of overlap and repetition remain, which I hope the reader will tolerate. As with many another ‘Greatest Hits’ collection, as well as the ‘rarities’ this one comes with remixes and previously unreleased material. The ‘remixes’ are Chapters 7 and 9, which are (especially in the case of chapter 9) versions of previously published works, substantially rewritten for this volume and, in the case of Chapter 7, translated back into English. The previously unreleased material is represented by Chapters 10 and 11, which originated as seminar or conference papers and were never written up for publication. The original draft of chapter 11 has circulated in ‘samizdat’ format and even been cited in footnotes.1 As well as those papers, this volume contains five ‘commentaries’ (sometimes longer than the chapters), in which I discuss the background to the papers and meditate further on the issues raised, consider published responses to my work and other more recent literature on the same topic and take my argument further. Much of what might otherwise have been contained in a general introduction is thus presented closer to the relevant chapters where, it is hoped, it might be more valuable. This introduction serves to present more general background and a brief introduction

1 M.J. Innes, ‘ “A place of discipline”: Carolingian courts and aristocratic youth’, in C. Cubitt (ed.), Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 59–76, p. 61, n. 6.

2

introduction

to the historiographical significance of the papers collected here—in other words a justification for the presentation of this collection. It may thus be useful, or even interesting, to set out some autobiographical context.2 Since my undergraduate degree (taken in history and archaeology as an equal combination at the University of York) I have retained an equal interest in both disciplines and the profound conviction that a rounded appreciation of the early medieval period can only come through knowing about history and archaeology. Indeed one benefit of studying the two subjects together has been the ability to bring the insights from one into the study of the other. Throughout my career, an advantage of this multi-disciplinary formation has been the ability to critique historical approaches from the perspective of an archaeologist and archaeological work from the viewpoint of an historian; the corresponding disadvantage is, of course, that of being treated as an archaeologist by historians and as an historian by archaeologists! There is also the danger of being accused, often with reason, of being a jack of all trades and master of none. The use of these disciplines to elucidate the social history of Merovingian Gaul came from taking Edward James’ suggestion that working on Gaul might be a good career move; there were (and still are) far fewer people in the UK studying that area than there were researching Anglo-Saxon England, and almost none from the joint perspectives of history and archaeology. After some consultation the topic of my thesis was fixed as a regional study of the civitas of Metz, mostly lying in the north-east of what is now France and partly in modern Saarland (Germany). Neither of us had a very clear idea of where this would lead but the evidence for the region is fairly plentiful in comparison with most other Merovingian civitates and the potential seemed to be there to combine written and excavated data and to bring together several areas of archaeology in which I had become interested as an undergraduate, principally the study of cemeteries and of urban settlement. Being an Englishman studying Merovingian France was not always easy. Much Merovingian cemetery archaeology was, and remains, in 2 H. Williams, ‘Rethinking early medieval mortuary archaeology’, EME 13 (2005), pp. 195–217, at p. 200, explicitly asks about the extent to which my work has been shaped by my social and intellectual context. I hope that the information contained in this introduction and the various commentaries might help provide answers to that question and that, as a result, I will not find myself ‘castigated by [my] peers and [my] career in jeopardy’ (ibid., p. 201). The former has happened often enough and, one way or another, it is probably a bit late for the latter, for good or ill.

introduction

3

the hands of local amateur enthusiasts who, when they replied my enquiries, were sometimes not backward in expressing the view that I really ought not to be studying their region at all. The hostility and obstruction that I experienced as a young doctoral research student goes some way to explaining, albeit without excusing, my reluctance to pull punches in critiquing traditional French approaches to Merovingian cemetery archaeology. More generally, I suspect that bringing approaches from one national historiographical tradition to bear on the data from another is always going to present problems of dialogue. These probably explain the fact that, in spite of a discernible reduction in the insularity of French Merovingian studies, although the work of British scholars on general historical issues is often referred to, their detailed attempts to discuss specific areas of l’Hexagone tend not to be.3 Fortunately, this was far from the only response, and it is a pleasure to record again my indebtedness to Professors Nancy Gauthier and Michel Parisse for their encouragement and, above all, to the conservateurs of the various museums of Lorraine and their staff, who were extremely welcoming. Some junior employees of the Direction des Antiquités de Lorraine significantly counteracted the lack of assistance offered by their superiors. It must also be emphasised that not all non-professional local chargés de fouilles were hostile or obstructive. Claude Lefebvre, for example, was extremely friendly and helpful and I offer him, again, my gratitude. Finally, the Godfather of French Merovingian Studies, Patrick Périn, has always been very encouraging and supportive, even though our approaches remain poles apart.

3 To take, as a sample, the spate of text-books associated with the French Aggrégation qualification, which appeared in 2002–3, this seems to be true from the bibliographies of D. Albert & C. de Firmas, Les Sociétés en Europe du Milieu du VIe à la fin du IXe Siècle (Lassey-les-Châteaux, 2002); N. Deflou-Leca, & A. Dubreucq (ed.), Les Sociétés en Europe, mi VIe–fin IXe Siècle (Neuilly, 2003); M. Gaillard & A. Wagner, Les Sociétés en Europe du Milieu du VIe à la fin du IXe Siècle (Rosny, 2002); &. J. Heuclin, G. Jehel & P. Racinet, Questions d’Histoire: Les Sociétés en Europe du Milieu du VIe à la fin du IXe Siècle (Nantes, 2002). G. Bührer-Thierry, Les Sociétés en Europe: Enjeux historiographiques. Méthodologie, bibliographie commentée (Paris, 2002) cites (of my work) VSEMW but not my Metz studies. P. Depreux, Les Sociétés Occidentales du Milieu du VIe à la fin du IXe siècle (Rennes, 2002); and R. Le Jan, La Société du Haut Moyen Âge. VIe–IXe Siècles (Paris, 2003) cite my work on Metz as well as on violence. This seems to reflect their more general attitude to Anglophone research.

4

introduction

Though other areas of my doctoral research produced conclusions,4 I was able to make the most detailed contributions in the field of burial archaeology. When I came to rewrite my thesis for publication, the discussion of cemeteries was more or less the only section that remained largely unaltered from the original. In fact the monograph was a much more documentary historical affair than had been the thesis, which (in spite of having been written in a history department)5 was very largely archaeological. The book only restored the balance between the two disciplines, and the documentary sections are those that I would change most, given the opportunity; as the present volume will make clear, there is much that I would add to the archaeological analyses but little that I would fundamentally change. In scholarly terms, the best part of my thesis was, ironically, the component that has never been published: the critical catalogue of cemetery sites in the diocese of Metz.6 That empirical research furnishes the basis for the final seven chapters in this volume. Most of the previously published papers that reappear in this volume were concerned with developing and refining the line of argument initially presented in Settlement and Social Organisation: The Merovingian Region of Metz. I have subsequently pursued the lines of enquiry I took in that book with regard to urbanism and the rural settlement pattern,7 but the essays collected here are solely those which explore the use of funerary data. My approach to the archaeological cemetery evidence was largely moulded by my education in a British archaeology department in the middle decades of the 1980s. The studies presented here were inspired by the teaching I received on a course on the archaeology of cemeteries,8 and above all by my reading of the work of Ellen-Jane

4

Especially in regard to the settlement pattern and its relationship to social organisation. 5 Were I four or five years younger I should doubtless have registered for my doctorate at the university’s Centre for Medieval Studies and been jointly supervised by Edward and either Tania Dickinson or Steve Roskams. This was not possible at that time, although Steve, Tania and Julian Richards all provided very helpful guidance and, indeed, Steve was my internal examiner. 6 See below, p. 262, n. 8. 7 See, e.g. (on towns), TSI; (on rural settlement) VTC. 8 In the best then-fashionable processual language, this was entitled ‘Mortuary Behaviour’; I well remember a non-archaeologist friend asking if the course was about how to behave in a mortuary. It was subsequently re-named ‘death and burial’.

introduction

5

Pader.9 My thesis aimed to apply then recent Anglophone theoretical and analytical approaches to mortuary evidence to the study of Merovingian data. In some ways, therefore, my career has led me full circle as in this volume I have taken the opportunity to explore some areas in which the more plentiful (if not always high-quality) evidence from Gaul, and the ways in which it can be combined with written data such as are more or less absent from early Anglo-Saxon England, can refine ways of seeing the post-imperial10 centuries on the British side of the Channel.11 Historiographically, therefore, the original research from which stem the ideas contained in the present work was located in a phase of British archaeology, during the later 1970s and 1980s, when researchers were exploring the use of cemetery data to elucidate the study of social organisation, often using structuralist analyses and nascent statistical programmes for the analysis of the patterns of association between grave-goods and other variables within the burial ritual. During the later 1980s, I became aware of archaeological theory of the post-processualist camp12 and especially its core tenets: seeing material culture as deliberately and actively constructed, rather than being a passive reflection of society, as had been the case with earlier views.13 My reading of post-processualist archaeology affected my interpretation of the cemetery evidence in particular in my concern with the need to provide an explanation for the custom of furnished burial, such as was common in northern Gaul in the sixth and seventh centuries. Funerary customs did not seem to provide any support for

9 E.-J. Pader, ‘Material symbolism and social relations in mortuary studies,’ in P.A. Rahtz, T.M. Dickinson & L. Watts (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries 1979, (BAR(B) 82; Oxford, 1980), pp. 143–59; ead., Symbolism, Social Relations and the Interpretation of Mortuary Remains (BAR(I) 130; Oxford, 1981). 10 In this volume, in the commentaries, introductions and other new pieces I have employed this term to describe the fifth to seventh centuries, borrowing it from the work of Andrew Gillett, Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West (Cambridge, 2003). This seems a much more apt phrase to describe an era when most political authorities were in some way or other trying to lay claim to the mantle of romanitas, than the more usual ‘post-Roman’. Nevertheless the latter term remains, unhappily, in the reprinted works. 11 Below, pp. 249–60, 278–84. 12 Then still relatively recent: principally, M. Shanks and C. Tilley, Social Theory and Archaeology (Cambridge, 1987). See also M. Shanks & C. Tilley, Re-Constructing Archaeology (London, 1987; 2nd edition 1991). 13 A brief and simplified history of the major stages of British archaeological thought is presented in AH (below, chapter 1).

6

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their usual interpretation as pagan or as a ‘Germanic’ introduction. The religious dimension of this critique of traditional cemetery studies featured little in my analyses. As far as I was concerned, Bailey K. Young had made most of the important critical points in dismantling the connections between paganism and burial with grave-goods, or unfurnished inhumation and Christianity.14 My concern was rather with arguing that these furnished graves could not be seen as passive markers of non-Roman ethnic identity, although such identities being themselves active and contingent creations made it unlikely that the archaeological record would simply reflect them in this way in any case. This thinking is pursued in chapters 2, 3 and 4 below and in the accompanying commentaries 2 and 3, the former being my fullest discussion of the problem to date. As further made clear in commentary 2, this line of thinking owed (like most of my work) an enormous amount to my doctoral supervisor, Edward James, author of the first and still influential sustained critique of the notion that cemeteries could be used to plot the distribution of Gallo-Romans and Frankish settlers.15 In supervisory meetings, Edward pushed me very rigorously to defend my emerging view that furnished inhumation had nothing to do with trans-Rhenan ethnicity; only rather later did I discover some thoughts he had had a decade or more previously along much the same lines.16 The historiographical reception of this part of my work receives fuller attention below.17 This, as discussed there, is an area where the essays published here have made a significant impact, provoking debate about one of the archaeological cornerstones of Germanist or migrationist views of the post-imperial archaeological

14 B.K. Young, ‘Merovingian Funeral Rites and the Evolution of Christianity: A study in the Historical Interpretation of Archaeological Material,’ PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania (1975). Importantly for me, this thesis was held in the library of the University of York’s archaeology department. Young’s work was published in abridged form in French as ‘Paganisme, christianisme, et rites funéraires mérovingiennes’, Archéologie Médiévale 7 (1977), pp. 5–81. 15 E. James, ‘Cemeteries and the problem of Frankish settlement in Gaul’, in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Names, Words and Graves (Leeds, 1979), pp. 55–89. This article has perhaps still not had the impact that it should have had, given that the ideas it dismantled could still be seen restated in, for example, V. Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen im fränkischen Siedlegebiet’, in A. Wieczorek, P. Périn, K. von Welck & W. Menghin (ed.), Die Franken: Wegbereiter Europas (2nd edition; Mainz, 1997), pp. 110–20. See also below, p. 142, n. 31. 16 E. James, The Merovingian Archaeology of South-West Gaul (BAR(I) 25; Oxford, 1977), pp. 179–81. 17 Commentary 2, below, pp. 131–67.

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record. It is satisfying to note that, even where my interpretation is not accepted and where the ‘Germanic’ interpretation is preferred, the days seem to be numbered when these burials can be cited unhesitatingly as evidence of ‘Germanic’ settlement, without at least reference to the existence of doubts. As discussed in commentary 2, the ‘antiGermanist’ view that I revived and developed has long been taken on board by historians and there are indeed signs that it may be gaining more general acceptance among students of post-imperial mainland European archaeology. It is, however, fair to say that it has had limited (if any) impact upon the study of early Anglo-Saxon burial, where, in one form or another, the ‘Germanic’ import of furnished inhumation remains generally accepted.18 If these burials were produced neither by religion nor by the existence of long-standing ethnic custom, then there seemed little reason why it should be the simple reflection of the wealth, rank or social class of the deceased. Here I contributed to a trend of criticism of the use of Merovingian cemetery data to explore issues of class and wealth in which, again, Edward James had played a significant part.19 Indeed, my analysis of the patterns of association between grave-goods and the age and sex of the deceased (discussed below in chapters 8 and 9) showed that there could be no straightforward relationship between grave furnishing and wealth or rank. Age and gender seemed to be far more important in determining the extent of a grave’s furnishing. This was perhaps the area of my research that grew most directly out of the works on Anglo-Saxon cemeteries that I had studied as an undergraduate.20 As is discussed further in commentary 5, the initial phase of my research into the cemetery data, the attempt to isolate gender-specific artefacts and artefact-kits was directly inspired by then relatively recent work on English evidence.21 The availability of directly contemporary written

18 See, e.g., J.T. Baker, Cultural Transition in the Chilterns and Essex Region, 350 AD to 650 AD (Studies in Regional and Local History Vol. 4; Hatfield, 2006). 19 E. James, ‘Burial and status in the early medieval West.’ TRHS 5th series, 39 (1989), pp. 23–40; R. Samson, ‘Social structures in Reihengräber: mirror or mirage?’ Scottish Archaeological Review 4.2 (1987), pp. 116–26; H. Steuer, Frühgeschichtliche Sozialstrukturen im Mitteleuropa. Eine Analyse der Ausertungsmethoden des archäologischen Quellenmaterials (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften Göttingen, phil.-hist. Kl. 3rd series, 128: Göttingen, 1982), e.g. pp. 471–97. 20 See further, below, pp. 317–8. 21 Below, p. 317.

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sources enabled a more rounded and contextual discussion of gender than was available for the Anglo-Saxon material. It has therefore had some role in furthering the study of this area in archaeological analyses in Britain and mainland Europe.22 The emergence, from my quest for gender-based artefact assemblages, of the importance of age as a determinant of grave-goods burial, was, for all that it was unexpected and indeed accidental,23 more ground-breaking. In 1988 the idea that there might be a link between the nature of a grave’s furnishing and the age of the deceased was, if not unheard of, still a new concept.24 That the study of social age might even help to explain the grave-goods custom was (and remains) even more radical. When it was presented at the conference of the Association Française d’Archéologie Mérovingienne in Metz in 1988, Patrick Périn’s ‘prudence’ (scepticism) was the most polite response expressed in open discussion.25 A more generous comment (reported to me by its recipient) was made in private conversation by Helmut Roth: ‘they criticise him today but in twenty years’ time they’ll all think he was right.’ This was one of the remarks that most encouraged me in persisting with my research and I am duly grateful. Roth’s remark was

22 E.g D.M. Hadley & J.M. Moore, ‘Death makes the man?’ in D.M. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London, 1999), pp. 21–38; N. Stoodley, The Spindle and the Spear: A Critical Enquiry into the Construction and Meaning of Gender in the Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Rite (BAR(B) 288; Oxford, 1999); id., ‘Burial rites, gender and the creation of kingdoms: the evidence from seventh-century Wessex’, in T.M. Dickinson & D. Griffiths (eds.) The Making of Kingdoms (Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10) (Oxford, 1999), pp. 99–107; Clark, D.F., ‘A methodological examination of aspects of chronological and social analysis of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries with particular reference to Cemetery I, Mucking, Essex’ (unpub. PhD Dissertation, University of London 2000); I. Barbiera, Changing Lands in Changing Memories: Migration and Identity during the Lombard Invasions (Florence, 2005). The thrust of my argument on gender antedates that of S.J. Lucy, ‘Housewives, warriors and slaves? Sex and gender in Anglo-Saxon burials’ in E. Scott and J.M. Moore (ed.), Invisible People and Processes. Writing Gender and Sexuality into European Archaeology (London, 1997), pp. 150–68. 23 See below, p. 318. 24 Heinrich Härke had suggested some linkages between the size of knives and the age of the deceased. H. Härke, ‘Knives in early Saxon burials: blade length and age at death.’ Med. Arch. 33 (1989), pp. 144–8. 25 Below, p. 319, n. 20, for other responses. The reaction stemmed partly from something of a culture-clash. In the 1980s it was not really the ‘done thing’ for 24year-old post-graduates to present their own work at these gatherings, especially when, however politely, they suggested that the established ways of thinking might not be right! I should like, however, to take this opportunity to thank Prof. Max Martin for his friendly and supportive remarks.

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in some ways quite prescient, although it has taken a little less than twenty years for other work to come to similar conclusions, much of it has been carried out entirely separately from my own and far from everyone thinks I was right! Nevertheless, whatever the problems with the data from which I drew my conclusions (the principal basis for Périn’s ‘prudence’), subsequent studies of better-quality evidence (mostly, I reiterate, conducted entirely independently of my work) have confirmed the general outlines of my model.26 All these conclusions about furnished inhumation left unanswered one crucial (but all-too-often ignored) question: if not demanded by ethnic custom or religious belief, or a manifestation of rank or wealth, then why did people dispose of their dead in this way? I began to answer this question in the course of my thesis by linking this ritual display with the instability of local social hierarchies and competition for authority. This, it should be made clear, was not to deny that certain families might have maintained local pre-eminence from the Roman period right through to the Carolingian; it was to suggest that in eras where burial with grave-goods was employed, that pre-eminence was open to competition, expensively maintained and transferred with some difficulty from one generation to the next. This point is further emphasised in the analyses presented in chapters 2 to 11. Whereas chapters 8–11 refine the arguments set out in my thesis and the subsequent monograph, about the ways in which Merovingian cemetery evidence permits an investigation into gender, age, sexuality and other dimensions of social organisation, chapters 5–6 more clearly develop my original interpretation of the burial rite in terms of ritual. All of the ideas just discussed—the poverty of ethnic/religious explanations, the importance of age and gender in determining the distribution of grave-goods, the linkage of furnished burial with social competition and the explanation of the custom through its analysis as public ritual—are closely inter-related. Another important area connected with all of those just enumerated, and which arose from the analysis of the cemeteries of the region of Metz—initially arising from noting the differences between the sites at Ennery and Audun-le-Tiche—was the study and explanation of

26 Below, p. 396, n. 78, for references, almost all post-dating my studies of age in the region of Metz. Of these only Brather appears to have been directly influenced by my research.

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change within the Merovingian period. One of the most important possible areas in which archaeology can contribute to the study of the post-imperial centuries is in revealing its dynamism. The written record has a tendency to homogeneity, resting largely on the desire of authors to make their works conform to those of the model writers within particular genres. Historians have also had a tendency to aggregate evidence from divergent chronological contexts. All this has made the detection of change more difficult and the significance of variations between sources written at different times hard to evaluate. Much historical writing therefore has a tendency to assume continuity and debates about change can all too often take the form of contests between those who believe in stasis or gradual, barely perceptible evolution and those who wish to locate a single period of revolutionary change.27 In my doctoral thesis I was still imprisoned within the dominant ‘from Roman to medieval’ frame of mind.28 By the time I began to rewrite the thesis in 1992 I had realised that the evidence and analysis presented in the thesis was in fact pointing in a quite different direction. I had stressed the significance of the changes that took place around 600 in my thesis.29 The essays collected here repeatedly stress the importance of those changes. It is to be hoped that they acquire some readership among Anglo-Saxon archaeologists, for the descriptive similarity of the changes in the nature of the data between the sixth and seventh centuries in England and in Gaul are quite extensive. This ought to call into question many currently accepted explanations for the English changes, especially conversion to Christianity or the creation of kingdoms. Nevertheless, as well as dynamic change through time, another aspect of my work has been geographical diversity. There has been a fine tradition of regional studies of early medieval mainland Europe, albeit largely of the Carolingian era and later. These studies have, fur-

27 Outside the post-imperial period discussed in this volume, the debate over the ‘feudal revolution’ or the ‘transformations of the year 1000’ might still be characterised in these terms. See the excellent recent overview by Simon MacLean, ‘Apocalypse and Revolution: Europe Around the Year 1000’; Early Medieval Europe 15 (2007), pp. 86–106. 28 The very first sentence of my thesis was ‘This is an attempt to write a social history of one region of Gaul during the transformation from the Roman to the medieval era’! 29 See also SC600, written before I had a contract to write a book based on the thesis; indeed when, thanks to the helpful comments of my external examiner, I believed that such a volume was not even a possibility.

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thermore, tended to deal with geographically peripheral regions of kingdoms. Regional surveys of the Merovingian period have not always had that sort of geographical focus, but in terms of coverage have usually been primarily artefactual overviews and have studied traditional issues such as Frankish settlement. My study of the region of Metz was in some ways more ‘Carolingian’ in its focus on aspects of social history and in moving away from the topic of Frankish settlement (largely because of my belief in the incapability of the evidence to answer such questions, as noted above), but different from many regional studies in focussing on an area at the heart of a polity, in this case Austrasia. Nevertheless, I made it clear from the outset that it ought not to be considered typical, and that I made no claims that any of my conclusions could be applicable to other areas.30 I should reiterate that point; though these essays repeatedly (probably wearisomely to anyone reading this book cover-to-cover) use the Metz data as a spring-board case study they by no means imply that there is anything necessarily typical about the area and certainly do not propose that one can unproblematically generalise from the region’s cemeteries. There are indeed good reasons why things might be different around the chief royal urban residence of the kingdom. In some ways royal presence did make the area around Metz rather different from other regions. For instance, the lack of aristocratic monastic foundations in the area, which I linked to the presence of the court, meant first a lack of the sorts of rich charter evidence as are available for other regions and second, perhaps, a difference in the development of particular types of estate. Within the region of Metz, variations can be traced in the details of the funerary custom over quite short distances. Comparison of the cemeteries of Lavoye and Dieue-sur-Meuse made this clearest. On a wider scale, even if the general outlines of my social analyses have been confirmed by studies of better data elsewhere, there are interesting regional differences in detail. In this sense I believe that, as I had hoped it would when it was published,31 my study of the region of Metz has made a valid contribution to unravelling the Merovingian world’s diversity and dynamism. It will quickly become apparent from the commentaries in this volume that this is a somewhat grumpy, or at least exasperated, volume.

30 31

S&S, p. 282. Ibid.

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I should make clear at the very outset that my sometimes rather despairing attitude towards early medieval archaeology is one that I maintain can only be held by someone who is (to some extent at least) an ‘insider’, an archaeologist. It is one held by someone with a deep and passionately held belief in the importance of archaeology in driving forward the study of this period (and others), and in the ability of archaeology (defined as the study of the unwritten, material cultural traces of the past)32 to speak with an independent voice. Archaeology, as I wrote in 1995,33 is in an unequalled position to help to shape revised views of the written data and thus to write new histories of this period. My exasperation stems from archaeology’s failure, as I perceive it, to make that voice speak adequately rigorously about the postimperial era in areas of interpretation and understanding, rather than in those of data recovery and description, where it occupies, of course, an unchallengeable position as the only discipline which is likely to produce more evidence for this period. This failure to make archaeology (in my view) speak with sufficient authority stems from diametrically opposite causes on different sides of the English Channel. On its northern shores, it originates, in no small part, in British archaeology’s continued suspicion of and hostility towards the discipline of documentary history; an embittered estrangement might not be putting it too harshly. This is discussed at length in chapter 1 and Commentary 1. As I argue in commentary 1, British archaeology has invested far too much of its own sense of identity in an opposition to documentary history, rather than in self-confidently shaping its own distinctive methods of contributing to the broader study of the past, which can be placed alongside documentary studies, appreciating the different contributions made by the latter. As I, again, claim in commentary 1, that sort of self-confidence would involve the recognition of the limits as well as developing the possibilities of archaeological analysis and an acceptance of the independent study of the written record as a complementary rather than antagonistic approach to past society, from which archaeological study can benefit, as well as one which can benefit from discussion with archaeologists.

32 33

As at the start of HA (chapter 1, below). EMCems, pp. 71–72.

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My criticism is most certainly not, let me make clear, based on a perceived failure to make the interpretation of the archaeological data fit ideas drawn from the written record; quite the opposite. Indeed my disappointment with French Merovingian archaeology in particular, and of German archaeology’s traditional culture-historical approaches, is based precisely on its subservience to a reading of the documentary record.34 That reading, moreover, is one to which few modern historians would subscribe. This means that the (in Germany particularly) empirically excellent work done is doubly prevented from making a contribution. On the one hand it rarely involves making the excavated data speak for themselves by developing purely archaeological means of drawing conclusions from material culture. On the other, what it does contribute tends to confront concepts and ideas based upon very outmoded readings of the written sources that historians have long since rejected. Thus this approach has little to say, beyond the presentation of data, from either an archaeological or an historical perspective. This is clearest in the ‘ethnic’ interpretation of grave-goods, which receives more extended treatment in chapters 2, 3 and 4 and commentaries 2 and 3. The problems created by such a literal and constricting view of ethnicity and the ways in which this might be reflected in the archaeological record go much further than the study of the putatively ‘Germanic’ burials of late fourth- and fifth-century northern Gaul. On this, one can do no better than refer the reader to the massive, magisterial and controversial study of the topic by Sebastian Brather.35 Brather’s volume has provoked intense debate in Germany,36 which shows signs of producing something of a revolution in German archaeological thinking. It has been immensely gratifying to learn that my studies of Merovingian archaeology, in Settlement and Social Organisation and in the essays reprinted in the present volume, provided some of the inspiration for this nascent revolution.37 Conversely,

34

See below, pp. 141–51. S. Brather, Ethnische Interpretationen in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie: Geschichte, Grundlagen und Alternativen (Berlin, 2004). 36 See, e.g., V. Bierbrauer, ‘Zur ethnischen Interpretation in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie’, in W. Pohl (ed.), Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters (Vienna, 2004), pp. 44–84; F. Siegmund, Review of Brather, Ethnische Interpretation, Historische Zeitschrift 280 (2005), pp. 706–708. 37 S. Brather & P. von Rummel, pers. comm.. The influence is clear in S. Brather, ‘Kleidung und Identität im Grab: Gruppierungen innerhalb der Bevölkerung 35

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I have learnt enormously from conversations with, and reading the works of, the researchers leading this movement, who have refined my own ways of seeing. It is difficult not to be exasperated by French Merovingian archaeology’s treatment of the northern Gallic, ‘Frankish’ cemetery evidence. Although very good work has been done on settlement archaeology and on other areas of Gaul, the discussion of that cemetery data remains sadly outmoded. An obsession with crude ethnic ascription remains, alongside the desire to force the archaeology into frameworks drawn from old readings of the written data. Furthermore, some of the work on ethnicity continues to employ very old-fashioned approaches such as the measurement of skulls. Social analysis remains, to all intents and purposes, non-existent.38 Some of these points, notably the attitude towards historical grandnarratives and general theoretical differences of approach, have led to a certain insularity of British early medieval archaeology.39 This is unfortunate for a number of reasons. Partly this seems to stem from an unspoken assumption that British archaeology is ipso facto theoretically and methodologically in advance of that on mainland Europe (south of Scandinavia especially). This is an attitude based upon the fact that for a long time British archaeology was indeed far in advance of that in other areas in terms of field techniques and often developed self-consciously theoretical approaches earlier than in other countries. While British archaeology’s excellence in the field remains, the difPleidelsheims zur Merowingerzeit.’ Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters 32 (2004), pp. 1–58, and id., ‘Kleidung, Bestattung, Identität: die Präsentation sozialer Rollen im frühen Mittelalter’, in id. (ed.), Zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Archäologie des 4. bis 7. Jahrhunderts im Westen (Erganzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 57; Munich, 2008), pp. 237–73. 38 E.g. P. Périn, ‘Possibilités et limites de l’interprétation sociale des cimetières mérovingiens.’ Antiquités Nationales 30 (1998), pp. 169–83, which barely advances the idea of ‘social interpretation’ beyond the search for ‘tombes de chefs’. The terms of analysis are those of the 1970s. See also A. Nissen-Jaubert, ‘La femme riche. Quelques reflexions sur la signification des sépultures féminines privilégiées dans le NordOuest Européen’, synopsis of paper given to colloquium on Les élites et la richesse au haut moyen-âge, Brussels, 13–15 March, 2008 (http://lamop.univ-paris1.fr/W3/elites/ Richesse/R%E9sum%E9NissenJaubert.pdf, accessed 6 July, 2008), who laments (p. 2) the lack of Merovingian gender archaeology. 39 Obviously this comment is directed at traditional early medieval Anglo-Saxon archaeology rather than at the more recently developed (in Britain) and more restricted (in terms of the number of its practitioners) ‘late antique archaeology’, which does have a non-British focus, although generally directed towards the Mediterranean and especially its eastern and southern shores.

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ferences between British and other European archaeologies may no longer be sufficient to justify this insularity. Field techniques in other European countries are now often as advanced (sometimes from the adoption of British methods), and European analytical and theoretical approaches might be considered with profit. As is discussed further in chapter 1 and commentary 1, the theoretical developments in British archaeology have not always represented unalloyed blessings. The failure to consider mainland Europe might also stem from a lack of ability in other languages that seems even further advanced among British archaeologists than among British historians. For some reason it appears to be acceptable among archaeologists to shelter behind a simple lack of linguistic competence in excusing such historiographical isolationism. As time goes on the assumptions of disciplinary superiority alluded to in the previous paragraph will become ever more detached from reality. Meanwhile, European archaeologists continue to read and communicate in English as well as their native tongues. Given the lack of impact upon British archaeology even of communication in English about mainland European early medieval archaeology,40 we might seek a further historical explanation for this insularity. I suggest that this in part stems from changes in attitudes towards migration as an explanatory hypothesis. Older generations of Anglo-Saxon archaeologists sought explanation simply in terms of the migration to England of Anglo-Saxons from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia. This was an attitude often framed by a particular reading of Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and frequently led to hypotheses that were unsatisfying from either an archaeological or an historical point of view (see above). Furthermore, archaeology carried out from this point of view rarely considered any parts of Europe other than those from which the migrants were assumed to have come. This in turn led to hypotheses that suffered from a lack of awareness of similar processes in other former provinces of the Roman Empire. Many of the drawbacks of these approaches have long been pointed out and there is no need to repeat them here. However, the

40 An example: when I presented the paper upon which BRMS is based, at the 2nd International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 1995, one Anglo-Saxon archaeologist present commented that ‘none of what [you say] would be considered new in Anglo-Saxon archaeology’. This perplexed me, because I had not at that time come across any (and have still not encountered much) Anglo-Saxon archaeology making the same point or offering the same way into reading and explaining burials.

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abandonment of the invasion (or migration) hypothesis by younger generations of British archaeologists appears to have led to a complete lack of interest in any of mainland Europe.41 This is compounded by the attitudes discussed above. This is unfortunate. Many of the explanations offered in AngloSaxon archaeology for the custom of furnished inhumation, and thus the social and political analyses based thereon, suffer from insularity. Familiarity with the evidence from the southern shores of the Channel would cast enormous doubt upon the ‘Germanic’ and pagan assumptions still common and upon conversion to Christianity as a catch-all explanation for the cultural transformations of the late sixth and early seventh century. The essays in this collection attempt to restore some of the freedom to act to the members of Merovingian local communities. For too long, occupants of the past have been studied as members of particular static collectivities, whether based upon sex, religion, kindred, ethnicity or social class. These are often expressed as simple binary oppositions: men or women, of this or that family, Franks or Romans, Christian or pagan, rich or poor, noble or commoner, free or slave. The argument has been presented that this was essentially how early medieval folk saw themselves: not as individuals but as members of groups. In a sense this is doubtless right. Perhaps people of all ages see themselves to some extent primarily as members of groups. But each person stands at any one time at the intersection of a number of such groups. The traditional views make the people of the past twodimensional. More to the point it is clear that, in opposition to many traditional analyses, the simple fact of group-membership did not compel any particular course of action. Studies of families and kin-groups have shown how their membership, rather than being determined by ageold ‘Germanic’ kin structures, was determined by the political configurations at any particular time.42 In other words, people chose when and with whom to make their kindred or affiliation the basis of action

41 As an example, which I have used before (BMRW, p. 387, n. 68), not one of the contributors to S. Lucy & A. Reynolds (ed.), Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales (London, 2002) aged under forty at the time of its publication makes any reference to mainland Europe at all (apart from one simplistic reference at p. 149). This is in diametrical opposition to those contributors aged over forty at the time. 42 See, e.g., P. Fouracre, The Age of Charles Martel (Manchester, 2000), p. 42.

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according to the demands of the moment. Traditional views of the so-called blood-feud have seen early medieval people driven to violent action by traditional ‘demands’ of codes of familial honour. Yet the existence of such codes, and even the historical reality of the ‘bloodfeud’ itself can be seriously doubted.43 Furthermore, the nature of these social groupings was never static. The study of early medieval ethnicity over the past two decades has illuminated very clearly how fluid this was. As I discuss below, the gendered aspect of ethnic identity was also redefined during the earlier Merovingian period.44 The essays collected here aim to demonstrate how the experience of membership of these groups changed, and how those experiences themselves helped to transform the nature of social identities. As is discussed below, especially in chapters 8–11, what it meant to be a man or a woman, young or old, Frankish or Roman, what choices of sexual practice might have implied, were all perpetually under renegotiation in the Merovingian era. The way into that negotiation comes largely through the analysis of the burial ritual that created our evidence, how it served as a sort of punctuation mark within constant social discourse, and of how it was itself constantly altered in the course of repeated re-enactment. This is enriched by the insights that the written record gives us into what people thought was the ‘correct’ structure of society and into their other beliefs and actions. This sheds light upon how ‘codes’ and institutions are perpetually redefined. These do not stand outside social behaviour, governing the latter. Rather they are constituted by people’s knowledge or awareness of the ‘right way’ to behave, formed by the accumulation of

43 REMV; VSEMW. An attempted counter to these views might be found in J.M.H. Smith, Europe After Rome: A New Cultural History, 500–1000 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 100–114, but the argument there is driven by pre-conception; the evidence cited does not provide any prima facie support at all for the case presented. Indeed, in spite of providing a more accurate translation of LH 10.23 (the supposed ‘feud’ of the inhabitants of Tournai), Smith persists in seeing this as a series of tit-for-tat killings rather than, as is utterly self-evident from Gregory’s Latin, a single bloody street-fight that allegedly, out of two gangs, left only one wounded person alive when the dust settled, followed by a period of angry but apparently bloodless confrontation between the families of the gang-leaders. This is a good example of how the characters in our histories are often forced to act in accordance with the pre-suppositions of modern scholars (even fine ones like Smith) rather than according to the evidence that describes their actions. 44 Below, pp. 374–80.

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interactions considered correct or acceptable and those that were not. In other words, what constrains action is not the existence of a structure extrinsic to people’s world-views, one that exerts some independent force upon them, but individuals’ knowledge or ideas about how to behave. These ideas might periodically be written down and even given legal status but they are incapable of being frozen. As theorists have commented, we can think of these norms as a sort of behavioural grammar. Just as a language’s grammar to some extent constrains what can be made intelligible to a reader or listener, it permits the generation and transmission of new ideas. As is well known, languages are not frozen by grammatical rules; constant practice through speech and writing means that technically incorrect usages which nevertheless manage effectively to convey an intended meaning are eventually accepted. Similarly, every minuscule behavioural infraction of social norms that is not penalised in some way adds to the ‘memory bank’ of acceptable behaviour until over time, the correct way to behave would be quite shocking to someone from a previous period. We are thus quite wrong to view the inhabitants of the Merovingian (or any other) past as members of static groups, whose actions will somehow be predictably in accordance with what we perceive to be the demands of such collectives (ethnic, gendered, familial, religious, wealth-based or whatever). My aim in these chapters is to bring the occupants of some Merovingian communities back from their graves and, by attempting to write social history (from documentary and archaeological sources) in accordance with the principles set out in this introduction, present them not as the predictable cardboard cutouts of previous histories but as active, thinking three-dimensional individuals with an ability to choose and, in so doing, to participate in the making of their history.

PART ONE

HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

CHAPTER ONE

ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY*

Introduction Archaeology is the study of the human past through its material remains,1 yet even this straightforward definition produces problems. Are not manuscripts and books material remains? Are other objects, such as inscriptions or coins, which bear writing, the province of the archaeologist or the documentary historian? We might hive these classes of material off into the disciplines of epigraphy or numismatics, but the problem remains, with, for example, graffiti on pottery, and so on. Acknowledging these blurred areas leaves us with an admittedly problematic and provisional, but nevertheless useful, definition of archaeology as the study of the unwritten, material records of the human past; it also, of course, raises the question of the interrelationship between the disciplines of documentary history and archaeology. The two are separate disciplines, in that the types of evidence dealt with, written records on the one hand and excavated data on the other, require, at a technical level at least, the acquisition of different skills for their evaluation and interpretation. Nevertheless, as they are both concerned with the human past, archaeology and documentary history ought to be natural allies. However, over recent decades there has been something of an estrangement between the two. In some areas of historical writing, like the early medieval period, where the volume of archaeological work and the comparative absence of documentary data highlight the problems of integrating written and excavated

* Originally published in M. Bentley (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Historiography (London, 1997), pp. 805–27. Reprinted with kind permission of Routledge. The notes have been harmonised with those in other chapters in this volume but otherwise the article is reproduced as in the original version. 1 For introductions to archaeology, see P.A. Rahtz, Invitation to Archaeology, (2nd edition; London, 1991); K. Greene, Archaeology. An Introduction (3rd edition; London, 1995); P. Bahn & C. Renfrew, Archaeology. Theory. Methods and Practice (London, 1991); P. Bahn, Bluff Your Way in Archaeology (Horsham, 1989) is extremely entertaining and contains a surprising amount of serious information.

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evidence, there is a disturbing lack of dialogue between archaeologists and historians. To give one current example, within the University of London a regular Wednesday-evening ‘earlier medieval’ seminar meets at the Institute of Historical Research, whilst on Thursday evenings, a few [806] hundred yards away at the Institute of Archaeology, the ‘Postgraduate seminar in medieval archaeology’ convenes. Yet, in spite of the chronological, geographical and thematic overlaps between the two seminars, the personnel in attendance are almost entirely different. This lack of dialogue is particularly ironic as most schools of archaeological theory currently stress the importance of the close inter-relationship between history and archaeology. This chapter will not be concerned with the methodologies of archaeological fieldwork, which, it is worth stating, is concerned with a much wider range of activities than excavation alone, including aerial prospection, field-walking, and methods of site evaluation and survey such as electronic ‘geophysical’ technology, enabling sub-surface remains to be charted to some extent without excavation.2 It should also be made clear that archaeological theory and practice do not stand as opposed entities. The theory-bound nature of even the most apparently mundane aspects of archaeological field-work have been known for some time, even if there often remains a self-conscious opposition between ‘dirt archaeologists’ and ‘theorists’. In recent years, the lack of practical integration of theory and fieldwork has preoccupied several leading archaeologists.3 Nor is it the concern of this chapter to provide an introduction to specialist scientific aspects of archaeological inquiry like metallurgical, ceramic or petrological analyses, scientific dating methods, palaeobot-

2

On excavation, the best introduction remains P.A. Barker, The Techniques of Archaeological Excavation, (3rd edition; London 1993). For fieldwalking, see P.J. Fasham, R.T. Schadla-Hall, S.J. Shennan & P.J. Bates, Fieldwalking for Archaeologists (Andover, 1980), and for ‘geophysics’, see A. Clark, Seeing Beneath the Soil (London, 1990). 3 See I. Hodder, ‘Towards a coherent archaeology’, in id., Theory and Practice in Archaeology (London, 1992), pp. 169–80; M.O.H. Carver, Arguments in Stone. Archaeological Research and the European Town in the First Millennium (Oxbow Monograph 29; Oxford, 1993), pp. 78–96; R. Bradley, ‘Archaeology: the loss of nerve’, in N. Yoffee and A. Sherratt (ed.), Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda? (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 131–3; J.C. Barrett, Some Challenges in Contemporary Archaeology (Oxbow Lecture 2; Oxford, 1995).

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any, or the study of animal or human bone.4 Instead the chapter will provide a guide, in rough chronological order, to the ways in which archaeologists have approached the past.5 The main focus will be that of the present writer’s research, the immediately post-Roman period of the middle ages.6 Culture-History The concept of an archaeological ‘culture’, ‘certain types of remains— pots, implements, ornaments, burial rites, house forms—constantly recurring together’,7 emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. This led to narratives of the succession of such cultures within a particular area, or the movement of ‘cultures’ from one area to another. This ensuing ‘Culture-History’ (not to be confused with cultural history!) is today something of a dirty term in [807] archaeological circles. As examples of Culture-History in the historical period we might note the excavations of Sir Mortimer Wheeler which aimed at elucidating and illustrating the conquest of Britain by the Romans, best known at Maiden Castle. Similarly we might cite the use made of archaeological material to track the invasion and settlement of the ‘Angles, Saxons and Jutes’,8 and the similar plotting of the migration of Franks into Gaul from the distribution of grave-types and their associated forms

4 See M.J. Aitken, Science-Based Dating in Archaeology (London, 1990); D. Wilson, Science and Archaeology (Harmondsworth, 1978). 5 For an excellent history of archaeology, the reader is referred to B.G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge, 1989). See also Renfrew & Bahn, Archaeology, pp. 17–40; G.E. Daniel, The Origins and Growth of Archaeology (Harmondsworth, 1967). 6 I reject absolutely the assertion that Historical Archaeology means the archaeology of the modern world, recently made by Charles E. Orser, Jr., A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World (New York, 1996), pp. 26–28. Orser’s view appears to be that ‘history’ only began when the New and Third Worlds came into contact with the Old. Although intended, laudably, to counter Eurocentrism, this formulation seems to me to do precisely the opposite. It also, of course, makes the title of his book tautological! Here, the tight schedule required for the production of this chapter has forced me to ignore historical archaeology outside Europe. This is a significant lacuna. Mea culpa. 7 V.G. Childe, The Danube in Prehistory (Oxford, 1929), pp. v–vi. 8 E.T. Leeds, The Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements (Oxford, 1913), which, as has recently been noted, used the concept of an archaeological culture over a decade before its more famous ‘introduction’ by V.G. Childe: K.R. Dark, Theoretical Archaeology (London, 1995), pp. 5–6.

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of artefact.9 Change in archaeological culture was usually interpreted as resulting from either ‘diffusion’ (the spread of cultural forms but not necessarily of people) or migration (where the appearance of new cultural forms in a region represented the immigration of new people ‘bearing’ that culture), or even invasion. It was within the Culture-History paradigm that most classical and biblical archaeology operated, attempting to link sites into a particular political historical narrative. As one example of this, and of how it affected the publication of fieldwork, we might cite the example of the French Romanist Jean-Jacques Hatt, who reduced most of the sites upon which he worked to unilinear sequences of ‘layers’ each identified with a particular historical phase, and punctuated by burnt levels which he associated with historically-attested ‘sacks’.10 Culture-History, by presenting the possibility of tracing ‘peoples’ through time, and especially backwards from their first appearance in written records, lent itself to abuse and manipulation in the service of nationalist and racist beliefs, and soon acquired some fairly nasty connotations.11 The Nazis made much use of the interpretations of Gustaf Kossinna (1858–1931) who argued for the supremacy of the Aryan race and the Germanic origins of Indo-European civilization; whereas Stalin (until 1950) employed the ideas of Nikolai Marr (1865– 1934), which, in total opposition to Kossinna’s migrationism, argued that material cultural and even linguistic changes represented internal socio-political change, thus allowing Slavic dominance in Eastern Europe to be projected far back into prehistory. Functionalism In the 1930s and particularly after the Second World War, with the ensuing awareness of the horrific extent to which ideas of ‘national characteristics’ could be pushed, Culture-History fell out of vogue to be replaced, gradually and far from universally, by functionalist archaeology.12 Influenced by structural-functionalist anthropology, 9 For critique, see E. James, ‘Cemeteries and the problem of Frankish settlement in Gaul’, in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Names, Words and Graves (Leeds, 1979), pp. 55–89. 10 Hatt’s approach can be clearly at his excavations near St-Médard, Strasbourg: ‘Les fouilles de la Ruelle St-Médard à Strasbourg.’ Gallia 11 (1953), pp. 225–48. 11 Trigger, History of Archaeological Thought, pp. 148–206, esp. 163–7. 12 Culture-history in effect remained the dominant paradigm in medieval archaeology until the 1970s.

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such as the (admittedly diverse) work of Malinowski and RadcliffeBrown, this approach saw ‘cultures’ as functional systems, wherein internal components each served a particular purpose for the maintenance of the whole (whether [808] or not acting towards biological imperatives). Each component of a culture, or social institution, could be explained in terms of its function, rather like the organs of the body. This led to environmental determinism; cultural components functioned in an adaptive way to cope with the natural environment, and could thus be explained in terms of the latter. To understand the function of a given element of the archaeological record, it needed to be interpreted in relationship to other parts of that ‘culture’. Thus developed the archaeological sub-discipline of environmental archaeology and the study of settlement patterns, increasingly using aerial archaeology, some practitioners of which had noticed the potential of aerial photographs during wartime service in the RAF. Functionalist archaeology could encompass diverse views, such as the later writings of V. Gordon Childe13 and the earlier work of Grahame (J.G.D.) Clark.14 Whereas Childe’s functionalist work began within an economically determinist perspective, he gradually became more interested in social organization, the contradictions inherent in the ‘functioning’ of society and eventually the ways in which social evolution was advanced or retarded by the use and control of knowledge. Clark, on the other hand, in opposition to Childe’s Marxist views, saw functionalism as meaning that societies operated primarily to maintain stability and their continued existence in their specific environment. Childe’s actual archaeological work remained somewhat limited and constrained within the field of typology, but Clark, most famously in his excavation of the Neolithic site of Star Carr in Yorkshire, was one of the pioneers of environmental archaeology.

13 V.G. Childe, Man Makes Himself (London, 1936); id., Social Worlds of Knowledge (Oxford, 1949); id., Social Evolution (New York, 1951); id., Piecing Together the Past: The Interpretation of Archaeological Data (London, 1956); id., Society and Knowledge: The Growth of Human Traditions (New York, 1956); id., The Prehistory of European Society (Harmondsworth, 1958). On Childe himself, see B.G. Trigger, Gordon Childe. Revolutions in Archaeology (London, 1980). 14 J.G.D. Clark, The Mesolithic Age in Britain (Cambridge, 1932); id., Archaeology and Society (London, 1939: the 3rd edition, of 1957, is cited here); id., Prehistoric England (London, 1940); id., Prehistoric Europe: The Economic Basis (London, 1952); id., Excavations at Star Carr (Cambridge, 1954).

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Another influential outcome of the functionalist phase in western European archaeology was ‘Hawkes’ ladder’,15 a hierarchy of topics according to the difficulty with which archaeologists could investigate them without recourse to historical texts or oral tradition (Clark, for example, made much use of folklore). Technology, according to Hawkes, was the easiest subject to examine archaeologically, followed by economics; socio-political organization was at best recoverable with difficulty, and religious belief more or less impossible to study. This provided some justification for functionalist archaeology’s major concern with the environment, settlement patterns, technology and economy, the latter three of which were seen as very heavily constrained by the first. Environmental archaeology within the functionalist perspective produced works of overtly environmentally, or ecologically, determinist character, such as that of Claudio Vita-Finzi and Eric Higgs. During this period, advances in scientific dating, most notably in carbon (C14) dating, produced a huge revision of prehistoric chronology, which was dramatically lengthened.16 For all its potential diversity, however, functionalist archaeology still relied, like CultureHistorical archaeology, on factors such as diffusion and migration for much of its explanation of change. [809] The New Archaeology (or Processual Archaeology) In the 1960s archaeology significantly altered the way in which it conceived of itself as a discipline. These developments are usually bracketed together as ‘the New Archaeology’. This was not the first time a ‘New Archaeology’ had been proposed,17 but the name has become fixed to the movement generally associated with the American archaeologist Lewis Binford.18 Binford believed that archaeology should recover

15

C.F.C. Hawkes, ‘Archaeological theory and method: some suggestions from the Old World.’ American Anthropologist 56 (1954), pp. 155–68. 16 On which see C. Renfrew, Before Civilization. The Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe (London, 1973). 17 See, e.g., C. Wissler, ‘The new archaeology.’ American Museum Journal 17 (1917), pp. 100–1; J. Caldwell, ‘The new American archaeology.’ Science 129 (1959), pp. 303–7. 18 Binford’s early work is collected in L.R. Binford, An Archaeological Perspective (New York, 1972). Within this volume, his essays ‘Archaeology as anthropology’ (originally American Anthropology 28 (1962), pp. 217–25), ‘Smudge-pits and hide smoking: the use of analogy in archaeological reasoning’ (originally American Antiquity 32 (1967), pp. 1–12) and ‘Some comments on historical versus processual archaeology’

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general aspects of human behaviour, and strive to be a science. Binford resolutely opposed what he conceived of as the ‘particularist’ tendencies of history (his view of which discipline was decidedly bizarre and out-moded). Instead, archaeology should be concerned with looking for cross-cultural generalities, and the proposal, testing and establishment of general laws (nomothetic interpretations). Explanation was thus equated with prediction. Binford conceived of society as a functioning system, responding adaptively to its natural environment. This led to a certain ecological or environmental determinism, and a view of social relations as essentially tending towards stasis. Again change was viewed as produced by agents external to the system. Such change could, however, only really be understood in relationship to the effects it had on the workings of the system, so internal relationships had to be studied. This in turn meant that one had to study the whole of a social system, and all of its remains. Binford was uninterested in diffusion, and the New Archaeological approach to change has been termed ‘neo-evolutionism’. Although humans were capable of adapting to such things as environmental change (adaptation), the forces driving change were largely non-human. The English archaeologist David (D.L.) Clarke came to similar conclusions as Binford at about the same time.19 Clarke, however, was influenced more by the New Geography and less opposed to the use of history. Clarke, like Binford, believed that archaeology needed to formulate its own technical terms to describe and analyse its data more efficiently. This led to a growth of what traditional archaeologists, and specialists in other disciplines, regarded as excessive jargon. Reading his and Binford’s early work can be hard work, and the posthumous second edition of Analytical Archaeology carried out by R. Chapman has even been termed ‘the Chapman translation’. One of Clarke’s (originally South-Western Journal of Anthropology 24 (1968), pp. 267–75) are of particular importance. See also L.R. Binford, Working at Archaeology (New York, 1983) and id., Debating Archaeology (New York, 1989). 19 As has often been noted, Clarke’s influential Analytical Archaeology (London, 1968) appeared in its first edition in the same year as Binford’s equally important edited volume (with S.R. Binford), New Perspectives in Archaeology (Chicago, 1968). Clarke died tragically early, and his essays are collected in id., Analytical Archaeologist (New York, 1979). Particularly important essays by Clarke were ‘Glastonbury lake village. A provisional model of an Iron Age society and its settlement pattern’, in id. (ed.), Models in Archaeology (London, 1972), pp. 801–69, and id., ‘Archaeology: the loss of innocence.’ Antiquity 47 (1973), pp. 6–18.

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principal interests, arising naturally from the approaches outlined, was in the spatial distribution and [810] relationships observed within the archaeological record, and the means by which such patterns could be tested for statistical relevance, predicted and explained. This was followed up in the early work of his student, Ian Hodder.20 New Archaeology rapidly, and unsurprisingly, became interested in ‘systems theory’ to study of the workings of cultural systems, using models derived from geography and biology. This allowed New Archaeologists, rather than seeing systems as simply reproducing themselves in a straightforward functional way, to examine the relationships between different elements of the system and seek processes which tended towards change, which they termed structure-elaborating, or morphogenetic, processes, as well as those which tended towards stability (homeostatic processes). This was accomplished through the use of the idea of feedback. When change occurred in one element of the system it would produce related change, adaptation or feedback in the others. Negative feedback, by counteracting the initial change, would tend towards stability, whereas positive feedback, by amplifying it, would produce greater and irreversible change. Systems theory produced two further developments. The first was the use of Immanuel Wallerstein’s21 notion of the World System, and the second was the idea of ‘peer-polity interaction’, developed by Colin Renfrew.22 Whereas the first developed ideas of ‘core and periphery’ in the inter-relationship of different cultures, the second theory was designed to explain comparable changes in different, more or less equal, cultures. In a system of units of roughly equal socio-political and economic power or geographical extent (peer polities), changes in one unit would, through processes of emulation and competition (agents of which being warfare, competitive monumental architecture, and so on), lead to comparable and more or less contemporary change in the other units. New archaeologists were interested in long-term developments, such as the development of social organization, or the collapse of complex 20 D.L. Clarke (ed.), Spatial Archaeology (New York, 1977); I. Hodder & C. Orton, Spatial Analysis in Archaeology (Cambridge 1976). 21 I. Wallerstein, The Modern World System, (vol.1; New York, 1974); see T.C. Champion, ‘Introduction’, in id. (ed.), Centre and Periphery. Comparative Studies in Archaeology (One World Archaeology 11; London, 1989), pp. 1–21. 22 See C. Renfrew & J.F. Cherry (ed.), Peer-Polity Interaction and Socio-Political Change (Cambridge, 1986).

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societies. These they perceived as processes which could be studied in general cross-cultural perspective (hence this approach is generally now referred to as processual archaeology). They made use of theories of the ‘stages’ of social development, such as the progression from band, through chiefdom, to state.23 In order to test the hypotheses proposed and arrive at the desired general laws of human behaviour, various archaeologists proposed different means of relating archaeological remains to actual human behaviour. Binford argued that archaeologists tend to ‘confirm the consequent’,24 by which he meant that since the archaeological record does not speak for itself, and thus we approach the archaeological record with particular views in mind (the ‘feudal’ nature of Maya economics, for example), any testing of these ideas against the data will simply tend [811] to reaffirm them. Binford instead argued for the use of ‘middle range theories’ from outside archaeology, which would demonstrate general aspects of human behaviour. These would then be used to find such regularities within the data, and act as a kind of bench-mark against which to judge interpretations. These external theories would come from, for example, ethnographic observation or the use of written records which reveal such general observations. These provide externally validated laws, and archaeological data can be examined with them in mind. Thus Binford stimulated ‘middle range research’.25 With the same general goal in mind, Clarke26 defined five types or levels of theory in which archaeologists were engaged: pre-depositional and depositional theory, dealing with the human and natural processes which led to the deposition and initial patterning of archaeological data; post-depositional theory, concerned with what happened to this

23 See, e.g., M.D. Sahlins & E.R. Service, Evolution and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1960); E.R. Service, Primitive Social Organization (New York, 1962); id., Origins of the State and Civilization (New York, 1975); M.H. Fried, The Evolution of Political Society (New York, 1967); H.J.M. Claessen & P. Skalnik (ed.), The Early State (the Hague, 1978). 24 L.R. Binford, Bones, Ancient Men and Modern Myths (New York, 1981), p. 29. Though the quote is comparatively late within Binford’s oeuvre, the idea can be traced back through his writings to the ’60s. See also J.A. Sabloff, L.R. Binford & A. McAnany, ‘Understanding the archaeological record.’ Antiquity 61 (1987), pp. 203–9. 25 See his own Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology (New York, 1978), which produced comparative data on discard patterns around hearths, and so on, for testing against palaeolithic evidence of hunter-gatherer communities. 26 D.L. Clarke, ‘Archaeology: the loss of innocence.’

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data once it was in the ground, how processes of decay and disturbance would affect the archaeological record; retrieval theory was simply enough theorization of excavation, sampling procedures and so on; analytical theory covered the treatment of the material recovered, its classification, experimental studies &c.; and interpretive theory which involves the recovery of the original social, behavioural, environmental patterns and activities (bringing us full circle to the processes studied by pre-depositional theory). Clarke argued that archaeology had to develop adequately scientific theory to deal with all these levels. Otherwise, he argued, archaeology would remain ‘an irresponsible art form’.27 In the USA, Michael Schiffer28 argued that archaeologists would have to understand certain processes involved in the formation of archaeological sites, which give the data their observable patterning. First one identified ‘correlates’, relating artefacts and patterns to specific human activities, or behaviour (so a certain patterning of material will be the correlate of gift exchange, for example). Then one had to study the ways in which this material record had been altered by two kinds of process. The first he called ‘C-transforms’, ‘cultural transformation processes’ or the means by which the archaeological record is formed in the course of normal human activities, loss patterns and so forth, but also things which would come under Clarke’s heading of post-depositional theory, like subsequent ploughing. N-transforms, on the other hand, ‘non-cultural transformation processes’ determined how the material record would be altered by its relationships with the natural environment. If archaeologists could reconstruct these transformation processes and eliminate them, they would arrive at a ‘reality’ of the material record, and the basis for its interpretation. Seen in the light of much of the functionalist archaeology of the mid-twentieth century, especially that of Grahame Clark, or similar work in the USA, much of the New Archaeology does not look particularly revolutionary, or even new. Binford was however reacting not so much to functionalist archaeologists [812] such as Clark but to the Culture-Historical archaeology which predominated over much of the USA; Clarke, as a student of Clark, proposed a way forward from earlier functionalism and especially away from the text-dominated or art-historical archaeology which was still to be found all too often in

27 28

Ibid., p. 16. M.B. Schiffer, Behavioral Archaeology (New York, 1976).

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Britain. New Archaeology did add to earlier paradigms the concern with historical processes, the quest for general laws, and the attempts to make archaeology a more rigorous and scientific discipline. The latter concern brought the introduction of mathematical formulas, computerized techniques of statistical evaluation and modelling, and spatial analysis. It also produced a more formal concern with the processes of site formation and the problems of archaeological sampling. These ideas together produced the concept of the ‘research design’, which should be set up to evaluate current knowledge of a subject, and establish sampling procedures at various levels, theoretical frameworks and questions to be asked, before any fieldwork was undertaken. New Archaeology was slow to catch on in historically documented periods, although spatial analysis of the distribution of Roman towns was undertaken by Hodder.29 It took even longer to make an impact on medieval archaeology. In 1982, at the twenty-fifth anniversary conference of the Society for Medieval Archaeology, Philip Rahtz proposed a ‘New Medieval Archaeology’.30 In the same year, Richard Hodges published a lengthy paper which similarly argued for the application of the methods and theory of New Archaeology to medieval data.31 Ironically, by 1982, when New Archaeology found its way onto the stage of medieval studies,32 it was already beginning to be rejected by a significant body of theoretical archaeologists. After the New Archaeology: Current Approaches33 ‘New Archaeology’ always had its critics, and these were by no means all the traditionalists and reactionaries which writers like Binford 29 I. Hodder & M. Hassall, ‘The non-random spacing of Romano-British walled towns.’ Man 6 (1971), pp. 391–407. 30 Published as P.A. Rahtz, ‘New approaches to medieval archaeology Part 1’, in D.A. Hinton (ed.), 25 Years of Medieval Archaeology (Sheffield, 1983). 31 R. Hodges, ‘Method and theory in medieval archaeology.’ Archeologia Medievale 9 (1982), pp. 7–38. 32 For major processual works in the historical period, we may cite K. Randsborg, The Viking Age in Denmark (London, 1980); id., The First Millennium in Europe and the Mediterranean. An Archaeological Essay (Cambridge, 1991); R. Hodges, Dark Age Economics. The Origins of Towns and Trade, 600–1000 (London, 1982). 33 For an unusually reader-friendly overview of current theoretical archaeological approaches to diverse subjects, the reader is referred to Dark, Theoretical Archaeology. A degree of caution is, however, necessary, as the conceptualization of various topics becomes increasingly vague as the book progresses. For example, the effective difference between his economic categories of ‘feudalism’ and ‘render-systems’ (pp. 139–40) will remain quite opaque to any medievalist.

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liked to portray them as being. As early as 1974, an anthropologist, R. Adams, had, quite rightly, criticized some New Archaeologists for their ‘behaviouristic gradualism and biological reductionism’, and for failing to recognize the sometimes decisive ‘conscious diversity of actions’.34 This provided a foretaste of what was to come in the 1980s. Ironically, Ian Hodder, pioneer of spatial analysis and student of David Clarke, spearheaded the reaction against the New Archaeology.35 [813] A number of general criticisms of New Archaeology can be made.36 Prominent among these are its removal of the individual from history. Human beings simply responded in predictable ways to ‘system needs’, or to changes beyond their control; social systems were essentially stable; change brought about by conflict within the ‘system’ was ignored.37 The issue of ideology was almost entirely absent from processual archaeology. New Archaeology was excessively functional; from components of a ‘social system’ down to individual artefact forms, everything was explained in terms of its function; there was little symbolism in New Archaeology, and that which there was saw symbolism, predictably, as functional.38 The idea that societies could be divided up into neatly compartmentalized inter-relating ‘boxes’, is also questionable. Gordon Childe had long before said that humans reacted only to their perception of environmental needs, and this point was repeated in opposition to the environmentally or ecologically determinist aspects of processual archaeology. Middle-range theory and its analogs also faced a barrage of criticism. Schiffer’s C- and N-transforms were attacked by Binford, but his own ideas of externally verifiable general aspects of human behaviour were rightly condemned as being

34 R. McC. Adams, ‘Anthropological observations on ancient trade.’ Current Anthropology 15 (1974), pp. 239–58, at p. 249. 35 I. Hodder, Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of Material Culture (Cambridge, 1982); id. (ed.), Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (Cambridge, 1982); id., Reading the Past (Cambridge 1986); id., Theory and Practice in Archaeology (London, 1992). 36 For a lengthy statement, see P. Courbin, What is Archaeology? (Chicago, 1988). Whilst Courbin’s criticisms of New Archaeology are entirely convincing, his subsequent proposal that archaeology return to a sole concern with the collection of facts is reactionary and theoretically untenable. See the review of his work by J. Moreland in History and Theory 30 (1991), pp. 246–61. 37 For the reactionary political undertones of this stance, see Trigger, History of Archaeological Thought, pp. 312–5, 322–6. 38 Binford acknowledged the ‘ideotechnic’ aspect (note the term!) of artefacts; L.R. Binford, ‘Archaeological systematics and the study of culture process.’ American Antiquity 31 (1965), pp. 203–10.

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every bit as theoretically contingent as any other aspect of archaeology. Furthermore, the value of ethnographic analogies was called into question, particularly where the cultures under study, rather than being in some pristine state, could be shown to owe much of their character to their relationship to other types of society, or to their contacts with the western world. The anti-historicism of New Archaeology also caused problems (see below), and even processualists condemned refusals to deal with written data in historic periods. Perhaps most importantly of all, the New Archaeology was still only really interested in the lower rungs of ‘Hawkes’ ladder’. Response to these criticisms of New Archaeology produced an alternative and antithetical theoretical framework and a development within the processual paradigm. The first of these is what is known as post-processual archaeology. Rather than being a closely defined and more or less unified ‘school’ of thought, post-processual archaeology is essentially defined simply by its opposition to processual archaeology, in accordance with the points made above.39 The starting point of post-processualism is that material culture is actively and meaningfully constituted. It creates as well as reflects social relationships so that, for example, the particular costume deemed appropriate for a young woman does not simply reflect that social category (of ‘young woman’), but also actively creates it, in that the mental image of someone of that age and gender will largely be conditioned by that costume which symbolises it. People [814] use material culture actively within social relations, so that material culture can be read as a discourse. However, to understand this symbolism we need always to place it in context. Not only might different symbols mean different things in different cultures, but their meanings might change from one context to another even within the same society. The often-cited example of this would be the priest’s costume, which is white in some circumstances, symbolising good:bad/white:black oppositions, yet black in others. At the same time, however, post-processual archaeologists argued that objects were polysemic (had more than one meaning) or even deliberately ambiguous, within contexts as well as between them. One might be able to arrive at one meaning, perhaps even the dominant meaning, 39

For the essential statements of post-processualism, see Hodder’s works cited at n. 35, above; M. Shanks and C. Tilley, Social Theory and Archaeology (Cambridge, 1987); M. Shanks & C. Tilley, Re-Constructing Archaeology (London, 1987; 2nd edition 1991).

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by examining the context within a material cultural symbol was found, but one should always remember that other people might have read the symbol in a quite different way. These statements were also the product of a particular view of society and of social change. Post-processualism reacted against the slow, long-term systemic change envisaged by the New Archaeology, seeing social change instead as dynamic. Social structure could be seen as a mental image of rules or norms, or appropriate codes of behaviour, and of the ways in which material culture was used in these. This kind of ‘structure’, whilst in some ways inhibiting action, nevertheless also enables it, and individuals can play with these rules as well as within them. Social structure thus never quite reproduces itself exactly. These theories drew heavily upon the anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the ‘habitus’, the Marxist sociologist Anthony Giddens’ concept of structuration, and Noam Chomsky’s ‘generative grammar’.40 Some post-processualists, like Hodder,41 have been quite open in stressing the conscious ‘steps backwards’ involved in post-processual archaeology, reviving the importance of historical context (and thus even of culture-history), and several of Gordon Childe’s views. Many of their ideas were based initially upon a reading of structuralist thought, especially from linguistics (e.g. Saussure) and anthropology (e.g. Lévi-Strauss). The flaws in structuralist theory were rapidly taken on board, so that post-processualists quickly became post-structuralists too. Given that processualists were also interested in structuralism (the comparisons between ‘structure’ and ‘system’ are obvious), structuralism and the critiques of it provided the bridge from processualism to post-processualism. The influence of Marxist thought, particularly that of the ‘Frankfurt school’ (e.g. Althusser) was also to be seen in post-processualism, although the Marx-influenced rather than Marxist theory behind much of post-processualism has led other Marxist archaeologists to describe it as ‘ersatz Marxism’.42 The other major source of theory drawn upon by post-processualists was that of literary criticism and ‘critical theory’. In the early days of post-proces40 See P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, 1977); A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (Cambridge, 1984). 41 Hodder, Reading the Past, p. 1; id., ‘Theoretical archaeology: a reactionary view’, in id. (ed.), Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, pp. 1–16, repr. in id., Theory and Practice in Archaeology, pp. 92–121. 42 Trigger, History of Archaeological Thought, p. 369.

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sual archaeology thinkers such as Foucault, Barthes and Derrida came to be cited almost as often as archaeological writers.43 [815] Post-processualists rejected absolutely the opposition between data and theory. Following work by Mark Leone44 they argued that interpretations of the past are entirely dependent upon the ideological standpoint and socio-political context of the researcher in question. This led to arguments for a ‘plurality’ of archaeologies, with each interpretation as valid as the others. This was an attempt to evade the élitism of academic archaeology, to make the subject more democratic, and to try to avoid imposing modern, western capitalist ‘pasts’ on other societies. At the same time, in line with some at least of these views, post-processualists proposed that archaeologists take an active political stance, to combat the appropriation of the past by dominant ideologies. Archaeologists should consciously reflect on what they are doing, and use it actively to shape the present. Thus feminist archaeologists have been attracted by the post-processual approach.45 Some processualists had come to some similar conclusions about the short-comings of old-style processualism, a point which radical postprocessualists often forgot. This led to the establishment of ‘cognitive processualism’, which reinstates symbolism, ideology, the active use of material culture, and internal conflict into the study of the past.46 It is also far more open to the use of written sources than earlier processualist work. Nevertheless, it retains an obsession with long-term process and general laws. Some have claimed that that cognitive processualism 43 For introductions to structuralist and post-structuralist writers, and applications of their thinking to material culture, see C. Tilley (ed.), Reading Material Culture. Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism (London, 1990). 44 M.P. Leone, ‘Time in American Archaeology’, in C. Redman et al. (ed.), Social Archaeology (New York, 1978), pp. 25–36; id., ‘Some opinions about recovering Mind.’ American Antiquity 47 (1982), pp. 742–60. 45 On feminist archaeology in general, see: J.M. Gero & M.W. Conkey, Engendering Archaeology. Women and Prehistory (Oxford, 1990); R. Gilchrist, ‘Women’s archaeology? Political feminism, gender theory and historical revision.’ Antiquity 65 (1991), pp. 495–501; E. Engelstad, ‘Images of power and contradiction: feminist theory and post-processual archaeology.’ Antiquity 65 (1991), pp. 502–14. For an application to a historical period, see R. Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women (London, 1994). 46 The origins of this movement can be traced to C. Renfrew, ‘Towards an Archaeology of Mind’ (inaugural lecture) (Cambridge, 1982). For cognitive processual studies in the historical period, see H.C. Mytum, The Origins of Early Christian Ireland (London, 1991); L. Hedeager, Iron Age Societies. From Tribe to State in Denmark, 500 BC–700 AD (Oxford, 1992); R. Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement. Archaeology and the Beginnings of English Society (London, 1989).

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represents a new consensus,47 although post-processualists have denied both that this ‘consensus’ owes much to processualism or, indeed, that there is consensus at all.48 The focussing on laws has led to a somewhat fruitless positivist search for laws of the mind. A further development mainly within processualist archaeology has been the (to an historian) rather belated rediscovery of Annales School history.49 One could say that the Annales School shares many features with processual archaeology, not least its inability to cope with historical change. However, post-processualists have also taken up certain Annaliste ideas about the longue durée and mentalités.50 Needless to say, historians have been more than a little bemused by this, as they see it, reinvention of the wheel.51 There still seem, in spite of Renfrew and Bahn’s claims for a consensus, to be major differences between cognitive processualists and even ‘new’ post-processualists. The term ‘new’ post-processualists is used because there were developments within this loosely defined body of theorists, or steps backwards from some of the extreme positions adopted in the mid- to late 1980s. The principle line of attack was against the ‘disabling relativism’ of the ‘hard-line’ post-processualism of, for example, Shanks and Tilley. This attack was spearheaded by feminist archaeologists, who rightly saw that it was not feasible for post-processualists to argue that [816] archaeology be used actively in the present and at the same time claim that one reading of the past was as good as any other. If the latter was the case then chauvinist readings of the past overtly aimed at the subjugation of women would have to be admitted as equally permissible as views of the past designed to empower women. How could archaeologists use their discipline to silence Neo-Nazi abuse of the past, other than through the ‘naked’ use of academic power which post-processualists claimed to oppose? At the same time, the irony of lectures on the evils of élitism and the opening up of the past to the masses delivered from the high table of Peterhouse College, Cambridge,

47

Renfrew & Bahn, Archaeology, pp. 431–4. I. Hodder, ‘The processual reaction’, in id., Theory and Practice in Archaeology, pp. 145–54, at p. 147. 49 J. Bintliff (ed.), The Annales School and Archaeology (Leicester, 1991). 50 I. Hodder (ed.), Archaeology as Long-Term History (Cambridge, 1987). 51 See reviews of Bintliff (ed.), The Annales School and Archaeology, by C. Dyer, in Medieval Archaeology 36 (1992), p. 361, and by C. Delano-Smith, ‘The Annales for archaeology?’ Antiquity 66 (1992), pp. 539–41. 48

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was apparent even to one of their Cambridge School proponents.52 The realisation of the impossibility of maintaining both pluralism and a politically active stance, led to a reassessment of the early post-processual insistence upon the inextricability of data and theory.53 The difference between ‘facts’ and the body of data whence facts are selected, to paraphrase E.H. Carr,54 was realised. Dark has conveniently referred to this as the difference between data and evidence.55 Although the evidence we choose to study and cite in our research is entirely contingent upon the researcher, although, in archaeology, the way in which the data is observed, excavated, recorded and (above all) published is heavily dependent upon the theoretical stance of the excavator, and although the formation of the data itself is hardly unbiased, there nevertheless remains a body of data out there, which exists independently of our theoretical viewpoint, whether we choose to study it or not. It has frequently been possible to use data collected for one purpose to study quite different questions and arrive at conclusions entirely alien to the original excavator.56 It ought to be possible to accept or reject hypotheses about the past according to how well they ‘fit’ that body of data. For example, it is no longer possible to accept ideas linking particular types of weapons in graves to particular social classes, because closer examination of the data simply does not support them.57 If this were not the case, we would never be surprised in our encounters with history. So, as Hodder has most recently argued,58 we are not locked in a hermeneutic vicious circle, but rather our work represents a ‘hermeneutic spiral’, a dialogue with the past, where our experience of the data shapes our conceptions, as well as being structured by

52 I. Hodder, ‘To interpret is to act: The need for an interpretive archaeology.’ Scottish Archaeological Review 8 (1991), pp. 8–13. 53 See P. Graves, ‘Relative values? Criticisms of critical theory.’ Archaeological Review From Cambridge 10 (1991), pp. 86–93. 54 E.H. Carr, What is History? (2nd edition; Harmondsworth, 1987), p. 10ff. 55 Dark, Theoretical Archaeology, p. 36. 56 See, for example, the use of old cemetery data to propose reinterpretations of Frankish social structure which would have never occurred to the excavators of the site in question, in S&S, cc. 3–4. A similar point is made by J. Bintliff, ‘Post-modernism, rhetoric and scholasticism at TAG [Theoretical Archaeology Group]: The current state of British archaeological theory.’ Antiquity 65 (1991), pp. 274–8. 57 R. Samson, ‘Social structures in Reihengräber: Mirror or mirage?’ Scottish Archaeological Review 4, pt. 2 (1987), pp. 116–26; E. James, ‘Burial and status in the early medieval West.’ TRHS 5th Series, 29 (1989), pp. 23–40. 58 I. Hodder, ‘Towards a coherent archaeology’ (above, n. 3), p. 175.

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them. There may be no ‘right answers’, but we can establish that some answers are less wrong than others. Marxist approaches have to some extent stood to one side of the theoretical approaches outlined above. Marxism has its own theoretical basis and discourse, independently of the discipline of archaeology.59 It has also, however, been able to adapt in some way or other to each of these trends. Childe was a Marxist who worked within a generally functionalist paradigm. Although Marxist explanations of change were radically different from those of generally conservative processualists, there was something recognisable in processualist [817] ‘stagist’ views of social development for Marxists used to theorizing about sequences of modes of production. Structural functionalism or even systems theory could also be modified to represent contradictions within society, and especially the oppositions between infrastructure and superstructure. Structuralism has been closely bound up with Marxist thinking and post-processual archaeology has very largely been proposed by theorists heavily dependent upon Marxist thought and, in some cases, self-consciously proclaiming their stance to be Marxist, although, as noted, more traditional Marxists have rejected this.60 Some overall remarks can be made about archaeological approaches to the past. The first is that the sequence of fashionable paradigms is far more obvious, and paradigmatic changes are accompanied by far more polemic and posturing than appears to be the case in documentary history. Another is that for all the usual disparagement of the previous theoretical fashion, most new approaches in fact owe a substantial amount to their precursors. Referring to archaeology’s tendency to borrow often obsolescent ideas from other disciplines Bintliff has written that archaeological theory always ‘reappears in clean but borrowed finery’.61 This borrowed finery is almost always worn over at least some of the garb of previous theory.

59 See S. Rigby, ‘Marxist historiography’, in Bentley (ed.) Routledge Companion to Historiography, pp. 889–928. 60 On Marxist archaeology, see Trigger, History of Archaeological Thought, ch. 6, passim, pp. 259–63, 338–47; R.H. McGuire, A Marxist Archaeology (San Diego, 1992). For Marxist archaeology applied to an historical period, see, recently, the two chapters by Steve Roskams in N. Christie & S.T. Loseby (ed.), Towns in Transition. Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1996). 61 Bintliff, ‘Post-modernism, rhetoric and scholasticism at TAG’, p. 275. It should be said that Binfliff’s ‘discovery’ of Annales puts him very much in the same category.

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Relationships between History and Archaeology There is an emerging consensus among archaeologists that closer links with documentary history ought to be forged. Yet, for all these good intentions, there is still far too little meaningful dialogue between historians and archaeologists. The usual situation has been well summed up by Ian Morris: [those] who rely mainly on texts and those who rely mainly on archaeological evidence often act as if they were two sides in a competition, and one day an impartial observer will judge whose evidence is the best and who wins the game.62

As instances of this ‘competitive’ attitude we may turn to work on the early medieval era: It has been said that the spade cannot lie but it owes this merit in part to the fact that it cannot speak.63 But for the first millennium the written sources are primarily chronicles, biographies, letters and poems. Few wills and charters survive before about 950, and virtually no records of village life. The historian is at an obvious disadvantage. With these personal [818] sources only at his disposal, it is not surprising that the result commonly amounts to what Colin Renfrew has termed the ‘Dark Age myth’, . . .64 Archaeology can help, at least in terms of the description of the material culture of the Scandinavian societies, but there are strict limits to the types of questions which it is competent to answer.65

The roots of the problem lie in archaeology’s development as an academic discipline in western Europe. Culture-History, by simply attempting to flesh out, illustrate or extend political historical narratives, and by being conducted, usually, by researchers trained as

62 I.N. Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge 1992), p. 200. 63 P. Grierson, ‘Commerce in the Dark Ages: A critique of the evidence.’ TRHS 5th series, 9 (1959), pp. 123–40, at p. 129. 64 Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement, p. 6. One wonders if Hodges has actually read many early medieval written sources! 65 R.J.H. Collins, Early Medieval Europe (London, 1991), p. 313. Collins’ total ignorance of archaeology is best illustrated by the astonishing ‘clanger’ dropped on n. 47 to p. 323 (note on p. 419), where he claims that no archaeological evidence has ever been found of Viking Dublin, in spite of many documentary references, thus ignoring the major discoveries at Wood Quay and Fishamble St. On the latter, see, for example, P. Wallace, ‘The archaeology of Viking Dublin’ in H.B. Clarke & A. Simms (ed.), The Comparative History of Urban Origins in Non-Roman Europe. (BAR (I) 255; Oxford, 1985), pp. 103–46.

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historians, posed few problems for disciplinary relationships. History was dominant; archaeology was simply auxiliary or ancillary. These attitudes are still to be found today; in the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research archaeology is still classified under ‘auxiliary sciences’.66 Functionalism, by being essentially a prehistorian’s approach, and by concentrating on topics such as environment and economy which were not readily confronted through written sources, similarly did not rock the boat. The problems came with New Archaeology, which, as stated, tried consciously to distance itself from history. Partly this was based upon a rather strange view of documentary history; partly, too, it stemmed from an understandable and justifiable desire by archaeologists to rid their discipline of the tag, ‘handmaiden of history’.67 New Archaeological polemic, especially in the medieval period, did not help interdisciplinary relations. Picking up on critical reassessments of certain texts,68 some archaeologists decided that written sources simply had nothing very interesting to say. It was unfortunate for their case that, rather than having sufficient courage in their convictions, or faith in the explanatory power of their evidence, to produce alternative studies entirely drawn from the material data, they often fell back on the written sources whenever they ran into difficulties, especially with issues higher up ‘Hawkes’ ladder’.69 Moreover, the use made of such sources was frequently crude, and counter to historians’ critical assessments. The perceived jargon of the New Archaeology heightened the [819]

66 E.J. Hobsbawm, ‘An historian’s comments’, in B.C. Burnham & J. Kingsbury (ed.), Space, Hierarchy and Society. Interdisciplinary Studies in Social Area Analysis (BAR (I) 59; Oxford, 1979), pp. 247–52, at p. 249, implies that he thinks archaeology is an ‘ancillary discipline to history’. 67 I. Noël Hume, ‘Archaeology: Handmaiden to history.’ North Carolina Historical Review 41 (1964), pp. 215–25. 68 Most notably, D.N. Dumville, ‘Sub-Roman Britain—History and Legend.’ History 62 (1977), pp. 173–92. 69 For example, R. Hodges’ appeal to Bede’s account of a political marriage to provide a context for archaeological evidence of cross-Channel contact. ‘There is a firm historical foundation for these contacts, since Charibert I, who reigned at Paris from 561 to 567, gave his only daughter Bertha in marriage to Ethelbert of Kent.’ (Dark Age Economics, p. 35). Bertha was not Charibert’s only daughter; the marriage almost certainly took place in the 580s; thus Charibert did not ‘give’ her in marriage. See I.N. Wood, The Merovingian North Sea (Alingsås, 1983) for examination of how this forces a complete revision of Hodges’ view of Kentish-Merovingian relations.

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problems of dialogue.70 This is the context within which Morris’ ‘game’ is played. In trying to move forward we need to address traditional uses of archaeology by historians. These usually fall into three categories: 1. Illustrative. Archaeological data, mainly artefacts, are used to provide illustrations of the appearance of people, or settlements and ‘daily life’.71 2. Justificatory. Usually crude and off-the-shelf use of archaeology is made to ‘prove’ history. Documents attest the existence of X, and here it is, proven by excavations at Y. 3. ‘Filling in the gaps’. Where documents do not tell us anything about a given problem, it is valid to use archaeology to probe these areas. These categories are also to be found in archaeological work. The third, in particular, gives rise to what Ian Morris calls the ‘zero sum’ view of archaeology, that the importance of archaeology is inversely proportional to the number of written documents. An explicit view of this statement can be found from the pen of Grahame Clark.72 This is a view which must be abandoned by historians and archaeologists if we are ever meaningfully to integrate written and material cultural evidence. When we look more closely at previous attempts to use history and archaeology together, we usually see a three-stage process. In the first stage, an assumption drawn from written sources is used to structure the archaeological data, or the excavated data are themselves collected to answer a question drawn from the written sources. In the second phase, these neat correlations and illustrations are rapidly shown to be flawed, both by re-examining the archaeological sources and by more sophisticated consideration of the documents. As a result of the problems raised, in the third stage the idea that the two types of evidence can be used together at all is rejected. This can take the form

70

C.P. Wormald, Review of Hodges, Dark Age Economics, London Review of Books (21 Oct.–3 Nov., 1982), pp. 22–23. 71 See Collins at n. 65 above. 72 Archaeology and Society, pp. 20–21.

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of disparagement of one or other evidential form,73 and thus Morris’ competitive interdisciplinary ‘game’. Where this is not the case, it is simply assumed that the two types of evidence relate to wholly different things and thus cannot be used together. Sometimes this attitude is summed up in the epigram, ‘archaeology tells you what people did, whilst history tells you what they thought’, which of course implies that people did not usually think about what they were doing! The whole process is founded on the premises that one-to-one correlations ought to exist, and that the two evidential forms ought to relate to the same aspect of a given problem if they have anything at all to contribute to its study. [820] A concrete example may be seen in the examination of religion in post-Roman Gaulish cemeteries. Written sources provided the idea that there was a dichotomy between Christianity and paganism, especially in rural areas, in this period. Thus, in archaeology, graves with grave-goods and those without were assumed to be the graves of pagans and Christians respectively. Signs on artefacts were read as religious indicators; west-east oriented burials and even burials in sarcophagi were assumed to be of Christians. The flaws in these ideas were swiftly revealed. The Church did not ban grave-goods; documentary and archaeological instances of burial in church with gravegoods were cited; whether or not one was provided with grave-goods was shown to be governed to some extent by age and gender; general anthropological work showed that grave-goods were not indicative of a particular view of the after-life; west-east burial became common before widespread conversion to Christianity; the symbols on artefacts were rarely to be read in straightforward ways. Closer study of the documents even questioned the idea of this kind of religious opposition. As a result of this barrage of criticism, some archaeologists decided that this served as a ‘cautionary tale’ about using history and archaeology together.74

73 See, for example, R. Hodges’ comments on the failure (by 1982) of archaeology to find any confirmation of the existence of the thriving emporium at York mentioned in written sources: ‘At some stage we have to accept the power of this kind of negative evidence.’ (Dark Age Economics, p. 74). This needless to say is the opposite view to that of Collins, above, n. 65. Within a few years of the writing of these lines excavations at Fishergate revealed the ‘missing’ town! 74 P. Périn, ‘La confrontation des données écrites et archéologiques est toujours délicat et parfois il y a peu de rencontres, comme j’ai pu le vérifier, avec des autres, pour les questions de paganisme et de christianisme.’ Pers. comm. 14.vi.1988.

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The despairing view of integration now seems mainly to be held by historians.75 Certainly the combative stance, and rather silly mistakes in the use of written sources, of New Archaeologists like Richard Hodges served to obscure in historians’ eyes the very real advances and significant contributions to understanding which their work represented. Some historians still refuse to accept that archaeology has explanatory value. Many others see it as very difficult to produce independent hypotheses from archaeological evidence because that evidence does not take written form. Whilst it is true that the movement from ‘data’ to ‘evidence’ is, initially, more difficult, and requires more theoretical involvement,76 it is a long time since documentary historians drew their interpretations purely from the overt, face-value statements of their texts. The movement away from New Archaeology produced attempts to bring about a rapprochement between the disciplines. Yet although much sense has been spoken about the need to reopen dialogue, break down disciplinary barriers and find common theoretical approaches, no workable methodology has been proposed which allows archaeology to retain an equal and independent explanatory voice, and thus to move on from the ‘zero sum’ view. In 1988 a collection of studies of early medieval Britain and Ireland was published77 with the expressed intention of examining the integration of historical and archaeological [821] evidence from different theoretical perspectives.78 Worthy though the aims were, there was little methodological advance. Documentary evidence still set the agenda and there was not much attempt to use the archaeology to question or refine the picture drawn from often problematic written sources. Partly the problem arose from an absence of papers by historians which might have served to question the applicability of these types of document to the periods, places and

75

D.N. Dumville, ‘The origins of Northumbria: some aspects of the British background’, in S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester, 1989), pp. 213–22, at p. 213. The comments of T. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome. Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 BC) (London, 1995), pp. 26–30, esp. p. 29, seem to stem from a despair at precisely the same sort of crass one-to-one correlations as are described above. The conclusion, though, is unduly negative. 76 Dark, Theoretical Archaeology, p. 36. 77 S.T. Driscoll & M.R. Nieke (ed.), Power and Politics in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland (Edinburgh, 1988). 78 Such as Leslie Alcock’s culture-history, Chris Arnold’s processualism, Richard Hodges’ (by then) cognitive processualism, and Stephen Driscoll’s post-processualism.

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problems under study. The concluding essay by Driscoll79 begins with valuable and important comments about the value of interdisciplinary study and the historiography of historical archaeology. However, the case-study intended to illustrate the potential of interdisciplinary work remains disappointing. The analysis is flawed by being structured around particular views of conversion to Christianity, the Pictish state and the expanding power of the latter, all drawn from late and problematic sources. In the end the material remains, Pictish symbol stones, are used simply to illustrate these notions rather than to question them. More recently, the post-processual archaeologist, John Moreland, has written extensively on the relationships between history and archaeology. Moreland makes excellent points about how material culture may be read as text, and how texts may be seen as a kind of material culture. This permits us to use material culture and texts to examine the same kinds of power relationships and discourses.80 However, whilst Moreland’s work provides a valid means of using material cultural studies with work on the use and form of texts and literacy, he does not offer a framework for the use of archaeology with the contents of documents, which is, after all, what most historians work with. To progress, we need to take a step backwards. The problems in previous attempts to integrate historical and archaeological sources stem from two key issues. The first is a continuous hopping back and forth from one discipline to the other, using off-the-shelf interpretations from one to shape interpretations of the other. This is exacerbated by the ignorance of specialists in one discipline of the problems involved in the use of data in the other. This has resulted in the borrowing of ‘facts’ from unreliable documents, or simplistic use of archaeological data.81 We therefore need to do two things. We have

79

S.T. Driscoll, ‘The relationship between history and archaeology: artefacts, documents and power’, in Driscoll & Nieke (ed.), Power and Politics in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland, pp. 162–87. 80 J. Moreland, ‘Method and theory in medieval archaeology in the 1990s.’ Archeologia Medievale 18 (1991), pp. 7–42. For more consideration of common theoretical approaches to written and excavated material, see S. Tabacynzki, ‘The relationship between history and archaeology: elements of the present debate.’ Medieval Archaeology 37 (1993), pp. 1–12. The article’s excessively impenetrable style is not helped by bad proofreading. 81 See, e.g., B.S. Bachrach’s use of cemetery archaeology to evaluate the numbers of mounted warriors in ‘Charles Martel, the stirrup, mounted shock combat and feudalism.’ Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 7 (1970), pp. 49–75.

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to eliminate the cross-disciplinary comparisons and borrowings from all but the highest and most sophisticated levels of interpretation, and we have to rebuild the walls between disciplines, even if as low walls respected only in particular stages of analysis. In practice this means separating different categories of data within the disciplines (i.e. keeping settlement data separate from cemetery evidence, and the study of saints’ lives distinct from that of charters) as well as simply keeping written data distinct from excavated. [822] If we see all our data in context and as meaningfully and contingently formed by active individuals, analogous processes of enquiry are presented. These become clearer still if we see all our evidence, whether written document, decorated artefact, settlement or house plan or grave, as textual, conveying symbolic, coded ‘messages’ to an audience. The stages of enquiry can be set out as follows: 1. Frame questions. 2. Collect data. 3. Evaluate the data. This means assessing its reliability, to what extent archaeological sites were reliably excavated or published and what potential features were not recorded, or the extent to which a historical text is interpolated. 4. Examine the context of the data. This implies not only the geographical and chronological provenance of the material but also more general questions of who formed the data, why, and for whom. Textual scholars need to consider the questions of genre; archaeologists analogous issues such as what the data represents: votive pit, midden, grave, and so on. Archaeologists also need to consider such questions as how easy of access was this evidence, how visible was it, and for how long? 5. Establish patterning within the data. In documentary terms this simply means reading the document, and reconstructing internal semantic patterns, ranges of meaning, narrative strategies and so forth. For archaeologists it means looking at spatial distributions, patterns of correlation and so on. In both cases it involves reconstructing the message of the data, as opposed to the context within that message was made. 6. Produce detailed conclusions from this body of data. Alternative explanations should be kept open.

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This process is not purely linear. For example, stage 5 must sometimes precede stage 4; sometimes we can only establish who created a body of evidence, for whom, and how visibly, once we have considered what the overt message of the data is. Moreover, the process is recursive, as ideas emerge during the investigation of the data at stages 4, 5 or 6, we often return to our data to examine aspects of it which did not at first seem important, or we collect more data. Each body of data should be studied separately. Although at stage 1 we come to that evidence with preconceived ideas drawn from the usual bricolage of history and archaeology (including parallels from other periods and places), geography, anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, literature, sociology and philosophy, as well as personal experience, we ought to be asking what that particular type of data, when analysed on its own merits, can say in answer to those questions. I would also argue that questions at stage 1 be framed in as general a way as possible. Posing questions which are too specific, or too closely based upon ideas drawn from another discipline can lead at best to the abandonment of the examination of potentially interesting sources of information, or, at worst, hammering the data to fit these preconceptions. During stages 2–6 we should rule out any interference from the study of other categories of data. It has been this kind of criss-crossing [823] between the study of different kinds of material at these stages which has obscured the potential of so many sources. We must always remember that different kinds of evidence might have different things to say about different aspects of particular problems. This method allows us to abandon questions which do not seem to be answered, or answerable, from that kind of data, to frame new ones. It also allows us to determine those issues, or aspects of questions, which that material does confront. In spite of a widespread scepticism, the analysis of different bodies of data can realistically be kept distinct at these stages. Just as, recently, students of hagiography have been able to study their source material without trying to make it fit preconceptions drawn from work on narrative histories, and as settlement archaeology (especially urban) has often been studied in total separation from cemetery studies, it is quite feasible to study a body of archaeological material without constantly framing one’s questions or structuring the data and its patterning according to preconceptions from documentary history. The approach recommended here not only falls into line with the contextualism of post-processual archaeology,

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but also chimes with more rigidly contextual studies of written texts proposed recently by historians.82 It moreover permits each body of data to question, as well as to confirm or complement, the others83 because once we have studied these bodies of evidence separately, we can and must merge the conclusions drawn from each (stage 6) at a higher level.84 We ought to be able to see more clearly where genuine correlations do exist, but where, as is usually the case, such direct links are absent, it allows us to confront the questions of why they do not, by looking at the purposes served by the creation of each kind of data. It also allows meaningful integration to be made at a more sophisticated level, by looking at common purposes or mentalities involved in the creation of data. It should enable us to identify significant social change, which unidisciplinary studies have either ignored or dismissed as mere ‘fashion’.85 This approach should also allow us to choose between alternative explanations of one body of data on the grounds of sophisticated study of the others, not by preconceived ideas of the supremacy of one kind of data, but by the production of hypotheses which explain all sets of data equally. If different kinds of evidence are approached in this way, via analogous stages of analysis, posing comparable kinds of question, and arriving at independent conclusions, fruitless old questions of whether history or archaeology is dominant, ancillary or auxiliary are sidestepped. This ‘multi-disciplinary’ methodology does however require either that people be more specifically educated in more than one discipline or at least that disciplinary [824] specialists be prepared to engage

82 See P. Fouracre, ‘Merovingian history and Merovingian hagiography.’ Past and Present 127 (1990), pp. 3–38; I.N. Wood, ‘Continuity or Calamity: the constraints of literary models’, in J.F. Drinkwater & H. Elton (ed.), Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity? (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 9–18. 83 I would argue that none of the post-processual examples of inter-disciplinary integration cited approvingly by Moreland, ‘Method and theory in medieval archaeology in the 1990s’, uses archaeology or material culture to provide a voice independent of the written sources. Some seem only to justify or illustrate the latter. 84 Thus whilst I agree with Richard Reece that archaeologists should keep their data separate from historical ideas, I do so only when considering preliminary stages of analysis. R. Reece, ‘Sequence is all: Or archaeology in an historical period.’ Scottish Archaeological Review 3.2 (1984), pp. 113–6. 85 For an attempt to put this methodology into practice, see S&S, although, like all who would be jack of all trades, the author suffers from being a master of none. For a subsequent rejection of the only neat, direct correlation identified in this work, see FSP, p. 18 (below, p. 307).

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in the kind of dialogue which enables such conclusions, rather than vacuous one-to-one similarities or competitive attempts to prove one set of data better than the other. As far as future developments are concerned, it requires academics to educate their students in the possibilities of such dialogue, and to stop perpetuating the disparaging or confrontational states of mind discussed above. If we can carry out this methodology, we will produce much more rounded views of the past. Binford once wrote that historical archaeology would one day be at the forefront of archaeological theory.86 With a more thoughtful integrative methodology this might at last be possible, but just as archaeologists ought to benefit from the existence of documentary evidence, historians ought to be prepared to accept the benefits of independent material cultural research, and not just for illustrative, justificatory or ‘zero sum’ purposes. The recognition that archaeology has an equal and independent explanatory voice will allow a fuller understanding of all historical periods, from the BronzeAge Near East to the present day, by allowing us to challenge ‘the primacy of the articulate and the articulated from the perspective of the embedded and the silent.’87

86 L.R. Binford, ‘Historical archaeology: Is it historical or archaeological?’, in L. Ferguson (ed.), Historical Archaeology and the Importance of Material Things (Tucson, 1977), pp. 13–22, at p. 13. 87 D. Miller, Artefacts as Categories. A Study of Ceramic Variability in Central India (Cambridge, 1985), p. 205.

Commentary One Archaeology and its discontents1

I. Background The preceding chapter was originally written in some haste as a result of an invitation from Michael Bentley to fill a gap in the coverage of the Routledge Companion to Historiography. Writing it gave me an excuse to bring my reading of British archaeological theory up-to-date (to the mid-1990s) and to articulate my views on precisely how the two disciplines might be brought together. The speed with which it was written, and the constraints of space led, as Matthew Johnson has rightly commented, to it being ‘over-simplified in parts’.2 On the whole, the chapter does not appear to have had significant impact or attracted much response.3 That it has slipped under archaeologists’ radar is unsurprising; it is aimed at historians, and archaeologists would derive little benefit from a potted and simplified narrative of their discipline’s theoretical developments. It is reprinted here to set the remainder of the book in a historiographical and methodological context. It might bring the second half of the chapter, on the relationships between history and archaeology, and the methodological

1 I owe this title to a suggestion made by Professor Barbara Rosenwein following a paper I presented to an international conference at Paderborn in 2001, later published as ‘Early medieval archaeology and history: some interdisciplinary problems and potentials for the twenty-first century’, in H.-W. Goetz & J. Jarnut (ed.), Mediävistik im 21. Jahrhundert—Stand und Perspektiven der internationalen und interdisziplinären Mittelalterforschung (Munich, 2003), pp. 165–87. 2 M. Johnson, Archaeological Theory: An Introduction (Oxford, 1999), p. 208. 3 Leaving aside a generous comment by L. Jordanova, History in Practice (1st edition; London, 2000), p. 66, n. 8, and some positive reviews in historical journals. See Wim van Meurs. ‘Review of Michael Bentley, ed, Companion to Historiography,’ HABSBURG, H-Net Reviews, April, 1998 (http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev .cgi?path=7379892826795, accessed 14 March 2007) for brief but cogent critical remarks. The discussion of the relationship between history and archaeology receives sympathetic discussion in M.B. Moore, Philosophy and Practice in Writing the History of Ancient Israel (New York, 2006), pp. 42–45, and favourable comment in C.H. Langebaek Rueda, Arquelogía colombiana. Ciencia, passado y exclusion (Instituto Colombiano para el desarollo de la Ciencia y la Tecnología Francisco José de Caldas, 2003), p. 234.

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suggestions therein, to the attention of archaeological as well as historical readers. I want to use this ‘commentary’ to consider further the relationships between history and archaeology and to discuss other writing on that topic, primarily that which has appeared since chapter 1’s publication. In this context, the concentration on the early medieval period is less problematic and the remainder of this commentary will generally be devoted to the same period. As will become clear, the past decade has left me less sanguine about the possibilities of meaningful dialogue between archaeologists and historians. Previous extended discussions of the relationships between history and archaeology have usually been written by archaeologists. A detailed response by an historian is long overdue. There are two or three principal areas where the chapter might have been improved. With more time I might have made use of examples from a spatially and chronologically less restricted range of contexts. The account of the development of theory is also too Anglo-centric, or at least Anglophonic, and too linear. Other countries’ archaeological traditions have developed in different ways and at different times, sometimes in ways that parallel the British experience; sometimes shaped (in both areas) by close cooperation (as with Scandinavian archaeology); but often in quite distinct fashions. Theoretical developments have taken place in varying ways not only in different countries but, within those geographical units, in the archaeologies of different eras. French prehistoric archaeology, for example, has a very different, stronger theoretical tradition from that of the Merovingian era (which has pretty much no tradition of self-reflexive theory at all). This means that the relationships between documentary historians and archaeologists are sometimes rather different, and not always to archaeology’s advantage as we shall see. Sometimes, even when, methodologically, archaeology challenges the primacy of the written sources far less than in Britain, confrontational and unhelpful relations between the disciplines nevertheless exist. One may however hope that the absence of a ‘messy divorce’ such as happened in Britain might allow more fruitful interdisciplinary methodologies to emerge more easily. Another area where I would ideally have written the chapter differently, were I composing it in 2009, concerns the idea of archaeology as text. In chapter 6 and commentary 4, below, I subject my earlier thoughts on the textual metaphor to some critical scrutiny and there is no need to anticipate those comments here. Suffice it to say that, unlike other critical archaeological commentators on the idea, my

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reservations principally concern the ‘reading’ by modern scholars of the material cultural traces of the past, rather than the way in which meaning is conveyed by material culture in the past (or in present societies), which can of course be read haptically or bodily, through the use or experience of space or other aspects, as well as optically through the ‘reading’ of signs. Although material culture can convey information via the use of coded symbols, understood by context and inter-relation, there are some crucial differences between the creation, and thus the possibilities of ‘reading’, the archaeological record and the production of, and difficulties involved in deciphering, the written data. I will return, in this commentary, to some important if unpalatable implications for archaeology’s ability to recover information about ideas or mentalités. Finally, my discussion of the ways by which material culture, or the experience of it, helps to create reality is too simplistic and does not employ a very helpful example.4

II. Other discussions of History and Archaeology Probably the most serious (and puzzling) bibliographical omission in the preceding chapter is the important article by David Austin on the ‘proper study’ of medieval archaeology, published in 1990.5 This now rather dated piece continues to be cited with approval by archaeologists and so merits attention. Austin’s argument is that (by the late 1980s) medieval archaeology had allowed itself to be trapped in the documentary historians’ agenda. Medieval archaeologists had certainly all too often interpreted their data in ways ultimately driven by particular readings of the written sources (and sometimes still do). Whether that is the same as a documentary historical agenda is another matter. Instead, Austin proposed that medieval archaeologists devise their own agendas from their data and followed this up, in collaboration with Julian Thomas, with a case study to which I shall return.6

4

AH, p. 813 (above, p. 33). D. Austin, ‘The “proper study” of medieval archaeology’, in D. Austin & L. Alcock (ed.), From the Baltic to the Black Sea: Studies in Medieval Archaeology (London, 1990), pp. 9–42. 6 D. Austin & J. Thomas, ‘The “proper study” of medieval archaeology: a case study’, in D. Austin & L. Alcock (ed.), From the Baltic to the Black Sea: Studies in Medieval Archaeology (London, 1990), pp. 43–78. 5

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Austin’s overall argument—that archaeologists should have more confidence in the explanatory power of their data—is surely correct but its details betray misunderstandings at several levels. The comments on the written accounts do not reveal an awareness of their nature. Austin is not unusual among archaeologists in this and indeed—as he would rightly say—it is not the primary role of a medieval archaeologist to be familiar with the documentary record. Yet if one is going to critique that record it behoves one to have some idea of its character and problems. Austin thinks that modern historians still set the same agenda as had Bede in the eighth century.7 Alas, his comments on the works of Bede and Gregory of Tours only suggest that, if has read them, he has not understood them.8 The written record is diverse; to reduce it to representing the justifications of the élite is analogous to an attempt to reduce all archaeological data to grave-goods (as, some might argue, does the present volume). It has its limitations, of course. Even in thoroughly documented societies there are many subjects that it tells us nothing about and, as is well-known, even when it does inform us about things, its overt statements are subject to scrutiny and counter-readings. To proclaim—as many archaeologists still do—that the early medieval written record has a single agenda, that it tells us about the élite alone, or that it tells us solely what the élite wanted us to believe only demonstrates unfamiliarity with that record or with its sophisticated study. To continue to proclaim it is hardly likely to encourage documentary historians either to take seriously archaeologists’ work with their own data or to think it worthwhile to engage them in debate. What is at stake is neither the work nor the agenda of modern historians, nor even that of early medieval writers, but the use by archaeologists of concepts or master narratives that stem ultimately from nineteenth-century positivist readings of the documentary record.9

7 ‘[T]he documentary historian’s agenda laid down from the 8th century onwards’: Austin, ‘The “proper study” ’, p. 17. Apparently, we only have the one agenda . . . 8 Austin, ‘The “proper study” ’, p. 16: ‘This was, of course, the intention of Bede and Gregory of Tours, literate administrators who set about writing the history of their political masters and thereby justifying their growing hegemonic power.’ It was, ‘of course’, nothing of the sort. See, e.g., W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, AD 550–800. Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede. Paul the Deacon (Princeton, 1988). I am not sure what Bede was administering, beyond the monastic school at Jarrow. 9 Furthermore, as Howard Williams points out, in ‘Rethinking early medieval mortuary archaeology’, EME 13 (2005), pp. 195–217, at pp. 109–200, archaeologists

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Austin was neither the first nor the last archaeologist to fail to distinguish the two. Here, his polemic might have been more effective had it not been marred by serious errors of fact. He states, for instance, à propos the furnished inhumation cemeteries of the early middle ages (such as are the focus for the essays in this volume), that it remains a tacit assumption among most archaeologists and all historians [my emphasis] that the bulk of the dead in these cemeteries consisted of coherent groups of Germanic-speaking migrants, distinct from the others.10

Austin published this rather odd remark no fewer than eleven years after Edward James’ classic (and much cited by historians) discussion of the relationship between cemeteries and ethnic identity in northern Gaul.11 Although written by someone whom Austin would, one assumes, have regarded as an historian, this took the debate on the ethnic significance of cemeteries rather further away from the assumption of a one-to-one correlation between furnished inhumation and Germanic-speaking migrants than had anything written at that point by an archaeologist.12 James had published a further examination of the topic the year before Austin published his tirade.13 Indeed 1989 was also the year when I delivered the conference paper on which chapter 2 is based, pushing the reading of early medieval furnished inhumation yet further away from old-style understandings of ethnicity, especially ‘Germanic’ ethnicity, certainly further than had anyone trained purely as an archaeologist by that date. As will become clear, the ‘pro-ethnic’ objections to my interpretation of that rite, the attempts to tie it back to nineteenth-century historical concepts, have

were fully implicated in creating these metanarratives. They were not simply passive absorbers of historical ‘received wisdom’. 10 Austin, ‘The “proper study” ’, p. 17. 11 E. James, ‘Cemeteries and the problem of Frankish settlement in Gaul.’ in P.H. Sawyer (ed.) Names, Words and Graves (Leeds, 1979), pp. 55–89. James had published similar doubts earlier, e.g. The Merovingian Archaeology of South-West Gaul (BAR(I) 25; Oxford, 1977), pp. 179–81: see ALRF, p. 169 (below, pp. 110–11). 12 C. Hills, ‘The archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England in the pagan period: A review.’ Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979), pp. 297–330, which made some similar points, appeared in the same year. 13 E. James, ‘Burial and status in the early medieval West.’ TRHS, 5th series, 39 (1989), pp. 23–40. See also J. Campbell, E. John & P. Wormald, The Anglo-Saxons (London, 1981), p. 36, for other historians saying that the occupants of early AngloSaxon cemeteries were not all Anglo-Saxon newcomers, again well before Austin’s paper. One could multiply similar examples.

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come almost exclusively from archaeologists.14 More to the point, Austin contradicts himself; he had already referred to the work by historians like Walter Goffart, breaking down the notion of ethnic identities as immutable entities. Austin also declares that most documentary historians are not theoretically inclined.15 The basis for this statement is unclear. It is rather out of step with reality although Austin is not alone among archaeologists in the curious idea that historians ‘don’t do theory’. Admittedly, historians tend to wear their theory more lightly than do archaeologists.16 One can legitimately argue, as does Matthew Johnson, that the theoretical developments of history and archaeology have run on parallel courses,17 but the fact remains that the developments have tended to take place in history rather sooner than in archaeology. The similarities between processual archaeology and Annales School history were not noted until the late 1980s,18 but the Annales School emerged more than thirty years before the development of processualism in the early 1960s. The ‘linguistic turn’ affected documentary history over a decade before it began to be felt in post-processual archaeology.19 When criticising historians, Austin has difficulty finding recent examples. He castigates Georges Duby for not making more use of

14

See below, pp. 137–51. Austin, ‘The “proper study” ’, p. 13: ‘Whether theoretically inclined or not, and most are not, documentary historians do not feel in any way compelled to accept the validity of archaeological data . . . ’ 16 One might illustrate this by comparison of two articles on a similar topic: J. Nordbladh & T. Yates, ‘This perfect body, this virgin text: between sex and gender in archaeology’, in I. Bapty & T. Yates (ed.), Archaeology after Structuralism: PostStructuralism and the Practice of Archaeology (Oxford, 1990), pp. 222–37; and D. Neal, ‘Masculine identity in late medieval English society and culture’, in N. Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History (London, 2005), pp. 171–88. The former is little more than a competent undergraduate philosophy essay, uncritically summarising the work of theorists like Freud and Lacan but without being very clear about the differences in their stances or the possible critiques of their position. In spite of its title it contains no discussion either of the application of such perspectives to archaeology or the ability of archaeology to engage with the theory. The latter, by contrast, deals, with a selfconfidently light touch, with the work of these theorists and also demonstrates both the ways in which this theory can inform the reading of medieval texts and how the confrontation with historical evidence permits a critical engagement with some critical theoretical conclusions. See further, below, pp. 338–40. 17 Johnson, Archaeological Theory, pp. 150–153. 18 AH, p. 815 (above, p. 36). 19 Cp., e.g., H. White, The Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, 1978), the essays in which go back to 1966; M. Shanks and C. Tilly, Social Theory and Archaeology (1st edition, Cambridge, 1987). 15

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the archaeological evidence for medieval trade in a book published twenty-eight years before his critique.20 How much archaeological discussion of late medieval rural trade existed in 1962? In truth, not much. Austin then takes Ralph Houlbrooke to task for omitting to discuss the physical evidence for the house when discussing the size and composition of the medieval household.21 A number of issues arise. The first, of course, is that the physical nature of the house need have no relationship upon the conceptual issues of the size and composition of the household. The second is that had Houlbrooke included information on the physical evidence for the house, Austin would doubtless have accused him of simply including archaeology for the purposes of illustration,22 and—most importantly—the third is that, as Austin himself makes clear in his case study, archaeological discussion of the medieval house was pretty limited even in 1990.23 Austin essentially criticises Houlbrooke for failing to do by 1984 what, by his own admission, medieval archaeologists had barely begun to do sixyears later. I will limit my further discussion of Austin’s article to two related issues. One is what is constituted by the written record, and the other is what is meant by a documentary agenda. Instead of documentary history, Austin thinks that medieval archaeologists might instead turn to ‘social theory and anthropology, the main disciplines to which our prehistorian colleagues have turned.’24 This is problematic. One wonders how the (written) observations of modern social theorists and anthropologists help the archaeologist move away from the ‘tyranny of the written word’ any more than the observations of contemporary medieval people or the analyses of later documentary historians. Is the observation of Trobriand Island society by an early twentiethcentury anthropologist or of Kabylia by an ethnographer in the ‘60s

20

Austin, ‘The “proper study” ’, p. 13, referring to G. Duby, L’économie rurale et la vie des campagnes dans l’occident medieval (Paris, 1962). 21 Austin, ‘The “proper study” ’, p. 13, referring to R.A. Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450–1700 (London, 1984). 22 Cp. Austin, ‘The “proper study” ’, p. 10: ‘they may incidentally include pictures of material things such as castles or coins.’ See also p. 26. See AH, p. 819 (above, p. 41), for my own critique of the ‘illustrative’ use of archaeology. 23 Ibid., p. 24: ‘Analysis of buildings, for example, has been limited to the chronology and typology of house types . . . Archaeologists have told us little yet about the meaning of those buildings and how they helped to constitute peasant life’. This tacitly ignored the work of Matthew Johnson. 24 Ibid., p. 13.

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or ’70s any less a part of the documentary historical record than a ninth-century observation of his own society by a Frankish bishop? One might perfectly legitimately ask why the former is of more help to an archaeologist of the medieval west than the latter. In both cases one is left with fundamentally the same critical issues of how to use a written source, a third-party’s observations. The twentieth-century anthropologist’s writings are every bit as enmeshed in the contingencies of society, politics and mentalité as his or her ninth-century episcopal precursor. I would certainly not agree with David Hill, who wrote ‘[f]orget the Trobriand Islands, the Kula Ring and the potlatch when good, sound and relevant evidence is at hand.’25 I would, however, more seriously question the attitude of medieval archaeologists who seem to suggest that one should forget the ‘good, sound and relevant evidence at hand’ when one can look at the Trobriand Islands. One can question whether the analysis of twentieth-century society by a sociologist is less a contingent part of the documentary record than a twentieth-century historian’s study of the workings of eighthcentury society. Given that, as Austin himself admits, documentary historians have engaged with, as well as being influenced by, social theorists (again contradicting himself, undermining his earlier assertion that documentary historians are not theoretically inclined),26 the insights of either are surely likely to be as useful to the archaeologists, who ought to engage critically with both. Therein lies an irony in much recent archaeological writing: the use of ready-made historical frameworks is rightly criticised but the suggested solution appears often to be the off-the-shelf adoption of frameworks from anthropology or social theory. What archaeology should be doing is engaging discursively with all of these relevant disciplines. Later on, Austin suggests that one might make use of the grand historical sociological theories of writers like Michael Mann.27 Here the written record goes from tyrant to liberator. What does Mann work from if it is not the documentary historical record? Similarly, many archaeologists make

25 D. Hill, ‘End piece: Definitions and superficial analysis’, in R. Cowie & D. Hill (ed.), Wics: The Early Medieval Trading Places of Northern Europe (Sheffield, 2001), pp. 75–84, at p. 77. I am grateful to Dr Caroline Holas-Clark for drawing my attention to this quote. 26 Austin, ‘The “proper study” ’, p. 13. 27 Ibid., p. 34, referring to M. Mann The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1. A History of Power from the Beginning to A.D. 1760 (Cambridge, 1986): Austin wrongly gives the date as 1984: ‘The “proper study” ’, pp. 34, 41.

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use of the works of Michel Foucault. Although Foucault said he was not a disciplinary historian he still described his works as history and, naturally, worked from documentary historical sources.28 One cannot decry the tyranny of the written record and then suggest turning to Foucault as an alternative. However, Austin’s idea of the documentary agenda is ill-defined. It appears simply to equate with those subjects which do not interest him. At various points of his article and the subsequent case study, economic relationships are apparently a part of the documentary agenda; so, at others, are legal and tenurial relationships, demography, and ethnicity. Medieval people were profoundly interested in their legal and tenurial status and rights, and in the economic resources available to them; at some points they appear to have been very concerned with ethnicity. It seems unduly simplistic to reduce these areas to a ‘historian’s agenda’. Austin’s argument is common among archaeologists: ethnicity is not, as once understood, an immutable biological entity, to which gravegoods such as brooches gave unmediated access;29 therefore ethnicity was unimportant. The implication is that, were ethnicity important in society, it could unproblematically be revealed through the study of brooches; one argument is merely the photographic negative of the other. Yet the study of ethnic groups and identities shows that these are precisely the sort of thing that people use material culture to create, not least because they are not objectively measurable realities. The tragedy of ethnicity is that, although entirely fictive, one does not have to look far to see people dying for its sake. Their deaths graphically illustrate that ethnicity is no mere documentary agenda. Austin’s discussion of ethnicity in burials reveals a failure to grasp this. His suggestion that the dead in post-imperial cemeteries only became Franks or Anglo-Saxons when writers retrospectively created such groups ‘a century or two later’ simply betrays complete unfamiliarity with the relevant data, written or excavated.30 In hiving off high political history

28 M. Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, Tome 2: L’usage des plaisirs (Paris, 1984), p. 15. Foucault named his chair at the Collège de France that of ‘the history of systems of thought’. A. Megill, ‘The Reception of Foucault by Historians’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 48, No. 1 (Jan.–Mar., 1987), pp. 117–141, at p. 141, quotes Foucault saying ‘I am not a professional historian; no one is perfect.’ He may, I suppose, have been playing on the last lines of Billy Wilder’s Some like it Hot (1959). 29 Much mainland European archaeology has not yet reached even this stage: ORz; ALRF (below, pp. 93–130). 30 Austin, ‘The “proper study” ’, p. 17.

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as a documentary agenda, archaeologists like Austin not only tacitly abandon any claim by archaeology to have anything to contribute to that history; at the same time they condemn the inhabitants of the communities they study to being mere passive observers of it. In reality, surely, they and the political dynamics of their communities had an important role to play in shaping such history and archaeology has a valuable part in showing this.31 In 1997 the Archaeological Review from Cambridge devoted an issue to the relationships between history and archaeology. This opens with an excellent paper by Ian Morris arguing that: ‘Only when bringing texts and artifacts together can we write the kind of cultural history Roger Chartier suggests; and unless we write that kind of history we completely misunderstand both classes of evidence.’32 He concludes: ‘Historical archaeology is a way of thinking about material culture in the past. Archaeology is cultural history or it is nothing.’33 I agree completely with Morris’ views, except insofar as his proposed solution, whereby historians become archaeologists and archaeologists become historians, is practical. Morris makes one point very clearly: that archaeologists who critique history and historians very rarely have the slightest clue about what historians do, how they do it or what interests them. ‘Binford simply had no idea what professional historians did or how they related to their evidence. But, as often happens in academic debates, this did not really matter, because neither did most other archaeologists.’34 He shows how this remained true even with the then recent post-processualist writings of Hodder or Shanks and Tilley. The rest of the volume only demonstrates how true Morris’ comment remained, in one way or another, in 1997. Rupert A. Britton proclaims, for example, ‘if the historian were to set the agenda for the archaeologist working in a historical period, then fieldwork would run the risk of becoming a farcical treasure hunt.’35 The chapter by

31

I have tried to demonstrate this in BMRW. I. Morris, ‘Archaeology as cultural history’, ARC 14.1 (1997), pp. 3–16, at p. 12. The reference is to R. Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations (Ithaca, NY, 1988). 33 Morris, ‘Archaeology as cultural history’, p. 13. 34 Ibid., p. 5. 35 R.A. Britton, ‘Stuck in the past: historically oriented archaeology’, ARC 14.1 (1997), pp. 17–27, at p. 21. Britton appears to have been an undergraduate student when this was published, which might explain his ignorance of history and historiog32

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Catherine Hills contains more sweeping and unfounded generalisations about wicked historians: it is the historian, we learn, who is apparently behind television archaeology’s desire to excavate sites in a single weekend; labels for archaeological cultures such as the ‘Beaker Folk’ or the ‘Battle Axe People’ are chosen because that is what ‘the public, and historians, prefer’.36 I expect I am not the only member of the discipline to whom this was news. In 1999 I angrily referred to this piece as ‘a barely thoughtful rant on the subject’.37 Ten years on, and in spite of my admiration for Hills’ other work,38 I see no reason to recant. It has only a single bibliographical reference, to Austin’s 1990 tirade, and its untypically incoherent arguments do her scant credit. The focus of Hills’ paper is the contention that written documents might ‘lie’. This reduces the reading of documents to a simple search for the revelation of an unmediated, factual, descriptive ‘truth’. The interest of historians in their evidence lies not in the latter’s reliability for the positivist Rankean uncovering of ‘how it really was’, but in the analysis of what its authors were saying and why they were trying to say it. In support of this oversimplifying assertion, Hills points out that Bede calls Dumbarton an urbs, yet that site was not a city. Later on, however, she claims that we require objects to know what words mean, so we need Dumbarton to know what Bede meant by an urbs.39 Hills apparently remains oblivious to the point that knowing what sort of thing Bede meant by using various Latin terms rather eradicates the earlier claim that he was ‘lying’. Karen Høilund Nielsen presents an interesting discussion of the possible political ramifications of Salin’s Style II and shows openness to the study of the written record in order to help provide context and specifics of those politics.40 Unfortunately, her use of the documents is somewhat simplistic. Possibly the most bizarre remark about history in

raphy were not archaeologists with chairs in the discipline (such as Austin) guilty of much the same. Even so, his tutors were ungracious in allowing him to present this ill-informed diatribe to an academic audience. They could at least have spared him the ignominy of referring (p. 23) to ‘the annale’s [sic] school’. 36 C. Hills, ‘History and archaeology: do words matter more than deeds?’ ARC 14.1 (1997), pp. 29–36, at pp. 31, 35. 37 M&S, at p. 133, n. 11. 38 Not least her excellent overview, The Origins of the English (London, 2003) and see above, n. 12. 39 Hills, ‘History and archaeology’, pp. 33–34. 40 K. Høilund Nielsen, ‘Archaeology and history: complementary sources’, ARC 14.1 (1997), pp. 37–57.

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the entire volume comes in the chapter by Frands Herschend when we are told that ‘[t]oday, most historians are probably bored by the traditional core of their discipline; e.g. by studies of formal institutions, such as the analysis of a small factory company’.41 Herschend does make an intriguing attempt to bring the study of documents together with that of excavated data but it is marred by a failure to obey any of the fundamental rules of historical analysis: Beowulf is ripped out of any chronological and geographical context to be compared with land-holding in Öland. One of the principles of post-processualist archaeology is the importance of context in understanding excavated material. Comparing, as does Herschend, archaeological data studied in accordance with that principle and written data assumed to be relevant regardless of time, place or genre only renders archaeology subservient to the historical record in the same old way. As we move away from the early Middle Ages, the quality of the contributions rises. Thoughtful discussions of Etruscan, Palestinian and Nubian archaeology are presented, all of which have a more realistic appreciation of the value of the documentary record and some awareness of the limitations of the ‘material culture as text’ metaphor.42 In a concluding essay, Mads Ravn makes the point that historical discussions of other times and places can serve the same general purpose, in providing comparanda, as anthropological or ethnographic studies. Ravn shrugs off Morris’ paper as simply playing Devil’s Advocate on historians’ behalf but his paper, like most of the others, betrays a lack of awareness of what documentary history is about. His statements about archaeology’s independence as a discipline are undermined by his own adherence to probably the greatest and most pernicious of all the myths to emerge from nineteenth-century readings of the documentary record: that of ‘Germanic society’.43 41

F. Herschend, ‘Historical or textual archaeology: an archaeology of critical reading’, ARC 14.1 (1997), pp. 59–83, at p. 61. 42 C. Riva & C. Whiting, ‘“Excluded histories”: Case studies in the archaeology of Italy and Palestine’, and D.Q. Fuller, ‘The confluence of History and archaeology in Lower Nubia: scales of continuity and change’, in ARC 14.1 (1997), pp. 85–98, & pp. 105–28. In a move not untypical of British archaeology, Riva and Whiting make much use of the theory of Paul Ricoeur, but without ever citing any of Ricoeur’s actual writings: only the valuable discussion of them by Henrietta Moore: ‘Paul Ricoeur: Action, meaning and text’, in C. Tilley (ed.), Reading Material Culture: Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-structuralism (Oxford, 1990), pp. 85–120: an important article in developing my own thinking about material culture and text. 43 M. Ravn, Death Ritual and Germanic Social Structure (c. AD 200–600) (BAR(I) 1164; Oxford, 2003). Cp. J. Jarnut, ‘Germanisch. Plädoyer für die Abschaffung eines

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Some further views on the relationships between history and archaeology have been presented by John Moreland, currently reader in archaeology at the University of Sheffield and author of useful work on early medieval settlement and economy as well as on archaeological theory and indeed on the relationships between texts and material culture.44 His brief study contends that archaeologists and historians are too fixated upon using sources as evidence for the past and pay insufficient attention to how objects including texts were used in power struggles in the past. Moreland’s main thesis is that writing was a technology of oppression, not merely a transparent means of recording facts. He maintains that only the primacy of the written word means that we do not accord archaeology the ability to answer questions higher up ‘Hawkes’ Ladder’, about ideas and beliefs.45 He intends to argue that archaeology can respond to such questions. Moreland opens with more of the usual claims about how historians are dismissive of archaeology. Like Austin, he does not allow (then) current or even recent examples to get in the way of polemic. He can cite only one historian propagating such views within the twenty years immediately preceding his book’s appearance (that being a waspish Peter Sawyer in 1983). Philip Grierson’s unfortunate comment about the spade being unable to lie because it cannot speak is trotted out again,46 despite being forty-two years old at the time. The quote from Moses Finley about archaeology’s value being inversely proportionate to the number of written documents is actually eleven years older than Moreland’s citation makes it seem. It dates to 1975 (hardly current in 2001) and, put back in context, could easily be seen as in harmony with, and possibly stemming from, the historian’s reading of a then still commonly-held archaeological view, as expressed in (at that time)

obsoleten Zentralbegriffes der Frühmittelalterforschung’, in W. Pohl (ed.), Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen: Von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters (Vienna, 2004), pp. 107–13. 44 J. Moreland, Archaeology and Text (London, 2001). See also AH, p. 821 (above, p. 44), n. 80. 45 AH, p. 808 (above, p. 26). 46 As it was by me in 1997—AH, p. 817 (above, p. 39). Had Moreland used my paper he could have found some more recent illustrations of the problem. Moreland had reviewed S&S most generously in Antiquity but it and my other works which use archaeology and history together are entirely absent from Archaeology and Text. So are the methodologically similar works of Ian Morris, such as Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 1992). Perhaps they would have been flies in the polemic ointment.

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fairly recent works by archaeologists like Grahame Clark.47 Yet Moreland is confident enough to state that ‘most historians’ accept Grierson’s view. This is not a depiction of, at least, the British early medieval historical profession that I recognise. Indeed my sense is that, as far as Morris’ ‘zero-sum’ game is concerned, the situation among historians (if not among archaeologists) has changed quite significantly in the years since I published the preceding chapter. Nevertheless this sort of argument (on either side) tends to remain in the anecdotal sphere and is unlikely ever to get us very far. Moreland does present a useful and insightful survey of how successive archaeological theoretical viewpoints have ultimately failed to establish a methodology that breaks free from the primacy of the written word. The problems with Moreland’s study are serious. Not the least important flaw is that Moreland himself has analysed no texts. All of his discussion of writing and of the use of documents is entirely based upon secondary sources. As he has not carried out any documentary research himself he has no basis for critical engagement with the secondary studies that he uses and thus is as dependent upon, or subservient to, historians as his predecessors were, or more so. The idea that writing could be a technology of repression or, in other circumstances, of resistance and empowerment (as Moreland has subsequently ‘conceded’) will hardly cause shock-waves or even ripples among students of the written word, documentary or literary. Nevertheless, in spite of his non-engagement with the primary material, Moreland tells us that he is furthering this ‘argument’ in future work, including a book on textual communities.48 There is little concrete in Moreland’s book. Historians are castigated ‘who only work on the content of texts’49 but nowhere in the book are we given a single clear, concrete example of exactly how Moreland’s ‘methodology’, if we can call it that, might give a new and nuanced understanding of material culture and the uses of literacy. I will return to lengthy analysis of Moreland’s only original case study below, as it further reveals his book’s limitations. With the principal exception of Morris’, most of the works on the relationships between archaeology and history discussed above share 47

AH, p. 819 (above, p. 41), n. 72. On his staff web-page: http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/staff/moreland.html (accessed April 16 2009). 49 Moreland, Archaeology and Text, p. 96. 48

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several features. The most common and the most serious is the lack of awareness of what historians do and how they do it, of the nature of the early medieval written record and, to any noticeable degree, of how it is to be analysed, its problems, how they can be surmounted and how they force different types of question to be formulated.50 The points made to critique that record are most basic. Their authors appear impervious to the fact that these seem crude to historians for it is historians, not archaeologists, who have revaluated the written record, what it can and cannot say about the past, and taken their own critiques far beyond those of the writers just discussed. Related to this is a failure to distinguish between historians’ work and that of archaeologists framing their enquiry in terms of old-fashioned perceptions of the documentary record, but most depressing is the relentlessly low scholarly quality of these contributions. Quite apart from the misinformation and misunderstandings (and misspellings), these papers are, as we have seen, littered with self-contradictions. Reading some of the contributions to the 1997 edition of the Archaeological Review from Cambridge (Cambridge, mark you), a historian can be forgiven for wondering how they ever managed to be published.

III. Archaeology vs. History: a one-sided polemic This is especially unfortunate when combined with the combative stance of most of these works. It is most worrying that the works discussed above are not anomalies; they represent just the visible tip of a disciplinary iceberg. Nearly forty years after the long-won battle for disciplinary independence from history and classics was relevant, archaeologists continue to engage in confrontational tirades against (what they perceive to be) history. British archaeology undergraduates can still be found posting comments like the following on internet discussion boards: ‘it’s so satisfying to tell the historians just how wrong they are . . . ’51 Leaving aside the fact that it is difficult to see how archaeology could ‘prove history wrong’ any more than history

50 I deal with these issues in introductory fashion in the first half of my chapter ‘The sources and their interpretation’, in P.J. Fouracre (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History Volume 1: 500–700 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 56–90. 51 http://yorkuk.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2205051025&topic=1697 accessed 10 March 2007.

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could ‘prove archaeology wrong’ (and that, to tell ‘the historians’ anything, you would need actually to talk to some),52 one simply does not find history students with the same in-grained sense of opposition to archaeologists. This can only be learnt behaviour; it must result from being fostered by those who are teaching these young people and who write works like those discussed above. Indeed, on the day that I first wrote this the homepage of the York archaeology department had a news item entitled ‘Archaeology better than history?’ The link led to a page in which the following paragraph could be found: My favorite [sic] quote from the story was a student describing his first experience of an archaeological dig, “At school I felt as though history wasn’t convincing, because it’s always biased. This way you are finding out something that is more real”; quite so.53

With comments like this posted on departmental websites, how can we expect younger generations of British archaeologists to emerge other than with the same old ingrained and ill-informed attitudes? Yet, in spite of their tirades, archaeologists continue to resort to the historical record and continue, like Richard Hodges,54 to make basic errors when they do so. Even Julian Richards, author of some of the most interesting and genuinely challenging thoughts on the interpretation of cremations, of animal symbolism, and of the economic hierarchy of settlements55—excellent works which really make the archaeological data speak in sophisticated and independent fashion— refers to Alcuin as “archbishop of York”.56 This is an error equivalent to an historian referring to Sutton Hoo Mound 1 as a hoard or a settlement site. Just as that error would doubtless lead to criticism of historians’ ignorance of archaeology, mistakes in the historical background will give historians a similar view of archaeologists’ attitude to written 52

As discussed in AH, pp. 805–6 (above, pp. 21–22). http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/arch/news/NAGTY_at_York.html, accessed 3 April, 2007: the page has subsequently been edited. 54 AH, p. 818 (above, p. 40), n. 69. 55 J.D. Richards, The Significance of Form and Function of Anglo-Saxon Cremation Urns (BAR(B) 166; Oxford, 1987); id., Anglo-Saxon symbolism, in M.O.H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 131–47; id., ‘What’s so special about ‘productive sites’? Middle Saxon settlements in Northumbria’, in T.M. Dickinson & D. Griffiths (ed.), The Making of Kingdoms (Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10; Oxford, 1999), pp. 71–80. 56 J.D. Richards, The English Heritage Book of Viking Age England (London, 1991), p. 16; the error persists in the reprint: Viking Age England (Stroud, 2000), p. 23. 53

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evidence. Certainly it will not convince them of archaeologists’ right to critique the documentary sources. A younger archaeologist has recently declared that, among early medieval historians, ‘the kings and bishops school’ is still prevalent.57 This assertion is supported by a reference to the New Cambridge Medieval History, volume 2. The slighting tone is unfortunate when compared with the fact that the author goes on to explain the development of Anglo-Saxon trading sites according to the ‘key role’ played by ecclesiastical centres in some areas and the ‘unusual degree of royal control’ in others.58 How the explanatory importance of royal and ecclesiastical power moves us on from an interest in kings and bishops is left unspecified. When addressing audiences including historians, it still appears to be de rigueur for young (and even not-so-young) archaeologists to open with polemic against the tyranny of documentary history.59 It is difficult to think of any mature academic discipline whose self-definition is so based upon opposition to another. Archaeologists, in Britain at least, have now invested so much in their own marginalisation by historians that it is difficult to envisage how they might be brought back to fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue.60 The editors of the 1997 edition of the Archaeological Review from Cambridge said that they had had difficulty in finding a historian to take part in the ‘debate’. Earlier, Austin had said that the interaction between historians and archaeologists had become a monologue. In

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B. Palmer, ‘The hinterlands of three southern English emporia: some common themes’, in T. Pestell & K. Ulmschneider (ed.), Markets in Early Medieval Europe: Trading and ‘Productive’ Sites, 650–850 (Bollington, 2003), pp. 48–60, at p. 50. 58 Palmer, ‘The hinterlands of three southern English emporia’, p. 51, 58. 59 I was, for example, present when Palmer made the statement whose published form was referred to in n. 57, at a session of the Seventh International Medieval Congress at Leeds in 2000. For the continuation of old-school tirades against ‘history’ see, e.g., R. Francovich & R. Hodges, Villa to Village: The Transformation of the Roman Countryside in Italy, c. 400–1000 (London, 2004); R. Hodges, Goodbye to the Vikings? Re-reading Early Medieval Archaeology (London, 2006). 60 Since I first wrote these words, a recent seminar paper by Jinty Nelson in London does, commendably, seem to have done just that. This, in a promising development from the situation described at the start of chapter 1, was a joint meeting of the London University early medieval history and archaeology seminars. That said, the traditions of medieval archaeology in London have generally lain within the field of Culture History, rarely challenging the documentary framework, as can be seen from the works of leading figures in that tradition: Helen Clarke, James Graham-Campbell and Martin Welch. Their current successor, Andrew Reynolds (who arranged the seminar), is similarly one of the current generation of archaeologists most interested in fruitful dialogue with documentary historians.

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general it has, partly because over the past decade or so early medieval historians have tended to move away from things like social and economic history, where interaction with archaeologists is an obvious desideratum, towards topics to which archaeological data have little potential to contribute, such as intellectual history.61 Even the most ardent defender of the independent explanatory potential of archaeological evidence (and I would include myself amongst them) has to admit that archaeology cannot say much about notions of the Just War or penance. If archaeology features little in the other area in which early medieval historians have moved, towards a new sort of high political history, it is precisely because historians have taken on board archaeologists’ objections to the way that the material cultural record was hammered to fit earlier generations’ interest in ‘great men and battles’. Even so, one can still ask what benefit historians would derive from participating in what has long ceased to be a dialogue. Austin wrote that if historians refused to engage in debate with the archaeological record ‘we should . . . leave them, bricked up by their own hand, in their own ivory towers.’62 This is not a statement conducive to productive dialogue and, faced with silly, sweeping, erroneous and poorly-researched statements like those littering Austin’s paper, historians may understandably despair of ever having a worthwhile conversation with archaeologists. They might, by contrast (and adopting the same rhetorical tone), be happy to leave him in his trench, shouting at ghosts. When historians do not recognise their own discipline in these polemics, and do not feel that they or their colleagues currently play any conscious role in trying to direct the archaeological agenda, the vehemence of invective against them is surprising.63 Yet, if there are historians who are (like me) exasperated by the attitudes of some archaeologists there are few whom I know who are dismissive of the enormous potential of archaeology.64 Similarly, while 61 Though not well informed on them, I have a sense that this development is true in other periods of history that have traditionally had dealings with archaeologists, such as classical history. 62 Austin, ‘The “proper study” of medieval archaeology’, p. 35. 63 One archaeologist present at the seminar referred to in n. 60 expressed surprise that the meeting did not turn into a ‘Stabfest’. To me this is emblematic, simultaneously, of archaeologists’ mistaken views of historians and of the fact that the polemic between the disciplines has over the past twenty years, been almost entirely one-sided. My sense is that most historians have, simply, given up the ‘Zero Sum game’. 64 See e.g. M. Kulikowski, ‘The interdependence of town and country in late antique Spain’, in T.S. Burns & J.W. Eadie, Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiq-

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those archaeologists who are most vocal in expressing a view on the relationships with history may be unhelpful and ill-informed, and while their attitude seems ingrained throughout British archaeology, there are nevertheless many who continue to talk to historians.65 It may well be the case that documentary historians still underestimate the archaeological record’s explanatory power. It is almost certainly true that historians continue to allude to excavated evidence primarily for illustrative or ‘zero sum’ purposes.66 That is partly the consequence of the directions in which documentary research has moved in recent years, as noted above, but primarily because historians are nowadays well aware that they do not have the skills to analyse archaeological data; they are fully cognisant, in other words, of archaeology’s disciplinary independence. Moreover, this does not necessarily reveal a dismissive attitude towards archaeology so much as one that still requires education as to how archaeology can interact with the documentary record in a productive fashion and how it might contribute to the studies of issues further up ‘Hawkes’ Ladder’. The continued existence of this attitude is probably the result of the intellectual indigence of those works by archaeologists that confront interdisciplinary relationships, as discussed above, and of those case studies wherein archaeologists claim to be able to make the excavated data speak about mentalités, to which I shall shortly return. In other areas, though, historians have shown an interest in archaeological data, in its analysis and in its capacity to ask and answer major historical questions. Chris Wickham’s monumental Framing the Early Middle Ages67 is probably the supreme example. The studies of southern Gallic towns by Simon Loseby, another medievalist trained as an historian, rest heavily on close study of archaeological works on the region.68 In the very year that I castigated him for

uity (East Lancing, Michigan, 2001), pp. 147–61, for a historian arguing that archaeological evidence be taken seriously and on its own terms. 65 See, e.g., the papers in W. Davies, G. Halsall & A. Reynolds (ed.), People and Space in the Middle Ages, 300–1300 (Turnhout, 2006). 66 As defined in AH, p. 819 (above, p. 41). 67 C.J. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800 (Oxford, 2005). 68 See, e.g., S.T. Loseby, ‘Marseille: A late antique success story?’ JRS 82 (1992), pp. 165–85; id., ‘Arles in late Antiquity: Gallula Roma Arelas and Urbs Genesii’, in N. Christie & S.T. Loseby (ed.) Towns in Transition. Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 45–70; id., ‘Marseille and the Pirenne Thesis I: Gregory of Tours, the Merovingian kings and ‘Un Grand Port’, in

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earlier dismissive or erroneous comments about archaeology,69 Roger Collins published a helpful guide to Spanish archaeological sites and subsequently penned an extremely valuable critical discussion of the archaeology of Visigothic Iberia (indeed a more sophisticated evaluation than is available from archaeological specialists).70 Similarly useful critical analysis of that material can be found in the work of Michael Kulikowski, another historian.71 It is, as we have seen, difficult to find archaeologists publishing equally well-informed discussions of documentary data. Other examples of historians inviting the collaboration of archaeologists in the study of the early Middle Ages, from the past decade and a half, can be multiplied. Archaeologists from across Europe contributed to the major European Science Foundation-funded project on ‘The Transformation of the Roman World’. The leading English-language journal on early medieval studies, Early Medieval Europe, founded by historians, includes regular contributions on archaeology72 and in 1998 invited an archaeologist (Professor Helena Hamerow; later succeeded by Chris Scull) onto its board. Of the seminars mentioned at the start of the preceding chapter, that on ‘The Earlier Middle Ages’ at the Institute of Historical Research regularly invites archaeologists to address its members. One struggles to find examples of invitations coming in the other direction.73 Perhaps another reason why some historians have yet fully to internalise the fact that archaeology can contribute to the study of the early Middle Ages in ways that do not simply illustrate notions drawn from the documents, or fill in gaps in the coverage of the written record, is because, in spite of their tirades against history and historians, many archaeologists still treat their discipline as simply illustrative. Indeed R. Hodges & W. Bowden (ed.) The Sixth Century. Production, Distribution and Demand (Leiden, 1998), pp. 203–29; id. ‘The Mediterranean economy’, in Fouracre (ed.), New Cambridge Medieval History 1, pp. 605–38. 69 AH, p. 818 (above, p. 39), n. 65, p. 819 (above, p. 41), n. 71. 70 R. Collins, Spain: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (Oxford, 1998); id., Visigothic Spain, 409–711 (London, 2004), pp. 174–222. There are signs of change but Visigothic archaeology remains theoretically and analytically primitive. 71 M. Kulikowski, Late Roman Spain and its Cities (Baltimore, 2004). 72 Often survey or review articles, e.g. T.M. Dickinson, ‘What’s new in early medieval burial archaeology?’ EME 11 (2002), pp. 71–87; A. Reynolds, ‘On farmers, traders and kings: archaeological reflections of social complexity in early medieval northwestern Europe’, EME 13 (2005), pp. 97–118; Williams, ‘Rethinking early medieval mortuary archaeology’. 73 The seminar organised by Andrew Reynolds (above, notes 60 and 63) is a welcome example.

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the high public profile of British archaeology is dependent upon television programmes such as Meet the Ancestors, Time Team and Two Men in a Trench, which repeatedly use archaeology to illustrate the historical record. The aim of Time Team is frequently to dig trial trenches to demonstrate the existence of something well documented in the written evidence, sometimes with detailed plans and paintings.74 The excavation of a downed B17 ‘Flying Fortress’, the circumstances of whose loss and the location of the crash site were well known (the crew’s bodies having been recovered shortly afterwards), told an interested party far less about the experience of the American daylight strategic bombing offensive than they could learn by renting Memphis Belle on video or DVD. The discovery of some Bren Gun cartridges in the excavation of what was known from detailed plans to have been a Bren Gun emplacement can hardly be said to make material culture speak with an independent voice. It is only to be expected that the general public, or historians who do not have cause to deal regularly with archaeological data, should end up with a warped picture of the discipline, might get the impression that Peter Sawyer was correct when (admittedly twenty-six years ago) he said that archaeology was just ‘an expensive way of telling historians what they already know’, when this is how it presents itself. It will not do to blame historians, as does Catherine Hills,75 for this impression; week in and week out, the viewer sees established archaeologists, from academic departments and professional field units, lining up to participate in these programmes.76 It is worth pursuing this strand of thought as it is common on the mainland of Europe and therefore a key part of the historiographical background against which the chapters in this book should be set. One does not need to look far in the archaeology of the Merovingian period to see archaeologists making use of a political historical framework, often unrestrained by the fact that this ‘framework’ has no basis in the documents themselves. To take one example, Patrick Périn has adduced the appearance in Gaul of the army of Videmer, an Ostrogoth, to explain the appearance of certain types of brooch believed 74 Hence the unconscious irony of the subtitle of T. Taylor, The Ultimate Time Team Companion: An Alternative History of Britain (London, 1999). 75 Hills, ‘History and archaeology’, p. 31. 76 The excuse is usually that, by doing so, they bring archaeology into the front rooms of millions of people. The obvious riposte is that so, too, did the work of Erich von Daniken, if one ignores the question of the use to which archaeology is being put, or of the image of the discipline that is being presented.

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to be of Danubian origin, in Gaul and Spain.77 The Visigoths in Gaul are well known for their archaeological invisibility (a non-problem if ever there was). Périn assumes that the Goths had lost their traditional items of dress and had to have them reintroduced by a reinforcement from Italy. It is difficult to know where to begin to critique this idea. Videmer is a shadowy figure whose career cannot be said to be well documented. Indeed, leaving aside two letters addressed to a certain Wittimer (who may or may not be the same man) by Ruricius of Limoges, he features in no contemporary fifth-century source.78 It is certainly not mentioned in any written account that he or his troops ever went to Spain. But the real point is surely the weakness of any account that explains changes in the material cultural record according to hypothesised movements of armies and, in this case, the even more hypothetical women assumed to be with them (these brooches are items of female apparel). Yet Périn, once so cautious about the confrontation of written and excavated data,79 is confident enough to cite this as an instance of the use of history and archaeology to produce fruitful avenues of research.80 I’m afraid I must disagree. As will be alluded to in commentary 3, below, similar pseudo-historical hypotheses continue to be adduced to explain the funerary material culture of late fifth-century northern Gaul.81 As will become clear in later chapters, the German Merovingian archaeological establishment 77 P. Périn, ‘L’armée de Vidimer et la question des dépôts funéraires chez les Wisigoths en Gaule et en Espagne (Ve–VIe siècles)’ in F. Vallet & M. Kazanski (ed.), L’Armée romaine et les barbares du IIIe au VIIe siècle (Paris, 1993), pp. 411–23. 78 Jordanes, Getica 56.283–4: The Gothic History of Jordanes, trans. C.C. Mierow (New York, 1915, repr. 1966); Romana 347: MGH AA vol.5.1, Iordanis Romana et Getica, ed. T. Mommsen (Berlin, 1882), pp. 1–52; Ruricius, Letters 2.61, 2.63: Ruricius of Limoges and Friends. A Collection of Letters from Visigothic Gaul, trans. R.W. Mathisen (Liverpool, 1998); and cp. Paul the Deacon, Roman History, 15.4 MGH Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in usum Scolarum vol. 49 Pauli Historia Romana, ed. H. Droysen (Berlin, 1879). E. Stein, Histoire du Bas Empire (2 vols.; Paris, 1959), vol. I, p. 394; PLRE II, ‘Videmer 1’, p. 1164. 79 AH, p. 820 (above, p. 42), n. 74. 80 P. Périn, ‘La Progression des Francs en Gaule du nord au Ve siècle: Histoire et archéologie’, in D. Geuenich (ed.), Die Franken und die Alemannen bis zur “Schlacht bei Zülpich” (Berlin, 1988), pp. 59–81, at p. 59; A. Dierkens & P. Périn, ‘The 5thcentury advance of the Franks in Belgica II: history and archaeology’, in E. Taayke, J.H. Looijenga, O.H. Harsema & H.R. Reinders (ed.), Essays on the Early Franks (Groningen, 2003), pp. 165–93, at p. 165. 81 See, e.g., M. Kazanski, A. Mastikova & P. Périn, ‘Die Archäologie der Westgoten in Nordgallien. Zum Stand der Forschung’ in S. Brather (ed.) Zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Archäologie des 4. bis 7. Jahrhundert im Westen (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde; Berlin, 2008), pp. 149–92.

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remains inextricably wedded (paradoxically in spite of its claims to be using purely archaeological methodology) to the use of a reading of the documentary historical framework in interpreting archaeological data. Again, it will become clear that the documents themselves rarely provide any support for the underlying assumptions. There are English examples too. Martin Welch could be found in 1991 criticising those who wished to move away from the traditional views of the Anglo-Saxon migration, based on uncritical readings of the writings of Bede, as arguing ‘that we know much better than both contemporary and slightly later commentators’.82 Heinrich Härke, in support of a contentious reading of modern DNA evidence as demonstrating mass migration, also brings in reference to documents, none of which actually supports his view.83 Another abuse of the documentary record can be found in some recent work taking central medieval Scandinavian sources and assuming that they can be employed to reconstruct in detail the theological and cosmological views of a period up to 900 years previously.84 Jane Hawkes has briefly and cogently critiqued this approach and there is little to add.85 Yet Tania Dickinson, usually one of the most scholarly, sophisticated and critical readers of early Anglo-Saxon material data, has defended the approach on the grounds that it is currently accepted by most schools of archaeological theory.86 This can hardly be regarded as a sufficient justification but it does lead us to the heart of the issue.

82 M. Welch, The English Heritage Book of Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1992), p. 11. By an ‘only slightly later’ commentator, Welch means Bede, who wrote two to three hundred years after the event. By this logic, Edward Gibbon could be termed a ‘slightly later’ observer of the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. 83 M.G. Thomas, M.P. H. Stumpf & H. Härke, ‘Evidence for an apartheid-like social structure in early Anglo-Saxon England.’ http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_b/papers/RSPB20063627.pdf (accessed 3 April 2007). 84 L. Hedeager, ‘Migration period Europe: The formation of a political mentality’ in F. Theuws & J.L. Nelson (ed.), Rituals of Power. From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), pp. 15–57; ead. ‘Asgard reconstructed? Gudme—a ‘central place’ in the North’, in M. de Jong & F. Theuws (ed.), Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2001), pp. 467–507. 85 J. Hawkes, ‘Symbolic lives: the visual evidence’, in J. Hines (ed.), The AngloSaxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 311–38, esp. p. 315. 86 T.M. Dickinson, ‘Symbols of protection: The significance of animal-ornamented shields in early Anglo-Saxon England.’ Medieval Archaeology 49 (2005), pp. 109–63, at p. 112.

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commentary one IV. High up ‘Hawkes’ Ladder’ without a safety-net: archaeology’s limitations

Can the archaeological record be made to speak about the issues higher up ‘Hawkes’ Ladder’ as eloquently as the documents, and independently of the latter? Archaeologists have been wont to claim this to be the case and investigation of some examples is revealing. The first concerns seventh-century burial and is thus of direct relevance to the essays in this volume; it is also the most problematic and for all these reasons it will be examined at length. In the volume discussed earlier, Moreland presents just one case study to show how unwritten material culture (‘the object’ and ‘the voice’) conveys thoughts and ideas just as eloquently, as ‘textually’, as does the written record (‘the word’). This is a study of Wigber Low in Derbyshire.87 In the seventh century, burials were sunk in what we know to be a Bronze Age burial mound. We have no written account of this but, says Moreland, we do have the fact of their reuse of the burial mound. Indeed. He then says: By inserting their dead into the barrow, the organisers of the seventh[-]century burial collapsed, and sought to command, time. By making their dead contiguous with those of remote antiquity, they were making an eloquent statement, informed by oral tradition and memory, about their relationship with the dead and their place among the living. In uncovering and reconstructing that relationship we stand in the presence of those statements. We can get some idea of the kind of statements contained within that ‘text’ by looking at contemporary analogies. [Moreland means analogies contemporaneous with the seventh-century burial.]88

Later, we are told that the creation of this page of ‘text’ had drawn upon ‘memories of the past’ (I am unsure what other types of memory there can be) and oral traditions but ‘provided those stories with a new ending.’89 However, a new page was yet to be written: [T]he irruption of the written word (in the form of Christianity) into this landscape from the eighth century onwards almost certainly altered the way some read this monument. As Sarah Semple has shown, the

87 88 89

Moreland, Archaeology and Text, pp. 41, 42–43 and passim. Ibid., p. 41. Ibid., p. 42.

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Christianisation of the landscape transformed barrows from points of articulation with the ancestors into places of evil.90

None of Moreland’s reconstruction is at all implausible but epistemologically it has only the status of a series of hypotheses; it cannot stand as a ‘fact’ to ‘illustrate’ that a specific idea can be retrieved from the non-written data as easily as it can from the written. We have absolutely no idea why the region’s seventh-century inhabitants dug graves into this mound. We do not know that they were informed by oral tradition and collective memory in so doing. In the section immediately succeeding my first quotation Moreland buttresses his point by alluding to written sources, in this case, Paul the Deacon’s late eighth-century account of Duke Gislebert’s opening of the Lombard king Alboin’s tomb earlier in that century to recover the king’s sword. Not atypically, there is no citation or close reading of the actual documentary source. Moreland’s argument rests entirely on Patrick Geary’s analysis of the episode and the reasons for it.91 Geary’s discussion is itself an hypothesis; Paul the Deacon discusses the episode in quite different terms. Here we have an illustration of how texts give us clear statements but ones that we can read in several ways. The second passage, about the introduction of writing through Christianity, emphasises these problems. We do not know that Christianity only appeared in this area in the eighth century; nor can we be sure that Christianity introduced writing. Christianity could well have reached this region during the Roman period or slightly later. It had penetrated areas further west. The British kingdoms, which could have had overlordship of the area before the Anglian political take-over, were certainly Christian. It is also entirely conceivable that writing existed prior to the eighth century. Many documents were produced in sixth century northern Gaul, as we know from passing comments in Gregory of Tours’ Histories, but almost none survives.92 The same is

90 Ibid., pp. 42–43. Moreland refers to S. Semple, ‘A fear of the past: the place of the prehistoric burial mound in the ideology of middle and later Saxon England’, World Archaeology 30 (1998), pp. 109–26. I do not entirely recognise Semple’s argument in Moreland’s summary. 91 P.J. Geary, ‘Germanic tradition and royal archaeology in the ninth century: the Visio Karoli Magni’ in id., Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1994), pp. 49–76. The story comes from Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards, 2.28: W. Dudley Foulke (trans.), Paul the Deacon. History of the Lombards (Philadelphia, 1974; originally 1907). 92 S&S, pp. 46–48, 265–6; see also below, pp. 236–42.

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conceivably true of post-imperial Britain. Writing went on in the western highland regions of Britain; indeed this was probably a high point of Latin, literate culture there.93 The decision to keep written records is itself a conscious act, separate from the act of writing them in the first place, and the transformation towards more systematic retention of documents (and in different forms of repository) marked an important change in mentalities, in Gaul as well as in Britain and at about the same time, the seventh century. It is thus an important variable in how texts as objects are employed in socio-political interaction,94 yet it is one ignored by Moreland throughout his book.95 Christianity does not provide an explanation for this shift in Gaul; it is unlikely to be sufficient in England either.96 Further, because we have no written evidence, we do not know what people thought about these places before the arrival of Christianity. That charters associate some with pagan deities or mysterious beasts like Grendel by no means demonstrates that they had not had those associations earlier. Indeed, without explicit evidence it is equally likely that people had always given them these connotations with monsters and gods. We have no explicit statement that the Church renamed such monuments. Even a solely archaeological consideration of this material presents problems. Take the phrase ‘[b]y making their dead contiguous with those of remote antiquity’. We have no idea whether the seventh-century people of Wigber Low thought that the dead buried in the barrow were of ‘remote antiquity’. They did not have the benefit of the Three Age System, artefact typologies or Carbon14. Indeed it is impossible to demonstrate that they knew there were any dead people of any age in Wigber Low. By purely archaeological logic, the fact that they would not discover the remains of such previous burials (if they ever did so) until they sank the first of their own rather suggests that the initial decision to use the site cannot have been governed by the knowledge of the presence of the ancient dead and a wish to associate their own

93 For a brief discussion of the issues see A. Orchard, ‘Latin and the vernacular languages’ in T. Charles-Edwards (ed.) After Rome (Oxford, 2003), pp. 191–219, at pp. 194–200. Also R. Chapman Stacey, ‘Texts and society’, in Charles-Edwards (ed.) After Rome, pp. 221–57, at pp. 238–9. 94 BW, p. 73 (below, pp. 230–1). 95 In spite of his awareness of, at least, my own discussion of the issue in S&S. 96 Below, pp. 278–84, for further discussion of the archaeology of conversion in England.

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deceased with them. It is plausible of course that seventh-century lore supposed that Wigber Low was a burial chamber but if it did it was purely fortuitous, and naturally we cannot be sure of this. That people wished to associate themselves, for whatever reason, with an ancient monument seems likely but we do not know how ancient they thought it was, or what sort of monument, or even if they realised it was not a natural feature. They might have thought the barrow was Roman, they might have believed it to have been built by Woden, or any other deity, or some figure from the Bible, or by the devil, or by the devil tricked by humans (a common enough motif in folklore).97 In short, we have no idea what they believed it was, or what, if anything, they thought was in it. Burial in mounds was becoming a popular strategy in seventh-century England. The Wigber Low people might have been inspired by other communities’ adoption of the same strategy; it might thus have been competition or emulation that inspired their decision rather than their own communal traditions. Given that it is impossible to show that the choice of burial location was determined by the Wigber Low community’s awareness of the presence of earlier graves (indeed by archaeological logic it remains an unlikely hypothesis), the coincidence of seventh-century and Bronze Age interments provides no logical basis for distinguishing these people from the inhabitants of any other seventh-century cemetery-using community (wherever they sited their burials). To my mind, the crucial feature of Wigber Low is not the possibly fortuitous presence there of earlier graves but the fact that it serves as a visible, above-ground monument. That places these people’s decision in line with many contemporaneous developments in funerary practice across north-western Europe, which betray an analogous concern with making burial places more permanently visible, and thus with the future rather than with the past.98 We can hypothesise that that says much about ideas of time and one’s place within it and, generally, that hypothesis (unlike Moreland’s) rests solidly on the available archaeological record. In that case, too (and again unlike Moreland’s theory), we can find demonstrable traces of similar, and relevant, changes in the documentary record.99

97 See B. Effros, ‘Monuments and memory: repossessing ancient remains in early medieval Gaul’, in M. de Jong & F. Theuws (ed.), Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2001), pp. 93–118. 98 See BW, pp. 72–73 (below, pp. 230–1), and below, pp. 252–60. 99 Again, see BW, p. 73 (below, p. 231).

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If the Wigber Low people did think that the barrow was likely to contain old graves, it may have been only because other communities had discovered such remains in similar mounds, moving their motivation away from their community’s folk memory. Once again, historically contingent developments and emulation might provide the explanation. They might have chosen the barrow as a burial site for the simple reason that it was no use for farming. Moreland’s reading is preferable to this limited, and limiting, functional interpretation but it nevertheless remains possible. Moreland’s failure to deal adequately with the necessary preliminary critical analysis of excavated data or their archaeological context is unfortunate. It only underlines that his interpretation is essentially based upon a questionable reading of written documents and the application of particular grand narratives (of Anglo-Saxon conquest and of Christianisation) fuelled by one reading of those sources, about which even historians would have caveats.100 Ultimately, the point about his case study is that the Wigber Low burial evidence permits numerous equally plausible interpretations. This wide range can only be narrowed through the use of written data, even if merely to the extent of providing a ‘dominant’ or élite justification, against which we can use excavated data to provide routes into alternative readings. Paul the Deacon’s story about Duke Gislebert tells us that he opened a grave; the archaeology of Wigber Low tells us that seventh-century people put burials in an existing man-made mound. Up to this point, the status of both forms of data is about the same: they tell us descriptively what someone did and roughly when they did it. We can only hypothesise about why. However, Paul tells us two important things more: he informs us that Gislebert knowingly and deliberately opened what he knew to have been the grave of a named individual of a particular status (and gives us the name of the person, what his status was, what was known about his deeds that was worth associating with and indeed when he had died). He also tells us what Gislebert used to say about what he had done. Even if we assume (without any compelling reason) that Paul the Deacon had made the whole story up (had ‘lied’, as Catherine Hills would say), we still have an insight into what a late eighth-century writer thought a duke might do, why might have said he had done it and what he thought about people who did and said

100

See further, below, pp. 261–84.

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things like that. Archaeology can, on its own, tell us nothing about these things and this does make a difference to how we can explain the events they reveal. With the documentary case we can say that Paul the Deacon tells us this about this event and leaves us to explore, from the text, why Paul might have expressed those views. It also allows us an insight into what Duke Gislebert said. We might suggest that his real motives were different, we might suggest what they might have been, but we at least have one or two levels of articulate justification for the opening of a grave. On its own, the archaeological evidence does not even allow us to narrow down the range of intended justifications. None of this denies the power of archaeological data to suggest explanations; none of it implies that the seventh-century Wigber Low burials were not carried out to make statements that were perfectly clear to those involved as actors or audience. When studied entirely independently of the documents, however, the archaeological data do not, cannot and indeed can never allow us as clear an insight into those statements as does the written record. It is revealing that, in underpinning his reading of the excavated data, Moreland—in direct contravention of his own methodological strictures—invokes the content, alone, of specific written evidence. At no point are we informed about how the introduction of writing as a technology changed the situation (as, as he would put it, a source of information in, as well as about, the past), or of how any documents were used, as material objects, in effecting change or in bolstering the socio-political aims of a particular group.101 We see used the contents of Anglo-Saxon charters (necessarily from other times and places), which tell us the names of some monuments. Study of the form, purpose, use (as objects) and contents of charters suggests much about possible changes in land-owning patterns or in ideas of one’s place in time and the landscape; study of the form can tell us nothing about redefinitions of landscape features’ spiritual connotations. What might have changed the situation (although we cannot, as noted, say this with certainty) is not the putative irruption of the written word but the possible introduction of a new ideology, Christianity, which could have had the same effects on the renaming and reconceptualisation of

101 Robin Chapman Stacey points out that ‘the main function of charters was evidentiary rather than dispositive’: ‘Texts and society’, p. 231. See further below, pp. 238–42.

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ancient monuments (if it had any) with or without written documents. Moreover, as the use of old mounds for burials appears at precisely the same time as the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Catholic Christianity there is nothing to say that the strategy was not itself the product of the new ideology’s appearance.102 We also have the invocation of the contents of a late eighth-century Historia written in Italy. One might legitimately say that this is of doubtful relevance to Derbyshire, 150 or so years earlier, unless, as with Herschend’s study, rigid post-processual contextualism only applies to archaeological data, reducing them to subservience to somehow less contingent, generally applicable written sources, which thereby become much more powerful sources of information than historians would ever claim. The implication is that, while archaeological evidence can only be understood by reference to its specific circumstances, time and place, a document’s statement (content) may be generalised for the whole of early medieval Europe, which of course is nonsense. It is in any case difficult to see how this writing (which in Italy can hardly be said to have been a new technology or instrument of oppression introduced at this time) can, through the study of its form, shed any light at all on Wigber Low. I have tarried long over this case study partly because it is a good example of the problems with claims that the archaeological data are as articulate as the written and because it gives us a critical insight into the heart of a currently fashionable line of archaeological enquiry in the area of early medieval burial and is thus relevant to the theme of this book.103 This sort of clarion call about the power of archaeology to reveal ideological structures, followed up by off-the-shelf use of the documentary historical framework to furnish an actual explanation is not untypical. In a piece on Viking-Age burial in Man,104 Sarah Tarlow retreats from the possibility of reading the archaeological data on their own merits and into an interpretation ultimately based around a curious (but not unusual in British archaeology)105 supposition that Christianity espoused an equality in death and burial, and upon an interpretation of furnished inhumation as intrinsically pagan, without

102

As Martin Carver has argued with reference to the Sutton Hoo barrows. Discussed further below, pp. 249–60. 104 S. Tarlow, ‘The dread of something after death: violation and desecration on the Isle of Man in the tenth century’, in: J. Carman, Material Harm: Archaeological Studies of War and Violence (Glasgow, 1997), pp. 132–42. 105 See VPE, pp. 266–7, for critique. 103

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considering whether that is in fact what best explains the archaeological record. Brief consideration of some other instances underlines this general point. In her sensible tome, Gender Archaeology, Marie-Louise Stig Sørensen argues for the creation of a specifically archaeological approach to gender. In support of this call to arms (with which it is difficult to disagree) a series of case studies is presented. I will briefly discuss one; the point is more generally applicable. Stig Sørensen discusses the gendering of food.106 In so doing she sets out a series of entirely unobjectionable points about how the processes of food production and consumption are deeply gendered. She then moves on to describe some changes that took place in the form of ceramic vessels during the Bronze Age. These developments are extremely suggestive and interesting, and the range of explanations proposed by Stig Sørensen apposite and thought-provoking. One cannot come away from this chapter other than convinced by Stig Sørensen’s proposals that changes in ideas and cosmologies are demonstrated in the material cultural record, and that the experience of material culture was inextricably part and parcel of those transformations, producing and not merely reflecting them. One other point, however, is equally amply demonstrated, one which, I imagine, was less intentional: that is that not a single one of Stig Sørensen’s explanations is generated by the archaeological record alone. Each is derived from documentary history or ethnography, and then applied to the archaeology with the (entirely plausible) proposal that it might explain the archaeologically visible change. The material data reveal change but, at the level of cosmologies or mentalities, the explanation for those changes is sought by reference to the written word: historical or ethnographic observation. This range of possibilities may be narrowed down according to the degree of ‘fit’ with the excavated evidence but the fact remains that archaeological data on their own cannot clearly reveal the specifics of ideology or cosmology. Pots on their own do not—and cannot—tell one about how, specifically, the food-production process was gendered. There are some forms of archaeological data, of course, where the range of possibilities might be narrowed in ahistorical circumstances. They, of course, are those provided by the study of cemeteries, where we have the particular and deliberate association of particular types of

106

M.L. Stig Sørensen, Gender Archaeology (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 99–123.

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object with the bodies of people who can, in the right conditions, be aged and sexed. Even in a society without documents, these patterns of association would at least give some possible ways into understanding the gendering of artefacts and then perhaps of areas of houses and settlements, and possibly into issues like how the food production process was gendered. It still leaves us with important potential problems in extrapolating from the funerary context to that of everyday lived experience. These issues form the core of chapters 8 and 9, below, and there is no need to adumbrate them here. We can go quite a long way with this material on its own but, even here, only written data will allow us to narrow down the range of possibilities or add more specific detail about the symbolism. It might be, for example, that weaponry deposited in some adult male burials in Merovingian Gaul symbolised a claim to a particular ethnic identity, that of the Frank. We can only make that suggestion plausibly, however, by adducing contemporary written material—not the grand narrative of Frankish migration, but the sources wherein the association of the Franks with the army is attested.107 As a third example we can turn to that offered by David Austin and Julian Thomas in 1990.108 After Austin’s ill-informed invective, a historian might not be predisposed to sympathise with this article. Yet it is very good and entirely, it seems to me, in harmony with the methodology which I proposed in the preceding chapter. Comparison with Austin’s solo-authored chapter suggests that involvement in the casestudy of Thomas, a prehistorian, may have been decisive in explaining the differences between the two. This might also account for the theoretical shift between the processualist advocacy of ‘generalizing ideas which are spatially and temporally liberated’ in Austin’s chapter and the clearly greater influence of post-processualist contextualism in the case-study co-written with Thomas. This study examines the lay-out of the later medieval houses of Okehampton Park on Dartmoor to uncover a series of regularities which seem to relate to the inhabitants’ views of the world. In the later stages Austin and Thomas make some use of written data with which to compare their results. Some areas of dissonance emerge but, rather than allowing the archaeology to correct the history or vice versa, what is presented is an insight into

107

See further below, pp. 365–6. Austin & Thomas, ‘The “proper study” of medieval archaeology: a case study’, esp. pp. 53–75. 108

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how unwritten material culture allows other viewpoints from those expressed in the documents to emerge. The case study could be taken further by the informed analysis of the written records. Not being trained in their use, Austin and Thomas wisely leave that to others. The only things that mar what is a very good case study are some continuations of the ill-informed polemic of Austin’s preceding chapter and a curious view, again foreshadowed in the solo-authored piece, of what constitutes a documentary agenda. Austin dismisses his earlier readings of the material, to study economy and tenurial arrangements, and explanations relating to population pressure, as driven by a documentary agenda. Yet it is by no means clear how this is a purely documentary historical agenda. Late medieval historians have long shown an interest in the issues of the household, kinship and gender touched upon in this case study. One leaves the case study with the impression that, had Austin studied kinship, familial relationships and cosmologies in the 1970s and become interested in demography and economy later, he would equally have decried his earlier work as driven by an historical agenda and criticised it for its lack of interest in the forces of population pressure and the economy, into which archaeology gives a clear insight. Overall, while Austin and Thomas’ analysis is interesting, suggestive and plausible, like the others that we have briefly examined, it nevertheless leaves a range of explanatory possibilities open, which the documentary record alone would be able to narrow, even if only to isolate dominant intended readings. This conclusion may be unpalatable but it remains, unfortunately, a reality. In two decades and more of studying historical and archaeological data together I have yet to see a coherent case made wherein material culture can be used to recover a precise statement about issues of mentality, intention or belief, high up ‘Hawkes’ Ladder’, independently of documentary or otherwise written information. The point is clearly underlined by the essential fact (albeit one to which these writers were, ironically, apparently oblivious) that all of the authors who claim that the material record speaks as clearly as the textual make their case and expound their argument through the publication of written documents, not through the presentation of a series of pots, or a hat, or through the performance of a dance. As I argue in chapter 6, the creation of the material cultural record is crucially different from that of written text, even when making a specific, articulated point; its ‘writing’ and ‘reading’ tend to be simultaneous acts, embodied in the same performance. The point applies a fortiori to messages transmitted

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unconsciously by the experience of material culture. Unlike a written text, a trace is not left that can be as easily read many times over at later dates.109 This is not, let me make clear, to claim that one cannot make specific and eloquent statements through material culture, or that similarly precise statements are not made subconsciously through the use and experience of material culture. What is at stake is our ability to recover those statements. Prehistoric archaeologists have indeed made great leaps in allowing their data to suggest things about ideas, cosmologies and religious belief but, ultimately, they all remain suggestions. Let me also make clear that I am not saying that the written record is ‘primary’ or ‘the principal source of information’ in any general sense. What I am saying is that it does things which the unwritten record can never do, just as the material cultural data do things that the documentary sources cannot. Until archaeologists can give a clear example of a case where the archaeological evidence allows us to read a clear, precise statement (not a range of possible statements, suggested from comparison with documentary history, sociology, ethnography or anthropology) about ideology, cosmology, theology or the other issues higher up ‘Hawkes’ Ladder’ as unambiguously as a written statement (even allowing that written statements are rarely unambiguous), and entirely independently of the documentary record, then they must steel themselves to recognise this fact. That is, one might say, the nature of things. It would probably be helpful to all parties to abandon Hawkes’ unfortunate ladder metaphor, which gives the impression that the history of ideas and beliefs is ‘higher up’ and thus somehow better than the study of the economy or material culture.

V. The implications of these limitations None of what I argue in this ‘commentary’ is incompatible with the ‘multidisciplinary’ methodology proposed in the preceding chapter. I do not argue that Moreland’s reading of the Wigber Low data, or Austin and Thomas’ of Okehampton, is in any way implausible. I maintain simply that that their precise interpretations (more true of Moreland’s than of Austin and Thomas’) represent only one of many rendered equally possible by that same evidence. I firmly believe that one can and should examine the archaeological data independently of the writ109

See further, BW, pp. 66–67 (below, pp. 221–2).

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ten sources to find the range of possible justifications and implications. The documentary evidence, if it is applicable, does not subordinate those interpretations. What it does is to narrow, or sharpen, the range of possible connotations of particular symbols or actions. It perhaps gives us an idea of the intended, dominant meaning of a material cultural statement. Using the excavated data, we can then look at how people played with such symbols. We can look at spatial and chronological change and variation. We can perhaps see instances where what seem to be general beliefs are moderated or transformed. We can hypothesise about how social groups who might not have been involved in the decision-making processes, or who did not belong to the groups whose ideas were expressed through the formation of particular archaeological data (or written texts), might have read material cultural displays—in other ways and about the possible alternative, subordinate or even subversive readings of the material.110 This can importantly help to refine our understanding of the documentary data. In many ways, that is what the essays in this collection aim to do. The historical record, if it offers the archaeologist nothing else, allows, when combined with types of artefact like coins, the construction of fine chronologies such as entirely elude the prehistorian. For instance, with many ahistorical periods one can have little idea whether the building complexes on a site were all inhabited simultaneously or whether they represent a periodically shifting settlement of a much smaller group, occupied over centuries. This is sometimes, as with Austin and Thomas’ case study, unclear even in a period wellserved by written data, but the time frames within which the analysis proceeds are still rather narrower than in many undocumented eras, when sites separated by centuries may be regarded as vaguely contemporaneous. Prehistorians have of course argued—often cogently—for the importance of repeated patterns of behaviour and, like some of the annalistes, emphasised the longue durée over the short-term.111 Yet, this can be argued simply to be making a virtue of necessity. Precise chronological frameworks add to the volume and regional specificity of archaeological data, which documentary history can rarely match before the thirteenth century. Early medieval archaeology thus has the potential to write new and radical accounts of the period, throwing

110

As in Matthew Johnson’s case study of medieval halls: below, p. 85. See for example the excellent introductory text, C. Gamble, Archaeology: The Basics (London, 2001), at pp. 123–153. 111

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into question all kinds of assumptions about the traditional or conservative nature of post-Roman society, based ultimately upon the shortcomings of the documents. It is, however, in the final analysis, the latter’s very existence that permits this. I insist, nevertheless, that archaeology retains this potential regardless of the quantity of documentary data. In fact my contention is the diametrical opposite of the ‘Zero Sum’ view. The greater the written record, the greater the potential of material cultural to complement— and to question—that record, to provide further insights into social and ideological structures. It is partly because of this that, as Ian Morris claims, cultural historians of the early modern and modern periods who have used material culture to examine ideas and attitudes have sometimes gone further than archaeologists in giving unwritten culture a voice.112 In some ways this does make the ability of the archaeological record to answer questions about attitudes and beliefs dependent upon the survival of written data. I do not see any way around that. But it does not condemn the unwritten to service in the simple illustration of ideas drawn from the written; nor does it sentence material culture to the endless repetition of points drawn from the documents. With greater background information, we ought, if anything, to be able to make material culture refine the pictures available from the documents, as above. This is, however, only going to be possible if archaeologists abandon their hostility towards documentary history and historians and accept some points about the limitations of unwritten data as an entirely independent source of evidence.

VI. Bringing history and archaeology together How this might be possible is set out in the latter part of the preceding chapter. Some writers have addressed the issue in the decade since that chapter appeared. As we have seen, Moreland offers no practical suggestions about how to bring documents and archaeology together as evidence in the past. Matthew Johnson believes in the study of documents and archaeology together, to increase the contextual information available. He is also realistic about the potentials of material cultural data to yield more than suggestions about ideas and attitudes.

112

Morris, ‘Archaeology as cultural history’.

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His principal case study, of the late medieval hall, seems in accord with the methodology proposed in the preceding chapter, although it is sometimes unclear how much emerges from the surviving, specifically archaeological, material cultural evidence itself.113 The case study presented of historical archaeology, of Bodiam Castle, is a little more problematic.114 It is difficult to see where archaeology per se contributes to this study. Use is made of the surviving building and its plan but it is difficult to see how archaeology makes a contribution here, distinctive from that of, say, architectural history, or (if the building had not survived) that of a documentary historian who had access to an old plan of the castle. What is at stake in this study is not the different contributions of history and archaeology, the different ways in which study of the documents and that of material culture might give different perspectives, but (in some ways like Austin and Thomas’ study of Okehampton) differences of explanatory paradigm, between what we might term the military historical on the one hand, and the socio-cultural on the other.115 Ironically, though, the critique of the traditional military historical interpretation is ultimately itself founded upon functional military considerations. The castle’s defences are, it is pointed out, a ‘sham’: gun ports are badly placed, arrow slits sited impractically and the dam holding water in the artificial lake is undefended, and so could easily be breached. The main entrance to the castle presents a formidable prospect, approached by two causeways and a fortified island barbican, but the castle’s back door is much less well defended. All these criticisms are based upon practical, functional considerations. This is somewhat like claiming that the Maginot Line was not primarily intended for defence because its left flank was left hanging in the air in the Ardennes; surely by military logic it should have been continued to the Channel. Military history is, famously, littered with examples of defences badly sited, crucial approaches left unguarded and weaponry that the troops could hardly use. Ironically (again) by moving into the cultural historical sphere, invoking contemporary ideas of status, display and honour, the military aspects are

113 Johnson, Archaeological Theory, pp. 108–13; id. Housing Culture (London, 1993). 114 Ibid., pp. 156–61. 115 Johnson deserves credit for not, as would many archaeologists, like Austin or Hills, equating the functional military historical analysis with ‘the historian’s approach’. Johnson’s book is, however, rather more subtle throughout.

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to some extent reinstated (if in an admittedly less timeless ‘normalist’ way).116 What honourable knight would approach a castle by the back door? Ultimately, though, the principal reservation of this study must be that it is difficult to see the specific input of material culture, adding (as in Johnson’s other medieval example) a different perspective and enabling other ‘voices’ to speak. A more extended discussion of the relationships between history and archaeology has been offered by Martin Carver.117 Written with Carver’s usual enthusiasm and flair, this piece relies heavily, as did I in 1997, on the idea of material culture as text, which Carver develops interestingly to liken Sutton Hoo Mound 1 to an heroic poem.118 It also demonstrates the misuse, wearisomely common among British archaeologists, of the word metaphor to mean ‘symbol’.119 It is, however, difficult to see beyond Carver’s prose style to any actual propositions about how written and material culture might practically be brought together. Seeing material culture as text seems to be the solution to all problems. At times, Carver appears to suggest that the researcher ought simply to use everything that is at hand, from whatever source,120 but the chapter’s conclusion opens with a statement which, alarmingly, restates the old zero sum view:

116

Using the term ‘normalist’ as defined in W&S, p. 6. M.O.H. Carver, ‘Marriages of True Minds: Archaeology with Texts’, in B. Cunliffe, W. Davies and C. Renfrew (ed.), Archaeology: the Widening Debate (Oxford, 2002), pp. 465–94. 118 Ibid., p. 484. See also M.O.H. Carver, ‘Burial as Poetry: the Context of Treasure in Anglo-Saxon Graves’, in E. Tyler (ed.) Treasure in the Medieval West (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 25–48. The approach is similar to that which I adopted in 1995–98: BRMS; BW (below, pp. 203–31). 119 Carver, ‘Marriages of True Minds’, p. 484. See also, e.g., H. Williams, ‘Monuments and the past in early Anglo-Saxon England’, in World Archaeology 30 (1998), pp. 90–108, at p. 96. In discussing early medieval attitudes to the dead Williams says that the evidence of investment in commemorating the identity of the deceased ‘may suggest that the living continued to think of them through metaphors of kinship’ (my emphasis). The metaphorical use of the language of kinship would be to convey a similarity in the nature of relationships between the living and the dead and those between kin whilst acknowledging that, while sharing fundamental characteristics, the former are nevertheless not based around kinship. When people refer to their ‘brothers’ in a trades union, that is metaphorical use of kinship language. If early medieval folk believed that the cemetery’s dead were their kin or ancestors, then claiming kinship with them was not metaphorical. Carver also manifests (‘Marriages of True Minds’, pp. 469–71) another archaeological trend: the invocation of a French critical theorist, in this case Derrida, without the citation of any of his actual writings. Cp. n. 42, above. 120 E.g. ibid., p. 493. 117

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[T]otal integration between the study of texts and material culture is thus desirable and practical where both kinds of evidence are on equal terms of abundance and precision [my emphasis]. Where the archaeology is rich and the texts poor, archaeology will tend to set the agenda, and vice versa.

Carver thus implies that there is only a single range of issues, a single agenda, to confront. We must shape the questions we ask of any type of data according to that evidential form’s own analytical problems and potentials, not according to an agenda defined by the study of another corpus of material. What constitutes a ‘poor’ text? Or poor archaeology, for that matter? If a civilisation left a single text, let us say a poem, but hundreds of well-excavated and published settlement and cemetery sites, monuments and so on, we should not analyse that text in order to shed light on issues confronted by the archaeology. If AngloSaxon society had been archaeologically invisible except for Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, but had left an even greater volume of written data, we would be wrong to interpret the burial purely in order to address the issues brought up by the documents. We can only interpret the poem or the grave on its own terms. If these happen to yield questions and conclusions that are comparable with some provided by contextual study of other forms of data we might bring them together. If not, we must either accept that or think about how these conclusions add other dimensions to the picture created from other evidential forms. We can address the issue of why a particular form of evidence does not yield information on specific topics. With the exception of the initial comment about the ‘textuality’ of all forms of data (which I would replace with one to the effect that all forms of data must be studied in their own context and as deliberately and meaningfully constituted in the past),121 I remain convinced that the multi-disciplinary methodology outlined in the previous chapter is the only practical way forward, either by training students in more than one form of study or through the cooperation of scholars from different disciplines. The remaining essays in this volume all represent attempts to put this methodology into practice. Training remains essential, though. This is why it is simply not enough to say that one can and should use all available material. It may well be that the professionalisation of academic disciplines has

121

AH, p. 822 (above, pp. 45–46).

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meant that it is difficult, if not impossible, for one scholar to be proficient in the use of them all. There will doubtless be instances in the chapters which follow where my argument can be critiqued for my failure to be au fait with the latest thinking in either history or archaeology. That is no reason to ignore the specific problems involved in the analysis of particular types of evidence. Archaeologists have been fanatical defenders of the point that their data are not to be used ad hoc by specialists in other disciplines—and rightly too. Archaeology on its own encompasses a bewildering range of technical areas which demand knowledge of specific analytical problems before they can be used to furnish explanatory conclusions. By the same token, though, the technical issues involved in the handling of other types of data must be equally respected. The written sources require specialist treatment and come with their own array of interpretative difficulties. It will not suffice simply to appropriate areas proper to other disciplines whenever problems ‘higher’ up ‘Hawkes’ Ladder’ are encountered, but without paying due attention to the problems particular to the analysis of that form of material. It is this which enables the serious critique of approaches like Hedeager’s or Moreland’s by specialists in written data. But not only does this open archaeologists’ conclusions to criticism; it relegates archaeology from being the primary discipline concerned with the analysis of material culture to being a pale imitation of those disciplines into whose area it has strayed. Perhaps more pertinently, it hinders the development of specifically archaeological analytical methods and, above all else, it prevents dialogue between the disciplines. Discourse between history and archaeology will only be fruitful when archaeology has developed a realistic sense of its own potentials, which means, as with any other discipline, not just developing its methodologies in order to be able to make rigorous statements from its own body of data but also in having the self-confidence to accept those things which lie beyond its disciplinary remit and those sorts of question that it cannot realistically answer—those questions, in other words, to answer which an archaeologist will need to acquire the skills of another discipline. Above all, historical archaeology must develop self-confidence in its identity as a discipline in its own right, rather than defining itself by its opposition to, and marginalisation by, documentary history. Only then, it seems to me, will it truly have come of age.

PART TWO

UN-ROMAN ACTIVITIES: CEMETERIES AND FRANKISH SETTLEMENT, 1992–2009

INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO

The following three chapters represent my attempts to reassess the ethnic, specifically the ‘Germanic’, significance of furnished burials in late fourth- and fifth-century northern Gaul. They argue that such burials should instead be seen as contingent responses to their particular socio-political circumstances. One of the principal underlying supports of the traditional ‘Germanic’ interpretation (in itself showing the weakness of the argument) was the assertion that there was something inherently non-Roman, and thus ‘Germanic’, about the deposition of weaponry in burials. This is an argument so absurd that it receives little or no attention in the following pages. It nevertheless amused Frans Theuws and myself sufficiently to name a workshop on reinterpreting fifth-century furnished burial, at the Fourth International Medieval Congress at Leeds in 1997, the ‘committee for un-Roman activities’ and I have retained that title for this part of the book. Chapter 2 is probably the most cited of all my articles and perhaps that which has had the greatest historiographical impact. Chapter 3 represents a development of that idea and the subsequent ‘commentary 2’ describes the background to these papers, responds at length to critiques, discusses the historiographical development of the debate and further develops my reading of these burials. In chapter 4 I move on to the late fifth century to explore how the ideas in chapters 2 and 3, and especially those about the reasons behind burial discussed in chapters 5 and 6, might help us think about one of the most famous early medieval burials of all, that of Childeric I in Tournai. The ensuing commentary 3 brings my thinking on that up to date and responds to some criticisms.

CHAPTER TWO

THE ORIGINS OF THE REIHENGRÄBERZIVILISATION: FORTY YEARS ON*1

Almost forty years have passed since the publication of Joachim Werner’s seminal paper ‘Zur Entstehung der Reihengräberzivilisation’.2 Here, Werner argued that we should seek the origins of Merovingian burial customs—i.e. interments in cemeteries in more or less neatly-arranged rows (hence Reihengräber—row-graves), accompanied by numerous grave-goods, above all weaponry for males and jewellery for females— in a style of burial which appeared in northern Gaul late in the fourth century and which persisted to the mid-fifth century. This funerary custom differed from the prevalent rite of the period—interment with a decreasing number of grave-goods, usually vessels—in that the dead were accompanied by more lavish and more varied goods, again typically comprising weapons for men and items of jewellery for women. These burials had long been identified with Germanic newcomers into Gaul, and Werner repeated the then current idea that they were to be specifically identified with laeti. To support this claim, there was indeed a general correspondence between the areas in which ‘early Germanic’ burials were found and those where documentary sources mentioned laeti settlements.3 Werner thus identified some of the more

* Originally published in J.F. Drinkwater & H. Elton (ed.), Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity? (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 196–207, and reprinted with kind permission of Cambridge University Press. The notes have been standardised, and occasionally modified, the maps and diagrams have been re-drawn and some minor errors have been corrected. Otherwise the text is reproduced as in the original. 1 I must express my debt to the works of H.W. Böhme, upon which all studies of these graves must be based. I would also like to thank Dr Edward James and Dr Tania Dickinson both for reading the drafts of this paper and for discussing the subject with me over the last two years, thus helping perpetuate what I am sure they felt at times was something of a heresy! Finally I would like to thank Will Coster, who also read the draft of this paper. 2 J. Werner, ‘Zur Entstehung der Reihengräberzivilisation.’ Archaeologica Geographica 1 (1950), pp. 23–32. 3 See, e.g., H.W. Böhme, Germanische Grabfünde des 4 bis 5 Jahrhunderts zwischen untere Elbe und Loire. Studien zur Chronologie und Bevölkerungsgeschichte (Munich, 1974), pp. 192 ff., Abb. 66–68, 196, Abb. 69).

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lavish graves of the series (such as Vermand (Aisne) III, grave B) as those of praefecti laetorum.4 [197] He argued that these laeti remained in their Gallic settlements until Clovis’ conquests, when they joined the incoming Franks and reinforced their settlement of northern Gaul. Unfortunately for this idea, there was a noticeable chronological discrepancy between the written and the archaeological evidence. The historical sources placed the first laeti settlements in the period around AD 300, whereas ‘early Germanic’ graves began to appear only in the late fourth century. Furthermore, the lowly status of the laeti hardly tallied with the lavish nature of many of the graves, and the presence of numerous items of weaponry in the burials seemed to contradict the fact that the laeti, like Roman regular troops, did not own their weapons but were issued them from Roman depots. In his monumental work on Germanic grave finds between the Loire and Elbe, H.-W. Böhme argued instead that these graves were those of foederati.5 In many ways this theory tallies far better with the archaeological evidence, and it is generally followed today. There are, however, problems. The distribution of so-called ‘early Germanic’ weapon-graves covers practically all of Gaul north of the Loire, and the cemeteries which furnish these graves come from all kinds of contexts—forts, urban cemeteries, rural cemeteries, those associated with villas and so on. If these graves are archaeological traces of foederati, we must assume that there was a general policy of signing treaties with innumerable small groups of Germans, who then undertook a massive settlement of northern Gaul—yet these processes excited no contemporary written notice. Moreover, no such graves have been found in the areas where foederati were definitely settled, such as Aquitaine. Even the heart of Toxandria, ceded to the Franks in this period, remains strangely and consistently blank on Böhme’s distribution maps. In 1980, Bailey Young drew on the long-known fact that this burial custom was not the product of Free Germany but of northern Gaul, and, to use Böhme’s phrase, the ‘German-Roman mixed civilisation’6 which existed there, to ask whether there was any reason why the change in burial custom had to be linked with ethnicity. Despite pre-

4

Werner, ‘Zur Entstehung der Reihengräberzivilisation’, p. 25. Böhme, Germanische Grabfünde. 6 H.W. Böhme, ‘Das Land zwischen Elb- und Wesermündung vom 4. bis 6. Jahrhundert. Die Sachsen und ihre Beziehungen zum römischen Westen.’ Führer zu vorund frühgeschichtliche Denkmäler 29 (1976), pp. 205–26, at p. 207. 5

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senting a number of examples where very similar changes in rite were linked with social rather than ethnic changes, Young, inexplicably, still fell back on an ethnic explanation: although perhaps not all of these burials were those of German immigrants, they could still be called ‘Germanic’ in style.7 A third German group, the ‘Gentiles’ were introduced into the [198] question.8 Still, despite Young’s evident unease, the debate upon this group of burials has hinged upon their Germanic ethnicity.9 If only for the good health of the discipline, the time has surely come to question this assumption more rigorously. Like so many aspects of Gaulish archaeology of this period, the study of the ‘early Germanic’ burials has suffered from an inability to ask sufficiently detailed preliminary questions of the evidence, from a willingness to correlate too readily, too simplistically, the excavated data with the documentary sources, and from a desire to apply one hard-and-fast interpretation to what is evidently a very complex problem. Archaeologists have not, in this connection, seriously addressed themselves to the question of why people should wish to place grave-goods in their graves in the first place, and only Young has asked whether these changes in burial rite need relate to ethnicity. Regrettably, the first of these questions cannot be satisfactorily dealt with here; suffice it to say that the purpose of placing grave-goods with a burial was not primarily religious or ethnic.10 The large body of work carried out on Anglo-Saxon cemeteries has revealed that the funerary practice was directly linked to the maintenance of the standing of the deceased’s family within the local community,11 and this is now being demonstrated in Merovingian Gaul.12 7 B.K. Young, ‘Le problème franc et l’apport des pratiques funéraires (III–Ve siècles).’ BLAFAM 3 (1980), pp. 4–18. 8 E.M. Wightman, Gallia Belgica (London, 1985), p. 253. 9 Compare the two most recent general works on late antique/early medieval Gaulish archaeology: P. Périn, & L.C. Feffer, Les Francs (2 vols.; Paris, 1987) and E. James, The Franks (Oxford, 1988). 10 See, e.g., E. James, ‘Cemeteries and the problem of Frankish settlement in Gaul.’ in P.H. Sawyer (ed.) Names, Words and Graves (Leeds, 1979), pp. 55–89. 11 See, above all, E.J. Pader, ‘Material symbolism and social relations in mortuary behaviour’ in P.A. Rahtz, T.M. Dickinson & L. Watts (ed.) Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries 1979 (BAR(B) 82; Oxford, 1980), pp. 143–59; eadem, Symbolism, Social Relations and the Interpretation of Mortuary Remains (BAR(I) 130; Oxford, 1982). 12 G. Halsall, ‘La ‘civitas’ Mérovingienne de Metz.’ BLAFAM 12 (1988), pp. 50–52. idem, ‘Civitas Mediomatricorum: Settlement and Social Organisation in the Merovingian Region of Metz’ D.Phil. thesis, University of York (1991).

Inhumation Cremation N-S Orientation E-W Orientation Charon’s Obol Pottery deposit Weaponry Jewellery

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Analysis of the Origin of the ‘early Germanic’ burial customs

The question of how we may decide whether a burial rite is the product of the migration of an ethnic group into another region requires more detailed examination. Gerald Dunning proposed a series of three questions for determining whether a pottery form could be accepted as having been imported.13 This can be adapted as follows to the question of whether a burial rite is intrusive: Is it significantly different from the rites of the ‘host country’? Are the rite’s geographical origins known with precision and do they lie outside the ‘host country’? If ii. is satisfied, does the rite appear earlier than, and then overlapping chronologically with, its appearance in the ‘host country’?

13 G.C. Dunning, ‘The trade in medieval pottery around the North Sea’ in J.G.N. Renaud (ed.), Rotterdam Papers. A Contribution to Medieval Archaeology (Rotterdam, 1968), pp. 35–58.

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[199] The application of this test to the ‘early Germanic’ graves casts severe doubts upon the interpretation of these burials as the result of a Germanic migration into northern Gaul (fig. 2.1). First, does the rite really differ significantly from that of fourthcentury Gaul? We can look at individual aspects of the burial custom separately: a) The choice of inhumation is of course no different from the usual Gallo-Roman rite of the period. Although the common north-south orientation of ‘Germanic’ burials has frequently been cited as a crucial difference, and the general orientation of late Roman graves is indeed often east-west, the latter are not governed by any distinct rule of orientation. The fourth-century burials at Frénouville are oriented north-south,14 and the cemetery at Scarponne (Meurtheet-Moselle) shows the typical late Roman disarray as regards orientation, with north-south and east-west burials occurring together.15 The [200] ‘early Germanic’ graves contain pottery, glass and bronze vessels of Roman type, and these are generally positioned in the same way as in typically Roman burials. Another common ingredient of the rite is the placing of a coin in the deceased’s mouth or hand—again a Roman tradition and hence no different from other fourth-century burials. b) Examination of the choice of grave-goods is another way of attempting to identify an intrusive rite. Again this requires more detailed examination than is possible here but a brief résumé will serve to illustrate the essential points. The most common finds in male graves are belt fittings—buckles and so on. These were once thought to be the badges of Germanic mercenaries, but the chipcarving style of the metalwork found on these buckles is Roman,16 and the belt was a symbol of authority used in many areas of Roman life, military and civil.17 The distribution of these buckle types shows that they were found primarily along the frontiers of

14

C. Pilet La Nécropole de Frénouville (BAR(I) 83; Oxford, 1980). R. Billoret, ‘Informations Archéologiques: Circonscription de Metz.’ Gallia 39 (1968), pp. 373–407. 16 See G. Haseloff, Germanische Tierornamentik der Völkerwanderungszeit (3 vols.; Berlin, 1981). 17 R.S.O. Tomlin, ‘Notitia Dignitatum tam civilium quam militarum’, in R. Goodburn & P. Bartholomew (ed.), Aspects of the Notitia Dignitatum (BAR(I) 15; Oxford, 1976), pp. 189–209. 15

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the western empire, with isolated finds elsewhere, including some taken back to Free Germany, probably resulting from service in the Roman army.18 c) Another major support for the argument that these are Germanic graves is the presence of weapons in them. Whilst it is true that weapon-graves are not usual in the early Roman period, they are more common than is often supposed,19 and the weapons in ‘early Germanic’ graves are almost certainly of Roman manufacture. The axe is a possible exception, being accepted as a Germanic weapon, but even this is not certain. Axes are indeed found in Free Germany but one at least of Böhme’s axe types (type B) seems to originate in northern Gaul and not Free Germany. Our knowledge of the weaponry of later Roman troops is extremely uncertain, and we know even less about what weapons were being made by RomanoGaulish civilians for their own use. d) This leads us to the final argument for the Germanic nature of these weapon-graves: Roman civilians were not legally allowed to carry weapons. The drawback of this reasoning is obvious: legislation does not always reflect actuality. The distribution of late fourth- and fifth-century weapon-graves is extremely widespread, as mentioned above, and many of these graves contain no Germanic features at all.20 [201] In late Roman Britain, graves appear on the Lankhills cemetery site21 and at Gloucester22 which are similarly accompanied by buckles and knives. The conclusion can be drawn from these male graves that burial with weapons and symbols of authority such as ornate belt-sets was becoming an increasingly popular rite throughout the frontier regions of Roman Gaul in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Had we no documentary evidence to confuse the issue, it is highly unlikely that anyone nowadays would link the appearance of this rite to a migration of people. 18 Böhme ‘Das Land zwischen Elb- und Wesermündung’; Haseloff, Germanische Tierornamentik. 19 G. Lintz & D. Vuaillat, ‘Les poignards et les coutelas dans les sépultures du Limousin.’ Gallia 45 (1987–8), pp. 165–88. 20 As for example at Dieue-sur-Meuse, grave 101: J. Guillaume, ‘Les necropolis de Dieue/Meuse (France).’ Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 5/6 (1974–5), pp. 211–439. 21 G.N. Clarke, Winchester Studies 3. Pre-Roman and Roman Winchester Part II, The Roman Cemetery at Lankhills (Oxford, 1979). 22 P.D.C. Brown, ‘A fifth-century burial at Kingsholme’, in H. Hurst et al. ‘Excavations at Gloucester: third interim report. Kingsholme 1966–75.’ Antiquaries Journal 55 (1975), pp. 290–4.

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That archaeologists have done so in the past has mainly been due to the female burials. Some of these, in north-west Gaul, contain brooch types of known German origin—tutulus (or trumpet) brooches, Stützarmfibeln (supporting-arm brooches), saucer brooches and Armbrustfibeln (the analogy, with a particular form of crossbow is, as with the Tutulusfibeln, so arcane as to defy translation). That some of the ‘early Germanic’ weapon-burials have been found in close connection with female burials with these brooches has been sufficient in the past to convince most archaeologists of the Germanic ethnicity of all graves of this type. However, the decoration on (and ultimately the inspiration for) these brooch types is Roman—many bear the same chipcarved motifs as are found on the belt-sets. Examination of Böhme’s distribtution maps also suggests that certain distinct forms of brooches were being manufactured on Roman soil (fig. 2.2). Who is to say that, despite Germanic inspiration, and, perhaps, initial demand, these types were not being made by Romans for Romans? As with the male burials, the other artefacts found in these graves are of Roman manufacture. Claude Seillier’s map of ‘early Germanic’ burials in Picardy—the heartland of this form of burial—reveals furthermore that only about half of the cemeteries yielding ‘early Germanic’ evidence produced female graves with these brooches.23 These female burials are, moreover, not as significantly different from other late Roman burials as was hitherto supposed. In other parts of late Roman Gaul we can find burials of women with lavish jewellery, as at Sion (Meurthe-et-Moselle), grave 38,24 the urban cemeteries at Strasbourg,25 and so on. As Werner noted, the only real difference between these graves and those of the north-west is the absence of brooches26 [202] and therefore a difference in the ways in which women were dressed for their funeral. Is a variation in dress-style between two regions really a strong enough archaeological foundation upon which to build a migration hypothesis? When we turn to our second preliminary question we find that this, too, cannot be answered in the affirmative. The geographical origins of 23 C. Seillier, ‘La présence germanique en Picardie à l’époque romaine. Les textes et l’archéologie’ in D. Bayard et al., (eds.), Picardie: Berceau de la France (Amiens, 1986), pp. 55–58. 24 E. Salin, Rhin et Orient 1: Le haut Moyen Age en Lorraine d’après le mobilier funéraire (Paris, 1939). 25 R. Forrer, Strasbourg-Argentorate (Strasbourg, 1927). 26 Werner ‘Zur Entstehung der Reihengräberzivilisation’, p. 25.

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the new burial custom are, as has long been known, located in northern Gaul (fig. 2.3). Looking at the rite in general terms—the standard Roman form of burial but with the addition of more numerous gravegoods, including weaponry and belt-sets for men and jewellery for women—we can see that it was common across Gaul north of the Loire, west of the Rhine and east of Brittany. What is more, the rite is significantly different from those of Free Germany, where the funerary custom was either cremation, as in Saxony, or an archaeologically invisible rite, as in the Frankish homelands (either cremation or inhumation without grave-goods or a container for the dead, or another form of body-disposal such as exposure on platforms [203] or deposition in rivers). The only analogous graves in Free Germany, the Haßleben-Leuna group of central Germany (c. AD 300), are chronologically and geographically too far removed from the north Gallic ‘early Germanic’ graves to be linked with them. These graves, incidentally, differ far more from the customary burials of the region (cremations) and show certain Roman features, yet no one has argued that they represent an immigration of Romans into the area. They are [204] instead explained as ‘the momentary pride of an élite’.27 Why this interpretation has been applied here but not to the ‘early Germanic’ graves of northern Gaul is sadly all too easily explained—there are no historical sources for central Germany at the turn of the third century. The negative answer to the second question removes the necessity to ask the third. The fact, already mentioned, that analogous burials in Free Germany had died out before the appearance of the Gallic ‘early Germanic’ graves further argues against a Germanic origin for the latter group of burials. The ‘Germanic’ identification of these burials can thus be seriously questioned on the basis of the evidence of the graves themselves. The difference between the relatively restricted distribution of the Germanic brooch-burials and the wider spread of ‘weaponry and beltset-graves’ and, generally, of jewellery-burials has not been taken into account. Neither has the astonishing lack of archaeological evidence for significant difference from Roman rites, let alone for a German origin. If further arguments are needed, we can turn to look at the archaeology of areas where migrations of Germans are known to have occurred. First, the Visigothic foederati in Aquitaine, as mentioned,

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Germanic settlement? (after Böhme 1974, pp. 102–3)

left no graves of this type. If these burials were a particular trait adopted by German foederati on Roman soil we should expect to find some south of the Loire. Secondly, in their migration into Britain, the East Angles brought their native burial rite—cremation—with them, as is well known. ‘Germanic’ cremations on Gallic soil are very few, and most are found on the border with Free Germany. If the usual practice was followed in Gaul, we can turn the traditional argument on its head and argue that it is not the richly furnished graves at, for example, Vermand which are those of Germanic immigrants, but the larger number of unaccompanied inhumations. These are, after all, likely to be far more like the burials of the Frankish homelands. Finally, it can be argued that an ethnic minority in the midst of a larger ‘host’ population is likely to adopt distinctive or exaggerated cultural traits as a means of preserving its identity—these are often

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more fictive than realistic representations of their original culture.28 But this argument cannot explain the ‘early Germanic’ graves. Why should a Germanic minority choose to accentuate its cultural identity by adopting a rite which, as outlined above, was essentially Roman, accompanied by Roman material culture? [205] If, then, these graves are not those of Germans, whose are they? The archaeological evidence allows us to say, first of all, simply that a new burial rite was adopted across northern Gaul from the late fourth century onwards, and that this fashion peaked around 400. This was basically the traditional late Roman funeral custom but with the addition of more lavish grave-goods. From other sources we can argue that certain common items, such as elaborate belt-sets and cruciform brooches with onion-shaped terminals (Zweibelknopffibeln29), were symbols of authority—frequently, though not exclusively, of military authority.30 In addition, males are also frequently buried with weaponry—a further military symbol of authority. To explain this we need to consider the social role of the late antique funeral. That this was an important social mechanism—largely because it was one of the few occasions when a large proportion of the community was gathered together—is clear from various sources. It was used by wealthy families to re-assert their standing. We know of a Roman magnate distributing largesse to the poor in a cemetery on the occasion of his wife’s death.31 Funeral feasts and the distribution of food, which are suggested by the presence of food offerings in graves, and the discovery on Merovingian cemetery sites of rubbish pits containing animal bones,32 were further means of re-establishing the ties of dependence between a family and its followers. The sermons of Caesarius of Arles make it clear that to receive food from someone was to 28 Cp. J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz ‘Alaric’s Goths: Nation or army?’ in J.F. Drinkwater & H. Elton (ed.), Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 75–83, at pp. 81 ff. 29 H. Zabehlicky, ‘Zeibelknopffibeln als Kennzeichen von Soldaten auf spätrömischen Denkmälern, in W.S. Hanson & L.F.J. Keppie (ed.), Roman Frontier Studies 1979 (BAR(I) 71; Oxford, 1980), pp. 1099–111. 30 H.-W. Böhme, ‘Das Ende der Römerherrschaft in Britannien und die angelsächsische Besiedlung Englands im 5. Jahrhundert.’ Jr-gZM 33 (1986), pp. 469–574, renews the argument that the belt-sets are directly connected with the military. 31 P.A. Février, ‘Permanences et heritages de l’antiquité dans la topographie des villes de l’occident Durant le haut moyen âge.’ Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 21 (1974), pp. 41–138, at p. 132. 32 Halsall, ‘La “civitas” Mérovingienne de Metz.’, p. 51.

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enter into a dependent relationship with him.33 We should expect the use of the funeral as an occasion for a lavish display of the bereaved family’s status in the community and for accentuating the deceased’s place in society in times of instability or stress, when a family’s position was likely to be threatened by the death of a member. Thus the explanation for the appearance of these lavishly furnished burials in northern Gaul is to be sought in terms of social stress and competition for community leadership. This is underlined by the presence, already mentioned, of symbols of authority in these graves. If we seek a historical context for this, it can indeed be found in late antique northern Gaul. Van Dam argues convincingly that the Bacaudae of Roman Gaul were local community leaders who [206] asserted their power as and when the imperial authority could not make itself felt in their region, either through the difficulty of the terrain or through political instability—hence the appearance of Bacaudae in the third and early fifth centuries, during periods of civil war and separatism, and throughout the Roman period in the Alps, where the inaccessible terrain hindered Roman efforts at control.34 This rejection of imperial authority led to the use, by the central government, of the terms Bacauda (in its pejorative sense) and latro (bandit) for these leaders. These provincial elites were taking over the accepted imperial idioms of authority. The distribution map of silver imitation imperial coinage provided by King35 shows that in precisely the region which yields ‘early Germanic’ graves, local leaders had adopted the imperial right to mint coins. We know of the fortification of villas. Burgus of Pontius Leontius is the best known from the literary sources, but there are archaeological instances too.36 Bands of armed retainers or bucel-

33 Caesarius of Arles, Sermons 54.6; note too the juxtaposition of the scriptural quotations in Sermons 54.5. Caesarius of Arles. Sermons (3 vols.), trans. Mueller, M.M., (FotC 31, 47 and 66) (Washington DC, 1956–73). 34 R. Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley, 1985); compare J.F. Drinkwater, ‘The Bacaudae of fifth-century Gaul’, in Drinkwater and Elton (ed.), Fifth-Century Gaul, pp. 208–17, at p. 215. 35 C.E. King, ‘Roman, local and barbarian coinages in fifth-century Gaul’, in Drinkwater & Elton (ed.), Fifth-century Gaul, pp. 184–95, fig. 16.1. 36 J. Percival, The Roman Villa (London, 1976), p. 174ff.; id. ‘The fifth-century villa: new life or death postponed’, in Drinkwater & Elton (ed.), Fifth-Century Gaul, pp. 156–64, at pp. 158 ff.; H. Sivan ‘Town and country in late antique Gaul: the example of Bordeaux’ in Drinkwater & Elton (ed.), Fifth-Century Gaul, pp. 132–43, at p. 138.

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larii are also known. While Pontius Leontius was living in Burgus, the Auvergnat noble Ecdicius was defending his region with a private army, and the Byzantine Life of Daniel the Stylite37 similarly describes a Gaulish aristocrat with an armed retinue. Significantly, the word Bacauda seems to mean warrior.38 It is surely no coincidence that the high-point of the so-called ‘early Germanic’ graves occurs at the same time as the high-point of the activities of the Bacaudae—around 400. When a strong central authority was temporarily restored by Aëtius in the mid-century,39 the furnished burial rite underwent something of a decline, though perhaps not as marked as was once thought,40 before bursting back into popularity in the confusion of the later fifth century, when the Frankish kings popularized the rite as a means of cementing their authority. Further archaeological support can be found for the idea that lavishly furnished graves, especially those containing weapons and thus symbols of military power, occurred when the Roman central authority could not make itself felt. The best instance of this is the ‘civilisation des sommets vosgiens’ of the early Roman period.41 Here, high in the forested mountains of the Vosges, the local population continued to cremate its leaders and place items of weaponry—spears, daggers and axes—in their graves [207] until the early third century.42 Only when the settlements in the high Vosges died out and the population moved to the plain, where Roman authority was more easily felt (the Sarre was heavily Romanized),43 did these weapon-burials cease to occur. A more critical consideration of the archaeological evidence suggests therefore that the people of northern Gaul in the late fourth and early

37 Life of Daniel the Stylite, 60. E. Dawes & N.H. Baynes (trans.), Three Byzantine Saints (London, 1948). 38 Van Dam, Leadership and Community, p. 25, n. 1. 39 H. Elton ‘Defence in fifth-century Gaul’, in Drinkwater & Elton (ed.) FifthCentury Gaul, pp. 167–76, at p. 170. 40 E. James, ‘Childéric, Syagrius et la disparition du royaume de Soissons’, Revue Archéologique de Picardie (1988), no. 3–4, pp. 9–12. 41 T. Welter, ‘Die Besiedlung der Vorstufen der Vogesen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des gebirgigen Teils des Kreises Saarburg in Lothringen. Ein Gesamtbericht über mehrjährige Ausgrabungen der Reste aus Gallo-römischerzeit.’ JGlGA 18 (1906), pp. 371 ff.; M. Lutz, ‘Considérations sur la civilisation dite “des Sommets Vosgiens” à la lumière de découvertes récentes.’ ASHAL 78 (1964), pp. 25–40. 42 Welter ‘Die Besiedlung der Vorstufen der Vogesen’, p. 393; Lutz, ‘Considérations sur la civilisation dite “des Sommets Vosgiens”’, p. 34 ff.; B. Babault & M. Lutz, ‘La nécropole gallo-romaine de St-Guillaume (St-Quirin).’ ASHAL 73 (1973). 43 M. Lutz, ‘Archéologie des rives de la Sarre.’ ASHAL 78 (1978), pp. 11–39.

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fifth centuries took to displaying their power in the community more overtly in their funerals than had hitherto been usual. The removal of effective imperial authority from what had always been a strongly Romanized area created a vacuum in which the local elites competed for the direction of their communities. The presence of Germanic newcomers in these regions added a further element of confusion and competition. This process provides the context for the appearance of these lavishly furnished graves, the terminology of which must be changed, from ‘Germanic’ or ‘federate’ to ‘high-status’. It must be stressed that no specific identification is made here. The subjects of these graves might be Roman or German, civilian or military. The lack of such graves south of the Loire is explained by the greater continuity from Roman to post-Roman which existed there. Not only was the power of the long-established Roman aristocratic families less seriously challenged there but there was generally less of a power vacuum to be filled. The replacement of the effective power of the Roman central government by that of the barbarian kings was achieved there much more smoothly than in the north. There are of course problems with the theory expressed here, but they are less important than those raised by the traditional explanations, which have tried to impose too much of an interpretative ‘straitjacket’ upon the evidence. Any defence of the traditional ‘Germanic’ explanation must now be based upon a more critical examination of the archaeological evidence. A successful defence of the traditional ideas would also make the archaeology of the Frankish settlement far simpler—since we could trace the movement of Germanic influence more easily. In many ways the most worrying aspect of the thesis presented here is that it may well be right!

CHAPTER THREE

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE LATE ROMAN FRONTIER IN NORTHERN GAUL: THE SO-CALLED FÖDERATENGRÄBER RECONSIDERED*

Historiography of frontiers The study of frontiers has blossomed in recent years. In the field of Roman studies we have moved away from traditional “Limesforschung” with its concentration upon military history and fortification, towards more nuanced concepts of what makes a frontier, and indeed towards the realization that there are many types of frontier—military, political, cultural, economic, religious—which need not, and often do not, coincide with each other.1 Our view of the Rhine frontier has changed greatly. Once it was seen as a clearly defined dividing line between civilisation and barbarism, marking a huge cultural, mental and ideological barrier.2 More recently, however, opinions have changed. The dividing line between civilization and barbarism was complex: more than a simple question of which side of the river you lived. The equation of civilisation with living under the law, and barbarism with non-adherence to law, made this political vocabulary complicated and fluid. Further equations between barbarians and bandits, barbarism and banditry, underline this; and the geography—political and physical—of some external frontiers, like the North African, and internal zones like Isauria, emphasize the complexity of the situation.3 Archaeological study * Originally published in W. Pohl & H. Reimitz (ed.) Grenze und Differenz im früheren Mittelalter (Österreichische Akadamie der Wissenschaften: Vienna, 2000), pp. 167–80. The notes have been modified and in some cases edited. Otherwise the text is produced as in the original. 1 See, recently, above all C.R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire. A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore & London, 1994). An excellent introduction to frontier studies can be found on pp. 1–9. 2 A. Alföldi, ‘The moral barrier on Rhine and Danube’, in E. Birley (ed.) The Congress of Roman Frontier Studies 1949 (Durham, 1952), pp. 1–16. 3 Political vocabulary: R. Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley, 1985), pp. 28–34; Isauria: J.F. Matthews, The Roman Empire of

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has added to this the realizations that frontiers were zones of cultural interchange and, often, that there was great similarity between people living on different sides of the frontier. Now our views have moved so far that many would now see the frontier as almost invisible.4 One form of evidence which has been used to illuminate the ‘deepening’ frontiers of the late Roman Empire, and the cross cultural Roman-German “Mischzivilization” of the frontier regions is the form of lavishly furnished inhumation burials which appear in northern Gaul in the later fourth century, the so-called Föderatengräber. In this paper I should like to reexamine this evidence to argue, firstly, that we have moved too far away from the reality of the political frontier as a cultural demarcation line,5 and, secondly, to question the nature and extent of the north Gallic “römisch-germanischen Mischkultur”, but, thirdly, to show that the frontiers were deepening, if not in quite the ways that we think. This will underline that various forms of mental frontier can exist, and so emphasize the lessons of recent studies.

[168] So-called federate graves: historiography and archaeology In later fourth-century northern Gaul, it became increasingly common to inter the dead with more grave-goods than had previously been common, with the deceased dressed in a costume more closely related to that worn in life, even if this was more like ceremonial clothing or ‘Sunday best’ than everyday costume.6 In male graves, we find many elaborate official belt-sets and official brooches—“Zwiebelknopffibeln”7—and weaponry began to be buried too. Women on the

Ammianus (London, 1989), pp. 355–67; N. Africa: Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, pp. 145–51. 4 H. Elton, The Frontiers of the Roman Empire (London, 1996), ch. 1. 5 I make a slightly more extended critique of recent views of the frontier in BMRW (Cambridge, 2007), ch. 5. 6 The best collection and illustration of this material remains H.-W. Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde des 4 bis 5 Jahrhunderts zwischen untere Elbe und Loire. Studien zur Chronologie und Bevölkerungsgeschichte (Munich, 1974). This may be updated with H.-W. Böhme, K. Böhner, M. Schulze, K. Weidemann, G. Waurick, F. Baratte, & F. Vallet, A l’Aube de la France. La Gaule de Constantin à Childéric [parallel German edition, Gallien in der Spätantike] (Paris, 1980), pp. 121–216. 7 On Zwiebelknopffibeln, D.T.S. Janes, ‘The golden clasp of the late Roman state’, Early Medieval Europe 5.2 (1996), pp. 127–53, usefully surveys, with excellent bibliography, the work on these artefacts.

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other hand were interred with jewellery, including many new styles of brooch. The graves are inhumations, the deceased buried in the supine position, and accompanied by often lavish quantities of vessels, ceramic, glass or bronze. The custom of ‘Charon’s obol’ is also attested. These burials are usually found in small groups in typical late Roman cemeteries. Some, like Vermand, are associated with urban centres, others are found by villas, and others still by forts, like Oudenburg, where, surprisingly at first sight (but only at first sight), weapon burials are quite few. Overall these graves are quite evenly distributed across northern Gaul.8 Originally identified with laeti, after an important article by Joachim Werner,9 an equally important article by Kurt Böhner in 196310 associated the burials with similar graves in south-western Germany and ascribed the subjects of the graves to ‘Germanic’11 foederati, which

8 See, e.g. Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, p. 192, Abb. 67. Frans Theuws & Monica Alkemade (n. 21, below) have published a thorough critique of this map. 9 J. Werner, ‘Zur Entstehung der Reihengräberzivilisation’, Archaeologica Geographica 1 (1950), pp. 23–32. R. MacMullen, ‘Barbarian enclaves in the northern Roman Empire’, in id. Changes in the Roman Empire. Essays in the Ordinary (Princeton, 1990), pp. 49–55, (originally published in L’Antiquité Classique for 1963) accepts, at pp. 52–55, the laeti interpretation. 10 K. Böhner, ‘Zur historischen Interpretation der sogenannten Laetengräber.’ JR-GZM 10 (1963), pp. 139–67. See also R. Günther, ‘Laeti, foederati und gentiles in Nord- und Nordwestgallien in Zusammenhang mit der sogennanten Laetenzivilisation.’ Zeitschrift für Archäologie 5 (1971), pp. 39–57. 11 The debate on these graves has traditionally been carried out on the basis of a crude and simplistic binary division into “Romans” (inhabitants of the Empire) and “Germans” (including all inhabitants of the regions north of the Rhine and upper Danube frontiers), based ultimately on Roman ethnogeography. The lumping together of evidently (even from their archaeology) highly diverse groups as ‘Germans’ with supposedly common cultural traits leads ultimately to a current situation where, to accept the traditional ‘Germanist’ interpretation, we have to believe that Gaul was settled by eastern Burgundians and Vandals, picking up some Alamannic traits (Schulze-Dörlamm’s explanation of the weaponry; below, n. 14), and meeting up with and marrying Saxon women from the North Sea coast (Böhme’s interpretation of the jewellery: Germanische Grabfunde) moving into Gaul independently. With this level of strategic (and family) planning, it is hardly surprising that Rome fell! As will become clear, I reject the possibility of identifying these burials with any group from beyond the frontier, and argue that the symbolic and ritual language used originates within the Empire. Nevertheless, as a shorthand for the people from outside the Empire traditionally held to be buried in these graves, and their supposed cultural influences, I have retained the terms German and Germanic, albeit placing both in inverted commas. Similarly, ‘Roman’ is retained for north Gallic provincials, and ‘northern Gaul’ includes Germania I and II. See also, P. Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 326–37, which, however, pushes its ‘revisionist’ argument slightly too far in places.

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certainly fits the lavish nature of the graves better than did the laeti identification. In his monumental study of these burials, to which all subsequent work, particularly my own, owes a huge debt, HorstWolfgang Böhme12 linked the burials, on the basis of items of female jewellery, with the ‘Germans’ of the North Sea coast, although retaining the federate interpretation.13 Most recently, Mechthild SchulzeDörlamm has argued that the weapon burial rite was introduced into northern Gaul by East Germanic Vandals and Burgundians, again in Roman service, and perhaps coming via the Danube frontier.14 [169] The ‘Germanic’ interpretation of these burials nevertheless raises many problems, and has never satisfied everyone. In the ’50s De Laet and Van Doorselaer argued that these burials represented a reawakening of the pre-Roman Gallic rite of weapon burial.15 This argument was rejected on the grounds that Roman weapon burials in the intervening centuries were extremely rare; and the idea of ‘reversion’ to earlier states of affairs, especially after intervals of many centuries, is hardly a convincing historical explanation. Nevertheless, in the 1970s Edward James, first in a comment buried away in The Merovingian Archaeology of South-West Gaul and later in an influential 1979 article questioned the association of burial rite with ethnicity, on more fundamental grounds.16 Also in 1979, Catherine Hills, reviewing ‘pagan’

12

Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, pp. 195–207. This interpretation represents the current consensus. To list only some recent text-books, see: P. Périn & L.C. Feffer, Les Francs, vol. 1 (Paris, 1987), pp. 61–69; E. James, The Franks (Oxford, 1988), pp. 44–51; P. Geary, Before France and Germany. The Creation and Transformation of the Merovingian World (Oxford, 1988), p. 22; E. Ewig, Die Merowinger und das Frankenreich 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 1993), p. 11. 14 M. Schulze-Dörlamm, ‘Germanischer Kriegergräber mit Schwertbeigabe in Mitteleuropa aus dem späten 3. Jahrhundert und der ersten Hälfte des 4. Jahrhunderts N. Chr.. Zur Entstehung der Waffenbeigabsitte in Gallien’, JR-GZM 32 (1985), pp. 509–69. 15 S.J. De Laet & A. Van Doorselaaer, ‘Gräber der römischen Kaiserzeit mit Waffenbeigaben aus Belgien, den Niederlanden und dem Großherzogtum Luxemburg.’ Saalburg-Jahrbuch 20 (1962), pp. 54–61; A. Van Doorselaer, ‘Provinzialrömische Gräber mit Waffenbeigaben aus dem Rheinland und Nordfrankreich.’ Saalburg-Jahrbuch 21 (1963), pp. 26–31; id. ‘Le problème des mobiliers funéraires avec armes en Gaule septentrionale à l’époque du Haut-Empire romain.’ Helinium 5 (1965), pp. 118–25. 16 E. James, The Merovingian Archaeology of South-West Gaul (BAR(I) 25; Oxford, 1977), pp. 179–81; id. ‘Cemeteries and the problem of Frankish settlement in Gaul’, in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Names, Words and Graves. Early Medieval Settlement (Leeds, 1979), pp. 55–89. For earlier doubts about the ‘ethnic’ origins of all the components of the rite, see L. Musset, The Germanic Invasions (London, 1975), pp. 122, 135–7. Musset followed the “laetic” interpretation favoured when the French edition was written, a reading which has remained popular in francophone archaeology until quite recently: 13

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Anglo-Saxon archaeology17 cast similar doubts upon the equation of particular burial styles with immigrants from Free Germany, and in 1980 Bailey Young18 pointed out with great clarity that changes, often dramatic changes, in burial rite can happen without having anything at all to do with migrating people. Seen in this light, my own assault on the ‘Germanic’ interpretation of these graves, published in 1992, from a paper delivered in 1989,19 can be seen, certainly to a greater degree than I realized at the time, as simply continuing a particular archaeological line of reasoning. However, whilst James, Hills and even Young accepted that these burials were ‘Germanic’ in style, but that some, perhaps many, provincial Romans were buried in this way and that thus any ‘ethnic’ indication in the rite had to be more subtly and interestingly evaluated than before, my paper questioned the very basis of the claim that the rite itself was in any way ‘Germanic’. Put briefly, I applied a series of three questions to the rite and the artefacts deployed in it:20 1. Is the rite (or are the artefacts) significantly different from that (those) used in the ‘usual’ burials of northern Gaul? 2. Are the rite’s (or the artefacts’) origins known with precision, and do they lie outside northern Gaul? 3. If the rite’s (or artefacts’) origins are known to lie outside northern Gaul, does it (do they) appear there earlier than, and then overlapping chronologically with, its (their) appearance in northern Gaul? The answers to all three questions argued that if one subjected the archaeological data on its own to a rigorous, more objective analysis,

e.g. J. Mertens, ‘Recherches récentes sur le limes en Gaule Belgique’, in W.S. Hanson & L.J.F. Keppie (ed.), Roman Frontier Studies 1979. Papers Presented to the 12th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies. (BAR(I) 71; Oxford, 1980), pp. 423–70. 17 C. Hills, ‘The archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England in the pagan period: A review.’ Anglo-Saxon England 8 (1979), pp. 297–330. 18 B.K. Young, ‘Le problème franc et l’apport des pratiques funéraires (IIIe–Ve siècles).’ BLAFAM 3 (1980), pp. 4–18. 19 ORz (below, pp. 93–106). 20 These questions were derived from the three questions posed by Gerald Dunning in order to determine whether a pottery type was imported. G.C. Dunning, ‘The trade in medieval pottery around the North Sea’, in J.G.N. Renaud (ed.), Rotterdam papers. A Contribution to Medieval Archaeology (Rotterdam, 1968), pp. 35–58.

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without trying to make it fit a priori notions about ‘Germanic’ migrations, then it was apparent that there was no prima facie support for the ‘Germanic’ identification of these burials at all. The female jewellery may have been an exception but, as Böhme himself noted, some of that was itself clearly being made in Romano-Gallic workshops. In any case, only a portion of the cemeteries with the new style of burial contained such jewellery, the distribution of which was significantly more restricted than that of weaponry or belt-set burials. Otherwise, analysis would show that this was simply a development of provincial north [170] Gallic burial rites, with several new elements. The burials are, moreover, quite different from those of the supposed federates’ homelands. Prehistoric archaeologists would never associate this evidence with a migration of people. Instead of an ethnic interpretation, I proposed a social one, arguing that this rite made statements of local prestige which, turning the usual interpretation on its head, might have been used by ‘Germanic’ settlers, but was fundamentally late ‘Roman’. Looking at the symbols displayed I then argued that these burials claimed forms of power normally reserved to the empire and its officials (the belt sets and official brooches; the weaponry).21 I claimed that this could be seen, from the centre of the empire, as illegitimate authority and thus proposed a tentative identification with the bacaudae of northern Gaul, following Raymond Van Dam’s interpretation of these people.22 There has been no real reply to this yet;23 paradigms in the conservative field of late Roman and early medieval archaeology do not, in spite

21 ORz, pp. 205–6 (above, pp. 103–5). Thus, contra F. Theuws & M. Alkemade, ‘A kind of mirror for men: Sword depositions in late antique northern Gaul’, in F. Theuws & J.L. Nelson (ed.), Rituals of Power. From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), pp. 401–76, at n. 115, I did offer an explanation for the choice of weaponry. I thank Frans Theuws, not only for sending me a copy of this devastating paper in advance of its publication, but also for numerous extremely stimulating discussions of late Roman and Merovingian Gallic archaeology. 22 Van Dam, Leadership and Community, pp. 25–56. 23 This note originally discussed the responses that had appeared by 1997: P. Heather, The Goths (Oxford, 1996), p. 203, n. 40; H. Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe, 350–425 (Oxford 1996), p. 61, n. 40, p. 133, n. 16; K.R. Dark, From Civitas to Kingdom. British political Continuity, 300–800 (Leicester, 1994), p. 236, n. 102; C.R. Whittaker, ‘L’importance des invasions du Bas-Empire: peut-on fair confiance aux historiens?’ Revue du Nord 77 (1995), pp. 11–20, at p. 17, n. 32; M. Welch, ‘The archaeological evidence for federated settlements in Britain in the fifth century’, in F. Vallet & M. Kazanski (ed.), L’Armée Romaine et les Barbares, IIIe au VIIe siècle (Paris, 1993), pp. 269–78, at n. 9; S. Burnell, review of Drinkwater & Elton (ed.) Fifth-

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of any youthful optimism I felt in 1992, change overnight. Certainly my view makes the archaeology of northern Gaul more difficult if you want to plot the migration of the Franks, but then archaeologists have been slow to take up, if they have taken it up at all, the much more subtle work which historians have done on ethnicity and ethnogenesis in the last three decades, work which shows that the processes of ethnic change were far more complex, and interesting, than the simple matter of plotting the routes of invasion and settlement to which some archaeologists still wish to reduce it.24 But I detect increasing dissatisfaction with traditional readings of this burial evidence; there is revolution in the air.25 In this paper I should like to develop these ideas, add further thoughts, and respond to some criticisms made of the 1992 article.

An Alamannic origin? My first points concern a group of burials which I overlooked in 1992, but which might, superficially, lend some support to the traditional ‘Germanist’ argument. These are the lavishly furnished burials found in the Alamannic area of Free Germany. [171]26 This group comprises a number of graves, from c. 300 AD onwards, including males with

Century Gaul, Medieval Archaeology 39 (1995), pp. 294–6, at p. 295; B. Effros, ‘From grave goods to Christian epitaphs: Evolution in burial tradition and the expression of social status in Merovingian society’ (PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994), pp. 91–92; I am hugely indebted to Dr. Effros for so kindly sending me a copy of her thesis. See below, p. 71. 24 Even Heinrich Härke, who proposes much more subtle and persuasive means of relating differing burial types with ethnic identity in early Anglo-Saxon burials, still sees such ‘ethnicity’ as a matter of genetics, or the geographical origin of one’s ancestors. Härke, ‘Changing symbols in a changing society: the Anglo-Saxon weapon rite’ in M.O.H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo. North-West Europe in the Seventh Century (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 149–65. 25 E.g. in the comments on Grubenhäuser by Paul van Ossel, in Établissements Ruraux de l’Antiquité Tardive dans le Nord de la Gaule (51e Supplement à Gallia; Paris, 1992), p. 127; and by the comments of Michel Kazanski in ‘L’Équipement et le matériel militaires au Bas-Empire en Gaule du nord et de l’est’, Revue du Nord 77 (1995), pp. 37–54.’ 26 It was these burials (and I am grateful to Dr Martin Welch for reminding me of them in conversation), which formed the basis of Böhner’s ‘federate’ argument: Böhner, ‘Zur historischen Interpretation der sogenannten Laetengräber’. For illustration, see R. Christlein, Die Alamannen. Archäologie eines lebendigen Volkes, 3rd edition (Stuttgart, 1991), pp. 50–52.

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weapons, and females with fairly extensive jewellery.27 Superficially at least, they could well provide a model for the ‘federate graves’ of the late fourth century. There are, however, reasons to reject this argument. Firstly, a number of the lavish graves, such as Lampertsheim, graves 24 and E, make use of a cremation rite convincingly to be associated with the peoples of ‘Free Germany’. Secondly, some also use weapons, not in the ways in which they are used in northern Gaul, but in the traditional ‘Germanic’ custom of a group of three ‘votive’ bronze arrowheads. These burials also utilise clearly non-Roman material. Thus, in rite and in the material culture employed, they differ from the north Gallic burials. Furthermore, the latter are separated from the former geographically. Such graves are rare in north eastern Gaul; a few examples are known, mainly on the frontier itself, such as the male burial from Köln ‘vor dem Severinstor’, which differs significantly from the Alamannic so-called precursors, being, apart from its sword and shield, a typically ‘Roman’ sarcophagus burial.28 No identifiably ‘Alamannic’ origin can be found for any of the material in the north Gallic graves. Other problems for the ‘Germanist’ interpretation arise. How, does one square an ‘Alamannic’ origin of the rite with the supposedly ‘Saxon’ origin of the brooches? Accepting one of these elements excludes acceptance of the other, unless one assumes an, utterly ahistorical, Germanitas, which would lead ‘Saxon’ migrants to adopt an ‘Alamannic’ rite, for no reason other than their shared ‘Germanness’.29 The argument for an ‘Alamannic’ origin of these burials is, therefore, weak. It explains material cultural change simply by hammering it into a framework provided by a crude reading of documentary sources.30 Thus, as an explanatory framework, it is inconsistent. The introduction into ‘Free Germany’ of new burial forms, similar to those of Roman Europe, and using clearly Roman objects,31 is not explained as a Roman 27 Male graves include Lampertsheim, graves 24 and E, and Stockstadt graves 1 and 2; other graves contain the symbolic deposition of three bronze arrowheads, such as at Bittenbrunn-Laisacker. Female burials include those at Erlbach (dating to c. 300), Gerlachsheim and Gundelsheim. 28 Böhme et al., A l’Aube de la France, p. 147; Schulze-Dörlamm, ‘Germanische Kriegergräber’, dates the burial to the mid-fourth century, thus slightly later than Böhme et al. 29 See n. 11, above. 30 For fuller thoughts on this general problem, see AH, esp. at pp. 817–24 (above, pp. 39–48). 31 Such as the famous Haßleben-Leuna group of burials.

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migration, and equally significant changes in burial style earlier in the Roman period, such as the change to inhumation, or in the period after the ‘Great Invasions’, such as significant changes in Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian mortuary practice around 600 AD, are similarly not explained in terms of movement of people. The general problem of assigning material culture and change to ‘ethnicity’ and migration is a problem to which we must return.

‘Germanic’ brooches Turning to more specific, artefactual supports for the ‘Germanic’ identification we may begin with the brooches. In 1992, redrawing Böhme’s distribution map,32 I expressed some doubts that the north Gallic ‘tutulus brooch’ really was a ‘Germanic’ import. This seems clear enough from Böhme’s map but if we redraw it we see that Gallic types are [172] found in Free Germany, but the ‘German’ types are never found in Gaul. Comparison with patterns where a type is known to be introduced into a region from elsewhere and subsequently developed in the new area, such as the distribution of Anglo-Saxon brooches on the continent and in southern England would suggest that the movement was from Gaul to Germany, and that types like the ‘Germanic’ Issendorf type are local north German developments from GalloRoman Nymwegen types, which are in any case earlier, as Böhme’s work shows. The argument that the type itself is of ‘Germanic’ derivation is not decisive, as later fourth-century tutulus brooches are quite unlike their supposed predecessors. If one accepts that the Nymwegen type is of the early to mid-fourth century,33 then one can perhaps trace the style back through rare brooch styles like one from Trier Metzelstraße, dated to the late third or early fourth century,34 and then to the 32 Although making an error in citation. The map in question is Germanische Grabfunde map 6, not, as cited in ORz, p. 202, map 7 (the error is rectified, above, p. 100). 33 As would be logical from its occurrence in Nymwegen-Grutberg grave 405, coindated by bronze issues of Constantine I and Licinius minted between 317 and 320. Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, p. 285. 34 H. Cüppers (ed.), Trier. Kaiserrezidenz und Bischofssitz. Die Stadt in spätantiker und frühchristlicher Zeit (Mainz, 1984), p. 341. The brooch is catalogued as Germanic purely on the grounds that it looks a little like later Tutulusfibeln, which are supposed to be Germanic because they are assumed to develop from north German prototypes also later than this artefact. This traditionalist argument has the merit of circumventing

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earlier Roman provincial tradition of disc brooches, enamel or otherwise, with raised central bosses.35 ‘Roman’ disc brooches had always been exported to ‘Free Germany’ and provided models for ‘German’ variants.36 But it seems safest to avoid these constricting diffusionist arguments and simply say that the tutulus brooch is a new, mid-late fourth-century brooch style which was manufactured in Gaul and exported northwards. This interpretation of the distribution maps would tally with our understanding of the origins and movement of other late Roman metalwork with comparable distribution patterns, such as belt sets. No one has ever doubted that these were Roman products moving north. Similar arguments can be made about the distribution of fine wares,37 and even of prestige items found more often in Scandinavia than in Gaul, such as the so-called Vestland type cauldron, whose Meuse valley origins are apparently not in doubt.38 It is strange that we assume quite an opposite movement for brooch styles with the same distribution and which often exhibit the same repertoire of stylistic and decorative motifs.

both the rigours of logic and the demands of chronology! This example seems to me to represent the end of what Feugère calls the ‘little understood’ development of his type 25b, through the third century: M. Feugère, Les Fibules en Gaule Méridionale de la Conquête à la Fin du Ve Siècle après J-C (Paris, 1985), p. 354. 35 For Gallic enamel and other disc brooches with raised central bosses see, Feugère, Les Fibules en Gaule Méridionale, esp. type 25 (pp. 351–6), and nos. 1911– 1959 (plates 152–6). For other examples, see, e.g., J. Schaub & J.P. Petit, Bliesbrücken. Gallo-Römische Siedlung in Lothringen (Sarreguemines, 1984), p. 42; B. Schnitzler & M. Schneider, Musée Archéologique de Strasbourg (Strasbourg, 1985), p. 73; V. Notin & J.-M. Desbordes, Augustoritum. Aux Origines de Limoges (Limoges, 1990), p. 92; for Romano-British ‘Tutulus brooches’, see R. Hattatt, Ancient and Romano-British Brooches (Ipswich, 1994; originally 1982), pp. 139–43, 166–67; id. Ancient Brooches and Other Objects (1989), pp. 128–29. I am grateful to Dr. Barry Ager (British Museum) for the latter reference. The supposedly Germanic tutulus brooch found at Kirmington (P. Everson & G.C. Knowles, ‘A Tutulus brooch from Kirmington, Lincolnshire (S. Humberside)’, Medieval Archaeology 22 (1978), pp. 123–7) seems self-evidently derivative of the Romano-British types. 36 See S. Thomas, ‘Die provinzialrömischen Scheibenfibeln der römischen Kaiserzeit im freien Germanien.’ Berliner Jahrbuch für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 6 (1966), pp. 119–78; eadem, ‘Die germanischen Scheibenfibeln der römischen Kaiserzeit im freien Germanien.’ Berliner Jahrbuch für Vor- und Frühgeschichte 7 (1967), pp. 1–187. 37 Such as Argonne Ware. See, for example, the distribution map of Chenet 342, found in Elton, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 79. 38 Böhme et al. A l’Aube de la France, pp. 127, 129.

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This argument can be made for other brooch styles too (such as Stützarmfibeln).39 The hairpins found in these graves are clearly a frontier style, which finds its densest distribution on the lower Rhine, and which is a very common item of late Roman female dress. For now it will suffice to draw attention to the fact that there is a clear opposition between brooch styles which are found in northern Gaul and which spread into northern Germany but rarely or never lowland England, and those which are found in Northern Germany and which spread into lowland England (where we know there was a Saxon migration) but rarely or never into Gaul.40 This opposition is not simply a question [173] of date. Taking all that into account, we have to admit that the number of inhumations with definitely ‘Germanic’ jewellery is very low. It becomes very difficult to ascribe a ‘Germanic’ ethnicity to the occupants of all of the dozens of lavish burials by extension from a handful with Saxon brooches, often quite late within the series. Then it must be noted that even where the brooches are similar, there are clear differences in dress fashion between the women of northern Gaul and those of free Germany, particularly sharp on the upper Rhine—the Alamannic frontier. The women of north-eastern Gaul wore jewellery—earrings especially—not found across the Rhine, and were not buried with brooches of the styles common amongst the Alamans. Alamannic women too wore waist belts, and so did their contemporaries further north and west, but Gallo-Roman women did not.41 Clear differences in dress appear even in Böhme’s work.42 As mentioned, hairpins are far more common in Gaul. This is perhaps more important in defining identity and difference than the precise nature of the clothes fasteners involved. In that sense the political frontier was an important cultural frontier too. We might note in passing that the fact that the female costume of the north Gallic burials differs from that of the lower Saxon graves

39

Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, map 3. The second group comprises chip-carved equal-armed brooches (Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, map 5), Stützarmfibeln with banded bows (ibid., map 4), Lower Saxon Type A Stützarmfibeln with trapezoidal foot (ibid., map 3), Armbrustfibeln with trapezoidal foot (ibid., map 2), Liebenau type applied saucer brooches (ibid., map 7), cast saucer brooches (ibid., map 8). Westerwanna type applied saucer brooches (ibid., map 7) and Issendorf, Babilonie and Ortbrook type Tutulus brooches (ibid., map 6) were unknown outside Saxony in 1974. 41 Christlein, Die Alamannen, p. 77. 42 Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, pp. 158–61. 40

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was explained by Böhme43 as being a simple question of regional variation. However, one of the reasons why burial with this jewellery is supposed to be ‘Germanic’ is because fourth-century ‘Roman’ women were not buried with brooches. ‘Roman’ women across the north and east of Gaul were, however, buried with necklaces, earrings, bracelets and hairpins, in much the same way as those of the so-called federate graves. So the only real difference is the brooches, and this might also be read as a regional variation, especially if one added other jewellery burials without the brooches to the overall map of lavish inhumations.44 According to the traditional argument ‘Germans’ are allowed to vary, but ‘Romans’ are not, and the double-standards of this explanation are not explained! With similar unexplained double-standards, the near-disappearance of brooches from Gallic female costume is usually described as a change of fashion, whereas its reappearance is explained in terms of migration!45 Dr Martin Welch46 has criticized my interpretation for underestimating the significance of these brooches and female costume; I think, for the reasons just set out, that it is rather the traditionalists who have overestimated the significance of these features. Bailey Young47 has suggested that the inhumation rites of the Merovingian period can be divided into votive offerings of ‘Roman’ origin, and the clothing of the deceased, a ‘Germanic’ tradition. Yet it is clear that ‘inhumation habillée’ was still practised across Roman Gaul in the fourth century, especially for women, making this distinction unconvincing. ‘Roman’ males were commonly buried with their belt-sets in graves which show no possible ‘Germanic’ influence, and the question of which category the weapons in these burials fall into is problematic.

43

Ibid., p. 159. See ORz, figure 17.3, p. 203. Adding in these burials would leave lavish inhumations covering most of Gaul north of the Loire. 45 Dr Carol Van Driel-Murray has suggested to me that the reappearance of brooches may indicate a break-down in weaving technology, leading to a need for more clothes fasteners. While I am not fond of such extreme functionalist explanations, if one accepts the argument, at least in part, it further underlines the collapse of a complex economy and craft-specialization in northern Gaul in the late fourth century, for which see below. 46 Welch, as n. 23. As stated, this rejoinder was probably added late in the publication process, so it is unfair to take it to task as a fully-formulated counter-argument. 47 B.K. Young, ‘Paganisme, christianisme et rites funéraires mérovingiens.’ Archéologie Médiévale 7 (1977), pp. 5–81. The interpretation is followed by B. Effros, ‘From Grave-Goods to Christian Epitaphs’, pp. 92–93 and passim. 44

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[174] Weapon-burials: A ‘Germanic’ trait? So we move on to these weapons, the other key support for the ‘Germanic’ identification, leading to a grave like Dieue-sur-Meuse 101 being called ‘Germanic’ on the sole basis of the fact that it has a (Roman) spear in it.48 There is nothing of ‘Germanic’ origin in this grave, or its contemporaries on the site, or in the rituals used. Michel Kazanski has recently argued that the weaponry in these graves is overwhelmingly of Roman origin, and that where external influences can be detected they as often come from the east as from Free Germany.49 Even the axe, the most common of all weapons in these graves (and, again, much more common in Gallic than in north German weapon burials), long held as being a clearly ‘Germanic’ weapon,50 is probably late Roman, as numerous written references attest.51 I would suggest that the axe is a cheap, mass-produced side-arm, perhaps for limitanei. The idea that ‘Romans’ simply would not be buried with weapons is far from convincing; most Free Germans were not buried with weapons either.52 This argument against weapon burials being Roman rests on legal assumptions: Roman citizens were not allowed to carry weapons;53 Roman soldiers’ weapons were state property. These arguments

48 Böhme et al., A l’Aube de la France, pp. 177–8: ‘C’est la seule sépulture germanique sûre d’un cimetière provincial romain du IVe–Ve siècle.’ For the site, see J. Guillaume, ‘Les nécropoles mérovingiennes de Dieue/Meuse (France)’, Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 5–6 (1974–75), pp. 211–349. 49 Kazanski, ‘L’Équipement et le matériel militaires’, pp. 37–54. 50 Even in ORz, p. 200. 51 Axes used by the Roman army: Amm. Marc., Res Gestae 19.6.7, 26.8.10; Vegetius, De Rei Militari 4.46; Notitia Dignitatum Or. 11, Occ. 11 (illustrations of the insignia for the Magistri Officiorum for east and west); Scriptores Historiae Augustae, Caracalla, 4.i. See also the cavalryman’s tombstone from Gamzigrad on the Danubian frontier, which depicts the deceased carrying an axe whilst on horseback: P. Southern & K. Dixon, The Late Roman Army (London, 1996), p. 93. I am grateful to Dr. Jon Barlow of the University of Sydney for some of these references, though we will have to differ on their interpretation. Note, too, that no source refers to pre-settlement Franks using axes, not even Ammianus’ detailed account of Julian’s Frankish wars. Ulrich Dahmlos, in his seminal article, ‘‘Francisca—Bipennis—Securis’. Bemerkungen zu archäologischem Befund und schriftlicher überlieferung.’ Germania 55 (1977), pp. 141–65, expressed surprise that no franciscae were known from the Frankish homelands. His surprise was misplaced; the true francisca is clearly, even from archaeological data, a fifth-century north Gallic development. 52 Weapon burial in Free Germany is not a common rite, except perhaps in the former East Germany and Poland, and Scandinavia. 53 The counterpart of the argument is that weapon burial is, conversely, a concomitant of ‘German’ law. See, for a recent example, F. Naumann-Steckner, ‘Death on the Rhine: changing burial customs in Cologne, 3rd–7th century’, in L. Webster &

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are easily disposed of. Firstly, it is extremely simplistic to assume that the proscriptions of the laws accurately reflect social reality, and, secondly, there is ample evidence which suggests quite the opposite.54 Thirdly, there were occasions, like bandit-hunting, when citizens were expressly permitted to carry arms,55 and, fourthly, civilian aristocrats in particular must have possessed eminently serviceable weapons for the hunting expeditions which were so notable a part of their culture. The argument that weapon- and belt-set-graves are ‘Germans’ because of the army’s barbarization is questioned by recent work which has shown quite forcefully that, although it was significant, we should not overemphasize the barbarization, specifically the Germanization, of the late Roman army.56 [175] Another reason for rejecting the idea that weapon burial is an ‘un-Roman activity’ is presented by consideration of a wider range of ritual evidence. The Romans may not commonly have buried weapons with their dead,57 but they were certainly not above disposing of such items in ritual contexts. It is now widely accepted that the Romans deposited items of weaponry and armour in rivers—although here too the idea has surfaced (if you will excuse the pun) that this is just not a M. Brown (ed.) The Transformation of the Roman World (London, 1997), pp. 143–79, at p. 153. This idea has been fairly thoroughly discredited: see E. James, ‘Burial and status in the early medieval west’, TRHS 5th Series, 39 (1989), pp. 23–40, at pp. 34–35. 54 Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, p. 341, for late Roman legislation against civilians wearing military accoutrements in Rome. How much worse (from the legislators’ point of view) must the situation have been in the frontier regions? Note that the apparel which the law-makers attempted to ban from civilian garb included not only weaponry but military uniform, including belts and cloaks—precisely the sorts of item used so prominently in the so-called federate graves. 55 B.D. Shaw, ‘Bandits in the Roman Empire.’ Past and Present 105 (1984), pp. 4–52; id., ‘The bandit’, in A. Giardina (ed.), The Romans (Chicago,1993), pp. 300–41. On several occasions in the mid-fifth century, in the cause of the City’s defence, the Emperors lifted the ban on the citizens of Rome carrying weaponry: Nov. Val. 9, Nov. Maj. 8, rubric. But where were the people supposed suddenly to find these weapons? 56 Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe, pp. 136–52, seems to me to have extremely important implications. See also Kazanski, ‘L’Equipement et le matériel militaires’. This recent work effectively disposes of Simon Burnell’s critique (above, n. 23) of my 1992 article which rests solely on the ‘fact’ that the late Roman army was becoming Germanized, and that this ‘fact’ outweighs the absence of written testimony to Germanic federate settlement and the archaeological data’s silence on the matter. 57 ORz, pp. 206–7 on Roman weapon burials in the Vosges. G. Lintz & D. Vuaillat, ‘Les poignards et les coutelas dans les sépultures du Limousin.’ Gallia 45 (1987–8), pp. 165–88, on Limousin dagger-burials. R. Lantier & H. Schönberger, ‘Provinzialrömischer Gräber mit Waffenbeigaben,’ Saalburg Jahrbuch 12 (1953), pp. 53–6, on provincial Roman weapon burials in general. The corpus, if not enormous, is nevertheless certainly significant.

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Roman thing to do.58 There is apparently a particular density of such finds on the lower Rhine and especially in the first century. At Empel, near the Meuse in the southern Netherlands, 140 items of military equipment were buried in a cult complex.59 Similar finds are known from Roman Britain, including weapons probably ritually deposited in foundation trenches of military buildings, as at South Shields and Fendoch.60 Weaponry is occasionally found in votive pits too. For the fourth century, of course, we have the lavish and well-known bogdeposit of Roman military equipment at Deurne.61 The fact that much of this, as far as can be determined, is official issue, even legionary issue, is another nail in the coffin of the legal argument against Roman weapon burial. Once we accept this then it becomes even less of a leap to the ritual deposition of weaponry in burial contexts.

Other Points Two subsidiary issues should be raised before considering an overall interpretation of these burials. The first need not detain us long. Attempts have recently been made to ‘prove’ the ‘Saxon’ origin of the subjects of these burials from their physical anthropology.62 The methods and results are unconvincing. The approach has been to use more up-to-date scientific methods to answer out-dated historical questions, and this vitiates the approach in itself. More specifically, however, we should note that the sample of bones studied has clearly been selected with the idea already in place that, following Böhme’s work, the people

58 I. Haynes, ‘Religion in the Roman army: unifying aspects and regional trends’, in H. Cancik & J. Rüpke (ed.), Römische Reichsreligion und Provinzialreligion (Tübingen, 1997), pp. 113–26, esp. pp. 116–23. I am tremendously grateful to Dr. Haynes both for showing me this paper in advance of publication and for discussing the relevant evidence with me. 59 N. Roymans & T. Derks, ‘Ein keltisch-römischer Kultbezirk bei Empel (Niederlande)’, in Archäologisches Korrespondenzblätte 20 (1990), pp. 443–51. 60 Haynes, ‘Religion’, p. 122, and refs. 61 There has, yet again, been great reluctance to see this as a Roman votive find. Böhme et al., A l’Aube de la France, p. 138, state that the Deurne helmet belonged to an officer who rode into a bog and drowned. This is unlikely in the extreme. The presence of three shoes, each from a different pair, possibly confirms the ritual nature of the deposit: Southern & Dixon, The Late Roman Army, p. 124. 62 J. Blondiaux, ‘La présence germanique en Gaule du Nord. La preuve anthropologique? A propos des cimetiéres de Vron (Somme) et de Neuville-sur-Escaut (Nord).’ SzSf 8 (1993), pp. 13–20.

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in these graves should have come from the lower Elbe region. No selection of bones from other regions of Gaul, or ‘control’ samples from Spain, Italy or North Africa, was used. Further, the end results are, themselves, not conclusive. Ethnicity, moreover, is not something which can be directly approached using physical anthropology, as will be further discussed below.63 [176] Finally, we should remember that the archaeology of the socalled ‘federate graves’ is quite different from that of other areas where we know ‘Germans’ settled. In fourth-century Alamannia, the former Agri Decumates,64 on the upper Danube frontier in Rhaetia,65 in the Balkans, in Anglo-Saxon England,66 and even in Frankish Toxandria and the far north of Roman Gaul, to judge from the cemetery associated with the ‘Germanic’ settlement at Gennep,67 ‘Germanic’ immigrants either buried significant numbers of their dead according to their traditional rites or, where they did adopt new customs, incorporated significant numbers of their own artefacts in the burial. This is rarely the case in Gaul.68

Ethnicity and Burial From crude and unsatisfactory attempts to plot the diffusion of this rite, and from the artefactual supports of the ‘Germanic’ interpreta-

63

C. Seillier, ‘La presence germanique en Gaule du Nord au Bas-Empire’, Revue du Nord 77 (1995), pp. 71–78, feebly attempts to bolster the idea of a ‘Germanic’ settlement from Saxony by reference to the presence of intrusive hand-made pottery (p. 74). This might have been a good idea had not analysis, by Seillier’s own admission, shown that the pottery could have come from the Eifel (p. 76), within the Empire! Seillier refers to Blondiaux’s work, and makes bizarre appeal to physical anthropology on p. 77. 64 E.g. Christlein, Die Alamannen, pp. 50–52. 65 E.g. Burns, Barbarians Within the Gates of Rome, pp. 113–47 & refs. 66 E.g. M. Welch, Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1991), p. 56. 67 P. Van Ossel, ‘L’Insécurité et militarisation en Gaule du nord au BasEmpire. L’Exemple des campagnes.’ Revue du Nord 77 (1995), pp. 27–36, at p. 36 (‘Discussion’). 68 An exception might be Vireux-Molhain (J.-P. Lemant, Le Cimetière et la Fortification de Vireux-Molhain, dép. Ardennes (Romisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Forschungsinstitut für Vor- und Frühgeschichte Monographien 7; Mainz, 1985). where a number of graves are catalogued as cremation. This interpretation does not seem certain, and appears in places to be proposed from a simple absence of bones. If these are cremations, they are very unusual ones, with the grave-pit being dug to a size to accommodate an inhumation.

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tion, it is worth turning to broader issues of the association of ethnicity with burial rite. The arguments above attempt to remove the prima facie archaeological artefactual or ‘diffusionist’ arguments for linking these burials with a migration of people. Yet we are still left with the question of whether artefacts or rites, and their origins, necessarily tell us anything at all about ‘ethnicity’, which is fundamentally a state of mind.69 It is the latter point which also disallows the frequent, intellectually lazy, appeal to ‘science’ to elucidate such matters via physical anthropology, morphological traits or even (and recently especially) DNA. Even given the unlikely discovery that ‘communities of belief’ like late antique ethnic groups were so discrete as to be identifiable with particular physical anthropological traits of DNA patterns, an entire battery of modern scientific techniques would not, were we to find Stilicho’s skeleton, reveal whether, or at which points of his life, he saw himself primarily as a Roman or a Vandal. Similarly, analysis of the DNA of Hilderic, king of the Vandals (descended from the House of Theodosius on his mother’s side), or of Hilderic’s distant cousin, the emperor Theodosius II (descended from a Frank on his mother’s side), would tell us nothing of their ethnicity.70 The material culture and the rituals involved in these graves are almost entirely ‘Roman’ in origin, or elements which appeared newly within the late fourth century. Does that necessarily mean that the subjects of the burials regarded themselves as ‘Romans’?71 This question is of course impossible to answer with any certainty. We might [177] argue that an immigrant group within a larger host population might create its own, more or less fictive, ethnic identity, by deploying readily available material culture. Valid though this possibility is,

69 On the problems of ethnicity, I have found T.H. Eriksen, Ethnicity and Nationalism. Anthropological Perspectives (London, 1993), the best guide through the voluminous literature. As will be seen, I align myself with the ‘instrumentalist’ school, believing that even the modified primordialist stance of, e.g., G.C. Bentley, ‘Ethnicity and Practice’, CSSH 29 (1987), pp. 24–55, which takes on board the work of Pierre Bourdieu, mistakes ‘ethnicity’ for the whole of an individual’s “habitus”, rather than just a component element, or dimension, of it. For a brief statement of my views on this, see EMCems, pp. 56–61. 70 See above, n. 63, for the application of such ideas to these particular burials. 71 Effros, Grave goods, pp. 91–92, argues against the thesis of my 1992 article on the entirely valid grounds that artefacts and their origins do not necessarily tell you anything about ethnicity. It does seem a tad illogical, however, to use that point as the basis for moving on to argue for a Germanic ‘ethnicity’ for which there is no support in the evidence.

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we have to admit that it remains entirely in the realms of hypothesis. There is no way of affirming or rejecting it from the evidence available. We can at least confirm that the differences in rite between the north Gallic graves and those of the ‘Free German’ homelands imply a significant change in attitude towards the disposal of the dead, and thus that any hypothetical migration led to the significant renegotiation of a particular body of traditional ideas. There is, thus, no possibility that these rites were used to reflect an ‘intrusive’ ethnic identity, by maintaining traditional non-Roman ideas, in any straightforward way. However, what little we do know of ‘Germans’ within the Empire and the disposal of their dead, leads us to question the very idea that they marked themselves out from the ‘Romans’ by mortuary ritual. In Trier is to be found the epitaph of Hariulf, protector domestigius, filius Hanhovaldi, regalis gentis Burgundionum.72 This Burgundian royal, taking service in the imperial bodyguard, was buried in typical Roman style, with a Latin inscription. If ‘Germans’ of this standing were buried in such eminently ‘Roman’ fashion, where does that leave the supposition that more lowly immigrants would wish to demonstrate their difference from, and superiority over, ‘Roman’ neighbours, by using a (supposedly) quite different rite? Alternatively, we are left with the idea that the subjects of the north Gallic lavish burials might be ‘Germans’ precisely because their burials are so ‘Roman’! It would, however, seem preferable to adopt some more logical solution.

Interpreting the burials To understand the reasons for the appearance of this new rite we must, as Böhme realized, look for social explanations. These graves are usually found in small numbers within larger ‘traditional’ cemeteries, and the groups include men and women, adults and children, in other words whole family groups, and the children are often as lavishly furnished with grave-goods as the adults. In all these significant ways, it should be stressed, this archaeological horizon differs from that of the fully-fledged “Reihengräberzivilization” of the late fifth to seventh

72

CIL 13.3682. See Cüppers (ed.) Trier, pp. 349–50.

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centuries.73 As Böhme said,74 it can only be a question of a socially prominent group trying to express its identity, although there is no reason to assume that this group was ipso facto ‘Germanic’. Furnished burial like this is a public and transient rite, as I have argued elsewhere, and as such must be seen as indicative of insecure tenure of local power.75 Rather than [178] passively mirroring a social reality, it is an active attempt to recreate, underline or maintain that reality. The prominent families of northern Gaul, for the first time, on the whole, since the Roman Conquest, took to burying themselves with lavish symbols of that local power: official belt sets, probably often of military derivation, official badges of rank in the form of Zwiebelknopffibeln, weaponry, as well as elaborate costume and impressive arrays of food and drink containers. These funerals were thus probably accompanied by feasting and gift-giving. The burials use a new form of display, but much of its ‘vocabulary’ is traditional. Established areas of aristocratic life and leadership, such as hunting, feature in this grammar of display. Hunting was one of the features of late Roman aristocratic life depicted most prominently in the reception-room mosaics of the great late Roman villae; the bronze dish deposited presumably in a public display in the axe-grave from Saint-Rimay (Loir-et-Cher)76 similarly depicts a boar hunt. This aspect of these graves would benefit from closer study.

73 M. Welch (as n. 23) also critiqued my 1992 article for underestimating the continuity of lavish burial through the fifth century. Although it is not made entirely clear in this hasty rejoinder how that should affect my thesis, it should be pointed out, firstly, that I did (‘Origins’, p. 206) say that the ‘hiatus’ of the mid-fifth century might have to be closed, but, secondly, that the differences in the nature of the rite, and in the nature and symbolic referents of the grave-goods between the late fourth- and the early sixth-century phases of furnished burial, are rather more critical, and should not be ignored. The late fourth- and earlier fifth-century furnished burials tend usually (with exceptions like Oudenberg) to be small groups, comprising both sexes and all ages, within larger cemeteries, so the rite would appear to be a restricted, élite practice. The developed Reihengräberfelder of the sixth century characteristically reveal most of the burials to be furnished to some degree, with lavish burial dependent upon community norms structured around age and gender: this is a communal rite. The social background to the two phases must surely be different: S&S, pp. 75–163, 245–57; FSP (below, pp. 289–314); BRMS (below, pp. 203–14). 74 Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, pp. 166–86. 75 See, above all, S&S, pp. 245–8; BRMS. 76 Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, p. 107. Such mosaics, like the frnished graves, also depict the aristocrat wearing a prominent belt of office: J. Arce, ‘Otium et negotium: the great estayes, 4th–7th century’ in L. Webster & M. Browm (ed.), The Transformation of the Roman World, A.D. 400–900 (London, 1997), pp. 19–32.

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The context for these displays is surely the beginning of the end of effective power in northern Gaul, commencing with the difficulties of the Alamannic wars of mid-century, and exacerbated after the suppression of the usurper Maximus in 388, the last Emperor to rule at Trier.77 Thereafter Roman rule was never securely re-established. This context of political break-down and local insecurity is that which produces the almost universal abandonment of the classical villa, drastic reductions in the level of town life, and a severe economic down-turn in the fifth century. In this context it becomes meaningless, even were one to accept the ‘Germanic’ identification of the ‘federate graves’, to debate the precise legal status of their subjects. Laeti may have been typically rather poor; ‘Germans’ entering the Empire in a ‘federate’ capacity may have been of a higher status,78 but these graves do not passively reflect a given social or legal status, or actual wealth. They are active statements made in response to particular circumstances. These burials assert their subjects’ claims to lead a locality, leadership apparently based at least partly upon ideas of armed protection. The occupants of the burials, in the circumstances of late fourth- and early fifth-century northern Gaul, could have come from any one of a number of groups, whatever their legal rights.79 But it is vitally important to note that even though some of the deceased in these graves may well have been ‘Germanic’ settlers, the symbolism of the graves was almost entirely Roman. They subscribed to Roman rite, but more importantly they expressed power entirely through Roman symbols: the belt sets and brooches of office; weaponry associated with the army.80 Note, too, that the style of ‘chip-carved’ metalwork is common on a range of artefacts, even types which are indisputably of ‘German’ origin. Until the late fifth century, the people of northern Gaul and its ‘hinterland’ in Free Germany found it 77

I have argued this elsewhere: TSI, pp. 239–45; S&S, pp. 248–51. Burns, Barbarians within the Gates of Rome, xiii–xxi, esp. xviii–xix. There are many problems in applying fourth- or fifth-century notions of foederatio to the sorts of immigration which, according to traditionalist arguments, would be represented by the ‘federate graves’. See also Elton, Warfare in Roman Europe, pp. 91–94; P. Heather, ‘Foedera and foederati of the fourth century’, in W. Pohl (ed.), Kingdoms of the Empire. The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 1997), pp. 57–74. 79 I am grateful to Walter Pohl for this point. 80 If I am right in linking the axe with limitanei, it could explain the very frequent choice of this weapon, which would thus make a specific link with the army, as opposed to spears which might be more ambiguous. 78

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easiest to display status using a decorative vocabulary associated with the Empire and its officers. If this was increasingly an area where the Roman state could make its presence felt only with difficulty, there can be no doubting that the inhabitants of the region still looked inwards—to Rome—for the justification of their power. I do not [179] therefore believe that there is anything necessarily illegitimate about these displays of power, although representatives of the court at Milan or Ravenna may have disagreed, and so no longer follow my initial identification with bacaudae. If anything, all these symbols claim legitimacy. In this sense, too, any ‘ethnic’ claim made by the rite and the material used was ‘Roman’. We can note further that these public, lavish funerary displays are quite common on the fringes of the late empire, when the Imperial presence was in retreat. Comparable types of burial are known in lowland Britain, as at Lankhills and Gloucester,81 on the Danube frontier,82 and in Spain in the middle and lower Duero valley.83 In the last of these regions we similarly find inhumations with official belt-sets and weapons, although here they are also joined by items of horse-harness and agricultural implements. These burials have also been associated with laeti but for no better reason than their vague similarity with

81 Lankhills: G.N. Clarke, Winchester Studies 3. Pre-Roman and Roman Winchester Part II, The Roman Cemetery at Lankhills (Oxford, 1979), “foreign elements”. Gloucester: C. Hills & H. Hurst, ‘A Goth at Gloucester?’ Antiquaries Journal 69 (1989), pp. 154–8. These works, like Schulze-Dörlamm, ‘Germanische Kriegergräber’, represent desperate attempts to hang a crude ethnic/geographical origin—as ‘exotic foreigners’—upon burials for the simple reason of their difference. Note that Hills and Hurst (at p. 157) also cite, with apparent approval, physical anthropological ‘evidence’ for ethnic difference. Just as crude is their attempt to find a documentary historical context for the grave, employing references to Goths in Theodosius’ army in the 390s. There is no evidence that Theodosius’ forces ever reached Britain, or indeed that there was any reinforcement of the regular British army after 388. 82 Burns, Barbarians Within the Gates of Rome, pp. 113–47 & refs. 83 On these graves, see, for example, P. de Palol, ‘Romanos en la Meseta. El Bajo Imperio y la aristocracia indígena’, in Segovia. Symposium de Arqueologia Romana (Barcelona, 1977), pp. 297–308; J.M. Blazquez, ‘Der Limes Hispaniens im 4. und 5. Forschungsstand. Niederlassungen der Laeti oder Gentiles am Flusslauf des Duero’, in W.S. Hanson & L.J.F. Keppie (ed.), Roman Frontier Studies 1979. Papers Presented to the 12th International Congress of Roman Frontier Studies (BAR(I) 71; Oxford, 1980), pp. 345–96; L.A. García Moreno, ‘Zamora del dominio imperial romano al visigodo. Cuestiones de Historia militar y geopolítica’, I. Congresso de Historia de Zamora (1990), pp. 455–66; F. Perez Rodriguez-Aragon, ‘Los cingula militiae tardorromanos de la peninsula Iberica’, Boletin del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueologia 58 (1992), pp. 239–61. I thank Professor García Moreno for sending me a copy of his paper.

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the north Gallic graves. Interestingly, bacaudic activity is recorded in Spain too,84 but perhaps in slightly different parts of the peninsula.85 Even the isolated mid-fourth-century weapon grave at Köln ‘vor dem Severinstor’ can be incorporated in this schema, deposited as it was when Gallic usurpers (Magnentius and then Silvanus at Köln itself) were in revolt, when the Empire had not yet re-established its presence in the region, and when, as a result of this, local insecurity was heightened by serious Alamannic attacks. A final support for the argument presented here, that these burials are to be understood as publicly created ‘texts’ claiming local power, may be found by returning to the cemetery at Oudenburg.86 The cemetery associated with this fort contains probably the greatest concentration of furnished burials from this horizon of north Gallic archaeology—about half of the site’s 216 burials.87 Yet of these only two contained weapons. This, as stated above, is surprising at first site, especially given the fact that the cemetery, overwhelmingly male in its composition, is very probably that of the fort’s population. This surprise is misplaced. Status in this military community would hardly have been displayed effectively through the use of weaponry; instead the dead of Oudenburg are most commonly interred with the brooches (in no less than forty graves, three examples being gold) and belt-sets which presumably symbolized their rank. The deliberate, ritual display of the latter items is underlined by the fact that most were placed separate from the body, at the corpse’s feet.

84 Hydatius, Chronica, 117, 120, 133. R.W. Burgess (ed. & trans.), The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Two contemporary accounts of the final years of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1993). 85 The Spanish burials still need more thoughtful, and subtler, interpretation and, especially given the differences in the fate of rural settlement and economy, and urbanism, between Spain and northern Gaul, I would hesitate before applying my interpretation of the Gallic burials to the Spanish data in a blanket fashion. Nevertheless, some fundamentally analogous factors may be at work. 86 For a convenient summary, see J. Mertens, ‘La nécropole du castellum de Oudenburg’, in S. Applebaum (ed.), Limeskongress 7 (Tel Aviv, 1971), pp. 59–70. 87 The site’s distinctiveness is clearly shown in the table at Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, p. 167. Note, however, that Böhme only seems to count graves with supposedly ‘Germanic’ grave-goods. Mertens, ‘La nécropole’, states that 108 graves out of (at that stage) 176 had grave-goods.

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[180] Conclusions So where does this leave the study of the frontier? The first point that I would make is to stress that this paper has in no way been intended to argue that there was no ‘Germanic’ settlement in northern Gaul; it is simply intended to demonstrate that a particular form of data is not in itself evidence of this. But northern Gaul was a frontier province, and it was in many ways economically removed from the core of the empire (there is, for example, hardly any African Red Slip found in northern Gaul, apart from a few sherds from the upper Rhine88), and perhaps increasingly militarized and forced to be self-sufficient. There was much contact across the frontier too, as is clear from the archaeological data, but note that the balance of these exchanges is heavily in favour of the Roman element—as with metalwork, pottery, bronze vessels, the existence of Roman-style buildings in Alamannia. and so on. There is very little evidence of Free ‘Germanic’ culture spreading into Gaul: a handful of cremations; a few brooches; the occasional sherd of handmade pottery, as at Newel in the Triererland.89 Paul Van Ossel has recently even argued that the Grubenhaus, which, as we all think we know, is the classic sign of Free ‘German’ settlement, is too readily, too quickly ascribed to ‘Germans’.90 Certainly, some of these buildings appear very early in the history of late Roman northern Gaul.91 So, at least until about 400, if the cultural frontier zone was deepening, it was spreading from northern Gaul into Germania Libera and not vice versa.92 Having said this, it is also important to repeat the cultural differences which are marked by the political frontier: distinctions in styles of dress; differences in styles of burial; even differences in styles of building and settlement, even if these were breaking down in the last quarter of the fourth century. The deepening frontier is more a question of economic patterns of the empire leading to the northern provinces to look northwards, than of a break-down in Romanitas

88

See J. Hayes, Late Roman Pottery (London, 1972), pp. 454–7. Cüppers (ed.), Trier. Kaiserrezidenz und Bischofssitz, p. 348. 90 Van Ossel, ‘L’Insécurité et militarisation’, p. 28. 91 Van Ossel, Établissements Ruraux de l’Antiquité Tardive, p. 127. 92 Contra, e.g. J. Barlow, ‘Kinship, identity and fourth-century Franks’, Historia 45 (1996), pp. 223–39. 89

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and an influx of ‘German’ influences.93 Seen in their broader context, then, the lavishly-furnished inhumations of northern Gaul are not, in themselves, evidence of deepened cultural frontier zones. They are still consciously Roman, and remain so into the early fifth century, when the ever decreasing ability of Rome to back up the local power of its representatives was matched by the ever decreasing symbolism of local authority through Roman badges. When furnished burial revived in the late fifth-century, power was very clearly represented with quite different symbols, such as the gold-and garnet jewellery. Even then we should remember that Childeric was buried with his official fibula and a seal ring in the Roman tradition. The so-called ‘federate graves’ of the late fourth and earlier fifth centuries are indications of the weakening political authority of Rome. In that sense they represent a deepening north Gallic frontier, but in a political, not a cultural sense.

93 What implications this has for the still fashionable ‘Pirenne debate’ cannot be established here. Interesting though the article is, I am unconvinced by the “longue durée” explanation of D.H. Miller, ‘Frontier societies and the transition between late antiquity and the middle ages’, in R.W. Mathisen & H. Sivan (ed.) Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 158–71, which, to me, relies too much on ideas of “reversion”.

Commentary Two Careful with that axe, Eugenius

I. Background The preceding two chapters represent the elaboration of an idea that I first had as an undergraduate. In the course of writing essays on intrusive burials in Iron-Age Britain and on the earliest Anglo-Saxon graves, I chanced upon the idea of using Gerald Dunning’s three criteria for identifying imported pottery1 to try and spot the graves of incomers. This seemed to yield interesting results. Eighteen months or so later, as a new D.Phil. student sitting in on Tania Dickinson’s legendary special subject on the Anglo-Saxon Migrations, I thought it would be interesting, in discussing fifth-century metalwork, to apply the test to the earliest so-called Germanic burials in Gaul, as described in Horst-Wolfgang Böhme’s monumental study of ‘Germanic’ graves between the Elbe and the Loire.2 This appeared to cast doubt upon the ‘Germanic’ nature of these graves and suggested an interesting avenue for future research, albeit one tangential to the thrust of my doctoral work on the region of Metz, wherein almost no such graves are found.3 A year thereafter, I was invited to participate in a conference which Hugh Elton and John Drinkwater were planning, on fifth-century Gaul. There being little specifically ‘fifth-century’ about my Metz work, the idea of resuming my inquiry into the supposed ‘early Germanic’ graves sprang to mind. As I read such of the work on these burials as I could find in York I was struck by how illogical it was. That there was nothing intrinsically ‘Germanic’ about the graves seemed to be staring the authors in the face. On occasion they appeared to notice this but all continued to fall back on the ‘Germanic’ explanation. Bailey

1 G.C. Dunning, ‘The trade in medieval pottery around the North Sea’ in J.G.N. Renaud (ed.), Rotterdam Papers. A Contribution to Medieval Archaeology (Rotterdam, 1968), pp. 35–58. 2 H.W. Böhme, Germanische Grabfünde des 4 bis 5 Jahrhunderts zwischen untere Elbe und Loire. Studien zur Chronologie und Bevölkerungsgeschichte (Munich, 1974). 3 For which, see below, p. 163.

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Young’s 1980 article in the Bulletin de Liaison de l’Association Française d’Archéologie Mérovingienne4 showed this very clearly. It was as though Young, having assembled all the pieces of the ‘social’ explanation, demolishing the ‘Germanic’ interpretation, felt at the last minute that he could not go through with so radical a final step. It was perhaps time for someone with more youthful bravado to take Young’s argument to the next stage. As the concluding sentence of chapter 2 makes clear, I presented my paper at the conference very much as an intellectual exercise: a ‘what if?’ scenario, challenging people to show me where I had gone wrong or to provide evidence that made the ‘Germanic’ interpretation plausible. In so doing they would strengthen the traditional views and make the archaeology of the Frankish settlement rather easier. Yet, the paper was very well received at the conference, by the smattering of archaeologists present as well as by the historians. The latter, not having been ‘indoctrinated’ into the traditional views as students, were perhaps better placed to look dispassionately at the data and their degree of fit with the proposed interpretations. The sense seemed to be ‘you must be right; why has no one spotted this before?’ Actually they had but I was at this point unfamiliar with the work of De Laet and Van Doorselaer.5 I had, then (again, as the concluding sentence of chapter 2 makes clear), no particular vested interest in proving that my argument was correct. I was perfectly willing to be shown that the traditional interpretations were solid, so I could get on with trying to examine the routes, mechanisms and processes of Frankish settlement in Gaul (something that did concern my thesis). Disappointingly, in the immediate aftermath of the conference’s publication there did not seem to be much response at all and those that did appear were insufficient to make me reconsider my point of view. Two responses, by Martin Welch and Simon Burnell, are considered in chapter 3. Another discussion of the topic was presented by Dick Whittaker in his study of the late Roman frontier.6 Although a very interesting analysis, Whittaker still 4 B.K. Young, ‘Le problème franc et l’apport des pratiques funéraires (III–Ve siècles).’ BLAFAM 3 (1980), pp. 4–18. 5 ALRF, p. 169 (above, p. 110), n. 15. 6 C.R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire. A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore, 1994), pp. 233–40; id. ‘Landlords and warlords in the later Roman Empire’, in J. Rich & G. Shipley (ed.) War and Society in the Roman World (London, 1993), pp. 277–302.

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accepted the ‘Germanic’ interpretation of the occupants of the graves. My rejection of this identification actually suits the thrust of his argument about the blurring of the line between soldier and civilian rather better. In a slightly later work, however, Whittaker cited my article, oddly, in support of a claim that the absence of ‘federate graves’ in Toxandria showed that there were no federates there.7 This is the very opposite of the point I was making. The most significant revision of the point of view expressed in chapter 2 was forced by my own rethinking and further reading. This concerned the burials’ historical context. I greatly overestimated the degree of restoration of authority that took place under Aëtius in the mid-century. More importantly the identification I suggested with the north Gallic bagaudae was problematic. This phase of burials, beginning in the last half of the fourth century and seemingly peaking in the first quarter of the fifth, does not really match the heyday of the historically-documented bagaudae,8 really in the second quarter of the fifth century. Such clear linkage of the two phenomena was clearly mistaken and, as is clear from chapter 3, by 1996 I had rejected an overt connection. Nevertheless I retain some points of contact (as is clear from a closer reading of chapter 3). If Raymond Van Dam’s analysis of the Gallic bagaudae is correct, and I remain convinced that it is more plausible than the alternatives,9 these were leaders of local communities, who claimed official authority and appropriated—at least in the eyes of the imperial government—the badges of such power. The ‘vocabulary of power’ manifest in the late fourth- and early fifth-century graves does seem resolutely traditional and equally appears to stress a claim to official sanction, through the deployment of such things as the belt-sets and brooches that symbolised office in imperial service. Other aspects of the symbolism, its emphasis on hunting for example, also point to very traditional areas of aristocratic display. Although there is nothing ‘unofficial’, let alone un-Roman, about these statements of authority, they continue to

7 C.R. Whittaker, ‘L’importance des invasions du Bas-Empire: peut-on faire confiance aux historiens?’ Revue d Nord 77 (1995), pp. 11–20, at p. 17, n. 32. 8 I am persuaded by the arguments of C. Minor, ‘Bacaudae—a reconsideration.’ Traditio 51 (1996), pp. 297–307, that this is the preferred spelling, rather than bacaudae, as used in chapters 3 and 4. 9 M. Kulikowski, Late Roman Spain and its Cities (Baltimore, 2004), pp. 182–3, and C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 530–32, disagree.

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strike me as the sorts of things of which the Roman government could take a very dim view when reasserting its authority in the region. We hear very little about Roman government or authority in the north of Gaul between the suppression of Magnus Maximus (388) and Exuperantius’ 417 campaign against the bagaudae. The visit of Stilicho to the Rhine in 396 appears to have been very brief and to have done little more than shore up treaties with the barbarians over the river.10 In this period local leaders, as I shall discuss further below, may well have appropriated aspects of authority that the government believed were theirs alone to bestow and so some of these people might indeed have been those attacked by Exuperantius as rebellious bagaudae when the government attempted (and very nearly succeeded) in restoring its authority in the region after the suppression of the early fifth-century usurpers between 406 and 414. The weakness of the direct link, of course, is that the accounts of Exuperantius’ operations north of the Loire clearly indicate a two-sided conflict, not the simple slapping down of presumptuous local squires. The bagaudae apparently fought back. This suggests something more active than a simple appropriation of power in a political vacuum, later severely punished. Be that as it may, I remain convinced that the displays of power in the north Gallic burials were part of the same process, the same responses to political change, as produced those more ambitious leaders known as the bagaudae. As stated, some of this change is clear in chapter 3, which represents a paper delivered to a conference organised by Walter Pohl in Vienna in December 1996. I hoped that at this conference, on frontiers in the early Middle Ages, I could administer what I thought would be the coup-de-grâce to the ‘Germanic’ interpretation of the furnished burials. The Vienna paper (chapter 3) shows where my thinking had gone since 1989.11 Less convinced by the ‘bagaudic’ interpretation, as just noted, I had conversely become much more certain that these burials had nothing at all to do with ‘Germanic’ settlement. In 1989 I had been prepared to leave axes and certain forms of jewellery as

10

BMRW, pp. 199–200, 207. The years between the publication of the Sheffield conference and Walter’s invitation to speak in Vienna had seen a change in the general focus of my research. With the publication of my study of the region of Metz, my work began to shift towards the general historical and archaeological examination of the barbarians and their effects on the late Roman world (eventually published as BMRW). 11

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possible indices of non-Roman presence. By late ’96 I was sure that neither was anything of the sort. The axe, traditionally assumed (presumably on the evidence of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies) to be a Frankish import is mentioned by several sources as being used by late Roman troops. No source, archaeological or documentary, links Franks with throwing axes (the so-called franciscae) before the fifth century and the Frankish settlement of northern Gaul. As happens so often in the ‘Germanic’ argument, rather than looking at the prima facie statement of the extant data, which would suggest that Roman troops used axes, especially in Gaul and that these were adopted by the Franks in the course of their take-over of northern Gaul (which, as I argue in the next chapter, and as many others had done before, was itself largely in the context of their service in the Roman army), this evidence is twisted and distorted to support a priori assumptions. Ammianus Marcellinus, for example, mentions axes being used by the Gallic legions at the siege of Amida by the Persians.12 Although this utterly straightforward passage requires no special pleading at all to support my case that axes were used by the Romans, the traditional argument is that we can assume—although Ammianus never says anything of the sort—that these ‘Gallic’ legionaries were in fact Franks. We know they were Franks because they were using axes. We have no evidence from the fourth century, written or excavated, to link Franks with axes. The axes are Frankish because Ammianus describes them being used by troops who must be Franks. This sort of circular argument is ubiquitous in defences of the traditional viewpoint. The metalwork’s distribution had been read with the a priori intention of proving ‘Germanic’ settlement. A closer study of Böhme’s maps and of the typological development of particular forms of brooches led me to conclude that the female apparel, hitherto the strongest support for the argument linking the occupants of these burials with the lands east of the Rhine, was in fact manufactured inside the Empire and exported northwards—as Roman jewellery had been since the early imperial period (as we shall see, this was not entirely a new argument). The inclusion on the same maps of fourth-century types of jewellery (mainly brooches) manufactured in Gaul and taken north to Germania Magna as well as fifth-century typological descendants

12 Amm. Marc., Res Gestae 19.6.7, 26.8.10. Ammianus Marcellinus. trans. J.C. Rolfe (3 vols.; London 1935–39).

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of such items made in the north of Germania and taken to England in the Anglo-Saxon migration gave a misleading picture. This made it look as though there was indeed a Kerngebiet (core area) around the mouth of the Elbe, manufacturing items of jewellery which were then taken to England and northern Gaul by migrating ‘Saxons’. Another issue of which I had become aware between 1992 and 1996 was the existence of burials comparable to those of northern Gaul in the ‘Duero Valley Civilisation’ in Spain. One reason I had hitherto been nervous of my bagaudic explanation was the existence of fifthcentury bagaudae in Spain; when I came across the Duero Valley burials I was initially convinced by this serendipity that my connection of the bagaudae with furnished graves was proven. Alas they are not really in the right area;13 while there were doubtless people in the Duero valley whom the Ravennate government would have considered bagaudae, written sources only mention them in the province of Tarraconensis and, as far as I know, these burials are generally absent there. As before, though, one might link these graves with the same social and political processes as created the Spanish bagaudae. I will return to these burials below. The Vienna paper makes clear that I had discovered that my 1992 paper was not quite the bolt from the blue that I had originally thought. I had been aware of some earlier doubts but my reading of more of the historiography, thanks largely to access to the superb library of London University’s Institute of Archaeology, demonstrated that it stood much more in a sequence of critiques of the ‘Germanic’ interpretation. One of these had been penned by my own doctoral supervisor, Edward James, in the monograph publication of his D.Phil; I should have spotted that one! Nevertheless, my arguments were rather different and, I believe, rather more broadly and soundly based than the fullest previous counter-arguments (as opposed to expressed doubts). Furthermore, since 1992 I had met Frans Theuws, professor of archaeology at the University of Amsterdam, who had independently been coming to similar conclusions about the fifth-century ‘Germanic’ graves. As mentioned in the introduction to this section, Frans and I organised a discussion of the topic at the Fourth International Medieval Congress at Leeds in 1997. Theuws’ interpretation of the burials differs in detail from mine, something to which I shall return, but we are firmly in

13

As stated less emphatically ALRF, p. 179 (above, p. 128).

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agreement that the graves are not to be understood as indices of barbarian migration. It is also worth pointing out that by the time that I gave the Vienna paper in 1996, Böhme had abandoned his earlier association of these graves with foederati;14 I was as yet unaware of this change of interpretation when chapter 3 was written. Böhme nevertheless retained a ‘Germanic’ interpretation, seeing the burials as those of Germani recruited into the regular Roman army, and who brought their wives and families with them. Even so, he admitted the exclusively Roman manufacture of the artefacts in, for example, the grave of the Vermand ‘tombe de chef’, the use of Roman rites such as burial in a coffin,15 and that at this point burial with weapons was not a normal Germanic rite. ‘The Vermand warrior played a pioneering role in this process at the beginning of the [fifth] century.’16

II. Responses and Development: The question of ‘Germanic’ origin There have now been a number of responses to the thesis presented in chapters 2 and 3. One, by Penny MacGeorge, is perhaps the least considered.17 MacGeorge rejects my thesis but makes no attempt at all to engage with the material culture, which she accepts as ‘Germanic’ on the say-so of works which preceded my 1992 paper. The sum total of the argument is to counter my point that the spread of the burials would imply a mass settlement of northern Gaul by numerous groups of allied barbarians, by saying that these could be ‘Germanic’ officers living ‘off base’. There is no consideration of the point that there is no prima facie case for these burials being those of immigrant Germani: that the material culture in these graves and the ritual employed are essentially indigenous to northern Gaul.

14 H.-W. Böhme, ‘Söldner und Siedler im spätantiken Nordgallien’, in A. Wieczorek, P. Périn, K. von Welck & W. Menghin (ed.), Die Franken: Wegbereiter Europas (2nd edition; Mainz, 1997), pp. 91–101 id., ‘The Vermand treasure’, in , in Brown, K.R., Kidd, D., & Little, C.T., (ed.), From Attila to Charlemagne: Arts of the Early Medieval Period in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 2000), pp. 78–89, at p. 88. 15 Ibid., p. 83; neither example contains anything intrinsically non-Roman. 16 Ibid., p. 87. 17 P. MacGeorge, Late Roman Warlords (Oxford, 2003), p. 141.

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Another rebuttal appeared in the work of Ellen Swift.18 In her monograph on regionality (sic) in dress accessories, her argument was, simply, that my 1992 paper ignored the connections between the north of Gaul and the Saxon regions of north-west Germany. She claimed this not on the basis of the brooches, as is usual, but because of the belt-buckles. Swift so accepted the Böhme argument that the furnished burials of northern Gaul are those of foederati that she argued from that to suggest that some types of belt-buckle found in the area were items of federate uniform. From the distribution of these buckles, she then moved on to claim to be able to plot the areas whose defence was abandoned to ‘Germanic’ allies by the regular Roman army. These buckles are found in the Saxon ‘homelands’ of the putative immigrants, which amply served, in Swift’s view, to demonstrate the connections between the inhabitants of the two areas. This is a very peculiar argument. Essentially, Swift claimed that the buckles belonged to foederati because they are found in ‘federate’ burials; she then argued that the graves are those of foederati because they contain the buckles. Little further comment is strictly necessary but a few points may clarify. No one to my knowledge—even Swift—has ever claimed that these buckles were being manufactured anywhere other than in the workshops of Roman northern Gaul, or that their presence in the cremations of the North Sea coast area stems from anything other than barbarians from that area returning home after service in the Empire. To be sure, that does demonstrate some connection between the Saxons and the north of Gaul—I had never denied that—but that is far from furnishing any sort of proof that the occupants of the northern Gallic burials, or the ritual used therein, originated in the north of modern Germany. The absence of these buckles in the area between the Gallic limes and the Elbe-Weser-Triangle results from the non-burial of such items, not their non-existence. It cannot therefore show that Saxons, specifically, unlike other Germani, moved to settle in northern Gaul. Many forms of buckle and other belt-fittings are found in northern Gaul and in the Saxon ‘homelands’, as are other artefacts. As has long been known, this demonstrates the connections between the areas, but in terms of the export of influences and objects from Gaul to Germania. The only movement of people explicitly manifested by the archaeol-

18 E. Swift, Regionality in Dress Accessories in the Late Roman West (Monographies Instrumentum 11; Montagnac, 2000), p. 219.

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ogy is from Gaul to Germania; movement in the opposite direction is at best implicit. Swift’s work showed that Roman army buckles are distributed over particular areas; she argued that Britain is particularly distinctive. She would see other distinctive artefacts of the same general type—belt-fittings—in the burials of Spain. So, one type of such Roman official metalwork is, unsurprisingly, found in some burials in the area within which it was made. There is no proof that these graves were of foederati. It is a perverse argument that postulates the ‘Germanic’ origin of the occupants of graves in northern Gaul on the basis of those burials’ inclusion of some northern Gallic artefacts which some other people took back to Germania and eventually included in very different burial rites. In a later work,19 Swift said that ‘it is difficult to explain away the links via artefacts to free Germany through fashion alone’. Indeed; those links can be explained (since the movement is from south to north) by the return of Germani from the Roman army, and through trade. She added a series of rhetorical questions: ‘Why do these belt sets of various types occur in these graves and in a significant minority in free Germany? If Tutulus brooches were a general late Roman fashion why are they not more widespread? Why are they still worn in the Germanic dress style? Why do they often occur with other unusual ‘non-Roman’ objects, such as amber beads . . . ?’ The first question has been satisfactorily answered for decades by reference to Germani serving in the Roman army. I have never claimed that Tutulus brooches were a general Roman style; since Swift’s own work clearly demonstrates what she terms ‘regionality’ in female dress accessories, it is surely well within the realms of possibility that some regions might adopt new artefacts or a new fashion. As I have said in Chapter 3, the abandonment of brooches is not explained by population movement; it seems odd that their reappearance must be so accounted for. I discuss the issue of ‘Germanic’ dress further, below. Amber beads are presumably found in Gaul because the amber trade from the Baltic into the western Roman Empire is very well documented. And indeed Swift has subsequently quietly abandoned her ‘Germanic’ interpretation. In her most recent treatment of this topic, of

19

E. Swift, The End of the Western Roman Empire (Stroud, 2000), pp. 90–91.

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which I am aware,20 her starting points include acknowledgement of the subjective nature of ethnicity and its lack of grounding in genetic or biological origins; the abandonment of the ‘Roman’: ‘Germanic’ dichotomy; the acceptance that Roman identity itself was not monolithic; and subscription to a suggestion by Greg Woolf that Roman identity was transformed into an ‘ethnic’ identity in opposition to ‘new barbarian ruling societies’.21 Most of these points are unobjectionable; indeed they bring Swift’s approach into line with that which I had adopted in 1992.22 The idea that Roman ethnic identity was a fifthcentury creation is, however, implausible.23 Be all that as it may, Swift now argues that the burials grew out of late Roman military burial rites, which included belt-sets and brooches. Weapons were added as a ‘later variation of the same martial display’, in a context on the peripheries of the Empire, consequent upon the militarization of the élites and ‘heightened violence and struggles for power’.24 Although not acknowledging the fact, Swift thus adopts an interpretation which generally accords with that which I suggested in 1992, and even more so with that which I suggested in 1996 (and published in 2000). Swift does not seem to be aware of the latter piece25 and the sole reference to the 1992 article simply says that: those who prefer to interpret them not as Germanic but as the display of local elites in an environment of competing warlords, for example G. Halsall, ignore the relationship between the so-called ‘weapon burials’

20

E. Swift, ‘Constructing Roman identities in Late Antiquity? Material culture on the western frontier’, in W. Bowden, A. Gutteridge & C. Machado (ed.), Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2006), pp. 97–111. Note, in particular, the description of the funerary assemblage as Roman or ‘Roman-derived’, at p. 109. 21 Ibid., pp. 97–98. See G. Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge, 2000), p. 249. 22 It is illuminating, however, that she appears to think that the scholarship that has moved ethnicity away from being a biological or genetic given is ‘recent’ (citing works by Siân Jones from 1996–1997) and that this ‘led to’ historians taking an interest in ethnogenesis: Swift, ‘Constructing Roman identities’, pp. 97–98. Of course the notion of performative or situational ethnicity goes back to the 1960s and its adoption by historians to the early 1980s at least, while the discussion of the processes of ethnogenesis pre-dates Jones’ work by three decades and more and had, by the time of the publication of Swift’s article in 2006, become the subject of heated revisionist debate: for summary, see BMRW, pp. 14–16, 35–45, 457–62. 23 BMRW, pp. 45–57, 470–82. 24 Swift, ‘Constructing Roman identities’, pp. 109–10. 25 If she were, she would know that I had published precisely the same point about axes as she makes at ‘Constructing Roman identities’, pp. 105–6, but six years earlier.

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rite, which in the 4th- to 5th-c[entury] transition period in this area is strongly associated with Roman military sites, and the previous Roman military burial tradition.’26

Swift is correct that I had not delved deeply enough into the northern Gallic burials, which included belt sets and brooches, before the late fourth century. Nevertheless, several points must be made. The first is that this association strengthens my interpretation; it is not clear how anything in her approach challenges my view. The second is that beltsets and brooches were not, as signs of rank (as has long been known), restricted to the army; they were also used by the civil service.27 Thus these burials need not necessarily be those of soldiers. Third, the assertion that these burials are found on military sites is based upon insecure evidence. The necropolis at Vermand where the famous ‘tombe de chef’ (‘grave B’) was found cannot be identified simply as a military cemetery.28 It lies just outside a fortified site, to be sure, but a civitascapital. Swift ignores the fact29 that the ninety-six furnished burials from the cemetery of Oudenburg, indisputably associated with a fort, included only two weapon burials. One needs to ask why (unlike the badges of rank) weaponry would be a meaningful symbol of status in a military community. Swift’s linkage to the military is, like other identifications, too restrictive and does not take into account the female burials. In spite of her disingenuous claim to be presenting an interpretation different from my own, Swift, in the empirical component of her paper, simply adds support to my rejection of the ‘Germanic’ reading, whereas her explanation of the phenomenon adduces the same fundamental factors but fails to elaborate them as fully as I had done fourteen years earlier. Frank Siegmund has referred to my questioning of the ‘Germanic’ origin of the Gallic burials as ‘justifiable’ but asserts that an ethnic interpretation is ‘the only sensible one’.30 Sadly he does not stay to explain why that might be the case. Siegmund has pioneered a computer-assisted technique of putatively establishing the ethnicity of the

26

Ibid., p. 105. ORz, pp. 200, 205 (above, pp. 103, 105), and refs. 28 Swift, ‘Constructing Roman identities’, p. 105. 29 Drawn attention to in ALRF, p. 179 (above, p. 128). 30 F. Siegmund, ‘Social structure and relations’, in I.N. Wood (ed.) Franks and Alamanni in the Merovingian Period: an Ethnographic Perspective (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 177–99, at pp. 189, 191. 27

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dead of various cemeteries according to the presence or otherwise of particular artefacts. This is an attempt to show, via ‘scientific’ method, the reality of the ‘Kulturmodelle’ (Cultural Models) which lie behind much traditionalist German archaeology, notably expressed in the work of Volker Bierbrauer. Cultural models are apparently very fixed—not things that one adopted or abandoned lightly—and so make the ethnic affiliation of their adherents very clear. The ‘Germanic’ Kulturmodell featured inhumation with grave-goods; the ‘Roman’ one featured sarcophagi and burials without grave-goods.31 Clearly, Siegmund’s distribution maps illustrate the relative popularity of disposing of particular artefacts in inhumations but they cannot, without a series of presuppositions, reveal the ethnicity of any of the deceased. If anything, Sigmund’s maps have a tendency to show a continuing difference in burial rite between the regions that had lain inside the Empire and those which had not. Ethnicity does not and cannot emerge from such distribution maps alone. Nevertheless one might see why Siegmund is keen to dismiss my work without further consideration. The fullest response has been presented by one of Bierbrauer’s students, Dr Michael Schmauder, in a lengthy footnote to a paper on the archaeological evidence for the formation of the Frankish kingdoms.32 I am grateful to Dr Schmauder for devoting his time to a full, considered and well-informed counter, which stands in clear contrast to the flimsy dismissals of MacGeorge, Swift and Siegmund. His argument merits full discussion. Schmauder presents a series of points to reject my interpretation, which are based upon a very thorough knowledge of the archaeological material. First, he objects to my association of the burials with the bagaudae. This is a connection that I had already played down; indeed I had written that I ‘no longer follow[ed] my

31 See, e.g. V. Bierbrauer, ‘Romanen im fränkischen Siedlegebiet’, in Wieczorek et al. (ed.), Die Franken, pp. 110–20: an article untouched by (at the time of publication) two decades or more of archaeological thought. For what should have been the decisive rejection of this idea, see E. James, ‘Cemeteries and the problem of Frankish settlement in Gaul’ in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Names, Words and Graves: Early Medieval Settlement (Leeds, 1979), pp. 55–89. 32 M. Schmauder, ‘The relationship between Frankish gens and regnum: a proposal based on the archaeological evidence’, in H.-W. Goetz, J. Jarnut & W. Pohl (ed.), Regna and Gentes: The Relationship between late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World (Leiden, 2003), pp. 271–306, at pp. 279–80, n. 31.

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initial identification with bacaudae [sic]’.33 Nevertheless, Schmauder’s own objections to the link, which differ from mine, are weak. He points out that there are bagaudae recorded in times and places where there are no such graves. This of course implies that the burial is a simple passive reflection of a documentary phenomenon rather than, as I had argued, an active response to particular socio-economic and political circumstances. There is no reason why the response—to rather different circumstances in any case—would necessarily be the same in varying eras and diverse regions. Schmauder then asks rhetorically why the bagaudae would differentiate themselves in burial from the remainder of the population. This is a strange question. I had, or so I believed, set out at some length a rather detailed argument about why local leaders (leaving aside the questionable bagaudic link) would use the public ritual of burial to make statements about their social position when that was under threat. More to the point the question is simply sidestepped as to why some Germani would suddenly take to adopting a new burial ritual marking themselves out not only from other settlers from barbaricum but also from the indigenous population. Schmauder’s question (i.e. why adopt a distinctive rite?) must be posed to his own interpretation. If it were, even were the ‘Germanic’ identification proven, a response to this question would lead inevitably to the conclusion that the interpretation of these graves must go far beyond seeing them, as Schmauder does, as a simple marker of ethnicity and immigration and, later, of acculturation by Gallo-Romans. Schmauder then says he is unsure why I proposed an Alamannic origin for the phenomenon, an interpretation which, he states, had not been proposed before. However, as should be apparent from my work, I was not proposing an Alamannic origin for the rite but rejecting any argument that led the deposition of weaponry in burials back to supposed Alamannic precursors. Weapons are found in some Alamannic graves but are rather different, as is the rite itself. My argument, again as I had believed was clear enough, was that the interpretation of the burials needed to account not simply for the burial of particular jewellery styles, which were argued to be imports from the north of modern Germany, but also for the deposition of weapons, which finds no support in that area.

33 ALRF, p. 179 (above, p. 127); see also above, pp. 133–34. Schmauder cited ALRF and so must have been aware of that.

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Traditionalist arguments for a ‘Germanic’ origins of this rite had argued that the custom of inhumation with weapons originated in diverse regions but, in particular, the search for a parallel for these burials in barbaricum had led them much further east, with SchulzeDörlamm suggesting that the custom was introduced by Vandals, Burgundians or other migrating ‘East Germani’, perhaps coming via the Danube.34 We can leave aside the absence of any proof of such a migration at the start of the period covered by these graves, such as would be necessary if the burial ritual were introduced by such ‘Ostgermanen’. The Vandals and Burgundians only appear in the region, and then somewhat removed from the main areas where these burials are found, a generation or more after the rite had appeared. This is an explanation which is limited to the sword burials (more common from the mid-fifth century although there are some Gallic burials with swords a century earlier) and thus has little bearing on the origins of the rite as a whole. My point is simply that an explanation of these graves that ties them, via the male burials, to a fifth-century migration from the east of Germanic-speaking barbaricum cannot tally with an explanation which links them, via the fourth-century female graves, with the North Sea coast. The argument that ‘weapon burial’ is a key element of the ‘Germanic’ Kulturmodell, and thus ties the fourth-century burials to western ‘Germanic’ settlers because of a rite that appears more commonly a century later and is argued to have been introduced by a migration from the east of Germania Magna, is hardly logical. The only way of evading the absurdities inherent in that argument35 is via the idea of a pan-Germanic ethos and culture that allows any and all Germani suddenly to adopt a practice or material culture never used by them previously for the simple reason that another group, within the huge area between North Sea and Ukraine occupied by Germanicspeakers, had used that material culture or ritual. All Germani, in this view, have a shared repertoire of cultural traits that they can draw upon at will. This is an idea almost as ludicrous as the image of Vandal males moving to northern Gaul to meet and marry Saxon women, as a result of the work, no doubt, of the ur-Germanische Dating Agency.

34 M. Schulze-Dörlamm, ‘Germanischer Kriegergräber mit Schwertbeigabe in Mitteleuropa aus dem späten 3. Jahrhundert und der ersten Hälfte des 4. Jahrhunderts N. Chr. Zur Entstehung der Waffenbeigabsitte in Gallien’, JR-GZM 32 (1985), pp. 509–69. 35 Such as those noted in ALRF, p. 168 (above, p. 109), n. 11.

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Schmauder says that, by contrast with the non-appearance of these burials in (some) areas and eras where bagaudae are recorded they are found in regions where there is evidence of the stationing of barbarian foederati. This is puzzling as there is no evidence at all, other than the traditional reading of the burials, for the fourth-century stationing of barbarian foederati in frontier regions. The one area of Gaul documented to have been colonised by barbarians in a treaty relationship with the Empire is Toxandria, settled by Franks in Julian’s day. There are no ‘federate graves’ in Toxandria, as is well known. Nor, as is equally famous, are there any in Aquitaine, where foederati (of a possibly new kind) are recorded. On Schmauder’s own criteria (i.e. that the burial type must be found wherever and whenever the particular social category is recorded), these burials are even less likely to be a reflection of federates than they are to be bagaudae. Indeed, as noted, even Böhme has abandoned his identification of these graves with foederati, presumably on these sorts of grounds. Leaving that aside, we are faced with the problem of what foederati were. Fourthcentury federates, by their very nature, had to live outside the Empire; there was no question of the Empire entering into a treaty with its own subjects. Troops who served the Empire as the result of giving themselves over to the Roman state were called dediticii. A change is claimed to have taken place with the ‘Treaty of 382’ allegedly signed by the Goths and representatives of the emperor Theodosius I. The very existence of this treaty can be questioned.36 Fifth-century sources mention foederati who must have been recruited from non-Romans living inside the Empire.37 Quite who these were is debatable but it has been suggested that foederati took on a different sense in the late fourth century, to mean regular units recruited from barbarians, of a new but not unrecognisable form.38 By Procopius’ day this was certainly the case.39 Procopius claims (correctly) that this was a change

36 BMRW, ch. 6; see also T.S. Burns, Barbarians within the Gates of Rome (Bloomington IA, 1994); M. Cesa, Impero Tardoantico e Barbari: la Crisi Militare da Adrianopli al 418 (Como, 1994). 37 Olympiodorus, fragment 7.4: The Fragmentary Classicizing Historians of the Later Roman Empire, ed. & trans. R.C. Blockley (Liverpool 1981), vol. 2, pp. 151–220. 38 Burns, Barbarians within the Gates of Rome; J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, Barbarians and Bishops. Army, Church and State in the Age of Arcadius and Chrysostom (Oxford, 1991). 39 Procopius, Wars 3.3.11: Procopius, ed. & trans. H.B. Dewing, vols.1–5 (London, 1914–28). By the time of Maurice’s Strategikon (barely half a century after Procopius),

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from earlier usage but when that change took place is not clear from his account. Whether one accepts this or follows the traditional argument about the constitutional shift marked by the ‘Treaty of 382’, foederati appear too late and too far away to be behind the appearance of the Gallic furnished inhumations. Schmauder’s argument, if we ignore his mistaken assertion that the rite appears in documented areas of federate settlement, raises the same problems as those he considered fatal for the bagaudic reading. The burials do not appear everywhere where federates are recorded. Clearly, not all ‘federates’ were buried in this way in the areas where these graves are found (if the furnished burials represent all the incomers, then they were fairly thin on the ground), so one still needs to ask why some (and only some) such barbarians (and their wives) would differentiate themselves from their fellow federates, from (to a lesser degree) the local Romans and (and to a far greater extent) from their ancestors and relatives back home, who were buried in quite different fashion. Again—even following a ‘Germanic’ reading—we come ultimately to the point that the simple migration and settlement of barbarians is insufficient to explain these graves. Next, Schmauder turns to the appearance of inhumation burials in the North Sea coast area of modern Germany, as possible precursors of the Gaulish graves. Clearly, some Germani in that region were adopting a new rite.40 This is clear. Yet the chronology of this rite is broadly the same as that of the Gallic graves. More to the point, the interpretation of these burials has—when not engaged in sterile debate about which area the custom was introduced from—seen them as adopting a new rite in order to copy the Romans: another manifestation (alongside the deployment of imperial metalwork in cremations) of the proclamation of local status by displaying cultural links with the Empire. This all seems entirely plausible and I would argue that its appearance (incidentally a much greater change from the usual cremation rite than that marked by the appearance of the so-called ‘federate graves’ in Gaul) is a marker of the same sorts of local instability as produced the northern

foederati were no more than élite cavalry: Maurice’s Strategikon: Handbook of Byzantine Military Strategy trans. G.T. Denis (Philadelphia, 1984). 40 J. Bemmann, ‘Körpergräber der jungeren römischen Kaiserzeit und Völkerwanderungszeit aus Schleswig Holstein. Zum Aufkommen einer neuen Bestattungssitte im überregionalen Vergleich.’ SzSf 13 (1999), pp. 5–45; J. Kleemann, ‘Zum Aufkommen der Körperbestattung in Niedersachsen.’ SzSf 13 (1999), pp. 253–62.

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Gallic graves. In Schmauder’s view, when a furnished inhumation rite appears in the north of Germany it can unproblematically be seen as a Roman burial custom copied by locals; when there is an elaboration of the very same Roman custom within Roman territory it is argued to represent the graves of immigrants from north Germany, because the supposed migrants copied the Roman rite when at home. This cannot be logical. A furnished inhumation in the north of Roman Gaul might have been that of an immigrant from north Germany, so buried by his or her family because, before it moved, that family had earlier adopted the Roman burial rite as a means of displaying status. It might. But, by any application of Occam’s Razor, the simplest and most logical explanation is—indeed must be—that the occupant of a grave in northern Gaul, buried using an elaboration of the usual northern Gaulish rite, was a native of northern Gaul. The other inhumations in northern Germany adduced by Schmauder are so different in rite from the Gallic ones that they need not detain us. Michael Schmauder labels my reading of the jewellery ‘dubious’ and claims that it limits the foundation of ‘ethnicity claims’ to brooch typology. Yet brooch typology is the fundamental basis of the traditional argument. Even he admits that it is beyond doubt that some ‘Germanic’ brooch types are descended from Roman types. He claims that it has been shown that ‘Tutulus-brooches’ are Germanic in origin. However, the source he cites41 does not show this at all. Brieske argues that fourth-century Tutulusfibeln are descended from the third-century Dosenfibeln of east-central Germany, although the latter knew no further development in the area of their origin. Leaving aside whether this (descent from a brooch from another region which did not develop further there but instead appeared in a new, variant form in a different area) is more plausible than derivation from Roman disc brooches with raised central bosses which (if I am right) did develop in the fourth century and were (certainly) exported into the region, Brieske moves on to make other arguments for a ‘Germanic’ origin. Tutulusfibeln are found much more commonly in the Elbe-Weser region than in Gaul and this is especially true of the early examples, leaving aside one from Nymwegen. This is, as it stands, a weighty argument but it bears closer examination. Looking at Böhme’s (to my knowledge) most

41 V. Brieske, Schmuck und Trachtbestandteile des Gräberfeldes von Liebenau Kr. Nienburg/Weser (SzSf 5.6; Oldenbourg, 2001), pp. 15–19.

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recent distribution map of Tutulusfibeln,42 reveals a number of issues. One is that he had, since 1974, fused his earlier separate Ortbrook and Nymwegen types into a single Ortbrook-Nymwegen type, although the two look (to me) quite different. By this move, he removed at a fell swoop the earliest Gallic Tutulus-brooch and did indeed make it look as though the type appeared earlier in northern Germania than in Gaul, with an outlier in the latter region. Yet the Nymwegen brooch is an early example,43 is significantly different from the Ortbrook brooch (which is why Böhme had earlier identified it as a separate type) and stands in a clear line of development with the later Gallic types, which Böhme now labels Vert-la-Gravelle, Marteville and Cortrat-Oudenburg. What is clear from Böhme’s up-dated map is that all of these three types are found much more often in Gaul than in the Elbe-Weser area, although found there too, whereas not a single ‘Germanic’ type (except for the Nymwegen example whose inclusion in the group is questionable) is found in Gaul. Böhme’s labelling of the types suggests that he continues to see the Vert-la-Gravelle, Marteville and Cortrat-Oudenburg as Gallic products. Brieske sees no problem in acknowledging that these brooches were, as elements of their decoration make clear, the products of Gallic workshops.44 The fact that they are found in ‘Saxon’ cemeteries like Issendorf reveals ‘Germanic’ federates going home. So we are left with a picture of the development of a type of brooch in fourth-century northern Gaul, from a period before the appearance of the ‘federate graves’,45 some examples of which (as everyone agrees) were made in northern Gaul and exported northwards to Germania. To date, no ‘Germanic’ type of this brooch (which appears to develop there on separate lines) seems to have been found in Gaul. Contrary to Schmauder’s claim, none of Brieske’s discussion significantly challenges my reading of the brooch’s typological origins. The ‘Germanic’ interpretation is, says Schmauder, based upon the more solid foundation of the use of such brooches in traditional dress—or Tracht as it is known in German archaeology. Indeed, leav-

42 Böhme, ‘Soldner und Siedler im spätantiken Nordgallien’, Abb. 68. This is the map to which Brieske also refers. 43 ALRF, p. 172 (above, pp. 115–6). 44 J. Werner,’ Zur Entstehung der Reihengräberzivilisation’, Archaeologica Geographica 1 (1950), pp. 23–32, at p. 29, had proposed that the Tutulus brooches were Gallic but being taken home by settlers, on very similar grounds to mine. 45 The Nymwegen brooch, for example, must date to c.325, well before Böhme’s Stufe (period) I (350–400).

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ing aside the appeal to the questionable concept of Tracht, I had said as much myself.46 The brooches I discuss are sometimes employed in pairs at the shoulder. Schmauder says that this represents the traditional ‘West Germanic’ peplos dress ‘unless found in Northern Gaul at a future date’. In saying this, of course, he ignores the fact that such costume has already been found in Northern Gaul: in the so-called federate graves themselves! If every time one finds a woman in northern Gaul buried in a peplos dress, fastened at the shoulders by two brooches, one assumes (on that basis alone—since Schmauder says the provenance of the jewellery is not important) that it is the grave not of a local but of a ‘Germanic’ immigrant, then—clearly—it is going to be pretty hard ever to furnish an example of a native northern Gaulish woman wearing a peplos dress! In fact, though, the peplos costume was known in Gaul until the third century.47 Given the predominance of cremation in the burials of Germanic-speaking barbaricum, where the remains are, at best, placed in a pot and interred with occasional, sometimes burnt items, the evidence of how, exactly, brooches were worn is less forthcoming than in the Gallic graves. Examination of these, and of the inhumations of northern Germany, reveals considerable variation in the employment of brooches which casts doubt upon much of Schmauder’s argument. The relative availability of data means that the argument that peplos dresses are ‘Germanic’ is largely founded upon the evidence of burials supposed to be of ‘Germanic’ women: the argument that they are ‘Germanic’ women is based upon the fact that they are wearing peplos dresses. We are, again, well into the spirals of a circular argument. More to the point, perhaps, Schmauder (and Swift) ignore the differences between the female costume represented in the Gallic graves and that of Germania Magna, to which Böhme himself had drawn attention.48 Apparently ‘Germanic’ women can adopt new aspects of costume and abandon others on migration (in spite of the apparent immutability of Tracht), whereas Gallo-Roman women are incapable of changing dress fashions (evidently ‘Roman’ Tracht was far more rigidly adhered to than was ‘Germanic’!). Perhaps more

46

ALRF, p. 173 (above, p. 117). H. Fehr, ‘Germanische Einwanderung oder kulturelle Neuorientierung? Zu den Anfang des Reihengräberhorizontes’, in S. Brather (ed.), Zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Archäologie des 4. bis 7. Jahrhundert im Westen (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde; Berlin, 2008), pp. 67–102, p. 90. 48 Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde, p. 159; see also ALRF, p. 173 (above, pp. 117–8). 47

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importantly still, the presence of two brooches at the shoulder need not reveal the existence of a peplos costume at all, but rather a costume wherein a cloak or shawl was pinned over a brooch-less dress of standard Roman form.49 German research has identified this costume as of Roman origin. There are a couple of general points to be made here. Even if we allow the possibility that the brooches and/or the costume were ‘Germanic’ in origin (though I have yet to see any decisive argument to that end) we are still presented with the situation wherein the overwhelming majority of the furnished inhumations of northern Gaul have nothing un-Roman in them at all, in terms of material or rite.50 To extrapolate from a few female burials to the entire phenomenon must be a methodological mistake of the first order. What is more, even those graves with material of putatively ‘Germanic’ origin represent a burial rite which differs much more from the funerary rites of the barbarian homelands than from the usual burials of northern Gaul. The most that can be said from the archaeological evidence on its own, even if one accepts (as I do not) the ‘Germanic’ reading of the jewellery and costume, is that some immigrant Germani claimed a local social position by adopting a rite that was becoming common among claimants to authority in Gallic community politics. It would not explain the rite’s origins or the circumstances of the great majority of the inhumations. Schmauder’s final argument concerns ‘Charon’s Obol’: the custom of placing a coin in the deceased’s hand or mouth. This is found in the northern Gallic graves and is thus, I argued in the 1992 paper, another aspect of the ritual that is entirely in line with the usual burials rites of the region. Schmauder claims this is debatable, referring to work by Max Martin on the cemetery of Krefeld-Gellep, a huge necropolis attached to a Roman fort on the lower Rhine. Martin, in Schmauder’s words, showed that ‘Charon’s Obol’ was ‘there as elsewhere a typical Germanic custom of Roman origin’. Let us restate the facts: we have a cemetery in Roman territory wherein some of the deceased are buried in a ritual that incorporates one frequent element ‘of Roman origin’. Rather than drawing the simplest, most obvious—and surely

49 Fehr, ‘Germanische Einwanderung oder kulturelle Neuorientierung?’, pp. 89–97, for thorough discussion. 50 ALRF, p. 178 (above, pp. 125–7).

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correct—conclusion, that these were burials of local provincial Romans, Martin suggested that they were Germani because the Germani copied this Roman practice when outside the Empire. As with the argument about the north German inhumations, this is so illogical that it hardly requires further comment. Inscriptions are known to have been erected inside the Roman Empire by people of Germanic-speaking, barbarian origin, yet we would not argue on that basis that everyone within the Empire commemorated by an inscription was a ‘Germanic’ immigrant, even if one (on directly analogous grounds to Martin’s for his description of ‘Charon’s Obol’) could call the erection of a funerary epitaph a ‘Germanic custom of Roman origin’. Outside the Empire one might describe instances of ‘Charon’s Obol’ as ‘a Germanic custom of Roman origin’. Within the Empire, one cannot identify beneficiaries of this rite (in burials that conform to the other key elements of Roman inhumation) as ‘Germanic’ incomers without cutting oneself badly on Occam’s Razor. A further, noteworthy and potentially interesting development of the traditional ‘Germanic’ interpretation, is Frauke Stein’s attempt to argue for a materially invisible weapon-burial custom in Germania east of the Rhine.51 Stein’s argument proceeds from the discovery of fragments of swords and sheaths in the cremation pyre (or ustrina) at the cemetery of Liebenau in Lower Saxony. Weapons, she claims, might have been displayed and burnt with the body but not buried; hence their archaeological invisibility. Thus weapon-burial in late Roman northern Gaul might indeed have ‘Germanic’ origins. What is interesting about this is its attempt to move our thinking about burial ritual beyond its final archaeological traces. What is problematic is, first, that such archaeologically invisible elements of ritual might equally, if not more, plausibly be postulated for the provincial Romans.52 Second, the argument brackets all Germani between Rhine and Weser into a single cultural or political grouping, which contradicts the historical and other archaeological sources, and, third, there are problems of chronology and sample size.53 51 F. Stein, ‘Waffenteile in Rhein-Weser-germanischen Brandgräbern. Ausnahmen von der Regel oder eine durch das Totenritual verschleierte Waffenbeigabensitte?’ in C. Dobiat (ed.), Reliquae Gentium. Festschrift Horst-Wolfgang Böhme vol. 1 (Rahden, 2005), pp. 403–17. 52 ALRF, p. 175 (above, pp. 120–21), for evidence. 53 For all these points and others, see Fehr, ‘Germanische Einwanderung oder kulturelle Neuorientierung?’, pp. 86–87: a detailed and persuasive critique.

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In a historiographically very significant development, recent years have seen the stirrings of change within German archaeology. This has originated in the University of Freiburg, where Professor Haiko Steuer has had the confidence to allow his students to explore the problems of this period’s archaeology without constraining them to follow the traditional interpretations. This has culminated in a major monograph by Sebastian Brather,54 which has provoked a great deal of debate within German archaeology.55 Brather’s work moves from a very rounded view of ethnicity and a survey of classical and late antique textual evidence to question the suppositions about the nature of ethnic groups that lie behind traditional Germanist archaeology. His rigorous critique is based upon many case studies, one of which is the archaeology of northern Gaul, in which, after a discussion of the historiography of the subject and its origins in the debate over the extent of a caesura between classical antiquity and the ‘Germanic’ Middle Ages, he accepts my doubts about the ethnic interpretation. Another of Steuer’s students, Hubert Fehr, has also presented excellent critical historiography of the subject of these burials and of the origins of the ‘Germanic’ reading.56 This traces doubts about the ‘Germanic’ reading of the furnished burials of late Roman and Merovingian Gaul back as far as the nineteenth century,57 placing my own questioning of this reading in yet deeper historical perspective. In his most recent discussion, Fehr also deals with the assumptions about the ‘Germanic’ origins of the ‘Reihengräberzivilisation’ in impressive detail.58 This represents the lengthiest and most meticulous attempt to confront the ‘Germanist’ interpretation on traditionalist German archaeology’s preferred battle-ground, the rigorous, detailed empirical study of sites and artefacts, and is thoroughly convincing.

54

S. Brather, Ethnische Interpretationen in der frühgeschichtliche Archäologie (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 42; Berlin, 2004). 55 See, e.g., the positively apoplectic response by V. Bierbrauer, ‘Zur ethnischen Interpretation in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie’, in W. Pohl (ed.), Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters (Vienna, 2004), pp. 44–84. 56 H. Fehr, ‘Volkstum as paradigm: Germanic people and Gallo-Romans in early medieval archaeology since the 1930s’, in A. Gillett (ed.), On Barbarian Identity: Critical Approaches to Ethnicity in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2002), pp. 177–200; id., ‘Germanische Einwanderung oder kulturelle Neuorientierung?’ 57 ‘Germanische Einwanderung oder kulturelle Neuorientierung?’ p. 82, n. 54. 58 Ibid., pp. 75–97.

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It is, however, disappointing that Fehr brackets my discussion of these burials together with all other critical responses to the Germanist reading, Belgian, French, British and American.59 These are surely as deserving of historiographical analysis as the traditional Germanist views.60 One has, from Fehr’s work, the impression that all these objections have the same theoretical or methodological starting point, which is incorrect. Some, such as the works of De Laet and Van Doorselaer, invoke ‘reversion’ to earlier practice, a reading that I (like their Germanist critics) find quite unconvincing. In the 2008 article, Fehr includes my works alongside works by James, Young and Effros.61 Yet, in 1979 James saw no problem in viewing furnished inhumation as ‘Germanic’, but as a sign of lordship rather than settlement, with some Gallo-Romans adopting the custom, and Young believed that the practice represented a fashion of ‘Germanic’ origin. My argument was thus quite different. By contrast, Effros’ based her comments on the flaws of the traditional interpretation on my work. It is unfortunate that, having pushed my publications on the topic back into a general, undifferentiated background of works proposing a ‘west-European’ origin for furnished burial, Fehr then (alas without acknowledging the fact) uses more or less the same methodology as I employed in my 1992 article, taking the components of the rite separately and subjecting their supposed ‘Germanic’ origins to scrutiny (though doing so with much greater empirical knowledge and rigour than had I). It is even more unfortunate that, having shown the shortcomings of the ‘Germanic’ interpretation but having stated (incorrectly) that no general alternative explanation for furnished burial had yet been proposed,62 Fehr does not offer a detailed or sustained explanation 59 Ibid., p. 71. This approach led me to some harshness in review (EHR 479 [2003], pp. 1349–50) of Fehr’s 2003 article. There I had probably taken umbrage at being lumped together historiographically with the bizarre work of Alain Simmer, which denies any settlement of early medieval Germanic-speakers in the Moselle valley: it is a simple lumpen ethnic interpretation in reverse. 60 H. Williams, ‘Rethinking early medieval mortuary archaeology’, EME 13 (2005), pp. 195–217, at p. 200, makes a similar point. 61 Fehr, ‘Germanische Einwanderung oder kulturelle Neuorientierung?’ p. 71, n. 13, citing E. James, ‘Cemeteries and the problem of Frankish settlement in Gaul’, in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Names, Words and Graves. Early Medieval Settlement (Leeds, 1979), pp. 55–89, ORz and ALRF, and n. 15, citing B.K. Young, ‘Le problème franc et l’apport des pratiques funéraires (IIIe–Ve siècles).’ BLAFAM 3 (1980), pp. 4–18, and B. Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, 2003), pp. 193–96. 62 Fehr, ‘Germanische Einwanderung oder kulturelle Neuorientierung?’ p. 72.

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himself. He sees the new ritual simply in terms of the existence of a frontier zone or culture between Roman and ‘Germanic’ hinterlands. Although Fehr repudiates the binary opposition between Roman and ‘Germanic’, his explanation still requires one to envisage monolithic Roman and ‘Germanic’ cultures, between which the Rhine and Danube provinces could be seen as forming a frontier.63 For those who do not want to abandon the traditional reading, the ‘frontier-culture explanation’ allows ‘Germanic’ influence in again by the back-door. Fehr’s explanation is further unsatisfactory because he has effectively removed the evidence of influence coming into the Roman frontier provinces from barbaricum; in his analysis the components of the rite are entirely traceable to Roman (or provincial Roman) origins. Indeed he also cites historical studies similarly showing the dominance of Gallo-Roman influence in the culture of the Merovingian world.64 It is thus difficult to find any empirical basis for the Roman-‘Germanic’ mixed culture that he envisages (and one should note that the idea of a “römisch-germanischen Mischkultur” was central to Böhme’s interpretation).65 Moreover, Fehr does not propose any explanation for why their location within a frontier zone would make the people of this region suddenly adopt a new burial ritual at the end of the fourth century. Thus although Fehr’s dissection of the empirical basis of the ‘Germanic’ interpretation of these burials is much more far-reaching than mine, his explanation of the phenomenon lags considerably behind. Some new imaginative interpretations have already started to appear in the work of yet another product of the Freiburg school, Philipp von Rummel. Von Rummel is unusual in modern archaeology in making sophisticated use of textual sources as well as rigorous criticism of archaeological interpretations in order to present new readings of fifth-century identities and the shifts therein, and of how ‘barbarian’ identities were created within late Roman society. It is an irony of the first order that traditional Germanists have criticised von Rummel for using Misch-Argumentation. His critiques are grounded in the prima facie interpretation of excavated data and then placed in a context provided by the study of the documents, whereas the traditional read-

63

Ibid., p. 101, esp. Abb. 5. Ibid., pp. 101–2. 65 H.W. Böhme, ‘Das Land zwischen Elb- und Wesermündung vom 4. bis 6. Jahrhundert. Die Sachsen und ihre Beziehungen zum römischen Westen.’ Führer zu vorund frühgeschichtliche Denkmäler 29 (1976), pp. 205–26, at p. 207. 64

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ings are ultimately founded on a politically and historically contingent reading of the documentary sources.66 To conclude this section, the debate over whether the furnished burial rite was at all ‘Germanic’ in its origins, and thus over whether its initial appearance could be linked to the migration of settlers from trans-Rhenen barbaricum, which I restarted in 1989–92,67 appears to be swinging slowly towards my point of view. The most detailed and impressive response by a supporter of the traditional reading (Schmauder) can be found wanting; other opponents of the view have changed their minds and accepted a Roman derivation (Swift); and within German archaeology supporters of the idea that the burial is not a ‘Germanic’ product have taken up the cry and confronted the traditionalists with more detailed and rigorous empirical arguments (Brather, Fehr, von Rummel).

III. Responses and Development: Explaining the rite By far the most interesting further discussion of the ‘federate burials’ of northern Gaul has come from the pen of Frans Theuws.68 Theuws had been working on the archaeology of this region and coming independently to similar conclusions regarding their lack of ‘Germanic’ origins. He has also discussed other aspects of the ‘Germanic’ influence in the region’s settlement sites.69 His explanation of the burials’ appearance differs in some ways from mine, although I would maintain that our readings are not incompatible. Theuws presents an excellent, detailed

66 See above all, P. von Rummel, Habitus Barbarus: Kleidung und Repräsentation spätantiker Eliten im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert (Ergnänzungsbände zum Reallexikon ser Germanischen Altertumskunde 55; Berlin, 2007). 67 Let me reiterate that this differed profoundly from the earlier doubts cast by James, Hills and Young, which were concerned with whether everyone buried using this rite (which they accepted as ‘Germanic’) could be seen as an immigrant barbarian settler; ALRF, p. 169 (above, pp. 110–11). 68 F. Theuws & M. Alkemade, ‘A kind of mirror for men: Sword depositions in late antique northern Gaul’, in F. Theuws & J.L. Nelson (ed.), Rituals of Power. From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), pp. 401–76; F. Theuws, ‘Gravegoods, ethnicity and the rhetoric of burial rites in late antique northern Gaul’ in T. Derks & N. Roymans (ed.), Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity: The Role of Power and Tradition (Amsterdam, 2009), pp. 283–319. I am very grateful to Professor Theuws for allowing me to see this article long in advance of publication. 69 F. Theuws & H.A. Hiddink, ‘Der Kontakt zu Rom’, in Wieczorek et al. (ed.), Die Franken, pp. 66–80.

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theoretical consideration of the ideas behind the traditional ethnic reading of the graves. He also makes rigorous criticism of many of the ideas and methods of typology, concerning swords and belt-sets. There is no need to discuss Theuws’ arguments against the ‘Germanic’ origin of the burial rite, as they are parallel to my own, or else Theuws accepts my reasoning. What is more interesting is his proposed explanation. Theuws reminds us that there is change within the ‘Federate Graves’ horizon, especially as regards the burial of weapons.70 Most fourthcentury weapon burials contain axes, whereas those with swords and/ or more complete weapon sets tend to be later. He points out, using Böhme’s own figures, that 113 such weapon graves are found within the Empire compared with only sixteen in barbaricum but goes on to argue that that is still a low number, making on average only about one per year. Theuws argues that we need to emphasise the unusual and above all new character of the burials. Theuws claims that his interpretation moves ‘beyond power’, arguing that my concentration on social competition and stress does not go far enough. With this end in mind he examines the symbolism of weaponry and argues that to see axes, spears and swords all as weapons is limiting. Indeed he proposes that we abandon the term ‘weapon grave’ in favour of ‘axe grave’, ‘sword grave’, ‘Sword-and-spear grave’ and so on. Axes are the most common weapons and Theuws proposes that rather than being a weapon, axes symbolise the clearance of land and thus perhaps fertility. Spears are weapons, says he, but also important power symbols. These and bows and arrows (excluded from Böhme’s weapon graves) might rather symbolise the hunt, and the chase was a means of showing one’s claims to own the land over which one hunted. The funerary ritual and the deposition of objects was part of the rhetoric of burial, which transformed the deceased into an ancestor. Pointing out the lack of a general correlation between weapon burials and the fortified sites of northern Gaul, Theuws argument links the new burials to claims to land of a new type. The lands in question are, in his reading, agri deserti. Unlike most work on the burials, Theuws deploys a sound knowledge of the general settlement history 70

Here I concentrate on his arguments in ‘Grave-goods, ethnicity and the rhetoric of burial rites in late antique northern Gaul’, principally because they concern the ‘Federate grave’ horizon more directly than his work on sword burials, which focuses more on the later fifth century.

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of the region. This was not an abandoned landscape but one in which the productive system was changing. He rejects my proposal that the rite was a symptom of competition or related to the difficulties of the transmission of authority from generation to generation. He also doubts that the occupants of the graves are aristocrats as one would normally understand the term. There is much that is important here and much that can be incorporated into my general explanation, to which I shall return. For now a couple of points need attention. The biggest of my generally small reservations about Theuws’ explanation is essentially that, in rejecting power, competition and violence, it paints too ‘rosy’ a picture. Theuws’ argument in favour of burial rituals turning the deceased into ancestors finds no early medieval support and is essentially based upon anthropological analogy. Having decried, correctly, the tyranny of nineteenth-century nationalist constructs based around the use of written sources as a distortion of the archaeological data, we run the risk here of becoming subject to another sort of tyranny, that of anthropological fieldwork of uncertain relevance to the early Middle Ages.71 As Theuws himself admits, the ‘ancestor’ theory works as an explanation of a static situation but does not account for change. The argument deployed to show that this burial rite was not about power lacks a secure foundation. More to the point, any explanation that sees these burials as making new kinds of claim over land must surely involve power relations. The fact that these claims are staked in the context of burial must imply that there was an issue of inheritance involved. The interpretation of the lands involved as agri deserti is interesting and, as I shall argue, can be incorporated in my schema. Agri deserti were not deserted lands, but lands for which no tax-liable owner could be traced. As such they had existed for some time, so one would need to ask why these claims had not been staked in this way earlier. None of Theuws’ explanation accounts entirely for the phenomenon without ultimately involving a general context of crisis and change, and issues of local power. Rather than going ‘beyond power’ the argument seems to me rather to be a retreat from it. Perhaps power and competition have too unpleasant overtones. In the same vein, Theuws works hard to show that axes and spears are

71 This is not an uncommon move in the recent development of archaeology: see above, pp. 55–56.

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not weapons but much more pacific symbols of fertility and land-ownership. The issue of the symbolism of the axe is difficult to resolve. Theuws simply says that he is not convinced by my linkage of the axe with the army; ultimately he deploys no argument against it. It is difficult to choose between the two, although I have at least presented evidence that the axe was used by the late Roman army in Gaul and thus could be a symbol of a military connection. There is, as yet, no data from the era to connect the axe with land-clearance other than a general functionalist one, precisely the sort of argument that Theuws normally—and correctly—decries. I would argue that the axe could have been chosen as a weapon, symbolising military roles or identities, precisely because (unlike with spears or bows) there was no possible linkage with hunting (as, I would argue, with swords somewhat later). The issue is unlikely to be resolved empirically; one chooses whichever version one prefers. Yet objects can be polysemic; they can symbolise more than one thing in different contexts. While Theuws is correct to say that spears are symbols of power as well as weapons, the fact is that they are symbols of power because they are weapons. As I have written before,72 late antique or early medieval weaponry is not symbolic of status as arcane relics of a past age, like the swords borne by modern Knights of the Garter, which represent status but not its nature or how it was acquired. Instead they were full of direct, and real, contemporary meaning about the nature of power and its acquisition, very much in the same ways as the AK47 is the symbol of the power of the modern warlord. Hunting was indeed an aristocratic pastime and Theuws is absolutely right to emphasise its importance in aristocratic symbolism. Even that, however, could be seen as practice for war. Perhaps more to the point, though Theuws offers a rounded and interesting explanation for the axe burials it does not account for the whole horizon of furnished graves of the later fourth and early fifth centuries, male and female, with or without axes. A further minor issue concerns the rarity of these graves. Theuws says that they work out at an average of about one per year. If we have only 1% of the graves, that would still mean only 100 per year. He suggests, probably correctly, that this means that most people will never have witnessed a weapon-burial. However, I would argue that, as these burials—in my reading—represent those of members of

72

VSEMW, at p. 3.

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families with claims to local leadership, even ten or twenty, let alone 100, every year, counting all sorts of burial, male and female adult and child, with weaponry or without, would represent a significant swathe cut into that land-owning stratum. Within that peer group it seems to me that this form of burial would have been quite common and wellknown. Even with these caveats, however, there is much more that I agree with in Theuws’ explanation and our readings are certainly not incompatible. I accept all his arguments about the rhetorical strategies of burial73 and he is right to point out that the subjects of these burials are not aristocrats as usually envisaged. My argument had probably been unclear in that regard, and also, perhaps, in what I meant by competition. It is perhaps worth underlining what I was and what I was not arguing in either of chapters 2 or 3 as, somewhat to my surprise, some people appear to have been unable to discern this. I was not, at any point, arguing that none of the late fourth or early fifth century burials in northern Gaul was of an immigrant from trans-Rhenan barbaricum. Nor was I arguing that there was no migration into, or settlement in, these regions by non-Romans. What I was arguing was that these burials are not evidence of migration. The argument that a form of evidence is not evidence of migration is a quite separate one from the argument that there was no migration. The argument that handmade pottery is found in some northern Gallic settlements and might therefore show the settlement of trans-Rhenan barbarians74 therefore has no bearing at all on the reading of the burials. I am also arguing that, even if a convincing case could be made that some recipients of this funerary rite were incomers, that would be insufficient grounds for ascribing the occupants of all of these graves, or the origins of the rite, to the immigration of barbarians. That there was, indisputably, migration into the Empire by Germanic-speakers is no logical reason at all to assign every change in the region’s archaeology to barbarian newcomers. I argue that the archaeology provides no support for the ‘Germanic’ ethnic interpretation; I am not—in any sense—replacing that with a blanket ‘Roman’ ethnic reading. As an archaeological phenomenon, the appearance of the furnished burial rite can only be explained by a social, not an ‘ethnic’,

73 74

As is clear from chapters 5 and 6, below. Schmauder, ‘The relationship between Frankish gens and regnum’, p. 280.

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interpretation, which views these graves as a response to changing socio-political circumstances. As noted above, even if one could find elements that indisputably identified the deceased as ‘Germanic’ immigrants (and I have yet to be convinced that there are any), immigration does not suffice as an explanation. One must still account for the occurrence of what is, in the ‘Germanic’ interpretation, a much more dramatic change in burial rite than is envisaged in my ‘northern Gallic social’ explanation. That leads us inexorably to the issues of competition and display that are central to my reading. As Walter Pohl correctly pointed out in debate at the Vienna conference, it is mistaken to try and link these burials with (or conversely to deny any connection with) any precise socio-legal or ethnic category: federate, laetus, Germanus or Roman. What is at stake is a claim for local authority—a claim made on the basis of very traditional Roman ideas of power—not the badge of a specific relationship with the imperial government. Such a claim might be made by any competitor for such leadership. As an explanation, we must look to the social and political circumstances of the region from the third quarter of the fourth century. From the later fourth century, northern Gaul found itself in a rapidly changing situation. Up until 380 the government of the western empire had frequently been conducted from Trier. Elements of the Gaulish aristocracy were not uncommonly to be found at the heart of politics. As a result very large concentrations of troops and bureaucrats were located in the region. With the third-century economic changes and the governmental responses to those developments, the army had been stationed over a wider belt of frontier territory than before and was largely paid in kind, as is well known. These developments are behind the changes in the settlement patterns of northern Gaul from the third century onwards. The well-documented dramatic reduction in the number of villas in the north of Gaul from the third century is, I believe, the result of the state acquiring large swathes of land in the region and/or diverting its surplus towards the provisioning of the enormous military and administrative presence in the area.75 From this period date fortified granaries, whose scale has suggested a connection with the imperial government. At the same time a large area of land near the imperial capital of Trier was enclosed by a wall,

75

VTC; BMRW, ch. 3, 11.

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known as the Langmauer, built, as is known from an inscription, by a detachment of troops from a unit of Primani. Occupation often continued on or near the sites of earlier villas but in very different forms, which surely represent a change in the area’s socio-economic situation. The transformation in the nature of occupation surely represents different possibilities of surplus extraction and probably different patterns of relationship between the owners of the villae and the inhabitants of other settlements than had earlier been made manifest in the construction of elaborate stone buildings with tiled roofs and hypocausts. Lands might well have been granted away by the imperial government on long emphyteutic leases, or the income from designated areas bestowed, on a shorter-term basis as a salary, upon its officers. Some of recipients of the larger grants might have been absentee landlords. In either case it is easy to see how surplus extracted might no longer be invested in the construction and maintenance of high-status stone buildings in the region. Other landowners, directly connected with the state presence in the area, might have been veterans granted lands on discharge, who would not have been very wealthy. Some such lands might have been agri deserti, as the Theodosian Code describes such lands being given to retiring veterans.76 This situation differs importantly from that across the Channel in Britain, where the fourth-century evidence suggests that, while the area’s prosperity might also have been closely linked to the provision of food and materials for the imperial presence on the Rhine, much of the profit from the surplus extracted remained in the hands of the local aristocracy, who were thus able to go on constructing well-appointed villas and town houses through the century.77 There are also important differences within the north-Gallic region. In the area around Trier, large villas were built and the local aristocracy appears to have remained wealthier than that in other areas of Gaul north of the Loire. This prosperity was probably linked to the proximity to the imperial court, and the Trierer aristocracy had been unusually wealthy since the early days of the Empire.78

76 Theodosian Code 7.20.11: The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions, trans. Pharr, C., (Princeton, NJ, 1952). 77 A.S. Esmonde-Cleary, The Ending of Roman Britain (London, 1989). 78 E.M. Wightman, Roman Trier and the Treveri (London, 1970); ead. Gallia Belgica (London, 1985).

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All in all, we see a region in which the productive system had changed profoundly, as Theuws argues, and in which landowners of new types (including the state) were coming to predominate. Many were either less permanently associated with the region or less wealthy than their predecessors. In all cases a link with the state seems clear. Many of the dominant people within local politics were doubtless imperial officers, civilian and, especially, military. This discussion has a significant bearing on the furnished graves. There were indeed new types of local landownership and new claims to be staked, much as Theuws has proposed. Theuws’ own work has shown settlements being created late in the fourth century within the region.79 In the late fourth century, however, the imperial presence was withdrawn, a process begun in 381 when Gratian moved the court to Milan, exacerbated with the defeat of Magnus Maximus (the last significant emperor to dwell at Trier) in 388 and made definite with the suppression of the Gallic and British usurpers between 406 and 413. From 388 at least, imperial presence in the region became ever more intermittent and fizzled out in the early fifth century. The graves become more numerous in precisely this period. A link with the end of regular state presence seems clear, given what has been said about the nature of landownership and surplus extraction in the area. People whose claim to own land was connected with the state may have felt that claim to be threatened, especially when a male head of the family died. There were possibly other areas wherein, without imperial administration, no one was very clear who had the rights to surplus or local leadership. All these points develop the hypothesis of chapters 2 and 3 about how the burial was a response to a situation wherein local authority was called into doubt. Whether axes in burials symbolise the deceased man’s military status (perhaps as a veteran) or the clearance of land, or conceivably both (this particular weapon might have chosen precisely because it could symbolise military leadership and land clearance) is difficult to determine. Theuws has made the interesting observation that these burials, especially those with axes, tend to be distributed away from military areas, either on the old frontier or those newly occupied hilltop sites in the hinterland.80 This is a strong case for their association with land claims. The absence of weapons in cemeteries associated with forts,

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Theuws & Hiddink, ‘Der Kontakt zu Rom’. This, obviously, contradicts Swift’s claims in ‘Constructing Roman identities’.

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where other symbols of authority might be more effective, is perhaps less surprising, as I argued above.81 The burials are also generally absent in the area around the Moselle. Here there are more traces, both of large villas in the fourth century and of the survival of such sites into the early to mid-fifth century. Both points probably argue for a more secure form of local authority, less called into question by the crisis of the state. Indeed the Trierer aristocracy maintained a selfconfident Roman identity—stressing its ‘senatorial’ nature—well into the Merovingian period, which may have made even the Merovingians themselves nervous:82 hence the general absence of the furnished graves in this area. This absence can be read to support Theuws’ linkage of the graves with new types of land-ownership or my connection of them with local power-claims brought into question, or indeed, since I see the two as complementary, with both. What it poses problems for is the ‘Germanic’ reading. Given the well-documented presence of trans-Rhenan barbarians in the Roman army, especially in the palatine units of the praesental field army, this distribution away from military sites or the heart of imperial presence is difficult to comprehend if the graves are a simple marker of ‘Germanic’ presence. Some clarifications and developments of my position can be made. The first concern who these people were. Although I maintain that they are those of families of local standing or prestige, I should make clear that I do not regard them as powerful aristocrats. I have always read the late Roman élite in the region as more akin to petty squires than the large landowners of southern Gaul, Spain and Italy. As discussed above, many were probably lowly even within that social band. Yet that will have made their dependence upon the Roman state even greater; hence the stress in social relations produced by the crisis of the Empire around 400. Theuws’ plausible theory of new forms of land-ownership, associated with the Empire, only underlines this. The local pre-eminence of these families would be all the more called into question and require underpinning through public ritual when family members died. The crisis is also manifest in the end of the Roman villas in most of the region and in serious contraction and dereliction in the area’s towns.83 These burials’ appearance must be understood in the 81

ALRF, p. 179 (above, p. 128). BW, p. 72 (below, p. 229). 83 P. van Ossel, Établissements Ruraux de l’Antiquité Tardive dans le Nord de la Gaule (51e Supplément à Gallia; Paris, 1992); TSI. 82

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context of the dramatic social and economic changes that took place at the same time. This is a different situation from that represented in the large sixth-century cemeteries wherein people from many families were buried with grave-goods in what appear to have been competitive displays of the ability to inter the deceased with suitable ritual.84 In the decades around 400, the local status of locally predominant families might be threatened at critical moments such as a death and require expensive underpinning, but that does not yet imply that there were numerous families competing for such pre-eminence. Theuws’ theory does not entirely explain the element of change. Indeed he feels the burial ritual is more novel than do I. I have never denied that the way in which people were buried in these graves should be considered as new; my point is that this novelty is best understood against the background of the general burial rite of northern Gaul, of which it is an elaboration. Theuws asks why, if the families represented in these graves were local aristocrats did they not display status through an elaboration of traditional forms of display. My response is, first, that that is precisely what they are doing in these graves, and, second, that in the economically and politically constraining situation in which these people found themselves in this period, older forms of status display were simply not possible. It seems to me that a rounded interpretation can only be arrived at through a consideration of all of the aspects of the burial display. If all that is at stake is a ritual display of a land-claim and the conversion of the dead into ancestors, involving no stress or competition for power, why should women and children be buried in this fashion? Conversely, if some men, women and children are seen as potential ancestors, why are not all the dead regarded in this way? The male burials are thoroughly Roman in their symbolism. The belt-sets, which, as Theuws and I have both pointed out, are often placed separately in the grave rather than worn, are badges of imperial authority. Other artefacts clearly symbolise the hunt, be they weapons or the depictions of hunting on objects. It has been suggested that hunting was becoming the symbol of aristocratic male identity par excellence in the late Roman period.85 Whether military or connected with hunt84

S&S; BRMS (below, pp. 203–14); BW (below, pp. 215–31). J. Huskinson, ‘Women and learning: gender and identity in scenes of intellectual life on late Roman sarcophagi’, in R. Miles (ed.) Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (London 1999), pp. 190–213. 85

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ing, the weaponry cannot be seen as out of line with late Roman ideas of status. The deposit of vessels is a standard part of funerary display and is probably, as I have argued before, to be connected with funerary feasting and the giving of food and drink as gifts to underline or cement social relationships, such as is well attested in late Roman society. A further argument against the ‘Germanic’ reading is precisely that the symbolism of these burials is so entirely Roman. If there are trans-Rhenan barbarians in these burials, the message being put across to the audience of the funerary rhetoric was how Roman they, and the power their family claimed, were. Indeed this leads us to further questioning of the bases of the ‘Germanist’ interpretation. One would need to ask why ‘Germanic’ settlers would wish to proclaim their difference from the other inhabitants of the region. This needs to be placed in the context of Roman attitudes towards barbarians and of barbarian attitudes to the Roman Empire. There is no space to develop these points here but, to summarise, Roman ideas of the barbarian, while they could rhetorically play up the idea of the noble savage, were fundamentally negative. Even when barbarism was being emphasised in the search for military identities after the separation of the civil and military branches of imperial service,86 the essential conceptual difference between Roman and non-Roman remained. Being a barbarian was, one imagines, not something that one proclaimed, were one actually a barbarian inside the Empire. We know of the tombstones of barbarian soldiers within the Empire, which do mention their non-Roman origins,87 but the point remains that the erection of a stone epitaph was essentially a claim for inclusion in Roman society. More to the point perhaps is the fact that, wherever we have an insight into the issue, we see the complete obsession of the barbarians with Roman-ness. The introduction of Roman-style inhumation into northern Germany, mentioned above, the display of Roman material in, especially high-status, burials in barbaricum, the manufacture of imitations of Roman badges of rank: all these are attested.88 Again, one must ask why barbarians who had acquired the much sought-after right to settle within the Empire that so dominated society, economy and politics ‘back home’ would

86 87 88

BMRW, pp. 101–10. ALRF, p. 177 (above, p. 124). BMRW, pp. 57–58.

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proclaim their status as non-Romans. As mentioned above, the only plausible argument in favour of the non-Roman origins of the occupants of these graves is precisely the vehemence of the claims being made to traditional Roman bases of power. All this remains, so far, satisfactory for the adult male burials, with or without weaponry, which after all dominate this archaeological phenomenon. What of the female graves and those of children? I argue that the interment of women in more elaborate, archaeologically-visible costume can also be understood within traditional Roman ideas about gender, status and power. This costume is very likely to have been linked to ideas of marital status and female propriety. Unfortunately the data from this phase of burials is usually so old and poor-quality that we are unable to examine issues such as the age of the deceased and relations between that and the costume in which they were buried. In other frontier areas of the Empire, Ellen Swift has suggested plausibly that variations in female funerary costume (including items such as bracelets, known in these graves too) are related to marital status.89 As is well known, a Roman male’s standing within politics was very much linked to the reputation of the women of his household and his ability to control them.90 Another issue at stake would be the alliance between families created by the woman’s marriage into her husband’s household. That would be called into question by her death and would require, especially in the critical circumstances of the decades around 400, underpinning through the funerary ritual and display, in which both families might well be involved, as indeed is attested by late antique inscriptions from Trier.91 An interesting point that might benefit from further examination is why the female burials of this horizon, and the material in them, appear to show less of a hiatus in the middle decades of the fifth century than do the male graves. I have no fully formulated explanation but one possibility might be that in the middle of the fifth century, as the Empire’s power receded but while contemporaries will have known neither that it would not return nor who or what would replace it if it never came back, it may have been difficult to find politically appropriate symbols of male power. Community politics might very well have become more immediately important, and these might

89 90 91

Swift, The End of the Western Roman Empire, p. 40. GEE begins to explore these ideas. BW, p. 71 (below, p. 228).

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have been more easily confronted through lavish burial of females, what I have called the linchpins of local alliances.92 Although well-furnished burials of children are proportionately more common in this archaeological ‘horizon’ than in the fully fledged ‘Row-Grave-Civilisation’ of the sixth century, they are nevertheless not frequent. Nevertheless, the deaths of children might also require marking through these burial rituals. Again one might refer to the situation in the decades around 400 and later, when the local bases of authority were called into question. In these circumstances the death of a child (especially perhaps a male child) might have questioned a family’s ability to project its local authority into the future; it might have caused stress in the marriage alliance between families; it might have raised issues of inheritance. As the western Empire disintegrated in the fifth century, furnished inhumation is attested in several areas, including those wherein ‘Germanic’ settlement cannot easily be adduced.93 All this, in my view, makes a social or socio-political explanation more profitable. I remain convinced that such an explanation must revolve around issues of local power and authority, social stress and the difficulties of transmitting standing from one generation to another. There are still important issues that require attention; Theuws’ work brilliantly adds other important variables to the equation. My own explanation has developed over the past two decades, as comparison of this ‘comment’ and chapters 2 and 3 will demonstrate. Doubtless it can be developed, modified and corrected further, but to recognise the interest and importance of the furnished burials of late Roman northern Gaul we must move the debate from the ‘ethnic’ and into the ‘social’ sphere. The ‘Germanic’ ethnic argument is insufficient as an explanation even within its own paradigm. These burials deserve better.

92

FSP, p. 16 (below, p. 305). For Spanish and British burials see ALRF, p. 179 (above, p. 127), nn. 81, 83. For fifth-century furnished burials in northern Italy, see G. Gastaldo, ‘I corredi funerari nelle tombe “tardo romane” in Italia settentrionale’, in G.-P. Brogiolo & G. Cantino Wataghin (ed.) Sepolture tra IV e VIII secolo. Documenti di Archeologia 13 (Mantua, 1998), pp. 15–59; S. Massa, S. ‘La necropoli del Lugone (Salò): Analisi della struttura sociale’ in G.-P. Brogiolo (ed.), La Fine delle Ville Romana: Trasformazioni nelle Campagne tra tarda Antichità e alto Medioevo. Documenti di Archeologia 11 (Mantua, 1996), pp. 71–79. 93

CHAPTER FOUR

CHILDERIC’S GRAVE, CLOVIS’ SUCCESSION, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE MEROVINGIAN KINGDOM*

The discovery of the grave of the Frankish king Childeric I in Tournai in 1653 marks the beginning of Merovingian archaeology. Its nature and contents have never ceased to excite interest and debate over the subsequent three and a half centuries, in spite of the loss of most of the artifacts in 1831. The king was interred with the most lavish assemblage yet recovered from any early medieval burial, his identity revealed by the presence of his seal ring. Subsequent excavations showed that the grave was surrounded by three pits containing the remains of twenty-three stallions, and suggested that the burial itself lay under a large mound.1 Traditionally the burial is dated to c. 481, on the basis of Gregory of Tours’ statement that Clovis died after reigning for thirty years.2 As Clovis died in 511 this would give the date of his accession, and thus—presumably—of Childeric’s death, as 481. Although knowledge of Clovis’ succession is so scanty that it is unclear whether he succeeded directly upon his father’s death, it is probably unnecessarily sceptical to reject the presupposition that he did so. Indeed, it has been stated that the burial is ‘the only Merovingian grave of which the identification [117] and date (481 or 482) are certain.’3

* Originally published in R.W. Mathisen & D. Shanzer (ed.), Society and Culture in Late Roman Gaul. Revisiting the Sources, (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 116–33 and reprinted with permission of Ralph Mathisen and Danuta Shanzer. The notes and references have been modified and renumbered and the bibliography that originally appeared after the text of the article (pp. 131–33) has been omitted, but otherwise the text remains as published. 1 The literature on the burial is enormous; see, e.g., P. Périn, M. Kazanski, ‘Das Grab Childerichs I,’ in A. Wieczorek, P. Périn, K. Von Welck, W. Menghin eds., Die Franken. Wegbereiter Europas (2nd ed.; Mainz, 1997) 173–82; and U. Koch, K. von Welck, A. Wieczorek, ‘Das Grab des Frankenkönigs Childerich I.,’ in Wieczorek et al. (ed.), Die Franken, pp. 879–83, and note also EMCems, pp. 31–32; and E. James, The Franks (Oxford, 1988) pp. 58–64. 2 LH 2.31. 3 P. Périn & M. Kazanski, ‘Le mobilier de la tombe de Childéric Ier. État de la question et perspectives,’ Revue Archéologique de Picardie (1988) no. 3–4, pp. 13–38, at p. 13.

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The presence of Childeric’s seal ring does not prove beyond doubt that the burial is his but, to borrow a phrase of English law, it places the identification ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’ The dating of the grave (and thus of Childeric’s death and Clovis’ accession) is quite another matter. The date of 481/2 is so generally accepted that the matter is not discussed. One overview makes no mention of dating criteria (the coins) within the grave, and another states that the burial ‘remains the only early medieval grave on the Continent which can be dated by reference to historical sources to within a year or two.’4 A recent critical assessment of late fifth-century sword-burials and of their dating methodologies takes the date of 481/2 as read.5 This date has in turn been used as the foundation for the dating of other graves, and employed as a terminus post quem for the incorporation of particular areas of Gaul into the Frankish kingdom. As has long been recognized, however, Gregory’s knowledge of Clovis was sketchy 6 and his chronology of the reign entirely artificial.7 Thirty years was a convenient and appropriate length for the reign of a great king, with suitable biblical precedent.8 Furthermore, Gregory’s approach to numbers was such that, like many of his contemporaries, he worked in multiples of five (using poetic lustra as a unit of chronological measurement), but more usually in simple multiples of ten.9 It is difficult, therefore, to take Gregory’s statement that Clovis reigned

4 Koch, Weick & Wieczorek, ‘Das Grab’; James, Franks, p. 59. At p. 79, James correctly points out that the date is derived from Gregory’s ‘unverifiable statement’ about the length of Clovis’ reign. 5 F. Theuws & M. Alkemade, ‘A Kind of Mirror for Men: Sword Deposits in Late Antique Northern Gaul,’ in F. Theuws & J.L. Nelson (ed.), Rituals of Power (Leiden, 2000), pp. 401–76, with a bibliography of studies of late fifth-century furnished burial, including Childeric’s. 6 See, e.g., I.N. Wood, ‘Gregory of Tours and Clovis,’ RBPH 63 (1985), pp. 249–72; also M. Spencer, ‘Dating the Baptism of Clovis 1886–1983,’ EME 3.2 (1994), pp. 97–116; and D.R. Shanzer, ‘Dating the Baptism of Clovis: The Bishop of Vienne vs. the Bishop of Tours,’ EME 7.1 (1998), pp. 29–57. 7 See C. Carozzi, ‘Le Clovis de Grégoire de Tours,’ Le Moyen-Age 98 (1992), pp. 169–85. 8 Thirty, for example, was David’s age when he began to reign (2 Sam. 5.4), and Christ’s age at baptism (Luke 3.23). 9 LH 2.24, where Gregory refers to Ecdicius’ army as ten strong, whereas Sidonius (Ep. 3.3.3) gives it as eighteen; for ages-at-death rounded to units of ten, see, e.g. LH 3.18, 4.51, 5.10, 6.15, 6.20, 9.19, 9.26, 10.12, 10.31 (Eufronius); VP 8.5, 11.3, 12.3, 14.4, 15.4; in general, see M. Handley, The Early Medieval Inscriptions of Britain, Gaul and Spain. Studies in Function and Culture (diss., Univ. of Cambridge, 1998), pp. 45–69. I thank Dr Handley for his information on this topic.

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thirty years literally. By the same token, one must be sceptical of the bishop’s statement of Clovis’ age at death: forty-five. This may have been derived from the age at which Merovingian kings appear to have come of age (fifteen), but it seems more likely that Gregory has once again thought of a suitable age given as a multiple of five (in this case, Clovis had lived nine lustra). Gregory is simply saying that Clovis [118] died in his prime.10 The placing of events at five-yearly intervals has been shown to be the work of a later interpolator.11 Gregory’s dating of the ‘Syagrius War’ to the fifth year of Clovis’ reign, however, seems original. Wood thought this was based upon oral tradition12 but it is perhaps based upon Gregory’s use of lustra and the fact that Roman emperors had celebrated their reigns in five-year units. It may be a genuine piece of information, but because one does not know when Clovis ascended the throne, one has equally little idea of when the fifth year of his reign was. The coins present in the grave provide some assistance. Coins of Zeno (474–91) mean that the burial cannot be earlier than 474, but theoretically they could also give a terminus post quem as late as 491. The other artifacts in the grave cannot furnish further help as artifactual chronologies of the period are themselves pinned down by the appearance of these types in Childeric’s grave, dated (with mistaken precision) to 481/2. Surprisingly, there is almost no externally datable reference to Clovis as king of the Franks before his campaigns of 506–7.13 The earliest independently datable event associated with Clovis is the Burgundian war of 501–2.14 The terminus post quem for what appears to have been his first act as king, his conflict with Syagrius, is 28 December 484, the succession of Alaric II as king of the Goths,15 to whom, says Gregory

10

Note that Clovis’ age does not appear in all manuscripts of the Histories. B. Krusch, W. Levison eds., MGH SRM 1.1 (Hannover, 1951) p. 87, n. 3. 12 Wood, ‘Gregory of Tours and Clovis.’ 13 Isidore of Seville, History of the Kings of the Goths 36; Cassiodorus, Variae 2.41, 3.4: Cassiodorus addresses Clovis as Luduin, suggesting a confusion between Chlodovechus and Chlodwin. 14 Marius of Avenches Chron. s.a. 500. Marius does not mention Clovis’ involvement, which is indubitably that discussed by Gregory at LH 2.32–33: see W. Goffart, Barbarians and Romans AD 418–585: The Techniques of Accommodation (Princeton, 1980) p. 155, n. 58. 15 H. Wolfram, History of the Goths (Berkeley, 1988) p. 190, and n. 166. The day is given by the so-called ‘Copenhagen Author’, who dates Euric’s death to 486 (“Consularia Italica”, s.a. 486: MGH AA vol. 9, Chronica Minora saec. IV. V. VI. VII, vol. 1, 11

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(and there seems little reason to doubt him), Syagrius fled after his defeat. Elsewhere, however, Gregory places Childeric’s death after the death of Alaric’s predecessor, Euric;16 indeed he places it after the death of bishops Perpetuus and Volusianus of Tours, who appear to have died in 491 and 498/9.17 The positioning of events within Gregory’s narrative is hardly decisive, but it shows that chronological precision is impossible. Interestingly, all of the people, other than Syagrius himself, whom Gregory names in association with the ‘Syagrius War’ were still reigning at the start of 507 when Clovis attacked Alaric [119] II.18 Although, again, not decisive, it would make a twenty-year interval between the two wars surprising. The traditional dates assigned to letters to Clovis by Remigius of Reims and Avitus of Vienne are derived from Gregory’s problematic— indeed extremely dubious—chronology, as are almost all dates given to Gallic political historical events in the late fifth century. Thus, if one rejects Gregory’s chronology as a construct, as one must, the essential, but surprisingly vague, chronological parameters that remain are that Childeric died some time after 474 and that Clovis became king at some point between then and 500. There thus is evidence to support a ‘short chronology’ for Clovis’ reign, beginning around 490. This is worth pointing out, given how much of the archaeology and the political history of late fifth-century is based upon the possibly spurious date of 481/2. Nevertheless, the balance of probability suggests that the traditional date, as luck would have it, is about right. Childeric had, after all, been active since the 450s, and in 511 Clovis had one son old enough, possibly, already to be king in Austrasia and to have a son of his own.19 The imprecision of the dating of events in Clovis’ reign is,

ed. T. Mommsen (Berlin, 1892), pp. 249–339 at p. 313); Isidore of Seville (History of the Kings of the Goths 36) states that Euric died in the tenth year of Zeno (474–91), i.e. in 483–4, and calculates this correctly as year 521 of the Spanish era. 16 LH 2.20 (Euric’s death), 2.25 (Euric’s persecution of Catholics and death); 2.27 (Childeric’s death, Clovis’ accession, the Syagrius War, and the episode of the Vase of Soissons). 17 LH 2.26–27; cf. LH 10.31. L. Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l’ancienne Gaule. Tome 2. L’Aquitaine et les Lyonnaises (Paris, 1910), pp. 304–5. 18 Clovis, of course, reigned until about 511 (LH 2.43); Ragnachar, who aided Clovis against Syagrius (LH 2.27), was killed by Clovis after 507 (LH. 2.42); Chararic, who remained neutral during the Syagrius war, also was killed after Vouillé (LH 2.41); and Alaric II, to whom Syagrius fled, was killed in the 507 campaign (LH 2.37). 19 See S&S, p. 9, for the suggestion that Theuderic ruled Austrasia before Clovis’ death. This may be further testimony to the fact that Chlothild was a formidable politi-

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nevertheless, surely worth noting, as is that of Childeric’s death and burial. He might have died five years before the traditional date, or even ten years after.20 The grave of Childeric has attracted much comment. It usually has been seen as a pagan Germanic monument. The use of the bull’s head in the horse-harness has been seen as prefiguring the Merovingian origin myth claiming descent from a bull-like sea-monster.21 The gold-andgarnet bees have also excited interest, as have the recently-discovered stallions. It has, furthermore, long been noted that Childeric’s burial appears to have revived the custom of furnished burial, in the form of the so-called ‘Flonheim-Gültlingen horizon’ of lavish inhumations, many containing swords with gold-and-garnet hilts, scabbard decorations and other objects [120] reminiscent of those placed in the Childeric grave. The location of the burial has reified Tournai as Childeric’s ‘capital,’22 although no other evidence associates him with the town at all. In fact, the written sources connect him entirely with Paris or the Loire valley, except when in exile.23 What seems not to have been considered hitherto, however, is what exactly made Clovis (presumably) bury his father in this way. The fact that the Tournai grave is held to have started a new fashion for burial with lavish goods implies that there was no precedent for such a burial. Nor is there. No previous king of the Franks was inhumed in such a way and, as far as is known, no later one was either.24 Even within the sphere of Frankish royal graves Childeric’s is unique. Yet cal figure: I.N. Wood, ‘Kings, Kingdoms and Consent,’ in P.H. Sawyer & I.N. Wood (ed.), Early Medieval Kingship (Leeds, 1977), pp. 6–29. 20 The latter possibility is admittedly the less plausible, but one should remember that Theoderic the Ostrogoth was politically active for half a century. 21 J.M. Wallace Hadrill, Early Germanic Kingship in England and on the Continent (Oxford, 1971), p. 18; see also I.N. Wood, ‘Fredegar’s fables,’ in A. Scharer & G. Scheibelreiter (ed.), Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 32) (Vienna, 1994), pp. 359–66, for doubts that the Merovingians really did claim descent from a quinotaur. The story may be Fredegar’s own invention, perhaps, as appropriate for a writer who drew heavily upon Isidore of Seville, a play on a false etymology of the name Merovech (Mere-vech > ‘sea-cow’). I owe this suggestion to an unpublished lecture by Ian Wood, given to the London Society for Medieval Studies. 22 E.g. A. Wieczorek, ‘Die Ausbreitung der fränkischen Herrschaft in den Rheinlanden vor und seit Chlodwig I,’ Wieczorek et al. (ed.), Die Franken, p. 245. 23 James, Franks, pp. 64–9. 24 E. James, ‘Royal Burials among the Franks,’ in M.O.H. Carver ed., The Age of Sutton Hoo. North-West Europe in the Seventh Century (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 243–54; P. Périn, ‘The Undiscovered Grave of King Clovis I (+511),’ in Carver (ed.), Age of Sutton

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this obvious point seems not to have interested previous generations of archaeologists. The burial has been deemed somehow ‘natural.’ As a supposed pagan, ‘Germanic’ king, Childeric was in some way destined to go to his last resting place like this. Yet, no other ‘pagan Germanic’ ruler was buried in anything like this fashion at the time, and none would be again for another century or more.25 Childeric may or may not have been pagan. Gregory claimed that he was, but Gregory had his own reasons for simplifying the process of Clovis’ conversion to catholic Christianity.26 Yet, the Vita Genovefae (‘Life of Genovefa’) does state that Childeric ‘loved and venerated’ the Parisian Christian holy woman,27 and Remigius’ famous letter to Clovis implies that Clovis’ parentes (presumably implying Childeric) had listened to the advice of their bishops.28 In a fifth-century context, neither testimony is decisive, but, whether or not Childeric was a pagan, one might question whether the rite used in his burial is (at least in its archaeological manifestation) intrinsically either ‘pagan’ or ‘Germanic.’ The slaughter and burial of the horses would certainly seem difficult to reconcile with Christianity. The interment of grave-goods, however, cannot be seen as itself indicative of paganism, as has long been demonstrated, but is still, alas, too little [121] acknowledged.29 There is, furthermore, no reason to assume that this type of burial is in any way ‘Germanic’:30 it certainly has no precedent in the Frankish homelands. Hoo, pp. 255–64; J.L. Nelson, ‘Carolingian royal funerals,’ in Theuws & Nelson (ed.), Rituals of Power, pp. 131–84. 25 The next comparable burials are those of around 600: the ‘princely burials’ of Anglo-Saxon England, most notably Sutton Hoo mound 1, and the very similar southern German Fürstengräber. The paganism of the subjects of any of these burials is far from certain. 26 See Wood, ‘Gregory of Tours and Clovis.’ Gregory discusses Frankish paganism at LH 2.10, 2.29; the first is a patchwork of biblical quotations about idolatry, and the second a speech placed Chlothild’s mouth that serves a similar purpose, and demonstrates Gregory’s knowledge of the classical pantheon and Christian apologetic. 27 Vita Genovefae 6.25. Childeric is described as a gentilis, which could mean either pagan (James, Franks, p. 66) or ‘barbarian.’ 28 Ep. Aust. 2. 29 See B.K. Young, Merovingian Funeral Rites and the Evolution of Christianity: A Study in the Historical Interpretation of Archaeological Material (diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1975); id., ‘Paganisme, christianisme et rites funéraires mérovingiens,’ Archéologie Médiévale 7 (1977), pp. 5–81; and G. Halsall, ‘La Christianisation de la région de Metz à travers les sources archéologiques (5ème–7ème siècle): problèmes et possibilités,’ in M. Polfer ed., L’Évangélisation des régions entre Meuse et Moselle et la Fondation de l’Abbaye d’Echternach (Ve–IXe siècle), (Luxembourg, 2000), pp. 123–46 (also below, pp. 261–84). 30 ORz (above, pp. 93–106); ALRF (above, pp. 107–30).

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Were the Tournai grave assigned to the traditional date of c. 481, one would have to say that furnished burial had not been common in the preceding half-century. The burst of lavishly-furnished graves in northern Gaul, usually (but probably incorrectly) associated with Germanic foederati,31 had petered out in the second quarter of the fifth century.32 Although there were isolated cases thereafter, this rite was rather different from that of the ‘Flonheim-Gültlingen Horizon’ and of the so-called Reihengräberzivilisation to which it had given rise by the early sixth century. This makes Clovis’ decision to inter his father under a mound, accompanied by a hoard of treasure and large numbers of valuable war-horses, all the more intriguing. Once one abandons the assumption that burial passively reflects a religious or ethnic reality one can appreciate that the formation of the material cultural data retrieved by archaeology is, like the production of written texts, deliberate and contingent. This makes it much more interesting. Almost all work upon the burial has concentrated upon what it tells us about Childeric. Yet it was not Childeric but Clovis who created the tomb. This study, therefore, will speculate upon the circumstances that led Clovis to create this unique monument. I previously have suggested that furnished burial is a symptom of social instability, and especially of power passed only with difficulty from one generation to the next.33 Put briefly, the burial of grave-goods is a transient ritual display, requiring an audience at the graveside to read and understand the symbolic message of the artifacts. Analysis of the rite, in its various manifestations, in Gaul between the late fourth century and the late seventh suggests that it was adopted by local élites as a response to political crisis and threats to their power,34 or, more widely, [122] as a competitive rite within larger communities.35 In the latter case, detailed analysis reveals that the individuals interred with the most elaborate ritual deposits were those whose deaths would create the greatest tension within local communal politics. A grave can be seen as a text, a conjunction of semiotic variables designed to convey

31

See ALRF (above, pp. 107–30) for critique. But see below for the suggestion that this hiatus may be more apparent than real. 33 S&S; FSP (below, pp. 289–313); BRMS (below, pp. 203–14). 34 As in the case of the so-called Föderatengräber of the late fourth and early fifth century (see above, n. 28). 35 As in the case of the large, communal Reihengräberfelder which appear from the late fifth century onwards and are fully developed by the early sixth century. For interpretation, see above, n. 31. 32

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information to an audience. Furnished burial also should be seen in the context of feasting and gift exchange. All in all, the funeral is the occasion for the bereaved family to recreate, to maintain, and perhaps to enhance its relations with other families and individuals. How, then, does this theory relate to the burial of a king? This study will suggest that even a grave as exceptionally lavish as Childeric’s can be incorporated into this schema. Cutting away the spuriously precise date given to the burial inevitably results in the loss of the possibility of being too exact about the grave’s context. But given the utter chronological imprecision of late fifth-century Gallic history, this turns out to be less of a hindrance than might be expected. It also permits a revaluation of the archaeological evidence. A conjectural reconstruction of the circumstances of Childeric’s burial requires a return to the aftermath of Attila’s invasion of Gaul in 451 and the murder of the patrician Aëtius in 454, and a re-examinination of the nature of the Frankish settlement of Gaul. Traditional models36 work on what may be termed the ‘moving front principle.’ This sees the migration and settlement of barbarian peoples very much as a continuous and controlled military front (as in the First and Second World Wars, which doubtless influenced the model), moving back and forth according to military and political success and failure. Even the reinterpretation of Childeric’s reign and its significance37 suggests simply that ‘the front’ had pushed much further south by Childeric’s death than had hitherto been supposed. There may be something in this model. The collapse of Roman social structures and politics in the north of Gaul in the decades around 400 led to dramatic reduction in the scale of urban life, even to the near desertion of some towns, the abandonment of villas, the collapse of industry and manufacture, and the end of a monetized economy. It also created a political vacuum into which powerful frontier kings, like those of the Franks and Alamans, were sucked. The region around Trier may have maintained some sort of Roman rule, under a Count Arbogast, but the Alamans seem to have pushed their rule as far west

36 See, e.g., C. Verlinden, ‘Frankish Colonization: A New Approach,’ TRHS 5th ser., 4 (1954) pp. 1–17; P. Périn, L.-C. Feffer, Les Francs. A la Conquête de la Gaule (Paris, 1987), p. 43 ff.; Wieczorek, ‘Die Ausbreitung.’ E. Ewig, Die Merowinger und das Frankenreich (2nd ed.) (Stuttgart, 1993) pp. 14–21, presents a slightly modified version. 37 James, Franks, pp. 72–7; id., ‘Childéric, Syagrius et la disparition du royaume de Soissons,’ Revue Archéologique de Picardie (1988) no. 3–4, pp. 9–12.

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as Troyes, and the Frankish kings seem to have taken over the areas south of the lower and middle Rhine. Here Gregory’s picture of the expansion of Frankish power in the early fifth century [123] seems about right.38 In the course of his account, Gregory mentions that Chlodio had his fortress at Dispargum, in the land of the Thuringians. Since the 1930s at least, it has, surely correctly, been thought that Gregory confused Thoringi (Thuringians) with Tungri (inhabitants of the area around Tongres, just south of the initial Frankish settlement inside the empire, in Toxandria), and Dispargum castrum in terminum Tungrorum, as the corrected phrase would read, has been identified with Duisberg or nearby Asberg (Asciburgium) on the Rhine. Neither is in the civitas of the Tungri, but the emendation and location seem highly probable. Earlier, Gregory states that the Franks, having left Pannonia, reached the Rhine and crossed it. ‘Thence,’ says he, famously, ‘having crossed the Rhine they passed through Thoringia, and there, by pagus (‘village’) and civitas (‘city’), they set up long-haired kings over them, drawn from their first and, as I should say, more noble family’.39 Thuringia, in the context of Gregory’s account of early Frankish history, is this broadly defined land of the Tungri. This would certainly seem more plausible than the otherwise lost Rhenish Thuringian kingdom hypothesized by some.40 Chlodio expanded his power from Dispargum to Cambrai and to the river Somme. Gregory says—although not without reservation, qualifying his statement with adserunt (‘they claim’)—that Merovech, father of Childeric, was from the family of Chlodio. The broad, corrected definition of ‘Thoringia’ and its connection with Childeric’s family, are important for our story. Childeric’s own power, however, seems to originate further south. In the area north of the Loire and south of the Somme, the end of Roman rule does not appear to have had quite such dramatic results. Recent archaeological work suggests here that at least some villas continued to be occupied well into the fifth century.41 The context for this

38

LH 2.9. Ibid. 40 D. Claude, ‘Universale und partikulare Züge in der Politik Theoderichs,’ Francia 6 (1978), pp. 19–58, at p. 34, n. 108, challenges the notion, although it still appears in B. Schmidt, ‘Das Königreich der Thüringer und seine Eingliederung in das Frankenreich,’ in Wieczorek et al. (ed.), Die Franken, pp. 285–97, at p. 290. 41 P. Van Ossel, ‘La part du Bas-Empire dans la formation de l’habitat rural du Ve siècle’ in N. Gauthier, & H. Gallinié (ed.), Grégoire de Tours et l’Espace Gaulois (Actes 39

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better degree of survival may very well be the continued presence of Roman power in the region, a power focussed on the field army of Aegidius. He appears to have been appointed Magister militum per Gallias (‘Master of Soldiers in Gaul’) by Majorian in 457, and waged apparently successful campaigns there until his death in 465.42 After the death of Majorian in 461, however, his rule was regarded as illegitimate by the imperial government. It is in association with this ‘Roman’ army on the Loire that our sources mention [124] Childeric. None of the earliest sources, including the so-called Annales Andecavenses,43 names Childeric and Aegidius as working together; indeed only the ‘Angers Annals’ mention Childeric by name at all. Yet, there seems clear reason to associate Aegidius with ‘the Franks.’ In 463 Aegidius defeated a Gothic army led by Frederic, the brother of Theoderic II. Hydatius claimed that Aegidius was responding to a Gothic-inspired rebellion against him. The Gallic Chronicle, however, says that Frederic was killed by ‘the Franks.’ The Annales Andecavenses say that Childeric won a battle at Orléans, apparently before the death of Aegidius, which scholars have tended to associate with Aegidius’ victory over Frederic, a plausible but not necessary association. The earliest source to say that Aegidius’ battle took place ‘near Orléans’ is Marius of Avenches.44 It has been suggested that it was Gregory who appended Childeric’s name to a reference in the annals to Franks,45 but this is unlikely; the bishop does not appear to have emended, mediated, or otherwise made any attempt to make sense of the information he acquired in the ‘Angers Annals,’ but simply incorporated it as it was. There was clearly a good deal of campaigning on the Loire by

du Congrès International Tours, 3–5 Novembre 1994) (Paris, 1997), pp. 81–91. See C.E. King, ‘Roman, Local and Barbarian Coinages in Fifth-Century Gaul,’ in Drinkwater & Elton (ed.), Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, pp. 184–95, for the fact that a silver coinage was minted in this area in the mid to later fifth century. 42 Hydatius, Chron. 224 [228]; R.W. Burgess, ‘From Gallia Romana to Gallia Gothica: The View from Spain,’ in Drinkwater & Elton (ed.), Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, pp. 19–27, at p. 26, dates Aegidius’ death to early 465. Other writers place it in 464. 43 LH 2.18. 44 Marius of Avenches, Chron. a. 463: ‘Near Orléans, between the Loire and the Loir’ (inter ligerem et ligericinam). The Gallic Chronicle of 511 (638) simply says ‘by the Loire’ (iuxta Ligerim) (see R. Burgess, ‘The Gallic Chronicle of 511: A new critical edition with brief introduction’, in R.W. Mathisen & D. Shanzer (ed.), Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul: Revisiting the Sources (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 85–100). 45 James, Franks, p. 65.

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Aegidius: Gregory also mentions a miracle associated with Aegidius’ wars there.46 The implication that Aegidius led ‘Franks,’ however, seems clear enough. Gregory of Tours tells the famous story of how Childeric was expelled by the Franks, because of his attempts to seduce their daughters, and went into exile in Thuringia for eight years.47 In his place the Franks chose Aegidius to be their king. The story is curious for a number of reasons, but closer examination of its context may illuminate it. The relationship between sexual probity and political legitimacy (secular or religious) is a leitmotif running through Book 2 of the Historiae.48 Book 2, indeed, begins with the story of St Martin’s successor, Brictius, and his expulsion from the see of Tours, for seven years, for alleged sexual impropriety. The chapter that immediately precedes the tale of Childeric’s exile relates the deposition of the emperor Avitus (455–6) for his libidinous lifestyle. Both Childeric and Avitus fled because they feared they would be killed, by the senate on the one hand, and by the Franks on the other. The two stories make an interesting pair. Chapter 20, which follows the ‘Angers Annals’ and Childeric’s campaigns alongside Odovacar, relates the story of the duke Victorius, who fled from Clermont to Rome because he feared that he was about to be murdered on account of his adulteries. Alas, he was unable to mend his ways and was stoned to death. That story, too, forms half of a pair. This time, the contrast is with the immediately succeeding story of bishop Eparchius of [125] Clermont who was sorely tempted by lust, but managed to overcome this snare. Avitus, of whose family Gregory does not appear to have been fond, lost his throne and life as a result of his sexual misbehaviour, in spite of his (apparently forced and thus insincere) ordination as a bishop. Childeric, on the other hand, retained his throne, settled down to marriage, albeit one with somewhat irregular origins, and sired Clovis. In Gregory’s narration, the role of a woman appears to be important to the difference in their fates. Childeric’s wife was Basina, who Gregory says had been married to king Bisinus of the Thuringians. Basina left her husband and chose to live with Childeric because he had the

46 47 48

Gregory, GC22 for the miraculous delivery of Chinon from a siege by Aegidius. LH 2.12. I am grateful to Danuta Shanzer for drawing my attention to this.

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most utilitas of any king she had heard of. Again, Gregory’s narrative strategy works by juxtaposition. The following chapter describes the turmoil in Clermont during the episcopal election after the death of bishop Venerandus. Here too it is a woman who puts an end to the confusion and validates the final choice. A veiled woman spoke out and predicted that the Lord would choose the next bishop by sending him to Clermont. Sure enough, a holy man called Rusticus appeared on the scene and was unanimously elected. Childeric is bracketed by such figures. His next appearance, in the Annales Andecavenses, is preceded (just as it is succeeded by more stories of the temptations of lust) by Gregory’s discussion of another strong, praiseworthy woman, the wife of Rusticus’ successor, bishop Namatius of Clermont. The strange story of Childeric and Basina now begins to make a certain sense. Fundamentally, all that Gregory seems to have known is that Childeric was deposed, replaced by Aegidius, and fled to ‘Thoringia’, for eight years. He presumably knew that Basina was the name of Clovis’ mother; the name was still used in the Merovingian family in his own day.49 He seems, once again, to have confused Thuringia with a region in the far north of Gaul,50 but he surely knew that the grandfather of St Radegund was a Thuringian king called Bisinus (although it hardly seems likely that he could have reigned in the mid-fifth century).51 Gregory appears to have put ‘Thuringia’ and the alliterative similarity of Basina and Bisinus together into a story that fleshed out and explained Childeric’s exile, giving it a suitable moral dimension, repeating the lesson given throughout Book 2 (that sexual misdemeanour is followed by exile), and facilitating the almost ‘Queen of Sheba’ role played by Clovis’ mother. The story was further elaborated by Fredegar.52

49

LH 9.39; this Basina was the daughter of Chilperic I. He had access to information from the region of Tongres: LH 2.5; here, too, his information was garbled: he gives bishop Servatius’ name as Aravatius. 51 Schmidt, ‘Das Königreich der Thüringer’, p. 290. 52 Fredegar, Chron. 3.11–12, also makes Basina into a prophetess of Merovingian decline, although probably for his own reasons; Wood, ‘Fredegar’s Fables.’ For further discussion of the Childeric and Basina story, and a different suggestion of its origins in ‘romance’, see D. Shanzer, ‘History, Romance, Love, and Sex in Gregory of Tours’ Decem libri historiarum,’ in K. Mitchell & I.N. Wood (ed.), Gregory of Tours (Leiden, 2001). W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (550–800). Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, Paul the Deacon (Princeton, 1988), p. 210, saw the tale as a satirical prediction of the sexual behaviour of the kings of Gregory’s own day. 50

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[126] Worth keeping, however, are the stories of the rivalry of Aegidius and Childeric for leadership of ‘the Franks,’ and of Childeric’s exile in ‘Thoringia,’ which have been related these events to changes in emperor.53 Jarnut associated the expulsion of Childeric with Aegidius’ appointment as magister militum, by Marcian in late 456 or early 457. He linked the return of Childeric to Aegidius’ rebellion against Libius Severus in 461, forcing him to call upon Childeric’s support in his war against Frederic in 463, and consequently to take the title of ‘king of the Franks’: a sign of changing times. Yet, as there is no reference to cooperation between Childeric and Aegidius between 461 and Aegidius’ death in 465, a slightly different chronology might be suggested, retaining a linkage of these events with imperial politics. The expulsion of Childeric may well have been associated with the appointment of Aegidius, in 457. Here one might assume that Childeric, a Frank related to kings in the north, had been left in charge of Roman troops in the region by Aëtius after the defeat of Attila’s invaders in 451: Aëtius’ army at the Campus Mauriacus included a significant contingent of Franks.54 An interval of eight years would place Childeric’s return in 465, and might therefore be associated with Aegidius’ death. Conversely, Aegidius’ death might be associated with Childeric’s return. He was, according to Hydatius,55 poisoned or killed in an ambush. The campaigns of Odovacar at Angers and Childeric at Orléans, which immediately precede Aegidius’ death in the Annales Andecavenses, thus may be part of the process. For the last three or four years of his life, then, Aegidius had waged his wars in opposition to the legitimate government in Italy. Indeed, it is surprising that he neither took an imperial title, nor raised an emperor of his own.56 What he may have done instead was to take the title of king, just as Alaric I seems to have done only at times when he found himself outside the legitimate political structures of the Roman

53 See J. Jarnut, ‘Gregor von Tours, Frankengeschichte II.12: Franci Egidium sibi regem adiscunt: Faktum oder Sage?’, in K. Brunner & B. Mertens (ed.), Ethnogenese und Überlieferung Angewandte Methoden der Frühmittelalterforschung (Vienna, 1994), pp. 129–34. 54 One could also connect this with stories of a Frankish succession dispute and of the alliance of one candidate with Rome: Priscus, fr. 20 (Blockley). 55 Hydatius, Chron. 224 [228]. 56 H. Elton, ‘Defence in Fifth-Century Gaul,’ in Drinkwater & Elton, Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity?, pp. 167–76, at p. 172.

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Empire.57 The north Gallic field army that he commanded, containing a large number of Franks, adopted the identity of ‘the Franks’.58 [127] Childeric had fled to exile in ‘Thoringia,’ in the far north of Gaul. This was the area that his grandfather had taken from the Roman Empire. Ragnachar, the king who ruled Cambrai, one of Chlodio’s conquests, in Clovis’ reign was indeed referred to as a relative of Clovis. Thus, it would seem that at this time of crisis, Childeric had ‘gone home’ to the Frankish settlements in the north. As will be seen, this was a strategy which, in time, his son also would adopt. Clearly it was one that worked. Childeric’s return and Aegidius’ death did not immediately resolve the struggle for power in the region. As the Annales Andecavenses make clear, there was still, in the early 470s, a certain Count Paul commanding a force of Romans and Franks on the Loire. Nonetheless, Childeric appears to have eliminated all his rivals and there can be no doubt that for the rest of his reign he controlled northern Gaul as far as the Loire. The Life of Genovefa refers to him as the king of the Franks with whom she had to deal, and Remigius of Reims states that Clovis’ parentes had ruled Belgica Secunda.59 As seen above, this was an economically and socially more stable and prosperous region than those further north. This, and the basis of military strength in the former field army, will have given the ruler of these Franks an edge over any other competitors for power north of the Loire, and made him a worthy opponent or supporter. For these reasons, Childeric appears to have become an ally of Odovacar’s in the latter’s attack on the Alamanni. In this sense, then, there does seem to have been a ‘kingdom’ north of the Loire, which included Soissons, even if this was not the Roman ‘Kingdom of Soissons’ which is usually envisaged. Clovis’ choice of Paris as his principal urban seat, moreover, may have been related to his father’s association with the city, and made in opposition to Soissons, which, according to Gregory, was the chosen residence of Aegidius and his son Syagrius.

57 Suggested by T.S. Burns, Barbarians Within the Gates of Rome. A Study of Roman Military Policy and the Barbarians, ca. 375–425 AD (Bloomington, 1994), pp. 179–82, 223; this study provides a useful model for the origins of the Merovingian Franks. 58 This was particularly plausible given that the Roman army had been adopting ‘barbarian’ ethnic identities since the early fourth century, as I argue in BMRW. See also P. Amory, People and Identity in Ostrogothic Italy, 489–554 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 86–108. 59 Vita Genovefae 6.25; Ep. Aust. 2.

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At Childeric’s death, however, old tensions appear to have resurfaced. Gregory mentions that the first threat that Clovis faced was from Syagrius, the son of his father’s old rival, Aegidius. Efforts to downplay Syagrius’ significance60—he is, after all, mentioned by no contemporary source—may well be correct even if one wishes to reinstate the ‘Kingdom of Soissons’ in a modified guise. It remains possible, however, that, rather than being merely a minor figure who happened to be Aegidius’ son, Syagrius took the opportunity of Childeric’s death to make a bid for control of his ‘kingdom.’ Syagrius, especially if one takes a date for Childeric’s death later than 481/2, may have been rather older and more established than Clovis. Gregory guessed that Clovis had been forty-five when he died which, as noted above, was certainly a shorthand for ‘in his prime, but not old.’ Regardless of the exact length of his [128] reign, Clovis may not have been very old when he ascended the throne, whereas Syagrius must have been born before 465. Moreover, Gregory implies that Clovis was born after Childeric’s return from exile, which, in this reading, would imply some point after 465. And if Syagrius had been very young at his father’s death, it would explain why he had not been able to challenge Childeric. Changing the translation of Gregory’s famous term rex Romanorum from the language of formal titles—‘King of the Romans’—to the other modern English genitive form—‘the Romans’ king’—might get closer to the sense of Gregory’s informants. Syagrius was the king chosen by the ‘Roman’ faction, in opposition to the son of the Frankish king Childeric. However one reads the fragmentary evidence, it is clear that the first attested challenge Clovis had to face was from the son of his father’s rival. It almost certainly stemmed from the problems of succession. A problematic, indeed disputed, succession would provide the context for Childeric’s grave, which lies in Gregory’s ‘Tungria’—further north than Cambrai, the seat of Ragnachar, his relative. It would seem that, at a point of crisis, Clovis, like his father before him, had ‘gone home.’ This reading makes it unnecessary to dispute whether Remigius’ letter to Clovis dates to before or after the Syagrius war; either reading

60 See James, Franks, pp. 70–1, as ‘no more significant than his contemporary Arbogast.’ The diplomatic and pseudo-constitutional relationships between him and Constantinople mentioned by H. Wolfram, The Roman Empire and its Germanic Peoples (Berkeley, 1994) pp. 186, 203, are based upon modern scholarship rather than contemporary evidence.

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makes sense. But the removal of the date of c. 481 for Clovis’ accession also makes the letter undatable with precision. The display of the burial is staggering. What models did Clovis and his faction draw upon in creating this unique monument? It has been suggested that the idea of a mound was drawn from Hunnic burials,61 and this is possible, the more so given the non-Roman, ‘Danubian’ origins of some of the material culture, which, in late fifth-century Gaul, was probably seen as having associations with the Hunnic kingdom (even if it may ultimately have been derived from Byzantine models). Barrow burials and other mausolea were known in Roman Gaul, however, and one might argue that the idea of marking a grave with a large, above-ground structure like a barrow is so widespread historically that it need not be attributed to any specific model. One should, in any case, allow to Clovis and his advisors and supporters, some ability to create new material cultural ‘texts,’ drawing upon old ideas, playing with them, and creating wholly new aspects. One also should accept that many of the elements of the burial, in terms of artifacts, may have been used hitherto in funerary rituals, but in archaeologically invisible ways,62 as elements of a procession, or as gifts bestowed upon the living. The move to ritual deposition of these things with the dead may thus have been more evolutionary than revolutionary. There also had been a theme of furnished burial in northern Gaul during the fifth-century, albeit one that had been ‘played pianissimo’ in the middle decades of the century.63 The chronology of these burials has undergone much revision in [129] recent years.64 The mid-fifthcentury hiatus may be more apparent than real, especially because it is largely predicated upon the date of c. 481 for Childeric’s grave and an association of furnished burials with Frankish conquest, itself dated to the period after 481 because of assumptions about the relative significance of Clovis’ and Childeric’s reigns and where the ‘front line’ was situated.65 The doubts that can be cast upon the traditional date for the grave mean that one now can look at the archaeology of north Gaul on its

61

Périn & Kazanski, ‘Das Grab.’ I thank Tania Dickinson for this point. 63 BRMS, pp. 335–6 (below, pp. 211–12). 64 Theuws & Alkemade, ‘A Kind of Mirror,’ and refs. 65 See M.J. Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages. The Middle Rhine Valley 400–1000 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 169–70, esp. n. 13; James, Franks, pp. 76–77. 62

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own terms. Doing so demonstrates that a number of the graves of the so-called ‘Flonheim-Gültlingen horizon’ are at least as early as the Childeric grave. The coin-based terminus post quem of the famous ‘tombe de chef,’ grave 319 at Lavoye,66 for example, is exactly the same as Childeric’s burial: 474/91. Thus, in the last quarter of the fifth century, a number of locally powerful families in northern Gaul (a region also including the Germaniae) took to burying their dead with a lavish display of gravegoods. These dead usually were adult males. Some, like Lavoye 319, were men in their prime who had, presumably, died before their sons were old enough to have established a right to succeed smoothly to their social position.67 These burials employ new forms of material culture, and this cannot be other than associated with the final demise of the western empire. New artifact forms were employed to demonstrate power: forms associated not with the old Rome but with newer nonRoman powers on the Danube. The employment of furnished burial ritual speaks of local social instability sparked by the end of the Roman Empire. Thus, no matter how sophisticated analyses of written sources may have argued otherwise, the ‘End of the Roman Empire’ in the west was noticed by people at the time.68 The exceptional nature of Childeric’s burial was thus directly related to the exceptional political stress involved in Clovis’ succession to his father’s position, and, in the precise political circumstances of the end of the fifth century, to the exceptionally high stakes played for. Clovis was demonstrating his right to succeed his father. This display of wealth, and, for our purposes, the Roman seal ring and paludamentum in particular, was doubtless associated with equally lavish feasting and the giving of gifts, whereby Childeric’s supporters were bound to his son, and Clovis’ power legitimated. The occasion doubtless created or maintained other relationships. The stratagem appears to have been successful. Clovis’ campaign against Syagrius was waged with the support of his relative, Ragnachar of Cambrai. It is worth pointing out, nevertheless, that another Frankish king, Chararic, refused to support Clovis; sometimes even

66 67 68

R. Joffroy, Le Cimetière de Lavoye (Meuse) (Paris, 1974). BRMS, pp. 333–5 (below, pp. 209–11). Amory, People and Identity.

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the most elaborate rituals do not have the desired [130] effect.69 Nevertheless, Clovis had sufficient support to be able to defeat Syagrius and re-establish his control over his father’s ‘kingdom,’ and the ‘army.’ The story of the ‘vase of Soissons,’ with its reference to a military parade at a Campus Martius may underline the nature of Clovis’ power-base within a Roman army.70 Thus the basis of Merovingian hegemony, as has often been noted, was service in the Roman army.71 However, it is possible to suggest a slight modification of the traditional reading. Rather than being federates based in Tournai but serving under Roman command, the Merovingian ‘kingdom’ originated as a Roman army, an army that then adopted a Frankish identity.72 This powerful force gave Clovis the strength to challenge the Goths73 and Burgundians for dominance of Gaul, and eventually to eliminate the lesser Frankish kings. Thus, if anything, Merovingian power originated in the Paris basin and spread north. The conclusions reached here have a number of important implications for the archaeology of late fifth-century northern Gaul. Firstly, the abandonment of the precise date of 481 for Childeric’s burial allows a chronology for the artifacts, and burials, of the period to be created that is driven by the archaeological data themselves rather than by the crude employment of an uncertain documentary historical framework. Such a revised chronology, however, should not be forced back into use to plot the movement of the ‘Frankish front line.’ By beginning to move away from crude ethnic or political interpretations of graves one may be able to use them to look at more interesting issues of social history.

69 P. Buc, ‘Ritual and Interpretation: The Early Medieval Case,’ EME 9.2 (2000), pp. 183–210. 70 LH 2.27. 71 E.g. Ewig, Die Merowinger, p. 17. 72 This reading may support the argument of T. Anderson, ‘Roman Military Colonists in Gaul, Salian Ethnogenesis and the Forgotten Meaning of Pactus Legis Salicae 59.5,’ EME 4.2 (1995), pp. 129–44. It also may lie behind the story told by Procopius, Wars 5.12.13–15, about the fusion of the ‘Germans’ and the ‘Arborychoi,’ although one should probably place little reliance upon Procopius’ stories about the west. 73 Perhaps as early as the 490s: ‘Auctor.Havnensis’ s.a. 496, 498, for which see Consularia Italica [a collection of annalistic texts grouped by Theodor Mommsen under this misleading title], MGH AA vol. 9, Chronica Minora saec. IV. V. VI. VII, vol. 1, ed. Mommsen, T., (Berlin, 1892), pp. 249–339, at p. 331. These references do not name Clovis as the Frankish leader.

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The political reconstruction presented here is largely speculative, and other readings are possible, but it chimes with recent thinking on the subject, and makes sense of aspects of the evidence that have not hitherto been much discussed. The association of the lavish funeral display with Clovis’ uneasy succession to political leadership in the Paris basin must be retained. The less extravagantly furnished burials in the centuries following Childeric’s demise, particularly ‘founder burials’ and the graves of mature adult males, can be seen in similar terms. Stresses and strains on social relationships are caused by death, when the transmission of social standing from one generation to the next is insecure. Like thousands of other people in the late fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries who buried their dead with grave-goods, Clovis used the elaborate burial of his father to recreate a web of social relationships and to establish a right to succeed to a social position. His [131] subsequent career testifies that, in his case, the tactic worked.74

74 I am immensely grateful to Danuta Shanzer and Ralph Mathisen for inviting me to submit this chapter very late in the volume’s production, and for their very helpful editorial comments. This paper owes a tremendous debt to the work of Edward James on Childeric, Syagrius, and the so-called kingdom of Soissons. I should like to thank Professor James for ultimately providing the inspiration for this work and so much of my other research. Frans Theuws has provided many stimulating discussions of fifthcentury Gallic archaeology. I have also drawn inspiration from the works of Jarnut on Childeric and Aegidius, of Wood on Gregory’s vision of Clovis, and of Burns on the origins of Alaric’s ‘kingdom,’ and acknowledge those debts.

Commentary Three Once more unto Saint-Brice

The preceding chapter, as the closing foot-note makes clear, was, like Chapter 1, written at short notice to fill a gap in a volume. I was very glad to receive Danuta Shanzer’s invitation as the volume in which it appeared featured many of the contributors to Fifth-Century Gaul: A Crisis of Identity? about a decade earlier. As more than one person commented, Society and Culture in Late Roman Gaul. Revisiting the Sources could to some extent be seen as Fifth-Century Gaul: Ten Years On. It was an honour to appear in another well-received volume alongside so many other leading scholars. Like Drinkwater and Elton’s, Mathisen and Shanzer’s collection featured up-and-coming researchers as well as established writers (some of whom had made the transition between the two categories in the intervening decade). It should be stated at the outset that the paper was, after the section about the problems of dating Clovis’ accession, aimed only at presenting a possible hypothesis about the circumstances which might have led Clovis to bury his father in such an elaborate fashion. Other reconstructions of the politics from our very patchy data are, naturally, equally plausible. I would, nevertheless, stand by the rejection of the documentary bases of the traditional date for the grave and insist that the ‘moving front’ model of Frankish conquest is wholly insufficient for understanding the establishment of Merovingian power in northern Gaul. I also maintain that we need to speculate on what lay behind the creation of Childeric’s grave. That it was a passive reflection of Childeric’s status will simply not suffice; nor will attempts to remove Clovis from the decision-making processes surrounding the monument’s creation (see below). Some additional comments must be made, either to correct my statements or to respond to critiques. The most significant area where my paper needs to be corrected concerns the ‘gold and garnet’ or polychrome style of metalwork associated with the ‘Flonheim-Gültlingen Horizon’ of late fifth-century burials. In this paper, and other works, I repeat the old association of this style of metalwork with the Danubian realms of the Goths and Huns to conclude:

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These burials employ new forms of material culture, and this cannot be other than associated with the final demise of the western empire. New artifact forms were employed to demonstrate power: forms associated not with the old Rome but with newer non-Roman powers on the Danube. The employment of furnished burial ritual speaks of local social instability sparked by the end of the Roman Empire. Thus, no matter how sophisticated analyses of written sources may have argued otherwise, the ‘End of the Roman Empire’ in the west was noticed by people at the time.1

Although I noted the possibility that the style was, even if the immediate inspiration was Danubian, ultimately traceable to the Byzantine court,2 I was unaware of the extent to which more recent work was undermining the Danubian connection, if not coming to any sort of new consensus.3 It now seems clear that this metalwork is of Mediterranean—and therefore Roman—origin. Debate concerns whether the style reached the north from the east or the west of the Mediterranean but in either case this must force a significant revision of some of my conclusions. The appearance of the style in the burials of northern Gaul in the last quarter of the fifth century cannot be a simple manifestation of a turning away from Rome and adoption of styles consciously associated with the non-Roman world. A detailed study by Philipp von Rummel argues coherently that, when compared with other graves and finds from around the Mediterranean, and with artistic depictions, the material visible in Childeric’s burial represents fairly typical high-status, military dress associated with the Roman Empire.4 Von Rummel argues that although Mediterranean and ‘Roman’ this costume, because associated with the army, itself now largely made up of barbarians and associated with them, came to be thought of as 1

CGCS, p. 129 (above, p. 185). CGCS, p. 128 (above, p. 184). 3 Compare, for example, M. Kazanski & P. Périn, ‘La tombe de Childéric et la question de l’origine des parures de style cloisonné’. Antiquités Nationales 28 (1996), pp. 203–209; M. Kazanski, A. Mastykova & P. Périn, ‘Byzance et les royaumes barbares d’occident au début de l’époque mérovingienne’, in Probleme der frühen Merowingerzeit im Mitteldonauraum (Brno, 2002), pp. 159–93 (western Mediterranean origins); H.-W. Böhme, Der Frankenkönig Childerich zwischen Attila und Aëtius: Zu dem Goldgriffspathen der Merowingerzeit’ in C. Dobiat (ed.) Festschrift für O.-H. Frey zum 65. Geburtstag (Marburger Studien zur Vor-und Frühgeschichte 16; Marburg, 1994), pp. 69–110; M. Schmauder, ‘Die Oberschichtgräber und Verwahrfunde Südosteuropas und das Childerichgrab con Tournai. Anmerkungen zu den spatantiken Randkulturen.’ Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 30 (1998), pp. 55–68 (eastern Mediterranean/Byzantine origin). 4 P. von Rummel, Habitus Barbarus: Kleidung und Repräsentation spätantiker Eliten im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Berlin, 2007), pp. 368–75. 2

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barbarian dress. In this case the precise nature of the message aimed to be transmitted at Childeric’s funeral must have been somewhat different from that which I hypothesised above. Clovis would have been proclaiming his father’s claims to military authority, possibly underlining the Roman bases of that authority, perhaps demonstrating his father’s membership of the ‘barbarian’ military élite of the now defunct Empire. This would still reinforce my hypothesis that the display involved in the burial stems from political insecurity surrounding Clovis’ accession. Indeed, if the chief competitor for Childeric’s position was the rex romanorum Syagrius, then the overt display of Roman symbols of power and authority takes on added meaning. It still appears to be accepted that a new phase of burials employing these types of artefacts begins around the time of Childeric’s burial. Coin dates from graves like Lavoye 319 offer indications of the period 474–91.5 One might still link this upsurge in display to the crises surrounding the demise of the western Empire. Other areas where my comments need modification or correction concern my allusion to the idea of burial as text, which receives longer consideration in chapter 6, and the idea of a hiatus of furnished burial in the middle of the fifth century. The latter should be played down even more, although it still seems to be correct that that such graves were neither as numerous nor as lavish in that period as they were in the first and final quarters of the century. There is in particular a gendered aspect to this point in that female burials seem to show less of a hiatus and more of a continuation in the forms of object deposited than the male. Some steps towards an explanation of this fact are suggested above.6 There is another issue at stake in the burial: the rise in the importance of heredity in claiming political power. This is more appropriately the subject of a separate study but some points may be briefly highlighted here. Family ties linked barbarian officers, with and without royal titles, and the highest imperial Roman aristocracy (including the imperial families) from the late fourth century onwards.7 We have 5

CGCS, p. 129 (above, p. 185). Above, pp. 166–7. 7 See, classically, A. Demandt, The osmosis of late Roman and Germanic aristocracies’, in E. Chrysos & A. Schwarcz (ed.), Das Reich und die Barbaren (Vienna, 1989), pp. 75–86; Recently, W. Goffart, Barbarian Tides: The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire (Philadelphia, 2006), esp. pp. 187–239, takes this up as a general explanation for the demise of the western Empire. 6

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long been accustomed to seeing the ‘barbarians’ as different, by virtue of their kingly titles, but closer inspection reveals rather less difference between them and the leaders of Roman military factions than might be supposed. The son-in-law of the Magister Militum Boniface, Sebastian, clearly expected to succeed to his father-in-law’s pre-eminence; command of the Dalmatian army passed, after the assassination of the general Marcellinus, to his nephew Julius, later the last legitimate emperor of the West. Syagrius at least claimed the succession to his father Aegidius’ military power base. Meanwhile the Vandals made much of their familial links to the Theodosian dynasty, fighting a long war to put Olybrius, brother-in-law to the heir to the Vandal kingdom, on the imperial throne (ungratefully, Olybrius died within a few months of his eventual accession). The matter was never clearcut, as the bloody succession politics of the Gothic kingdom or the obscure familial ties of the Burgundian kings show. An important issue for discussion, however, is that, as the leadership of political and military factions in the regions of the Empire came to be expected (at least by the families of those involved) to be—like the imperial throne—hereditary, then the ability of the government in the centre to project its authority over the diverse provinces must have been seriously compromised. In that sense the Fall of the Roman Empire might have, in some small and superficial ways, resembled the break-up of the Carolingian Empire 400 years later.8 In this sense, Clovis’ strident claim to his father’s power was another symptom of the changes taking place in fifth-century western Europe. Other modifications are required by further consideration of the documentary sources. Three points must be underlined, concerning Remigius’ letter to Clovis. First, the fact that Remigius congratulates Clovis for taking over the government of Belgica Secunda by no means implies that that province was the only one ruled by his parentes. Remigius was metropolitan bishop of Belgica Secunda so his concerns were limited to his area of jurisdiction. No significance can be attached, therefore, to his failure to mention Belgica Prima, Lugdunensis Secunda or Lugdunensis Senonia. Second, Remigius refers to the rule of his metropolitan province by Clovis’ parentes. This word means ‘relatives’ rather than ‘parents’, so Childeric is not necessarily 8 Pace P. Heather, The Fall of Rome: A New History (Oxford, 2005), pp. 436–7, 449, who argues that the collapses of the Roman and Carolingian Empires were fundamentally dissimilar.

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implicit in the word.9 Ragnachar of Cambrai (a city within Belgica Secunda) was also a parens of Clovis, according to Gregory of Tours.10 A comment by Gregory, in his discussion of the war against Syagrius, is possibly significant. He says that Ragnachar regnum tenebat (‘held a [or even the] kingdom [or kingship]’). Perhaps Clovis did not succeed his father directly or perhaps, given Gregory’s tendency to use the singular noun regnum to describe the whole of Gaul even when it was divided into several kingdoms, a Frankish realm had been partitioned between Childeric and Ragnachar. Either way, this might lend support to the hypothesis of a tense succession (as continued to be the case through the sixth century when Merovingians died11). Third, the letter is undatable and could, in light of the preceding comment, conceivably have been written after Clovis’ defeat of Ragnachar, completing his take-over of the province, hitherto divided between the kings. The implication of Remigius’ letter that its recipient was a young king does not necessarily negate this suggestion. Clovis’ war against Ragnachar of Cambrai is undatable. We can place it, because of Gregory’s mention of Ragnachar’s involvement, only as after the ‘Syagrius War’, itself no more precisely datable than in the (undatable) fifth year of Clovis’ reign. Gregory places the killing of Ragnachar at the end of his discussion of Clovis’ life, alongside the discussion of his conquest of two other Frankish realms, one of which (the conquest of the Rhineland kingdom of Sigibert the Lame, whose son fought at ‘Vouillé) must belong after 507. However, given the stylised nature of his account of Clovis, and especially of the killing of the rival Frankish kings,12 we can probably not date these wars so confidently to the end of Clovis’ reign—I was clearly mistaken in that regard.13 Especially in terms of constructing a political historical narrative or in drawing maps of late fifth-century political geography, the weight that can be placed upon Remigius’ letter is strictly limited.

9

Contrary to what I wrote in CGCS, p. 120 (above, p. 174). LH 2.27: cum Ragnachario parente suo; 2.42: fuerint autem supradicti regis [sic Ragnachar and Richhar, his brother] propinqui huius. 11 See, classically, I.N. Wood, ‘Kings, kingdoms and consent’, in P.H. Sawyer & I.N. Wood (ed.) Early Medieval Kingship (Leeds, 1977), pp. 6–29. 12 For discussion of which I am immensely grateful to Adrian Smith, whose doctoral research on Books 1–4 of the Histories will shed great light on the subject. 13 CGCS, p. 118 (above, p. 172), n. 18: this of course entirely negates my point about four of five actors in the Syagrius War still being alive in 507. Only Clovis and Alaric II were necessarily still alive at the start of that year. 10

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Finally, there is a curious coincidence. I note above the theme of the relationship between sexual morality and political legitimacy that runs throughout Book 2 of Gregory’s Histories.14 This begins with the tale of Saint Martin’s successor Brictius, expelled from Tours for seven years on account of alleged sexual misdemeanours. I note that this provides a parallel for the tale of Childeric’s exile and eventual return. What, inexplicably, I failed to note was the fact that the church that was eventually built on the site of Childeric’s grave was dedicated to Saint Brictius.15 Whether there is anything more than coincidence in this—whether there was some earlier association between Childeric and Brictius’ cult, because of the similarities in their careers—is unknown, unknowable and possibly unlikely, but worth pondering. Alain Dierkens and Patrick Périn, in a paper on the Frankish political take-over in northern Gaul,16 prefer to see the burial’s location in Tournai as stemming from the fact that that was where Childeric had died rather than, as I had argued, because Clovis had taken his father back north to be buried, and thus establish his right to succeed to his father’s status in the Frankish world, as well as enlisting his relatives’ help against Syagrius. Their interpretation (which is after all the usual one) is certainly the simplest and for that reason, on balance, probably to be preferred. What Childeric was doing in Tournai, however, is another matter. It is far from certain that Tournai was Childeric’s principal seat. As stated above, all the written sources link him with regions further south, with the possible exception of Remigius’ letter and its reference to Clovis’ parentes having the administration of Belgica Secunda, although, for reservations, especially about limiting the extent of Childeric’s realm on this account, see above. Tournai lies further north than Cambrai, Ragnachar’s chef-lieu: a fact that must be of some import, even if we can now do no more than guess what that was, not least because it suggests that Childeric cannot have governed all of Belgica Secunda, if Remigius’ letter did refer to him. We know 14

CGCS, pp. 124–5 (above, pp. 179–80). This is something that only occurred to me when giving a version of chapter 4 as a paper to the Earlier Middle Ages Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, in January 2001. I should like to thank those who participated in that discussion. 16 A. Dierkens & P. Périn, ‘The 5th-century advance of the Franks in Belgica II: history and archaeology’, in E. Taayke, J.H. Looijenga, O.H. Harsema & H.R. Reinders (ed.), Essays on the Early Franks (Groningen, 2003), pp. 165–93. See also P. Périn, ‘La Progression des Francs en Gaule du nord au Ve siècle: Histoire et archéologie’, in D. Geuenich (ed.), Die Franken und die Alemannen bis zur “Schlacht bei Zülpich” (Berlin, 1988), pp. 59–81. 15

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nothing of the circumstances surrounding Childeric’s death. He might have succumbed on campaign against Frankish rivals; he might have returned north to die; he might have established his base there; Syagrius himself might have driven him north from the Paris region. None of these suggestions circumnavigates the point that the written sources associate Childeric with the Loire and with the area around Paris—a fact which, on its own, presents decisive difficulties for the ‘moving front’ model. The political geography of the year when Childeric died need not have reflected that which pertained when he came to power; for all we know, the territory he governed when he died could have retreated northwards, dramatically and recently, rather than growing, slowly and steadily pushing southwards. If Childeric had been forced to move his base of operations back into the far north of Gaul, then that would, moreover, strengthen my argument that the burial display was linked to the uncertain political circumstances surrounding Clovis’ accession. Indeed, whatever one believes the circumstances of Childeric’s death, or the nature of the Frankish take-over of northern Gaul, to have been, one must still account for the nature of the burial, which is unique in Frankish Gaul. Dierkens and Périn make two general criticisms of my argument: that I ignore the archaeological sources and that I make some inexact statements of historical geography. I am not entirely sure what is meant by either. By my ignorance of the archaeological sources is presumably meant one, or both, of two things: my failure to discuss the furnished burials of mid- to late fifth-century northern Gaul or to consider the horse burials of Thuringia. The furnished burials of the region take on an importance in Dierkens and Périn’s work because their chronology and geographical extent are pressed into service to support the steadily southward-moving advance of Frankish conquest. They are associated with particular ethnic groups. As chapters 2 and 3 show, I reject the linkage of such graves with ‘Germanic’ warrior groups, being more interested in the socio-political circumstances behind the appearance of such burials. The relative chronology of these groups of graves is, furthermore, as Frans Theuws and Monica Alkemade have demonstrated, brilliantly and at length, much less secure than is often imagined.17 However one reads these graves, my point is that they provide

17

F. Theuws & M. Alkemade, M., ‘A kind of mirror for men: sword depositions in Late Antique northern Gaul’ in F. Theuws & J.L. Nelson (ed.) (2000), pp. 401–76.

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a back-drop to Clovis’ extremely elaborate employment of furnished inhumation and stem, I suggest, from fundamentally analogous circumstances. The problem with Périn and Dierkens’ model, even were one to accept the ethnic reading, is that, as I have discussed above in comment on chapters 2 and 3, it is insufficient as an explanation for the appearance of these graves. Why would these ‘Germanic’ incomers bury their dead like this? This argument, like that which desperately seeks ethnic origins for the women buried with (if the truth be known) equally problematic jewellery18 amongst the wives of ‘east Germanic’ mercenaries of different types, is much too limiting. The Thuringian graves are irrelevant in my view. They involve the burial of horses, albeit not in necessarily the same way (let alone quantity), and some similar artefacts although that probably stems, as has long been known, from the popularity of a particular fashion, influenced by Roman élite military dress. Again, though, rather than seeking an explanation in the diffusion of a form of burial, one ought to be asking why these graves were deemed appropriate. The Thuringians were a new people and these graves were neither numerous nor a long-standing local tradition. Like Childeric’s grave, they represent a response to changing circumstances. The investigation of those circumstances is much more fruitful than the attempt to rule out more searching and interesting explanations by simple appeal to the copying of a model. Even if it were copied, why was it copied? By inexact political geography is, I imagine, meant my discussion of Gregory’s location of Thoringia in the far north of Gaul.19 I reiterate that my article was meant only to provide a hypothesis but the fact remains that Gregory uses the same word, Thoringia, to mean the Thuringian kingdom destroyed by Clovis’ sons in the 530s and an area which he specifically locates on the left bank of the Rhine in northern Gaul. Serious problems are raised by a literal acceptance of the tale of Childeric’s 18 Von Rummel, Habitus Barbarus, pp. 258–64. For an extreme example of the argument, see P. Périn, ‘L’Armée de Vidimer et la question des dépôts funéraires chez les Wisigoths en Gaule et en Espagne (Ve–VIe siècles)’, in F. Vallet & M. Kazanski (ed.), L’Armée Romaine et les Barbares du IIIe au VIIe Siècle (Paris, 1993), pp. 411–23. For further discussion see above, pp. 69–70. 19 The identification with Tongres is apparently accepted by J. Vanderspoel, ‘From Empire to kingdoms in the West’ in P. Rousseau (ed.), Companion to Late Antiquity (Oxford 2009), pp. 426–40, at pp. 426–33. This presents yet another hypothesis for the emergence of Clovis’ kingdom, though unfortunately not one I find very plausible. Its hypothesis starts from points which are themselves very insecure, such as the dates I critique in chapter 4.

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Thuringian exile (see below) and I presented a reconstruction of how Gregory could have constructed the story, for his own didactic purposes, on the basis of some misunderstandings (the similarity of the names Basina and Bisinus; the confusion of the Thuringian kingdom with an area in the north of Gaul, perhaps stemming from the name of the civitas tungrorum). Dierkens and Périn accept Gregory’s confusion even if they reject the idea that he had muddled Thoringia up with Tongres.20 It might, I admit, be simpler to reject the entire episode as a moral tale with no factual basis,21 even than to retain only the eightyear exile as I (and Jörg Jarnut) do. That Childeric, if he were indeed driven out of his command over his Franks (whom our sources place on the Loire), would have gone into exile in Frankish northern Gaul nevertheless seems a more reasonable hypothesis than that he fled to the Elbe Valley, especially when we can see that Gregory confused one region of Frankish northern Gaul with Thuringia. There are three key problems with Dierkens and Périn’s own explanation of the grave. First, they ignore the fact that the written sources never associate Childeric specifically with anywhere other than the Paris Basin and the Loire valley, espousing instead the ‘moving front’ model of Frankish settlement, pinning this, questionably, to particular burials. Second, they uncritically accept Gregory’s chronology of Clovis’ reign and, thirdly, they believe without demur his tale of Childeric’s Thuringian exile. I deal with the problems involved in all of these approaches above. There is no profit in restating those points. In accepting the Bishop of Tours’ story of Childeric’s exile in Thuringia Dierkens and Périn ignore, leaving aside the fact that they do not engage in any literary analysis of the passage and its context and the issues mentioned earlier, the problems presented by the mention of King Bisinus who, to accept their view, would have to have been married—to Basina—eighty years or so before the death in battle of his last surviving son, Hermenfrid (who was himself still youthful enough to have young children, one of whom died over half a century later, in 587). Not impossible, but not very likely.

20

Dierkens & Périn, ‘The 5th-century advance of the Franks in Belgica II’, p. 169. As does B. Schmidt, ‘Die Thüringer’, in Auktorenkollektiv, Die Germanen: Ein Handbuch Vol. 2 (Berlin, 1983), pp. 502–48, at p. 503, n. 154. 21

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For Dierkens and Périn,22 Childeric went into exile in Thuringia, where, fortuitously, he happened to witness the lavish burials of some local aristocrats, with horses. He apparently thought that this was a good idea and so planned his own funeral23 (this interpretation neatly and conveniently leaves Clovis, who cannot have known about Thuringian graves, out of the equation) to accord with the Thuringian burials that had so impressed him. He either had a good memory or the Thuringian funerals were very memorable, or he planned his funeral about twenty years before he died. There was no issue of stress or difficult inheritance involved, and thus no exploration is needed of why such a funerary display might have been thought advantageous, either by Childeric or indeed by the Thuringians. It seems fairest to leave it to the reader to decide which interpretation represents the more sophisticated reading of the documentary and excavated material.

22 Whose interpretation is repeated by B.K. YOUNG, ‘Tomb of Childeric’, (http:// www.novelguide.com/a/discover/aneu_02/aneu_02_00230.html, accessed 4 August 2008). Young dismisses my own hypothesis with the curt statement that there is no evidence for it. There is, of course, no evidence to support Dierkens and Périn’s (in my view rather less likely) reconstruction, either. That is the way of late fifth-century Gallic political history, so it will not do to reject theories on those grounds alone. 23 Dierkens & Périn, ‘The 5th-century advance of the Franks in Belgica II’, p. 183.

PART THREE

BURIALS, RITUALS AND COMMEMORATION: THE EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA, 1995–2009

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE

The three chapters in this section in many ways represent the core of the present volume. They link the studies of the origins of furnished burial in Part 2 to those of Merovingian society in Part 4. They develop the ideas expressed in Part 2 about why the inhabitants of northern Gaul should have chosen to bury artefacts with their dead and thus provide the essential basis for the social analyses of Part 4. Just as one cannot evaluate the information contained in a written text without understanding the rules of genre and composition, it is difficult, if not impossible, to understand what conclusions may be drawn from the analysis of burials without first exploring the reasons for the creation of this body of material. As with Part 2, the first two chapters reveal a development in my ideas. The publication history of the two pieces means, unfortunately, that they contain more than a little repetition (esp. pp. 216–20). Unlike Part 2, however, where my argument was progressively developed along a particular line of reasoning, here chapter 6 espouses, to some extent, a move away from the ideas expressed in the chapter 5. The idea is further modified and developed in commentary 4, in response to critique by other researchers. The third chapter in this part (chapter 7) follows up some of the points made in commentary 4 by exploring the implications of the first two chapters for the understanding of religion and conversion, in AngloSaxon England as well as in northern Gaul.

CHAPTER FIVE

BURIAL, RITUAL AND MEROVINGIAN SOCIETY*

Frederick Paxton has written that: Archaeological finds are rich but anthropologists and archaeologists have not solved the vexing problems of the relations between ritual behaviour and mortuary remains, or between religious change and forms of burial. In neither case is there an easy way to derive the former from the latter.1

Identifying religious change from burial forms is indeed a thankless task as numerous studies have shown,2 although these have not yet made much impact on early medieval archaeology. However, if we turn to the first of Paxton’s problems, the relationship between mortuary remains and ritual behaviour, then there are greater grounds for optimism, and it is on this subject that some ideas will be proposed in this essay. The paper is grounded primarily in the data of the Merovingian region of Metz.3 The relevant evidence almost [326] exclusively comprises archaeological data: burials with grave-goods. Written descriptions of funerals come mainly from further south, where different burial styles were in use, and this makes it difficult to match up the plentiful archaeological data from north of the Loire with what we know about funerals from written sources. Nevertheless, general comparisons can be suggested. Study of Anglo-Saxon and Alamannic * Originally published in J. Hill & M. Swan (ed.), The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe (Turnhout, 1998), pp. 325–38. Reprinted with permission of Brepols Academic Publishers. Apart from the harmonisation of foot-note style, the article is reproduced as it originally appeared. 1 F.S. Paxton, Christianizing Death. The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe, (Cornell 1990), p. 3. 2 See, above all, B.K. Young, ‘Merovingian Funeral Rites and the Evolution of Christianity: A study in the Historical Interpretation of Archaeological Material,’ PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania (1975). 3 S&S contains the empirical basis for this paper: cc. 3–4 for discussion of cemetery sites, the problems of the data, and references, and cc. 8–9 for interpretation. This paper develops some aspects of that interpretation. Some elements also derive from a paper, ‘Burying the author? Graves as texts in the study of gender in sixth-century Merovingian society,’ given to the Gender and Medieval Studies Group’s annual conference in Cardiff in January 1992.

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cemeteries also suggests that this paper’s general points might be more widely applicable in ‘grave-good-burying’ regions. The advantage of the archaeological evidence is that it allows us to study a ritual over two hundred years of development, permitting us to introduce both the temporal element which is all too often absent in anthropological studies of ritual, and to look at practice, rather than what people periodically said should be done, something rarely possible in documentary historical analyses. In the early medieval period it is very rare, too, to be able to follow the workings of a frequent ritual over two centuries. Burial north of the Loire can be divided into a number of constituent components, all of which are visible in the excavated evidence. It should be stressed that each of these components represents the outcome of particular, active choices. First of all, the body seems to have been dressed for its burial. The funerary clothing could be elaborate or extremely simple (maybe just a shroud), leaving no archaeological trace; it is extremely unlikely that anybody was actually interred naked. The body was, however, dressed in a very deliberate way, as will be seen. At about the same time, the grave was dug at the cemetery site. A number of variables were, again, open: the grave’s shape and size, the means, if any, of revetting its sides; the possible construction of chambers within the grave for the deposition of particular gravegoods. [327] Then the body was transported to the cemetery. As far as one can tell, sixth-century Merovingian cemeteries, like Roman graveyards, lay away from the centres of habitation, so the transportation of the body must have processed at least a few hundred metres. The body was then interred. Like the clothing of the body, its positioning appears to have been another variable, resulting from conscious choices. Any grave-goods could include other dress adjuncts, like belts and purses or pouches, not worn but placed by the body, and it is important to note the difference between these options. Other accessories to costume, such as weaponry, could, in the case of swords or scramasaxes, be worn in their scabbards, or deposited next to, or otherwise on the body. Finally, there was an array of other grave-goods, such as pottery, glass-ware, other vessels, and so on, deposited around the body. The positioning of the grave-goods was, again, deliberate and meaningful. A final element of the funeral process was feasting by the grave. This is suggested by a number of archaeological features: pits on cemetery

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sites containing ashes, bones and broken pottery; similar traces in the fills of graves; and pottery and other food offerings in the grave itself. The latter evidence and the position of other elements in the grave’s fill suggest that the feasting was done before the grave was filled in. The key to understanding grave-goods deposits like these is to see the funeral as an important space for the writing of a symbolic ‘text’.4 The artefacts placed in the grave were significant vessels for the storage and transmission of social information. It seems that an artefact’s size and material could be used to convey important information. Not only that, but pottery and metalwork provide surfaces which were frequently decorated. This decoration has only recently begun to be studied as a form of iconography5 but one thing [328] which has been remarked upon is the apparently deliberate ambiguity of its symbolism. This leads to an important point; even at the most basic level, objects are polysemic. The example used by Ellen-Jane Pader,6 perhaps the first person to reveal the fact that burials were texts which had to be read in much more sophisticated ways than had hitherto (or, for that matter, since) been the case, is that of the straw hat or boater. As an item of clothing it could symbolise an Etonian, a Vaudeville performer or a gondolier. To decide which of these is the case we need more contextual information. To be ‘translated’ at a basic level, all symbols, no matter how elaborate or technical, have to be incorporated into sets with other symbols. This is true not only of items of clothing, but of all the other variables mentioned above. It is surely unreasonable to suppose that crossing the deceased’s arms on his or her chest, or digging a grave with bowed sides or rounded ends, always

4 On interpreting material culture as text, see C. Tilley (ed.), Reading Material Culture. Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism (Oxford, 1990); D. Miller, Artefacts as Categories. A Study of Ceramic Variability in Central India (Cambridge, 1985). 5 D. Leigh, ‘Ambiguity in Anglo-Saxon Style I art,’ Antiquaries Journal 64 (1984), 34–42; T.M. Dickinson, ‘Material culture as social expression: The case of Saxon saucer brooches with running spiral decoration,’ Studien zur Sachsenforschung 7 (1991), 39–70; Heinrich Härke, ‘Changing symbols in a changing society: The Anglo-Saxon weapon burial rite in the seventh century,’ in M.O.H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo: The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe, (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 149–65; J.D. Richards, ‘Anglo-Saxon symbolism,’ in Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo, pp. 131–47. 6 E.-J. Pader, ‘Material symbolism and social relations in mortuary studies,’ in P.A. Rahtz, T.M. Dickinson & L. Watts (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries 1979, (BAR(B) 82; Oxford, 1980), pp. 143–59. See also E.-J. Pader, Symbolism, Social Relations and the Interpretation of Mortuary Remains (BAR(I) 130; Oxford, 1981).

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meant exactly the same thing. All the elements listed earlier form individual symbols, or ‘words’. Some may relate to different things; others may add emphasis or clarification. But it is the burial itself which combines these into an overall coded message. To understand this message, then, we need to look at all the variables and study closely their correlations and combinations. This would seemingly give an almost endless array of possibilities, and this study is limited by the fact that excavators of Merovingian cemeteries do not yet observe or publish all the necessary information. In this paper I should like to pursue this symbolic, linguistic interpretation by analogy with ritual language. [329] It is, furthermore, important to note that the precise meaning of a statement or symbol, or its ‘tone’, is also created by the context in which it is made or seen. The early medieval cemetery, a shared ritual site away from the settlement and reached by a funerary procession, ‘frames’ the statement made by the burial; it is the context which clarifies the precise meaning of the symbolic language employed in the burial.7 In other words, the meanings of symbols which might, in everyday life, have been employed in diverse and imprecise ways are focussed into a particular semantic range by the clear context in which the symbols are employed. The best way to see the sixth-century cemetery is as the field for a frequently competitive discourse, with individual graves as the (albeit lacunose) texts of statements within that discourse, and the elements of the burial as the symbolic language used to make the statement. There is another important element to be understood here: time. This text was intended to be read, and understood, very briefly. As soon as the grave was filled in, seemingly at the end of the rite, the message would no longer be visible. It therefore needed a large audience, of people present during the ritual. Sixth-century cemeteries appear to be large, and apparently served a number of local settlements. This, of course, allowed the funeral to incorporate and unify, at least potentially, all the elements of a dispersed rural community in a shared ritual.8 The procession with the body from the settlement to the cemetery would also help display certain elements of the message to an audience. We can confirm that all this did constitute a public field of display, if confirmation is felt necessary, from the fragmentary

7 8

For a discussion of framing, see Miller, Artefacts as Categories, pp. 181–3. This, of course, is a standard element of ritual.

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written sources. Gregory of Tours, for example, refers to people following a royal funeral procession in Soissons ‘as though dressed up for the burial of their spouses’.9 To be understood by this large but transient audience, the display [330] needed clear rules, the ‘grammar’ discussed above, and the clarification of the symbolism by its ‘framing’ within the cemetery. Some of this grammar becomes visible in the course of closer analysis. There are some correlations between the grave-goods, their type and their number, and the age and sex of the deceased. This shows that the clothing of the corpse, as well as the other artefacts placed in the grave with the body, was deliberately chosen to transmit information about the deceased. There were other correlations suggested, between skeletal positioning and grave-type, between the lay-out of the gravegoods and grave-type, and between grave-size and grave-type, but on the whole all the variables seemed fundamentally independent.10 One thing which should be noted is that the people who received the most lavish interments, in terms of grave-goods at least, were those who will have played an important public role: young women; young male adults; and especially some mature adult males. This seems to be mirrored in the public nature of their burial. How does all this work as ritual?11 The first point is that it deals with cosmology. We do not know what was said over the grave as part of the ‘funeral service’ or feasting, and our evidence gives us but few clues in this. Funerals obviously involved a supernatural element, but the evidence we have is concerned with other elements of cosmology. This, I think, is fundamental to our understanding. If we recognise that ritual is about the definition and redefinition of cosmology then the common misconception that ritual has to incorporate some kind of supernatural element is sidestepped; cosmology, as Tambiah says,12 involves man’s relations with man (or woman), child with adult, young

9

LH 5.34. See S&S, cc. 3–4. 11 On the nature of ritual, I have been most heavily influenced by the concise and pertinent comments of J. Black-Michaud, Feuding Societies (London, 1975), pp. 209– 17; and by the work of S.J. Tambiah, Culture, Thought and Social Action. An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., 1985). 12 S.J. Tambiah, ‘A performative approach to ritual,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 65 (1979), pp. 113–69, reprinted in id., Culture, Thought and Social Action, pp. 123–66. I cite the 1985 reprint. The article contains a splendid bibliography of ritual studies. 10

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with old, man’s [331] relation with nature, as well as man’s relations with the supernatural, the gods. The clothing and other grave-goods make a display of the deceased person’s identity. They set out how a person of that age and gender was to be seen, setting out symbols of the role of people of that station in life. I have interpreted these statements of roles elsewhere,13 and do not intend to go into them here. But, like all ritual, this involves the use of what might be termed ‘heightened’ language. All the evidence suggests that the grave-goods, even the contents of purses and pouches, were deliberately chosen. A comparatively restricted array of objects is employed to give an idealized depiction of the deceased’s social identity. A wide range of things which may well have been very important in everyday life are not interred on all sites, or are only employed in very specific circumstances. The use of a restricted range of artefacts brings with it a concomitant aspect of ritual ‘language’: repetition. The repeated use of particular types of grave-goods in association with particular groups of people serves to reassure the participants; it superimposes what is recognized, familiar, or ‘safe’, on circumstances which are potentially critical, threatening and unknown. By the use of well-understood symbols or references the ritual ‘remakes’ comparable scenes from the past. It links the current burial to previous burials of the same kind, telescoping time in the minds of the observers.14 [332] Thus a time of potential change in local social relations is masked by the emphasis laid on ‘continuity’, things which are ‘the same’. The cemetery itself acts as a clear ‘place of memory’. Like the commonly used grave-goods, it brings to the minds of the participants previous occasions of the same kind. This ‘scene making’, or reconstructing the past, in ritual is very important.

13

Cp. S&S, ch. 8; FSP (below, pp. 289–314). I originally came to this view via a phrase of Virginia Woolf: ‘I find that scenemaking is my natural way of marking the past’, ‘A sketch of the past’ in Moments of Being: Unpublished Autobiographical Writings, ed. J. Schulkind (New York, 1985), p. 122 (and I am grateful to Felicity Riddy for putting me onto this trail). This concept of ‘scene-making’, however, equates with very commonly held notions of how memory is ‘stored’ and ‘accessed’. In this paper, rather than looking at individuals’ means of recalling the past, or at ‘ritual’ enactments of ‘social memory’, I wish to suggest how ritual functions by creating ‘memorable’ scenes. On memory in the middle ages, see M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1990); J. Fentress and C.J. Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford, 1988); P. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance. Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1994); see also B.M. Ross, Remembering the Personal Past. Descriptions of Autobiographical Memory (New York, 1991). 14

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One of the reasons why is that it permits a certain flexibility, to which I will return. Whilst such memories as were evoked by ritual ‘scene-making’ would likely be of grief and loss, they would serve to unite the participants with the bereaved family. At the same time, the evocation of the remembered past is, or at least often can be, comforting when compared with the insecurities of the future; after all, previous crises of this kind had been endured. The ‘telescoping’ of time could be significant in other ways. If, as is very likely, the distribution of food and drink at funerary feasts represented one form of reciprocal gift-giving, it would bring to mind the occasions when the family hosting the feast was itself the recipient of such gifts.15 Scene-building is strengthened by the use of several media, another key element of ritual performance.16 We may be able to suggest this if we make the not unreasonable supposition that the deposition of the grave-goods placed around the body was accompanied by some spoken statement, thus heightening the symbolism, in much the same way as, in some Christian ceremonies, [333] the spoken ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ motif is accompanied by the physical act of throwing dirt on to the coffin. The meaning of the ‘language’ is underlined further by the fact that all these things would connect with other rituals. Other rites would have made use of the very symbols also played with in funerary ritual. Some of these are themselves suggested in the burial evidence: the acquisition of weapons, for example, as part of the entry into manhood; the dressing up of young women in their jewellery by their mothers; the cutting of hair as another part of the rites of passage associated with socialization17 is referred to in the deposition of shears and combs in burials. The burial was then part of a constant sequence of public rituals related to the life cycle, cross-referring with them. Those burials which involved the greatest display were, as mentioned, those of people who led the most ‘public’ lives, and therefore

15 On the role of time in strategies of gift-giving, see P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 4–9; P. Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Oxford, 1990), ch. 6. This telescoping of time does not, however, quite ‘abolish the interval’ (Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, p. 6). In examining the role of time in such strategies, as well as considering methods of employing ‘real time’ we need to look at means by which lived time can be distorted. 16 Tambiah, ‘A performative approach to ritual’, p. 128, 142–3. 17 See PLS 24.2–3, 67.

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those whose deaths were likely to cause the greatest threat to the maintenance of the status quo: young adult males, seen symbolically at least as warriors, certainly as potential heirs, probably served to some extent as linch-pins in local politics if, as has been suggested,18 their rites of passage to manhood involved alliances between families; young women, the betrothed and the married, were certainly extremely important in joining families in alliance, and if there were children, then the potential tension between her family and that of her husband would be increased;19 and above all, mature adult males who had died before their sons had established their own local position, and thus their right to succeed to their father’s social status: hence the need to spend resources on playing down the crisis which is brought by the death, by constructing a ritual ‘scene’ which presents a picture of normality. [334] All this underlines that grave-good deposits are a symptom of precariously and expensively maintained local power and status. Tensions are eased, and relationships remade or reaffirmed in ritual display and the attendant gift-giving in the form of feasting. But this itself suggests an element of conflict. Although the norms which governed grave-goods deposits can be reconstructed, they are of course fuzzy to some degree, probably partly as a result of the nature of the evidence and partly because, as Bourdieu has written,20 these schemes tend to be fuzzy anyway. Nevertheless, some graves are better furnished than others. In the sixth century, this competitive display takes the form of exaggeration of the norms. The appropriate grave-goods are multiplied. This might take the form of placing multiple objects of the same type in the burial; it can also be effected by placing more of the types of object generally appropriate. In the latter case, returning to the linguistic analogy, we can make a comparison with the repetition of different synonyms or metaphors in elaborate ritual language, what one anthropologist calls ‘stacking’.21 These funerary displays probably can be read as those of members of families of local prestige, of families who needed to maintain their

18

J.H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in the Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, 1986), ch. 6. 19 FSP (below, pp. 289–314) for full discussion. 20 Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, ch. 3. 21 Gary Gossen, cited in Tambiah, ‘A performative approach to ritual’, p. 142.

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position by particular manifestations of their ability to bury the dead appropriately. But, again, the possible tension in social relations is eased by a form of ritual ‘scene-making’ which emphasises the familiar. A certain element of competition is nevertheless permitted. All these ritual ‘statements’ taken together form a sort of ritual dialogue or discourse. A family may try to enhance its standing as well as maintain it by a particularly stylized burial display, accompanied, of course by lavish feasting. Finally I would like to return to the chronological dimension of our evidence: the creation, around 500 AD in this region, of this type of burial ritual, its florescence between c. 525 and the end of the sixth century, and its gradual decline through the seventh century. The rite first appears in the last quarter of the fifth century, probably beginning with the celebrated grave of Childeric I in [335] Tournai, c. 480, and giving rise to the lavish burials of the ‘Flonheim-Gültlingen Group’, in this region represented Lavoye, grave 319. The appearance of these graves is doubtless related to the end of the Roman Empire in the West, and to the creation of the post-Roman political units based on Frankish and Alamannic kingdoms. The changed power structures were symbolized by the deposition of material culture, including symbols of power, of new, particularly Germanic types, as well as of old Roman ones. The uncertainty and instability of the times was also represented by these graves, mainly of mature adult males, the age-group where death could call into question current local socio-political relationships. But these graves also frequently found new cemeteries, or new phases on cemeteries. Obviously, to encourage people to follow suit and use a new burial ground would require an altogether exceptional display. This makes it a mistake to compare these founder graves with later burials and to derive significance from the lack of similar burials in later phases.22 The problem of how such new rites were created is extremely interesting, but requires more space than is available here. Some suggestions might nevertheless be made. We should note that, though furnished 22 F. Stein, ‘Les tombes d’un chef franc et de sa famille à Güdingen: Considérations sur la role de l’aristocratie dans l’implantation franque entre la Meuse et la Sarre,’ Saarbrücker Studien und Materialen zur Altertumskunde 1 (1992), 117–44; B.K. Young, ‘Quelques réflexions sur les sépultures privilégiées, leur contexte et leur évolution dans la Gaule de l’Est,’ in Y. Duval & J-.C. Picard (ed.), Inhumations Privilégiée du IVe au VIIIe Siècle en Occident (Paris, 1986), pp. 69–88; B.K. Young, ‘Example aristocratique et mode funéraire dans la Gaule mérovingienne.’ Annales ESC 43 (1986), 379–407.

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burial had been sparse in the middle decades of the fifth century, after the phase of lavish late Roman burials in northern Gaul in the late fourth and early fifth centuries,23 inhumation itself [336] continued and there were occasional burials with grave-goods (for example at Haillot, Krefeld-Gellep, Mainz-Kostheim, Rhenen and possibly Furfooz). The new phase of burials can be read, rather than as completely new ‘intrusive’ rites, as particularly elaborate variations on a theme which had only been played pianissimo for thirty or forty years. The theme itself, fundamentally a late Roman provincial theme, was, however, recognisable. The new variation used different elements, especially those which proclaimed the ascendant power of the Germanic kingdoms. By c. 525, what may have begun as the burial ritual for local magnates had spread to other local families; entire communities were burying their dead with grave-goods, engaging in this ritual discourse. But the ritual, like all rituals, did not remain static. New elements were introduced, sometimes relating to dress. Women began to be buried with some forms of artefact which had earlier been reserved for men, for example. As just intimated, for all their norms, rituals remain ‘performances’, with the norms as the ‘score’, which can be elaborated or trimmed down.24 Another element enabling flexibility within this discourse is the fact that this ‘scene-making’ will never entirely reproduce the past; certain elements will be left out; by stressing the main elements the important link is made, but the opportunity is left for the incorporation of subtle changes. This is important in understanding how rituals change and develop. Around 600 a wide-ranging set of transformations taking place in north Gallic society, and largely connected to an increase in aristocratic power,25 had a profound effect on the ritual. Some families made displays in their funerals which, rather than exaggerating the old norms, broke with them, burying, for example, old women with quite lavish displays of jewellery, although, again, some of these burials are ‘founder graves’ and so are atypical. In the seventh century new cemeteries appear, they are smaller, they [337] serve smaller communities,

23 On the interpretation of these, see ORz (above, pp. 93–106). I briefly discuss possible reasons for the absence of lavish burial in the mid-century in TSI. 24 A commonly expressed view of ritual, but see, e.g., Tambiah, ‘A performative approach to ritual’, passim. 25 Cp. S&S, pp. 262–70.

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and the audience is smaller. The display, perhaps, not surprisingly, becomes correspondingly simple. The number of artefact-types used diminishes; the specific symbolism decreases in direct relation. Associations between grave-goods, gender and age are much more difficult to discern. This constitutes another aspect of ‘ritual language’: condensation. The array of weaponry of different forms, deployed in different combinations, in the sixth century to transmit information about the deceased’s identity, becomes reduced to single weapons, usually scramasaxes or spears, probably just meaning male, maybe ‘free male’. Jewellery becomes very rare; pottery deposits very rare indeed, on newly founded sites. The grave-goods cease to be those connected with gender and age, and seem to relate mainly to elaborate dress, and thus more nearly to the ‘wealth’, for want of a better word, of the family.26 The amount of ‘meaning’ is reduced. It is not difficult to see how the possibilities for playing with the ritual, to construct new messages, are reduced concomitantly. The use of such elements in ritual becomes decreasingly important, until by 675 the only elements attested are items of the corpse’s clothing, themselves apparently reduced to the simplest, standardized form. The focus of display, at least in terms of surviving material culture, seems to shift from the transient display of grave-goods and feasting during the funeral itself, to permanent, above-ground markers. To conclude, previous interpretations of grave-goods have been unsatisfactory because they have failed to take the performative, ritual aspects of the practice (including time and audience) into account. Due acknowledgement of those aspects serves above all to underline that grave-goods displays are symptomatic of insecure power. The elaboration of the transient ritual display stands in direct relationship to the potential threat to social relationships posed by the death in question. Lavish grave-goods displays are therefore certainly not ‘expression[s] of personal [338] and/or dynastic power’,27 or at least not in any straightforward way. Recognition of the performative and ritual aspects of furnished burial, and of the way in which material culture is employed as ‘heightened’ ritual language, creating, and being

26 Compare, for example, the distribution of sixth- and seventh-century gravegoods with adult males at Lavoye (Meuse): S&S, figs. 4.19 & 4.28. 27 Leslie Webster, ‘Death’s diplomacy: Sutton Hoo in the light of other male princely burials,’ in A.J. Frantzen & C. Neuman de Vegvar (ed.), Sutton Hoo: Fifty Years After (Oxford, Ohio, 1992), pp. 75–81, at p. 75.

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created by, social categorization, also allows us to sidestep traditional archaeological debates about the extent to which burial customs reflect or obfuscate ‘real’ social relationships. What I hope to have suggested is that archaeological cemetery evidence does permit a way into considering the rituals of early Merovingian society, and a way which allows us to look in detail at specific local practices and at temporal developments. It also allows us to see something of how rituals contain within them their own dynamic for change. And in that dynamic for change lie important aspects of the ways in which early medieval society itself changed. In these customary societies, social relationships, often themselves ritualized, were similarly performative, playing with, as well as within, the norms. Merovingian rituals were not static and neither was Merovingian society.

CHAPTER SIX

BURIAL WRITES: GRAVES, “TEXTS” AND TIME IN EARLY MEROVINGIAN NORTHERN GAUL*

This paper examines two methods of commemorating the dead in Merovingian north-eastern Gaul. It first of all considers the rite of furnished inhumation (burial with grave-goods), and then looks more briefly at the use of inscriptions. Whilst there are similarities between the two means of commemoration, there are also important differences, concerning the nature of social structure, and ideas of time. There are also significant differences in the precise way in which information about the deceased was conveyed. As I have argued in previous work on the subject,1 the rite of furnished inhumation can be viewed as a form of ritualised, symbolic communication. Employing an analogy with ritual language,2 I have suggested that the different elements of the burial were employed as symbolic ‘words’, combined with each other into statements to transmit information about the deceased to an audience. In previous work

* Originally published in J. Jarnut & M. Wemhoff (ed.), Erinnerungskultur im Bestattungsritual. Archäologisch-Historisches Forum (Munich, 2003), pp. 61–74. Reprinted with permission of Wilhelm Fink Verlag. The notes have been harmonised with those in the remainder of the volume. Otherwise the article remains as originally published. 1 Above all, BRMS (above, pp. 203–14). The essence of the argument is repeated in G. Halsall ‘La Christianisation de la région de Metz à travers les sources archéologiques (5ème–7ème siècle): problèmes et possibilités.’ L’Évangélisation des régions entre Meuse et Moselle et la Fondation de l’Abbaye d’Echternach (Ve–IXe siècle), ed. M. Polfer, (Luxembourg, 2000) pp. 123–46, at pp. 131–43. The empirical basis of the first part of my paper is the group of cemeteries studied in S&S, esp. chapters 3–4. To the references there, should be added, most notably, A. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery (Moselle). Fouilles d’Emile Delort (1941) (Woippy, 1993). On the whole I have avoided further citation of these works in the remainder of this paper, except where I wish to modify them. 2 On the nature of ritual, I was originally most heavily influenced by the concise and pertinent comments of J. Black-Michaud, Feuding Societies (London, 1975), pp. 209–17; and then by the work of S.J. Tambiah, especially his ‘A performative approach to ritual,’ Proceedings of the British Academy 65 (1979), pp. 113–69, reprinted in id., Culture, Thought and Social Action. An Anthropological Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 123–66. The article contains a splendid bibliography of ritual studies.

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on this problem, I moved from the comparison with ritual language to compare burials with written texts; both were formed by the arrangement of symbols (words in one case; material culture in the other) in meaningful juxtaposition, to enable its message to be ‘read’ by an audience. Here I should like to modify that earlier work and show that, although in some ways the burial does function as a kind of material cultural text, there are important, but at the same time very interesting, problems with the analogy. Nonetheless, in order to understand the ways in which furnished inhumation was used as a method of commemoration we must still break it down, identify and analyse its [62] component elements, and examine how the component elements of a burial were used to ‘speak’ to its audience. Part of the process will involve consideration of what sort of audience this was. The upshot of this, as we shall see, will be an attempt to see furnished burial as an active strategy involved in the creation, maintenance and renegotiation of social reality, rather than as a passive reflection of ‘ethnicity’, religion or social hierarchy.3 The archaeologically visible traces of the furnished burial custom in northern Gaul clearly do not represent all the rite’s constituent elements, but give an idea of what the less visible parts might have involved. Each represents the outcome of a particular, active choice. The detectable elements may be described as follows. The lapse of time between death and burial is unknown. Generally it would seem that interment took place very soon after death. However, there are some indications that burial might take place after a more significant lapse of time, at least for the uppermost ranks of society.4 The first

3 For my critique of these ideas, the reader is referred, in addition to the works cited in n. 1, to: EMCems, pp. 56–73; ORz (above, pp. 93–106); ALRF (above, pp. 107–30). For critique of the religious interpretation, see, above all: B.K. Young, ‘Merovingian Funeral Rites and the Evolution of Christianity: A study in the Historical Interpretation of Archaeological Material’, Univ. of Pennsylvania PhD thesis (Ann Arbor, 1975); id. Paganisme, christianisme, et rites funéraires mérovingiennes’, Arch. Méd. 7 (1977), pp. 5–81; id. ‘Pratiques funéraires et mentalités païennes’ in M. Rouche (ed.), Clovis. Histoire et Mémoire, t.1: Clovis, son temps, l’événement, (Paris 1997), pp. 15–42 (which contains a very valuable response, and suggested modifications, to my own work); B. Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Remains and the Making of the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, 2003); ead. Caring for Body and Soul: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World (University Park, Pennsylvania, 2003). 4 The former queen Chlothild was taken from Tours to Paris for her burial, a journey which must have taken some days. LH 4.1. See also CGCS (above, pp. 169–87), for the suggestion that Childeric might have been taken to the far north of Gaul from the Paris basin for his interment. Seasonal differences, such as the ground being harder

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series of choices made by the bereaved family concerned how to dress the body for its burial. Funerary clothing was sometimes elaborate, though it could also be very simple (perhaps a simple shroud) and leave no archaeological trace. The clothing of the body was, however, very deliberate, as we shall see. When the grave itself was constructed, which presumably took place at about the same time, another array of options presented itself: the grave’s shape and size, the revetment, if any, of its sides; the possible construction of chambers within the grave for the deposition of particular grave-goods. Like their Roman precursors, sixth-century Merovingian cemeteries apparently lay some distance from associated settlements, so the cortège with the body must [63] have processed, publicly, for at least a few hundred metres. The placing of the body in the grave also involved decision-making between a range of options. There were, for example, a number of ways in which the body could be positioned. Dress adjuncts could be worn as in life, or they, and items of clothing to which they were attached, might instead be placed next to the corpse. These different options imply distinct possibilities about the way in which such objects were articulated as symbols during the ritual. Similarly, items such as swords, knives or scramasaxes might be worn in their scabbards or sheaths, or placed by the body, equally presenting different options for the way in which their symbolism was employed. Then other grave-goods, drawn from a wide range including ceramic, glass or bronze vessels, were deposited around the body, and once again, their precise positioning, or in the case of certain artefacts such as spears, orientation, would have been chosen deliberately. Some gravegoods were placed in separate chambers or containers, yet another option. The role of the coffin, where one was present, requires further work. A distinction should probably be made between goods placed within the coffin, notably the clothing of the deceased, and those left outside. This could have very important implications for the nature, and the audience, of such a display, depending upon whether coffins were only closed once in the grave, or whether they were left open in the house of the deceased’s family for a more restricted viewing, and then closed before movement to the cemetery. This is something which cannot be

to excavate in winter, and more rapid bodily decomposition in summer, might also have affected the picture.

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revealed by the archaeological data, but it may mean that we need to look more closely for traces of coffins to examine this variable more closely. The data upon which the present paper is based rarely, alas, included information on this. Finally, the funerary process involved feasting at or near the grave side,5 as is suggested by pits excavated on cemetery sites, containing ashes, bones and broken pottery.6 Similar remains are found in the fills of graves, and pottery and other food offerings in the burial itself also suggest feasting. From this evidence it would seem that the feasting took place whilst the grave was still open, before it was filled in. Any understanding of the furnished burial ritual must begin by considering it as a means of conveying information to an audience through ritual. As stated above, every archaeological component of the rite needs to be seen as the product of a conscious, active choice. The artefacts themselves stored social information. The surfaces of diverse items of metalwork and pottery vessels were spaces which [64] could be decorated. The iconography of such decoration is difficult to understand. Traditional analyses have tended to focus on the search for identifiable elements of Germanic religious lore or legend, and whilst the identifications are sometimes valid, in the absence of contemporary written data it is difficult to transfer information from central and later medieval Eddas and sagas to material half a millennium and more earlier in date.7 As a brief consideration of the Christian case would show, iconography may remain roughly the same, depicting the same, easily identifiable scenes, images and episodes, but the

5 See B. Effros, Creating Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul (New York, 2004). G. Constable, ‘The commemoration of the dead in the early middle ages’ in J.M.H. Smith (ed.), Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West. Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough (Leiden, 2000), pp. 169–94, contains useful a discussion at pp. 172–5. 6 I suggested, from the published evidence available at the time, the existence of such a pit at the cemetery site of Ennery: S&S p. 91. The republication of the evidence by A. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery (Moselle) (as n. 1) makes clear that I was mistaken in this regard. However, other such pits on cemeteries are more clearly attested. 7 This is an important problem with the generally interesting and thought-provoking work of L. Hedeager; see L. Hedeager, ‘Migration period Europe: The formation of a political mentality’, in F. Theuws & J.L. Nelson (ed.), Rituals of Power. From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2000), pp. 15–57, esp. pp. 24–37; ead. ‘Asgard reconstructed? Gudme—a ‘central place’ in the north’, in M. de Jong & F. Theuws (ed.), Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2001), pp. 467–507.

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interpretation and conceptualisation of these scenes and images might change dramatically. The theology of the crucifixion changed dramatically through time. We need new, more rigorously archaeological approaches, and work has begun on these.8 Some of this work, notably Richards’,9 stresses the importance of reconstructing the potential audience of such objects and the ways in which they were intended to be viewed. Much of this work also stresses the deliberate ambiguity of early medieval decorative styles and motifs, and this is a point of some importance. All objects can be read, as symbols, in more than one way; they have more than one meaning. Pader famously used the example of the straw hat or boater. As an item of clothing it could symbolise a pupil at the famous English public school of Eton, a Vaudeville performer, or a gondolier.10 To determine which meaning was intended by the person employing the symbol, more contextual information is required; to specify which of several symbolic meanings is intended, a symbol needs to be juxtaposed with other symbols, or placed in a context which rules out the other readings. We shall return to the issue of context, or ‘framing’ below. Even if we can decipher the intended meaning of a symbol, it is important to remember that even that symbol might be read more than one way. There might be a dominant meaning, but several other ways of seeing. To take one example, the dominant ideology of sixth-century Gaul might have valorised the social identity [65] of ‘warrior’, which was probably symbolised by weaponry.11 Women, 8 D. Leigh, ‘Ambiguity in Anglo-Saxon Style I art’, Antiquaries Journal 64 (1984), pp. 34–42; T.M. Dickinson, ‘Material culture as social expression: The case of Saxon saucer brooches with running spiral decoration’, Studien zur Sachsenforschung 7 (1991), pp. 39–70; H. Härke, ‘Changing symbols in a changing society: The AngloSaxon weapon burial rite in the seventh century’, in M.O.H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo. The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 149–65; J.D. Richards, ‘Anglo-Saxon symbolism,’ in Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo, pp. 131–47. 9 Richards, ‘Anglo-Saxon symbolism,’ as previous note. 10 E.-J. Pader, ‘Material symbolism and social relations in mortuary studies,’ in P.A. Rahtz, T.M. Dickinson & L. Watts (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries 1979 (BAR (B) 82; Oxford, 1980), pp. 143–59. See also E.-J. Pader, Symbolism, Social Relations and the Interpretation of Mortuary Remains (BAR (I) 130; Oxford, 1981). 11 This is not unproblematic. Härke’s analyses have shown that in Anglo-Saxon England one cannot directly assume that anyone buried with weapons had necessarily ever served as a warrior. See, amongst numerous other articles, H. Härke, ‘‘Weapon graves’? The background of the Anglo-Saxon weapon burial rite.’ P&P 126 (1990), pp. 22–43; id. Angelsächsische Waffengräber des 5. bis 7. Jahrhunderts (Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, Beiheft 6) (Köln, 1992). In northern Gaul, given that

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those men debarred from such an identity, or those who had failed to achieve such status, may have viewed the symbol rather less positively (though, as with all such subordinate readings, these lie generally beyond our reach). Here it is important to reiterate, given the multiplicity of possible meanings, that the symbolism used in the display of grave-goods in burial rituals was not haphazard, but deliberate. These points apply not only to grave-goods or items of costume, but to all of the observable variables within the burial ritual. If the bereaved decided to cross the deceased’s arms on his or her pelvis, or on his or her chest, or to construct a grave with squared ends or bowed sides, this, surely, may have meant different things in different circumstances, or when seen in different combinations. Every element of the burial can be read as a symbol. Some of these symbols may have referred to discrete aspects of the deceased’s social identity; others may have served simply to sharpen or clarify the meaning of other symbols. To be able to read these symbols, however, we must examine all of the variables discussed above, and look for patterns of correlation between them. Theoretically, this ought to give a practically infinite range of possible combinations. In practice, however, the number of observed combinations tends to be much more restricted. Furthermore, to gain as full an understanding as possible of the messages intended to be conveyed semiotically, we need to observe, record and publish all of these variables. In many cases, the available documentation does not include information on all of the possible variables, and this restricts our enquiry.12 Any statement must, of course, be viewed in context. The frame within which it is set determines the precise meaning of such a statement; it sharpens its meaning from a broad array of possible intended meanings to a narrower range of possibilities. The cemetery provides the frame for the statements made by burial. Sixth-century cemeter-

weapons are not normally buried with children, they may serve to represent someone who had reached an age when service as a warrior could be performed, or achieved a social status associated, however theoretically, with military service. The ethnic identity of ‘Frank’ might fall within the latter category. S&S, p. 258. 12 This leaves aside the point that the processes of formation and survival of the archaeological record can detrimentally affect our ability to study all of the variables. The enormous and immaculately excavated and published cemetery at Krefeld Gellep, for example, cannot be studied in all the ways suggested here, simply because the soil conditions on the site prevented the survival of bones. This thus denies us any knowledge of physical anthropological variables.

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ies in Lorraine are, on the whole, large, and seem to serve a number of communities. Set apart from the habitations of the living, and reached by a formal procession, the Merovingian cemetery was thus a clearly defined and important place of ritual, and of memory, as we shall see. [66] The sixth-century rural cemetery is therefore the location for a frequently competitive discourse between families. It is the specific site for making ritual statements to an audience through the display of meaningful symbols arranged in particular juxtaposition. Each burial thus becomes a statement in this discourse, and the symbols employed (not just the grave-goods, though those seem to be the clearest, but also the other variables mentioned) are the ‘words’ which make up the statement. Previously I have used the analogy of text to explain this way in which burials are conducted. The burial was likened to a written text, in that an audience at the graveside could ‘read’ the statement so deployed, in much the same way as the reader of written text makes sense of its message by decoding written symbols or signs (words) according to their specific arrangement with regard to each other. The meaning of such a written statement is also governed by the context within which it is made, both within the text itself and also in the context of the genre of text being read, which provides a kind of frame. The burial simply used material signs deployed on or in the ground instead of written words arranged on paper or parchment. This analogy is useful to some extent. However, on reflection, the parallels are perhaps less directly applicable. A personal reading of a text starts with the text ready made. Even the ‘public’ ritual performance—reading out—of a text (a liturgy, perhaps, or the reading of a saint’s life or other sacred work) works in a rather different way from the way in which a burial may be said to constitute a ‘material text’. There the written text, again, precedes the performance, and there are also important ways in which texts function in such contexts to unify an audience, which relate clearly to the fact of their articulated, written (or at least verbal) form.13 There is no space to go into that here. In a furnished burial the ‘text’ or, perhaps better, the trace is what one finishes with, it is created by its performance, and can never act as the basis for another such performance.

13 See, to cite but one example, B. Stock, Listening for the Text. On the Uses of the Past (Baltimore, 1990).

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Furthermore, the final arrangement of signifiers, which might be likened to a written text, is emptied to some extent of its content, for the content of each component symbol was doubtless made clearer through its performance. This should not be equated simply with the way in which the reading of a text can add emphasis to make a point clearer; such clarification came from the use of several symbolic media in the performance of the burial rite. The display and deployment of many of the symbols involved, particularly the artefacts, was doubtless accompanied by spoken word and gesture. This ‘multi-media’ aspect is not unusual in ritual, employed to heighten meaning. Writing and reading this kind of ‘text’ are simultaneous events. Thus our ‘text’, the final material trace of the burial ritual, such as can be revealed archaeologically, and which could be ‘read’ by an audience at the graveside to discover its symbolic meaning, was created through performance. Instead of preceding performance and acting as a potential springboard for ‘ad-libbing’, personal or individualised elaboration or interpretation, as is the case with a written text, in burial ritual the [67] location for individuality, or for any personalisation of the precise meaning of symbols, was in the actual act of deploying those symbols. Rather than starting with it, we end with the basic statement. Thus, if we can be said to end with a ‘text’, it is a text which has, sadly, lost much of its meaning, and which, although it can still be read in some ways, it can never again be performed. This material cultural, or ritual, ‘writing’ is a unique event; in most senses, reading it, too, is an unrepeatable process. The importance of this way of perceiving the sixth-century furnished burial is that it compels us to see interment as an active process, involving a number of parties—performers and audience. This, as stated above, allows us to evade interpretations of burials as passive reflections of status, ethnicity or religion (although, of course, all three are involved). This methodology also allows us to see how change could take place through the constant renegotiation of social relationships. The ritual contains within itself the seeds of change. Even if we move away from the direct textual metaphor, and admit that a considerable portion of the meaning of the ritual is forever lost to us, we can nevertheless employ the analogy with ritual language to pursue a study of Merovingian society and examine the issue of commemoration through burial ritual. First of all we have to consider the element of time. The burial ritual, in all its components, was a unique and transient event. Even the final material trace of this activity, which,

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as we have seen, can still be read for some of its meaning, was no longer visible once the grave was filled in. This is a rite which, if it is to convey any information at all, needs its audience to be present on the day on which it is conducted. This is important, and it leads us to consider audience, an element all too often excluded from analysis of early medieval burials. That sixth-century Merovingian cemeteries are large and used by several communities implies the possibility of large audiences for burial rituals, at least for the funerals of important members of the community. The size of this potential audience requires that symbols be easily understood, and thus the symbolism of artefacts in sixth-century burials does appear to have been fairly precise. Necessarily concomitant with this is the wide range of symbols deployed in the sixth century. Thus a ‘grammar of display’ appears to have existed in sixth-century northern Gaul. The nature of this grammar can be reconstructed from analysis of the patterns of correlation within intact burials, and has been discussed elsewhere. Some elements of performed ritual language are also seen in the choice of grave-goods. Elaborate burials often employ many different symbols of the same general meaning, paralleling the ‘stacking’ of synonyms or related phrases in ritual language. The use of this ‘grammar of display’ in public ritual in the precise ritual location of the cemetery, all of which was doubtless accompanied by feasting and gift-giving, created memorable ‘scenes’. These symbols also referred to the continuum of other public rituals, related to the life cycle (the bestowal of arms, the first cutting of hair, and so on), further enhancing their meaning. The use of well-known symbols, which had been employed in earlier burials of similar kinds, telescoped time, and brought to mind those earlier burials. This could serve to [68] reassure the mourners. Remembering previous burials would underline that, although death caused a rupture in the web of social relationships which made up a community, previous crises of this nature had been weathered. As a recent brief but thought-provoking discussion of literary topoi suggests, surely correctly, the employment of well-worn, and symbolically well-understood, commonplaces, can convey emotions very effectively.14 It may be that we should understand repeated use of material symbols in an analogous way.

14 M. Garrison, ‘The study of emotions in early medieval history: some starting points’, EME 10.2 (2001), pp. 243–50.

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The way in which scene-making telescopes time between rituals also functions to help social relationships. Gifts made at earlier funerals or other rituals of the life-cycle, could be repaid, and alliances between families cemented. My earlier analyses have suggested the burials which involve the most lavish displays of grave-goods are those of people whose deaths caused the most serious crises within local social relationships. Thus their burials, public events which would attract larger audiences, involved commensurately lavish investment in display. Equally, the death of important members of leading families required their relatives to expend resources in smoothing over the crisis which death produced and thus maintain their local standing. Thus, as a general rule, the greater the expenditure upon furnished burial display, the greater the threat posed to the stability of local social order by the death in question. In turn this implies, at a larger scale of analysis, that the custom of furnished burial is itself representative of a situation wherein local standing is transient, and must constantly be remade through ritual display. The furnished burial thus creates, through ritual, memorable scenes, which interrelate with other ritual displays in a vitally important aspect of the social politics of the period. As comparative evidence for the importance of transient public rituals and displays in the sixth century, we can look at Frankish law. The law-makers of the Pactus Legis Salicae envisaged that acts such as the casting off of kin or the declaration of inability to pay a fine be carried out by performing bizarre-looking public rituals.15 Similarly, the resolution of disputes is exclusively the affair of public oath-swearing, public acts and statements and so on. These clauses, and anecdotes in Gregory of Tours, argue that it is demonstration to those present which counted. This is in direct contrast with seventh-century law, which, as we shall see, allows for the production of documents. This obviously says something about views of the importance of documents, but it also says something about the projection of current situations into the future. Perhaps most significantly, where the Pactus Legis Salicae states that, where someone is unable to pay a fine, three degrees of living king should be called upon to help, and provides complex public ritual to bring in those kin, seventh-century Lex Ribvaria decrees that the family should pay over three generations.16 In the sixth-century, kinship

15 16

See, for example, PLS 58, 60. PLS 58; Lex Ribv. 12.

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[69] within three generations is defined broadly and in the present; in the seventh century it is projected into the future. Visible public ritual, attested in the laws and in burial archaeology, stresses the importance of the here and now in the sixth century. There seems to be little concern with projection into the future; in a society where status and power could be won and lost within a lifetime, this is barely surprising. The memories created were, as we have seen, of a general, ritual and communal kind. However, although the display was, as has been shown, transient, ritual scene-making created memorable events, and thus in turn could be used to promote the memory of the funerals of particular individuals. Though, as far as we can tell, there was little investment in permanent monuments, and little concern with projecting situations into the future, we should not automatically assume that no means existed by which the memory of burial rituals and the individuals so interred could not be preserved.17 If there was investment in ensuring the memory it took place not in the production of permanent monuments, or, as would later be the case, in provision for repeated memorial ritual in the future, but in creating a single, memorable scene. This is still an important difference from other forms of commemoration. By contrast to all this we can look at an alternative form of the commemoration of the dead, and the production of inscriptions.18 The general principles of the furnished burial rite in the region of Trier seem very largely to be the same of those which I identified in the region of Metz, though there are, of course some differences in detail. However, Trier itself is very different in that it has an unusually large number of late antique inscriptions. At the latest count, the number is somewhere in excess of 800: perhaps a quarter of the entire late antique Gallic corpus.19 Those inscriptions published by Nancy Gauthier20 number only about 200, largely from the two principal extra-mural cemeteries

17 My earlier work (see n. 1) has sometimes been guilty of this assumption. I am grateful to the participants in the Paderborn Colloquium, especially Fred Paxton and Anne Pedersen, for drawing my attention to this weakness. 18 This section deals with research which is still in its embryonic stages. I must acknowledge, the inspiration provided by the thesis of Mark Handley, University College, London: ‘The early medieval inscriptions of Britain, Gaul and Spain. Studies in Function and Culture’ (unpublished, PhD thesis, Univ. of Cambridge, 1998). 19 Mark Handley, pers. comm. 20 N. Gauthier, Recueil des Inscriptions Chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures à la Renaissance Carolingienne. 1. Première Belgique, (Paris, 1975) [Inscriptions in this volume are hereafter referred to as RICG 1 followed by their number in the collection].

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at Trier: St-Matthias (originally St-Eucharius) in the south and St-Paulin/St-Maximin in the north. These form the sample which I will discuss, in the hope that it might be indicative of more general pictures.21 One immediate problem arises in that most of these—at least according to current methods of dating—seem to belong to different dates from the sixth-century furnished burials upon which I concentrated [70] above. However, the dating of these inscriptions seems to me to be very vexed, and rarely very securely established,22 and many may be rather later than is often assumed. After the fourth century, however, there does not seem to be very much change, through time, in the nature of commemoration. Nevertheless, the Trier epigraphic culture is presented here principally as an alternative form of commemorating the dead. As should have become clear in any case, it is unusual within the whole of Merovingian Gaul. The Trier burials marked by inscriptions show some interesting similarities with the furnished burial rite, but also, as we shall see, some very important differences. Most of the inscriptions are now totally divorced from any archaeological context and we do not know whether any grave-goods, let alone how many or what kind, originally accompanied the dead. Furthermore, we have no general ‘background noise’, to tell us how different the sample of commemorated people is from the normal patterns of mortality. This is a different situation, again, from that in the furnished cemeteries. Nevertheless, some interesting patterns are suggested. In the St-Paulin/St-Maximin cemetery,23 which seems to be, on balance, slightly the later of the two, roughly one fifth of the total number of commemorands were certainly children below the age of twelve.24 This is a similar percentage to the number of children in the sixthcentury phase at Lavoye,25 which might lead us to suspect that we do simply have a cross-section of society, reflecting normal patterns of 21 M. Handley, Death, Society and Culture: Inscriptions and Epitaphs in Gaul and Spain, AD 300–750 (BAR (I) 1135; Oxford, 2003) analyses the full corpus of Trier inscriptions in much greater depth and detail. 22 Handley, ‘The early medieval inscriptions of Britain, Gaul and Spain. Studies in Function and Culture’, contains a valuable critique of current assumptions. See also id., Death, Society and Culture. 23 RICG 1.93–234. Some inscriptions name more than one commemorand, leading to a discrepancy between numbers of names and numbers of inscriptions. 24 Thirty-two commemorands from the cemetery have a recorded age younger than twelve years. 25 S&S, pp. 123, 141.

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mortality. However, this conclusion is only possible if we assume that all of the epitaphs which do not record an age commemorated adults; we only know the age of seventy-two commemorands and of these the children form nearly half. If we can extrapolate from this sample, the percentage of children in the cemetery might be as high as 45%. In another way, as well, this is rather different from the grave-goods cemeteries. Children there receive nothing like that attention, as a percentage of the total, in terms of expenditure on their funeral; the inscription is a costly memorial. This difference might be pursued in that the numbers of named men and women are more or less equal (where one can still reconstruct the name): fifty-six males to forty-two females. Again, in the furnished cemeteries, on the whole, male burials were far better furnished than the female. In the inscription sample, women receive proportionately a much higher share of the expenditure on burial rite than they do in the grave-goods ritual. Furthermore, on some furnished sites in Lorraine, there was a disproportionately low number of women in any case, suggesting either infanticide or that women were not as [71] often brought to the communal cemetery for burial.26 The situation is slightly different, however, at St-Matthias,27 where the males outnumber the females by approximately two to one: fifty-three to twenty-eight. There too, however, children approach one half of all the inscriptions which record an age at death (or where the age of death can be reconstructed from the surviving fragments).28 In all these ways, the epigraphic custom of commemoration seems significantly different from the rite of furnished burial. Similarities emerge, however, if we look at the differences in age at death. Amongst commemorands over the age of forty, there were

26

S&S, p. 141; FSP, pp. 15–16 (below, pp. 304–5). The inscriptions studied here are RICG 1.1–93. 28 For ease of comparison with the furnished cemeteries, for analysis I used the same age-groups as employed in my studies of the burials with grave-goods: Children (0–12); Adolescents (12–20); young adults (20–40); mature adults (40–60); and old adults (60+). However, see Handley, Death, Society and Culture, for an important critique of the usual readings of the age of death recorded on inscriptions. Handley demonstrates clearly that such ages are usually rounded (to ten or five) or symbolic, perhaps representing a conceptual age-group rather than precise age. Thus I have included individuals whose age was recorded as 40 in both the (rough) 20–40 and 40–60 age-groups, whereas those with a recorded age of 60 have been recorded in the 40–60 and 60+ groups. 27

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more than twice as many men as women;29 amongst adolescents, of whom there were few, the figure was, on the other hand, seven women to two men.30 This may simply represent actual differences between the sexes in mortality, but it is interestingly similar to some of the pattern of differential, gender-based expenditure revealed in the grave-goods cemeteries. The difference amongst the age group above forty certainly seems odd given that the number of males and females in the agegroup between about twenty and about forty is about the same (this too would parallel the furnished burial rite). Furthermore, the epitaphs of four of the adolescent women were not raised by a husband, which must mean that death in childbirth does not explain the pattern. The Trier epitaphs are very interesting in that they often name the people who raised the tombstone. Study of this aspect supports some of the interpretations of lavish grave-goods. On the epitaphs of two young women at St-Matthias, one in her teens, the other about twenty,31 the bereaved husband joined with the parents of the girl to raise the epitaph, again, presumably, smoothing over the tension in relationships caused by the death. There is of course a major difference in this display. There is clearly a greater relative investment in above-ground display. Whatever may have been displayed [72] to an audience on the day of the burial, in the form of grave-goods and other transient rites, the epitaph speaks to a different audience. We may suspect that it was a wider, peer-group audience, such as came to these principal Trierer churches for major festivals and to bury their dead, at which the display was aimed. Being stone, and above ground, and speaking to an audience not necessarily present at the funeral, they are also intended to project their message into the future. All of this seems to speak of a quite different social context from that of the transient display of grave-goods. It appears that the families who commemorated their dead in this way were more secure in their identities and status, and had the confidence to project that into the future. As has been mentioned, Trier is abnormal in the

29 Eighteen men to seven women overall; Eight men (RICG 1.8, 1.30, 1.33a, 1.39, 1.47, 1.50, 1.56 & 1.71) to three women (RICG 1.13, 1.21 & 1.32) at St-Matthias; ten men (RICG 1.104, 1.109, 1.126, 1.142, 1.165, 1.169, 1.174, 1.214, 1.217 & 1.219) to four women (RICG 1.119, 1.136, 1.144 & 1.166) at St-Maximin. 30 Women: RICG 1.26, 1.33, 1.36, 1.69 (St-Matthias), 1.97a, 1.101, 1.127 (St-Maximin). Men: RICG 1.52 (St-Matthias) & 1.147 (St-Maximin). 31 RICG 1.33 & 1.48. Once again I must reiterate that the recorded ages at death are likely to be only approximate.

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survival of its epitaphs, but it was also a fairly unusual place more generally. Its aristocracy appears to have had a very self-conscious sense of its identity, and especially a ‘Roman’ identity. There are a number of epitaphs which record the senatorial rank of the deceased, for men and women. RICG 1.192, for example, records an unnamed clarissima; Gauthier thought that this inscription was of sixth-century date.32 The Vita Germani Grandivallensis also speaks of Germanus coming from a senatorial family from Trier.33 This is all most unusual, and there are no other areas of Merovingian northern Gaul which furnish references to senators. It would seem to be this Roman community which erected these inscriptions, and within which the epigraphic display was aimed at maintaining standing. The very Romanitas of Trier also seems to have posed problems for the Merovingian kings, who soon found the place too uncomfortable and moved to Metz.34 The immediate Trier region would seem, therefore, to have had a very self-conscious and confident aristocratic stratum, rather different from that across the rest of northern Gaul. Its individuality in terms of death ritual is perhaps not surprising. In the seventh century this sort of commemoration became more common throughout the north. From about 600, there were dramatic changes in the nature of the furnished burial rite, which became more standardised. Concomitantly with this, there were more cemeteries, and smaller ones. The audience for the display was smaller, and more local, and the need for clear and sophisticated grammar of display was reduced accordingly. Grave-goods become highly standardised, and the range of types of artefacts used diminishes significantly. At the same time there is a shift towards a greater investment in above ground monuments: gravestones, walls around graves, sarcophagus lids visible at surface level and so on. Interestingly the subjects of the burials which received these new, more permanent markers were, like the commemorands of the Trier inscriptions, more evenly [73] spread across age groups and the sexes. At the seventh-century cemetery of Audun-leTiche, for example, more children than adults were buried in stone

32 This inscription is not the only Trier epigraph to record senatorial status; Handley, Death, Society and Culture. I am grateful to Dr Handley for allowing me to see this work in advance of publication. 33 Vita Germani Abbatis Grandivallensis 1. B. Krusch & W. Levison (eds.), MGH SRM 5 (Hanover, 1910), pp. 25–40. 34 G. Halsall, ‘Awkward ideologies in Merovingian Trier’ (forthcoming).

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sarcophagi. It would seem that, as amongst the ‘Romans’ of Trier, this type of commemoration was intended to reflect family identity. This, when taken alongside numerous other changes taking place—developments in urbanism, changes in the economy, written references to more established aristocratic lineages, changes in the laws’ treatment of the élite, and so on—all appears to suggest an increasing rigidity of social hierarchy and thus a decrease in the need to make competitive, transient displays in the cemetery. Instead, the investment in the permanent, above-ground marker suggests a greater desire to project identity into the future. They also enable a much more specific form of commemoration, and a different form of memory. In addition to this we also begin to hear more about other forms of memorialisation, for example through church services and libri memoriales.35 The relative investment in ensuring permanent commemoration into the future is far greater than had been the case in the furnished cemeteries of the sixth century. The similarity with the situation in Trier, and the conclusions which seem to be drawn from that evidence, underlines the relationship between this type of commemoration and more stable social hierarchy and self-confident élite. We can see this increased concern with the future in the survival of legal documents from the period around 600. Whichever way one looks at it: survival of originals, the date of the earliest genuine transactions in later copies, the earliest documents referred to in later works, the oldest documents known to us date to c. 600. This is not, obviously, because there were no documents in the sixth century; that was a very literate period. The only explanation which seems to work is to adduce a change in attitudes towards the retention of documents.36 Seventh-century laws, unlike sixth-century, allow the use of documents to modify custom. There was therefore a legal reason to retain documents. But the idea that a document might be needed in the future talks of a change in attitudes to time: a need to remember the present in the future. That change in ideas about time is also apparent in the laws concern with projecting situations into the future, and taking sometimes odd precautions to assume they were remembered, as in Lex Ribvaria’s provision that, where documents are not made

35 See, e.g., F.S. Paxton, Christianizing Death. The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca NY, 1990). 36 S&S, pp. 265–6, for brief discussion. More work is still required.

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to record transactions, young children be brought along and boxed round the ears, so that they will remember the occasion.37 Close study of the burial rites of earlier Merovingian northern Gaul, which looks at concepts of ritual, audience and time therefore allows us to trace, through time and space changes and variations in the ways in which the dead were commemorated. This sheds important light on social structures, social change and [74] most importantly mentalités. Looking at this evidence in these terms, and at changes and variations in it according to these ideas, allows, I think, a more diverse, dynamic and exciting picture of Merovingian society to emerge, by looking at how it expressed itself, and how its structures were expressed, and changed, by the rituals of burial and commemoration.38

37

Lex Ribv. 63. I should like to thank Professor Jarnut for inviting me to attend the very stimulating symposium at Paderborn, and the other participants for the useful feedback and reflections upon my paper. I am most grateful to Emma Campbell for critical discussion of my analogy with written texts. 38

Commentary Four Ritual and Commemoration

I. Background The thesis discussed and developed in the previous two chapters originated during the latter half of my doctoral research. The first Merovingian cemetery I analysed was the sixth-century site at Ennery (Moselle),1 which yielded some very interesting and (at the time) surprising results, but at the next site I was able to study, the seventh-century cemetery of Audun-le-Tiche (Moselle), analysis produced depressingly different, sometimes flatly contradictory, patterns. Noting the similarities between Audun and other, smaller and usually less well-recorded seventh-century sites (e.g. Berthelming, Bettborn and Bouzonville) and the seventh-century phase at Lavoye, on the one hand, and between Ennery and Lavoye’s sixth-century phase, on the other, was reassuring but left the problem of how to explain these changes in custom. The exploration of the shifts that took place around 600 became a focal point for my thesis and later research.2 It was also interesting to note the similarity between the broad thrust of these developments and the changes to the so-called ‘Final Phase’ in England and that conversion could not possibly explain the changes in Gaul, though for a while I toyed with the idea of a spread of ‘Christianisation’ rather than ‘conversion’ into the countryside—an interpretation that I would no longer accept. These ideas are pursued in the next chapter. If religious change was not an explanation then how could one account for the shift? As will be seen in these essays, as usual I opted for a social explanation: the increasing security of social hierarchy leading, in this reading, to a reduced need to maintain and proclaim status in funerary ritual. One aspect of this, as I saw it, was the reduction in

1

Discussed at length below, pp. 315–8. S&S, pp. 262–70; SC600 was my earliest published foray into the topic and (at p. 278) its possible ramifications for Anglo-Saxon England. I am very grateful to Martin Carver for allowing the inclusion of that essay in the volume. I am now exploring the period across western Europe in a Leverhulme-funded project provisionally entitled ‘The Transformations of the Year 600’. 2

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the detailed ‘meaning’ of grave-goods. For example, the wide range of weapons deposited in various combinations with males of different age-groups or social statuses in the sixth century, came to be replaced by a single spear or scramasax, and a complex statement about particular types of male was reduced to a message saying no more than ‘male’.3 In turn, this development led me to think about the semiotic content of grave-goods and to study then current archaeological theory linking material culture to critical theoretical methods of reading texts.4 The first outing for my embryonic thinking on this topic was at the Gender and Medieval Studies conference in Cardiff in January 1992.5 The topic of sex and gender is followed up in chapter 9, below. I pursued this line of thought in a paper given at the Institute of Historical Research in June 1993,6 which provided very useful feedback, and then at the second International Medieval Congress at Leeds in 1995.7 Chapter 5 is the published version of that paper.

3 For further discussion of grave-goods and the study of Merovingian masculinities, see chapter 10, below. 4 Principally C. Tilley (ed.), Reading Material Culture. Structuralism, Hermeneutics and Post-Structuralism (Oxford, 1990). This was a useful and important book in inspiring my thinking, but it represents (with the exception of Henrietta Moore’s chapter) a classic case of the ‘interlocution’ that replaces genuine interdisciplinary work in British archaeology in staking knowledge claims, as discussed below, pp. 339–40. Very influential on my thinking was the genuinely interdisciplinary work of D. Miller, Artefacts as Categories. A Study of Ceramic Variability in Central India (Cambridge, 1985). 5 The paper was rather pretentiously called ‘Burying the author? Graves as texts in the study of gender in sixth-century Merovingian society.’ I was subjected to some probing questions by Sarah Kay about sex and gender. Alas I do not think that I quite understood what Professor Kay was getting at, or its crucial importance, until (I am ashamed to admit) many years later, which must have made my response very shallow, rather like the paper itself ! 6 ‘The Discourse of the Dead: Graves, Texts and Time in the Study of Sixth-Century Society in Northern Gaul’. This was the original title of the paper given at Paderborn in 2001 and later published as BW (above, chapter 6). By way of aside, I note now that the IHR paper began with criticism of historians’ attitudes towards archaeology. This was to some extent an example of the confrontational approach often adopted by archaeologists to audiences of historians, castigated above (p. 65), although I also pointed out that similar strictures could be aimed at archaeologists and their attitudes to documentary history. As will be noted, my views on this have changed to some extent since I gave that youthful harangue, largely because I think that the approaches of historians (if not, alas, archaeologists) have developed significantly for the better in the past decade (above, pp. 67–68). 7 In a session on Merovingian ritual, which I organised along with Paul Kershaw and which also featured papers by Paul (on conflict and ritual) and by Simon Loseby (on urban ritual).

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Two years later an invitation to speak at a conference in Luxembourg enabled me to explore the interpretation of ritual in grave-goods deposits in relationship to religion and religious change, particularly following conversations with Bonnie Effros.8 I was also grateful for the chance to publish my arguments in a form which I hoped would increase their accessibility to French Merovingian archaeologists.9 In 2001 Jörg Jarnut asked me to participate in the colloquium on ‘Erinnerungskultur im Bestattungsritual’ at Paderborn giving me an opportunity to present some of my research to German archaeologists who work within very different explanatory paradigms.10 The interpretive differences between chapters 5 and 6 were not visible in the Paderborn paper as presented. Those changes resulted from useful debate at the conference itself and especially from my discussion of the paper with Dr Emma Campbell, who was studying the creation of community through the reading of central medieval texts11 and who drew attention to some possible limitations in my equation of the burial record with a text. In fact, as a result I began to see it as rather facile. Happily, then, the publication of the Paderborn paper was able to be rather more important than a simple restatement of my interpretations as published in 1998. The key difference between chapters 5 and 6 that was clear when presented in Paderborn was the contrast drawn between furnished inhumation around Metz and the funerary epigraphy of Trier. This aspect owes a huge amount to the work of Dr Mark Handley, and I should like to underline that acknowledgement here. I was lucky enough to examine Mark’s doctoral thesis on inscriptions in the early medieval West, as one part of which he discussed the epigraphic

8 Personal circumstances prevented me from attending the conference but the paper was nevertheless published in the proceedings, as ‘La Christianisation de la région de Metz à travers les sources archéologiques (5ème–7ème siècle): problèmes et possibilités.’ L’Évangélisation des régions entre Meuse et Moselle et la Fondation de l’Abbaye d’Echternach (Ve–IXe siècle), ed. M. Polfer, (Luxembourg, 2000) pp. 123–46. That paper forms the basis of chapter 7, below. 9 As such, as noted below, p. 261, n.*, much of the article was a French translation of BRMS. 10 Above, pp. 13–14 and pp. 69–71. H. Härke, ‘Archaeologists and migrations: a problem of attitude?’ Current Anthropology, 39 no. 1 (1998), pp. 19–45 (reprinted in T.F.X. Noble (ed.), From Roman Provinces to Medieval Kingdoms (London, 2006), pp. 262–276. 11 E. Campbell, Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old French Hagiography (Woodbridge, 2008).

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corpus from Trier and compared his results with my analyses of furnished burials. I found this comparison interesting and it inspired me to look for myself at the series of 200 inscriptions published by Nancy Gauthier.12 I should stress that the analyses published in chapter 6 are my own. Handley’s study and conclusions differed from mine in several ways, not least in that I postulated rather more difference between the inscriptions and the furnished burials than had he, and Handley, furthermore, studied about four times as many Trierer epitaphs as I did.13 Some similarities with and supports for the reading of the furnished burials remain, however. Turning to more specific aspects of the discussion, chapter 5 contains the same mistake in the reading of the ‘Flonheim-Gültlingen Horizon’ as appears in Chapter 4: The changed power structures were symbolized by the deposition of material culture, including symbols of power, of new, particularly Germanic types, as well as of old Roman ones.14

Clearly, the reassessment of the polychrome style’s origins and the conclusions about its Mediterranean origins force some reconsideration of this statement.15 The issue of feasting as a means of creating links between people, including at funerals, has subsequently been developed at length by Dr Bonnie Effros.16 Reference should also be made to the discovery of other pits on cemetery sites elsewhere in the Merovingian world, which might be interpreted as the remains of such activities.17

12 N. Gauthier, Recueil des Inscriptions Chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures à la Renaissance Carolingienne. 1. Première Belgique, (Paris, 1975). 13 Handley’s analyses are published fully in M. Handley, Death, Society and Culture: Inscriptions and Epitaphs in Gaul and Spain, AD 300–750 (BAR (I) 1135; Oxford, 2003). See also his ‘Beyond hagiography: epigraphic commemoration and the cult of the saints in late antique Trier’, in R.W. Mathisen & D. Shanzer (ed.), Society and Culture in Late Roman Gaul. Revisiting the Sources (Aldershot, 2001), pp. 187–200. Handley’s subsequent departure from academic history into the practice of the law represented a huge loss for early medieval studies. 14 BRMS, p. 335. I shudder now at my use of the term ‘Germanic’! 15 See above, pp. 188–90. 16 B. Effros, Creating Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul (New York, 2003). 17 R. Parent, Y. Berjot & J.-L. Demetz, ‘Puits à offrandes et sépultures mérovingiennes à Maizy-sur-Aisne (Aisne).’ RAE 17 (fasc.1–2) (1954), pp. 114–28; C. Aronovici, ‘Les puits à offrandes du cimetière mérovingien de Noiron-sous-Gevrey.’ RAE 30, fasc. 3–4 (1979), pp. 251–7.

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Finally, in this section, the discussion of the use of documents at the end of chapter 6 is much too brief and might be said to contravene the multi-disciplinary methodological points set out in chapter 1 and commentary 1. More must therefore be said here. It is clear from sources such as the Histories of Gregory of Tours that earlier Merovingian Gaul was a highly literate society.18 Yet hardly any sixth-century documents survive from northern Gaul.19 This makes a marked contrast with the seventh century. The oldest surviving Merovingian charters belong to the period just after 600, particularly to Dagobert I’s reign (621–36). The oldest copies of authentic charters belong to about the same era, and writers in the early Middle Ages who had access to archives (such as Flodoard of Reims) similarly do not appear to have been able to locate documents earlier than the end of the sixth century.20 Several reasons might be proposed for this difference in survival: simple chance; the shift from fragile papyrus to parchment, a more durable material on which to write documents; the foundation of new ecclesiastical (especially monastic) establishments, to which most of our charters refer; or the abandonment of public archives. None of these seems entirely satisfactory. Chance is quite insufficient to explain either the extent of the documentary blank that is sixth-century northern Gaul. Some of the oldest surviving charters are papyrus and the shift to parchment was a long and drawn-out affair possibly itself part of the process of change to an increased concern with documentary survival that I sketch below. It cannot, by contrast, be denied that the bulk of the earliest Merovingian charters do refer to foundations of the seventh century, with long subsequent histories, unlike earlier, secular repositories of documents like municipal archives. Nevertheless, the change does not only encompass such new establishments. Even

18

Theo Kölzer helpfully listed references to such documents as might be considered charters or privileges (Urkunden) under the heading Deperdita: T. Kölzer (ed.), MGH Diplomata Regum Francorum e Stirpe Merovingica (2 vols.; Hanover, 2001), vol. 2, pp. 469–700. 19 See below, pp. 282–3, with n. 88. 20 Kölzer (ed.), Diplomata Regum Francorum, nos. 22, 25, 28 etc. Flodoard, Historia Remensis Ecclesiae: M. Straatman (ed.), MGH Scriptores 36 (Hannover, 1998); The earliest Vita of the Messine saint Waldrada is clearly based upon a charter belonging to the reigns of Theudebert II and Theuderic II (596–612): J. Mabillon (ed.), Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti in Saeculorum Classes Distributa. Saeculum Secundum quod est ab anno Christi DC ad DCC. (ed. L. D’Achery) (Venice, 1733), pp. 58–59.

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churches founded long before 600, like Metz or Reims cathedrals, draw their oldest documents from this era. The idea that it was the abandonment of the old, Roman municipal archives (acta or gesta municipalia) that led to the creation of new documentary forms and to different institutional archives is more interesting. However, as I have pointed out before,21 in the case of northern Gaul, one would need to accept the functional survival of a municipal institution through a long period of urban decline and dereliction, only to be abandoned at the point where the fortunes of towns began to recover. Were we to accept that this were the case (and that all sixth-century ecclesiastical and other records had been kept there), this would only increase the interest of the shift around 600 AD, from public to private or individual institutional archives. Even where we might assume the existence of archives independent of the gesta municipalia—the royal archives most obviously— the problem tends to remain. Royal bureaucratic output must have been extensive, judging from the chance references to royal registers and letters in Gregory’s writings. Yet almost nothing remains of this. The only surviving element is the collection known as the Epistulae Austrasiacae: a selection, probably made at Metz, of royal diplomatic correspondence, along with some other letters (three, of no especial significance, relating to the see of Metz, supporting a Messin location for its composition). This compilation itself probably dates to around 600 and was presumably made to provide the court with a sort of formulary for diplomatic letter-writing. Again, it seems to indicate a change in attitudes in this period. I would suggest, provisionally at least, that the royal archives had not been kept in sufficiently organised fashion to make later reference and use easy. Ian Wood has argued that this was also the apparent state of municipal archives further south, in Le Mans, by the start of the seventh century.22 One might thus postulate a greater desire to be able to refer back to documents in the seventh century.

21

S&S, p. 265. I.N. Wood, ‘Disputes in fifth- and sixth-century Gaul: some problems’ in W. Davies & p. Fouracre (eds.), The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 7–22, at pp. 13–14. Wood argues this on the basis of the state of the will of bishop Bertram of Le Mans. In this, southern Paris basin-Loire valley, region, the survival of municipal acta or gesta is fairly well attested, but urban survival appears to have been rather better here than further north. 22

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We must therefore seek another explanation for the survival of documents after c. 600; I suggest that the crucial issue is not a change in production but in the deliberate retention of written texts. We can look to the Frankish law-codes to see why. Sixth-century law, as manifested by the Pactus Legis Salicae, makes no mention of the use of documents in order to prove a case. All of its enactments about inheritance or other social transactions envisage the normal operation of custom: children inherit equally, the provision of dowries works in a set fashion, members of particular segments of a kindred help to pay fines, or receive other payments, in particular orders, and so on. This is quite different in the provisions of seventh-century Lex Ribvaria. Here, although many of the provisions remain the same, it is repeatedly stated that one might circumvent the demands of custom by the use of a written document.23 These documents are of precisely the sorts for which models are given in the seventh-century and later formularies, like Marculf’s.24 Documents thus appear to have acquired a greater legal importance in evading the usual demands of custom. With the exception of Remigius of Reims’, presumably retained by his cathedral as a relic, the oldest northern Gaulish wills do indeed belong to the seventh century. Lex Ribvaria’s statements suggest, moreover, a differing view of the probative value of written instruments. In the Roman period, the legal worth of a document seems to have been as subject to scrutiny by the courts as any other witness.25 The trial of bishop Egidius of Reims (590) might reveal a Merovingian Gaulish instance of this attitude in practice.26 Egidius was tried for treason, part of the case for the prosecution being that he made overtures to the enemies of Childebert II of Austrasia (575–96) independently of the royal court’s authority. Documents bearing the royal signature were introduced in Egidius’ defence. These however were examined by the court and Otto the 23

Lex Ribv. 41, 59, 61, 62, 63, 70. A. Uddholm (ed. & trans.), Marculfi Formularium Libri Duo (Uppsala, 1962). 25 See, e.g., J. Harries, ‘Constructing the judge: Judicial accountability and the culture of criticism in late antiquity’, in R. Miles (ed.), Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (London, 1999), pp. 214–33, at pp. 218–9, for an example in practice. See also ead., Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1999), p. 108: ‘As Roman imperial culture became in general more reliant on the written word, so documentary proof acquired equal or greater weight than oral testimony’. It was an on-going process and Harries goes on to discuss the questioning of documents, like any other witness. 26 LH 10.19. 24

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referendary produced as a witness to the effect that they were forgeries. Now, Otto’s testimony was very likely unreliable. Egidius’ trial saw the Austrasian court rewriting history, claiming that Chilperic I (561–84) of Neustria had ever been the enemy (semper inimicus) of Childebert II, flagrantly ignoring a two-year period (581–3) when the two had been allies against Guntramn of Burgundy (561–92). Most of Egidius’ erstwhile factional allies, who had controlled the court in that period, had been done to death after a desperate bid to regain power in 587 and, with the close alliance now existing between Childebert and Guntramn, it might have taken a rasher man than Otto to speak up in the bishop’s defence or admit involvement in these documents’ creation. Nevertheless we might still see that the production of a legal document did not carry the weight that it did by the Carolingian period.27 This point is perhaps better supported by the examination of another of Gregory’s stories concerning the squabbling between Guntramn of Burgundy and the magnates controlling the Austrasian court during the minority of Childebert II.28 After Chilperic I’s murder (584), Egidius of Reims’ faction appears to have briefly regained control of the palace and, on an embassy to Guntramn, became involved in something of a (not uncharacteristically unedifying) stand-up row with the Burgundian monarch. Guntramn produced documents which he claimed demonstrated that the Austrasians had broken faith with earlier agreements. Tellingly however, the Austrasian aristocrats argued that these documents had no validity since most of the people with whom any agreement had been made were dead. If their outlook was in any way common, then we can see why, in the sixth century, documents were not deemed worth keeping beyond the lifetime of the parties involved. Guntramn’s seems, by contrast, to have become the prevailing attitude by the seventh century. Note, however, that I am not arguing for a simple, diametric shift in attitudes: first it was like this; then it was like that. I will argue below for some overlapping strands in the use of documents. There are also instances after 600 where the simple deployment of documents

27 For an illustration of which see R. Balzaretti, ‘The monastery of Sant’ Ambrogio and dispute settlement in early medieval Milan.’ EME 3.1 (1994), pp. 1–18; W. Davies, ‘People and places in dispute in ninth-century Brittany’, in Davies & Fouracre (ed.), The Settlement of Disputes, pp. 65–84, at p. 75. See also below, p. 240, n. 29. 28 LH 7.6.

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was not sufficient to win a case.29 However, it may be noteworthy that these cases, where a court over-ruled an earlier document, tend to be where peasants were arguing against lordly encroachment on their claimed rights. Here the unpleasant realities of more entrenched aristocratic power triumph over legal niceties; in one case a mnemonic device first (to my knowledge) attested in Lex Ribvaria is transmuted into straightforward corporal punishment.30 I suggest, further, that the wielding of naked socio-economic power manifest here, while it bears comparison with Egidius’ trial, is rather different from the scrutiny of documents for their legal validity by a Roman Alexandrian judge or even from the arguments deployed by the Austrasian magnates in 584–5. Ceteris paribus, the value of a document seems to be rather different, and longer-lasting, after c. 600. Taken with the statement of seventh-century law, we can thus identify reasons for the retention of written documents after c. 600. This seems, furthermore, to have been a part and parcel of the change in attitudes towards time—especially towards the future—which was suggested in the preceding chapters. As noted there, the Pactus Legis Salicae is exclusively concerned with the here and now. The legal procedures involved envisage the same sort of public display to a large transient audience as is suggested for the sixth-century funeral rite.31 I should clarify that I am not suggesting any sort of simple binary opposition between the use of public ritual and the employment of documents; I am suggesting a change in the relative importance of the two and in the way in which each was used. It is fairly well-known that the deployment of documents later on the earlier Middle Ages, and especially their reading out, was itself a public and ritualised act or performance. One can see this in the sixth century too. In Gregory of Tours’ Vita Patrum, for example, we encounter the public reading of the will of Nicetius, bishop of Lyon, in the city’s forum.32 Gregory’s 29 See C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 579, 582. The seventh-century case of Elariacum in Burgundy is not of unimpeachable authenticity; Kölzer (Diplomata Regum Francorum no. 103) considers that the document describing it is a forgery. The ninth-century Italian case of the peasants of Flexum is apparently authentic. 30 Below, n. 39. Here, children brought to court are boxed on the ears to make them remember the case for future generations. The Italian court ordered the peasant litigants to be beaten up so that they wouldn’t forget the ruling—and, one assumes, their place. 31 See, e.g., PLS 46, 50, 58, 60. 32 VP 8.5.

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own use of documents in the Histories is also indicative. Early on in the work, when composing Books I–IV, seemingly in accordance with the conventions of the genre of universal ecclesiastical history, and referring to the fairly distant past, he cites documents verbatim.33 Clearly he had access to a fairly well-stocked library including several sources now lost to us. When writing about more recent history, although, as mentioned, mentioning numerous written documents in passing, he cites almost none. The exceptions come towards the end of the work and concern very particular circumstances. One document recorded verbatim is the Treaty of Andelot, between Childebert II of Austrasia and Guntramn of Burgundy. Gregory, however, does not insert this text at the point where the treaty was made34 but on the occasion when (on an embassy by Gregory to Guntramn of Childebert’s behalf ) it is publicly read out and its terms again openly accepted by Guntramn.35 Similarly, the citation of other contemporary or recent documents largely concerns the public trials of the revolting nuns of Holy Cross, Poitiers.36 The ritualised public deployment of documents would be a strand connecting the periods before and after the suggested changes in the precise value of documents. Clearly, though, my proposal about a change in attitudes to documents only has the status of a suggestion; other interpretations are possible. Nevertheless, a broader view perhaps makes it more plausible. As discussed in the last chapter, the use of documents is not the only element of Lex Ribvaria to suggest a seventh-century change in attitudes to time. Lex Ribvaria’s recasting of the Pactus’ provisions about what to do when a fine could not be paid is especially significant. The Pactus envisages the use of public ritual (this point being particularly important to my argument) to bring in living kinsmen, related to the defendant within three generations, to help him pay.37 By contrast Lex Ribvaria states that the defendant’s family should pay over three generations—projecting the situation into the future.38 In cases of marriages between the free and individuals of particular unfree statuses, Lex Ribvaria again projects the situation into the future, differentiating 33

See, e.g., LH 2.3, 2.8–9, 2.31. LH 8.11. 35 LH 8.20. 36 LH 9.39, 9.41–42, 10.16. On the trial, see further, below, pp. 323–5. Another document is cited at LH 10.1 37 PLS 58. 38 Lex Ribv. 12.2. 34

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the status of any future offspring of the marriage from that of the partners to it.39 There is no such concern in the Pactus. Finally, Lex Ribvaria discusses a situation where no document is made to record a transaction; in this case young children are to be brought to court and boxed round the ears to help them remember the occasion!40 The procedure might be brutal but it makes clear how, unlike the compilers of the Pactus, the authors of Lex Ribvaria were concerned with projecting the memory of legal settlements beyond the lifetimes of those who were involved in them. Finally, when set alongside the observable shifts in the archaeological record, we can put all this evidence together to argue for an important change in ideas towards time and the future. This, I propose, helps us to explain the archaeologicallyvisible changes as well as the sudden increase in the survival of written documents. In chapter 7, I explore the possible implications for Anglo-Saxon England.

II. Development Two areas which these chapters touch upon, and which have been areas for debate in recent years are the history of ritual and the history of the emotions.41 The focus for both debates has been the use of written texts and consequently my thoughts on these areas take a rather different line. My approach to the emotional element of the funeral relies to some extent upon certain physiological constants and triggers, although I concede that their articulation and valorisation may well have been different and specific to the societies in question. I nevertheless retain my scepticism about the social constructionist view of the history of the emotions, especially in its extreme form.42 The debate on ritual has tended to dwell on its representation in contemporary texts and is thus somewhat removed from the concerns of chapters 5 and 6 although it may yet be possible to make some contribution to that

39

Lex Ribv, 61.10. Lex Ribv, 63. 41 Emotions: B.H. Rosenwein (ed.), Anger’s Past. The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1998). See also C. Cubitt, B.H. Rosenwein, S. Airlie, M. Garrison, & C. Larrington, ‘The History of Emotions: A debate’, EME 10.2 (2001), pp. 225–56. 42 G. Halsall, review of Rosenwein (ed.), Anger’s Past, EME 10.2 (2001), pp. 301–3. 40

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discussion by drawing upon the implicit dynamics of and developments in funerary rite as revealed archaeologically. The approach and some of the conclusions in chapters 5 and 6 have some similarities with other work being done on early medieval cemeteries. Frans Theuws’ analyses of burials have similarly stressed the importance of the interchange of the identity of the deceased, the creators of the funerary rite and the audience of the funeral in creating meaning.43 He employs the idea of rhetoric, drawing some parallels with saints’ lives, in considering how ideas about the deceased were transmitted to an audience. This, although different, has some parallel implications to my own analyses. Martin Carver, by contrast, has argued that the grave-goods display is akin to the creation of a poem.44 This analysis has numerous similarities with mine, although my study, its results and their expression are somewhat more prosaic. As made clear in chapter 6, though, I would no longer stress the ‘textual’ nature of the archaeological data to the degree that Carver does. The thesis presented in these chapters has been most thoroughly discussed by Howard Williams, who has made a sophisticated study of various aspects of memory in the archaeology of early Anglo-Saxon England.45 Williams has used the thesis presented in chapters 5 and 6 as a springboard for one aspect of his investigation (‘graves as mnemonic compositions’), commenting generously that ‘[Halsall] very clearly sets a theoretical agenda for interpreting the mnemonic significance of furnished graves.’46 More importantly, however, Williams pursues and makes an important critique of my ideas. He extends my discussion of scene-making from the grave-side back to the death-bed to argue, surely correctly, that the funeral is rather a series of scenes, emphasising my point further that the grave only provides a final trace

43 F. Theuws, ‘Grave-goods, ethnicity and the rhetoric of burial rites in late antique northern Gaul’ in T. Derks & N. Roymans (ed.), Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity: The Role of Power and Tradition (Amsterdam, 2009), pp. 283–319. 44 M.O.H. Carver, ‘Burial as Poetry: the Context of Treasure in Anglo-Saxon Graves’, in E. Tyler (ed.) Treasure in the Medieval West (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 25–48. 45 H. Williams, ‘Material culture as memory: combs and cremation in early medieval Britain’, EME 12 (2003), pp. 89–128; id., ‘Introduction: The archaeology of death, memory and material culture’ & H. Eckardt & H. Williams, ‘Objects without a past? The use of Roman objects in early Anglo-Saxon graves’, both in H. Williams (ed.), Archaeologies of Remembrance: Death and Memory in Past Societies (New York, 2003), pp. 1–24 & pp. 141–70 respectively; H. Williams, Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain (Cambridge, 2006). 46 Williams, Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain, pp. 118–9.

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of the events and is ‘not as important as the process of making it.’47 As most of the elements of this argument can be found in my writings it is with hindsight a little surprising that I had not connected them in this way myself! Williams’ point serves to underline my thesis in chapter 6 about the limitations of the textual metaphor, making even clearer the way that the burial ‘text’ is simultaneously both written and read in its performance, leaving us with a trace that is crucially lacunose and, inevitably, incapable of being re-read in anything like a straightforward fashion. Williams then progresses to point out some short-comings in my argument and I would accept all of his strictures as fundamentally valid. First of all he points out that the transient grave-goods display is not an opposition to above-ground monumental commemoration but, says he, complementary.48 To some extent I would agree with this. My agreement would not be based simply upon the fact that there must have been some above-ground marker of many sixth-century burials, given the comparative rarity of reuse or violation, or the neatness of the famous rows of graves (Reihengräber) in some Merovingian cemeteries (especially, in the central burial group of the sixth-century phase of Lavoye for instance), and not just upon the fact that some burials with significant above-ground monuments also contained grave-goods (Sutton Hoo mound 1 or the Childeric grave to give the two most extreme examples). I had also drawn attention in the 2003 paper to the way in which even ‘transient’ rites could give rise to more permanent means of commemoration,49 and tried to stress that the difference concerned the relative investment in two types of memorialisation, rather than suggesting a straightforward opposition. Nevertheless, my studies of burial customs across late antique and early medieval western Europe suggest that, empirically, there is an opposition, broadly speaking, between times and places where, relatively, more investment was put into above-ground commemoration especially by the élite, where grave-goods seem comparatively rare throughout buried communities, and where distinction was demonstrated by rule-breaking and difference from the main burial

47

Ibid., p. 120. Ibid. 49 BW, p. 69 and n. 17 (above, p. 225). Note, however, that this is not the same point as Williams makes, which concerns the mnemonic value of the ritual and the artefacts themselves, to which I return below. 48

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community, on the one hand, and those where more effort and expense was lavished upon the furnishing of the burial, less upon its surfacelevel or above-ground maintenance and where distinction tended to be revealed in rule-exaggeration, on the other.50 The relative investment in funerary commemoration accorded to different sections of the community (according to age and gender) also appears to change importantly between the two (as argued in chapter 6). As I have demonstrated in the previous chapters, especially in chapter 6, there is, furthermore, a clearly documented shift around 600 AD towards a greater concern with projection of specific situations into the future, as attested in the documentary record and discussed above. The transformation in the nature of the burial custom must therefore be understood in a broader context than is provided by archaeology alone. If one looks at the excavated data on their own, Williams’ point that burial rites performed over a short period of time could have created memories that were long-lasting, and thus need not have been diametrically opposed to the construction of permanent above-ground memorials, is exactly correct; it is the consideration of other aspects of social change at the same time that leads me to retain some sense of opposition between the ‘transient’ burial rite manifested in gravegoods and that revealed in a greater concern about the above-ground and the long term, and a relationship between this opposition and different attitudes towards time and the future. As discussed above,51 a tendency in modern British early medieval archaeology has been to turn to ethnography and anthropology for parallels as explanations rather than considering contemporaneous written sources. In an instance of this Williams suggests that the furnished inhumation ritual might have been an occasion when the deceased individual was transformed into an ancestor.52 This remains, in theory, a possibility but it does not find any evidence in the early medieval data. Ancestor

50 I would note, however, that there, crucially, different types of grave-goods custom within the broad category. See (briefly) G. Halsall, ‘Gräberfelduntersuchungen und das Ende des römischen Reichs’, in Zwischen Spätantike und Mittelalter, ed. S. Brather. (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 57; Berlin, 2008), pp. 103–17. There are other dimensions to this opposition. 51 pp. 55–57. 52 Williams, Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain, p. 121. This explanation is also proposed, with (in my view) the same weaknesses, by Frans Theuws, as discussed above, p. 157.

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worship, although—alarmingly—apparently gaining favour as an idea in early medieval archaeology, is not attested at all in early medieval western Europe. The concern with the memorialisation of the dead as ancestors only becomes clear with the development of Christian commemorative practices such as the libri memoriales which, as I argue, is to be seen as part of the same set of changes as leads in Gaul (and I would propose in England too) to the shift away from transient rituals like grave-goods deposition. Study of other early medieval forms of evidence would have helped here. This, it seems to me, is a good instance where British archaeology needs to abandon its aversion towards—indeed what I would characterise as its fear of—using contemporaneous written records as complementary data to help sharpen its explanations. As I argued in commentary 1, this does not mean making the archaeology in any way secondary or subservient to the historical sources. Williams’ point really strikes home when he writes that: by failing to develop his explanation of the role of remembrance through scene-making, Halsall continues to regard the transient nature of furnished burials as a weakness, to some extent considering them as a temporary phenomenon in the social ‘evolution’ of more enduring mechanisms of commemoration, rather than as a strength in creating memories in a different and distinctive way from erecting permanent monuments.53

Apart from the use of the term ‘social evolution’, which I do not think I have employed in my studies, Williams is quite right that this is a flaw in my argument. Rather than in not creating memories, the divergence of sixth- and seventh-century customs might indeed lie in the ‘different and distinctive’ types of memory created. Williams suggests that the performance of the ‘classic’ sixth-century furnished burial, from death-bed to interment, might create and enhance memories precisely through the brevity of the process. The ritual might etch such memories through the intensity of the performance. Here, too, Williams suggests an important further development of my thesis in looking at the potential roles of variables such as colour (tone and brightness) as employed in the goods and in the funerary costume (of mourners and of deceased, presumably), and other sensory aspects, not only sound and gesture (both which I had touched upon and

53

Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain, pp. 120–1.

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which alas lie beyond the archaeological purview) but also, perhaps, smell. Obviously the latter is difficult to explore through archaeology but means of doing so surely exist. If we can identify the contents of vessels deposited in graves, if we can recover hints as to the nature of any meals cooked in the funeral process, if we can find what herbs and other substances were used in the preparation or embalming of the corpse (leaving aside the odour of the dead body) we might have a way into suggesting what the ‘distinctive smell’ of the funerary process might have been. The documentary corpus also provides some pointers when considering the holy dead and the sweet smells that were given off during the reopening of their tombs. It is well known that smells are some of the most effective mnemonic triggers. Such analyses would add considerably to my interpretation of the way the funeral worked emotionally, in telescoping time and perhaps providing reassurance.54 The progressive absence of grave-goods and the end of the custom of depositing vessels with the dead surely made the seventhcentury funeral a less intense multi-sensory occasion (and therefore in some senses less memorable or, rather, memorable in different ways) than its sixth-century precursor. The issue of change remains, nonetheless. Sixth-century Merovingian cemeteries contain a much greater relative investment in gravegoods, chosen from a wide array of forms to convey, seemingly, quite specific messages about the deceased to a large audience present on the day in a short-lived ritual. Especially with the consideration of other evidential forms it seems clear that the sixth century was a time when social rituals did indeed dwell on the ‘here and now’. I stand by that aspect of my argument. By contrast, seventh-century cemeteries contain ever fewer grave-goods of ever more standardised and restricted types (and distributed among the community in subtly but importantly different ways) and invest much more in a range of surface-level and above-ground markers. That and the apparently greater importance of ‘family plots’ in cemeterial organisation do seem (especially when placed alongside the other changes manifest in other forms of evidence) to demonstrate an increased concern with the projection of

54 This would give such studies of colour and smell a clear focus, such as is much clearer from Williams’ studies in Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain than from his survey, ‘Rethinking early medieval mortuary archaeology’, EME 13 (2005), pp. 195–217, where the reason why these variables are worthy of study is not immediately evident.

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a family’s status into the future, a concern that was part and parcel of an increased security of such status.55 Another difference, which I have stressed in the preceding chapters, concerns audience, in social or spatial terms. For the furnished burial ritual to convey the information about the deceased (and his or her family) effectively one needed, ultimately, to be present on the day. We are speaking here of a large but local audience. The above-ground monument allows people not present on the day of the burial to visit (and revisit) the grave and, especially where more elaborate or including an inscription, to recover information about the dead and their families. This is one reason why I have read this form of memorialisation as being particularly important in élite, peer-group relations across wider distances. Where, as in the Trier epigraphy, such élite families bring their dead from across a region for burial in a particular central place, this aspect is underlined. One might see, probably at an even higher social level, a similar mechanism in the construction of churches in the Austrasian ‘capital’ of Metz. From about 600 onwards the number of churches built in the town grows dramatically, reaching forty-three by the mid-eighth century.56 We should see these as evidence of the high aristocracy copying royal and episcopal foundations in competitively making permanent marks on the urban landscape.57 If the opposition between sixth-century transience and seventhcentury permanence is certainly, as Williams suggests, too crudely drawn, particularly if viewed in terms of commemoration, there is still a change and a difference to be explained. Indeed if I have a criticism of Williams’ studies of memorialisation it is that they shy away somewhat from explanation, especially of change through time, concentrating instead on a sort of thick description which, while eminently necessary, is in my view only a first step, especially towards accounting for chronological shifts. Permanent above-ground memorialisation may simply work in a different commemorative way from the burial of grave-goods but the fact remains that people chose to make a change and do things differently, and we must ask why. The roots of my concern here, to push beyond this description towards analysis and explanation in terms of social relations, may indeed lie in my 55

This was, perhaps, the clearest instance of the practical effects of the ‘multidisciplinary’ method espoused in S&S and advocated in AH (chapter 1, above). 56 S&S, pp. 231–8, and maps 7.10–7.12. 57 Ibid., pp. 266–70.

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intellectual formation at a time when ‘social analysis’ of cemeteries was ‘de rigueur’ but I make no apologies for that. The only widely-known explanation for the shift towards permanent above-ground monuments around 600 concerns the increase in new barrows and is in religious terms, seeing this as the result of a pagan opposition to Christianity.58 There are considerable problems with this interpretation. Partly it relies for its force, fundamentally, upon the idea that there was something intrinsically non-Christian about burial with grave-goods;59 partly it fails to set the development in England in a wider European context with widespread change towards aboveground memorials; and partly it omits to set the display in the context of lavish funerary ritual around the fringes of the Merovingian kingdom. Carver places his interpretation of Anglo-Saxon barrow burial within a broader argument about an opposition between grave-goods burial and taxation (which he sees in somewhat structuralist terms as commensurate with a series of other polarities: respectively, urban: non-urban ‘options’, Roman:non-Roman, and Christian:pagan). This falls rapidly on simple empirical grounds. The high point of gravegoods burial in Gaul began in the generation after the conversion of the Frankish king to Catholic Christianity60 and lasted throughout a century when taxation remained (in whatever shadowy form) but urbanism was in decline; in the seventh-century, as taxation declined, so did grave-goods, whereas urbanism revived.61 If there is a link between levels of urbanism and grave-goods deposition it concerns the relative security of surplus in the hands of the local élite.

58 M.O.H. Carver, ‘Ideology and allegiance in East Anglia’ in R. Farrell & C. Neuman de Vegvar (ed.), Sutton Hoo: Fifty Years After (American Early Medieval Studies 2; Oxford & Oakville CT, 1992), pp. 173–82; id. Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? (London, 1998), p. 136; id., ‘Cemetery and society at Sutton Hoo: five awkward questions and four contradictory answers’ in C.E. Karkov, K.M. Wickham-Crowley & B.K. Young (ed.), Spaces of the Living and the Dead: An Archaeological Dialogue (American Early Medieval Studies 3; Oxford & Oakville CT, 1999), pp. 1–14 ; id., ‘Reflections on the meanings of monumental barrows in Anglo-Saxon England’, in S. Lucy & A. Reynolds (ed.), Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales (society for Medieval Archaeology Monographs Series 17; London, 2002), pp. 132–43. Carver has published the idea in many other places. 59 See further below, pp. 264–8. 60 See further below, pp. 268–9. 61 I have pointed this out, in general sympathy with Carver’s wish to move the discussion of urbanism into the sphere of mentalités as well as economics, in TSI. Carver has continued to publish his theory in unmodified form.

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Van de Noort has attempted to address the insularity of Carver’s argument by situating the English barrows in the context of the funerary mounds that appear at about the same time in the Rhineland and southern German fringes of the Frankish kingdom.62 His study correctly notes this peripheral distribution but has numerous weaknesses, particularly in its Germanism. Like other studies it ascribes to ‘Germanic’ paganism various ideas that cannot be substantiated and very possibly underestimates the degree of Christianisation in the area in the sixth century. Further, to see these barrows as a pagan counter to church-building neglects the fact that, while churches in civitascapitals and former Roman ‘small towns’ (vici and castra) are known in the sixth century, they cannot be called common and the majority are best seen as episcopal and royal foundations. The boom in urban church-building in northern Gaul begins in the seventh century, and rural churches do not seem common until the middle of that century or later. The relative chronology of the different forms of monument does not allow us to see one form (barrows) as a counter to the other (churches). Looking more broadly at funerary customs they seem to be part of a general concern with the above-ground commemoration of the dead, as I have noted repeatedly. The northern fringes of the Merovingian realm and Alamannia in particular had, moreover, been the location of the most lavish displays of funerary furnishing throughout the sixth century, a fact that can quite easily be explained by reference to the severity of social competition in those areas, far from alternative sources of legitimation, after the region’s conquest by the Merovingians in the early sixth century.63 It does not seem unreasonable to see more extreme displays in rural areas here, during the processes of aristocratic Separierung, than (as yet) in those further inside the realm. Nevertheless, Williams’ critique inspires me to refine and develop my reading of the change around 600. In some ways I will (at least superficially) reverse my earlier formulation and suggest that what Williams’ analysis shows is that the transient multi-media display of the grave-goods ritual created a more rounded and longer-lasting memory of the deceased for the mourners, than did the later ritual involving 62

R. Van de Noort, ‘The context of early medieval barrows in western Europe.’ Antiquity 67 (1993), pp. 66–73. 63 See also BMRW, pp. 400–3. On a macro scale, this distribution reveals a similar point to that shown by analysis of the pattern of lavish burials in and around Metz.

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less investment in grave furnishings and displays and more in aboveground monuments and other forms of permanent commemoration. However, this ‘reversal’ is really produced by reconsidering the word ‘memory’. I am arguing, in this commentary, that the sixth-century funeral created memories, perhaps powerful ones, of the event and thereby of the deceased and his or her family and other relationships, but that these memories remained those of the people who attended the burial and thus only had a meaningful lifespan commensurate with that of those witnesses. It is very possible that the ritual facilitated the creation of stories about the event and the dead person or other oral forms of commemoration that could be transmitted to future generations. Nevertheless two points must be made. The first is that such mechanisms remain hypothetical and the second is that this sort of transmission is less directly fixed to the original memorial than is the case where an above-ground or otherwise permanent monument exists, especially where the latter contains some form of inscription. As I stated in 2003, therefore, there is still an important difference between the two forms of commemoration. That difference surely lies in intention. The above-ground marker is set up to maintain a record of the burial, the deceased individual and (perhaps most importantly) the family for, it is hoped, a long time into the future, perhaps in perpetuity. In this it has similarities with the libri memoriales and other forms of Christian liturgical commemoration adduced earlier. It is therefore intended, in itself, to speak to future generations in a way that the display of grave-goods is not. In this, I am not sure how helpful the word memory is. The term ‘social memory’ has gained much currency in the past decade or so among early medievalists but I remain unconvinced of its analytical value.64 I have yet to see how, in any meaningful sense at all, it differs from, or permits any more exact or helpful understanding of past

64 J. Fentress & C.J. Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992); M.J. Innes, ‘Memory, orality and literacy in an early medieval society’, Past and Present, 158 (1998), pp. 3– 36; E. Van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Buffalo, 1999); C. Cubitt, ‘Memory and Narrative in the Cult of Early Anglo-Saxon Saints’, in Y. Hen and M.J. Innes (ed.), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 29–66; ead. ‘Monastic memory and identity in early Anglo-Saxon England’, in W.O. Frazer and A. Tyrrell (ed.), Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain, Leicester University Press (London, 2000), pp. 253–276.

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society than, perfectly good (if less fashionable) terms like ‘tradition’.65 Indeed I am not even convinced that the word ‘memory’ has more than limited metaphorical value in understanding the ways in which societies (rather than individuals) create, mark, discuss, valorise and retrieve their pasts. I maintain that memory is only an apposite or useful term when discussing the life-spans of the witnesses of an event and that, when we progress into the sphere of generations with no personal experience of the people or events being commemorated, we ought to employ terms like ‘tradition’, ‘memorial’, ‘commemoration’, or even ‘history’.66 In exploring the difference between the sixth- and seventh-century burial rituals, I would stress the point made in chapters 5 and 6 that the key change concerns the new attitudes to the future that emerged around 600. This makes a significant difference from earlier commemorative strategies, which were fundamentally concerned with the past. Sixth-century ‘here and now’ rituals might have worked well to create long-lasting memories among those present. As I suggested above,67 means might well have existed to transmit information about a deceased person to future generations. Nevertheless I maintain that the primary concern of the earlier Merovingian funeral, regarding commemoration, was with those alive at the time and that the mechanisms involved in the ritual meant that it dwelt principally on the past (even if the very recent past). The sixth-century demonstration of grave-goods, as analysed above and in my other studies, suggests a fairly precise ‘grammar of display’, helping to convey information about the deceased to an audience present on the day. To be effective, this must have had recognised referents, in the rituals of the life-cycle and in previous funerals. If these aspects of the rite symbolise dimensions of the identity of the deceased then we need to remember that the word identity means likeness, in this case likeness to an extant social category. As discussed in the preceding chapters, none of this

65 See also S. Foot, ‘Remembering, forgetting and inventing: attitudes to the past in England at the end of the first Viking Age.’ TRHS 6th Ser. 9 (1999), pp. 185–200, at pp. 187–8. 66 Here I owe much to my discussions with Julian Richards’ and my former PhD student, Zoë Devlin, and to her thesis (University of York, 2006), now published as Remembering the Dead in Anglo-Saxon England (BAR(B) 446: Oxford 2007). This contains an extended and extremely helpful critique of the concepts of memory used in early medieval studies. 67 BW, p. 69 (above, p. 225).

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makes the ritual static or prevents the playing with these categories, it does not negate the point that the categories themselves are made and remade in the process, and it does not deny the creation of memories retained thereafter. However it does underline my principal contention, which is that (like the memories themselves) this display essentially looked backwards. The above-ground memorial creates a fundamentally different means by which information can be maintained and retrieved, by providing a permanent fixed point, to which stories can be pinned in maintaining the commemoration of an individual. However, even if the permanent monument provides this type of reference point and is (at least in theory) longer-lasting than the memory created by the performance of a furnished burial, I suggest that the type of information retrieved is inevitably ‘flatter’, more restricted than the more ‘rounded’ or multidimensional (if probably shorter-lived) set of memories of an individual created through the furnished burial rite. This, I propose, might be the case because the social identity commemorated in aboveground markers principally concerned the deceased’s membership of a specific family of a certain importance in a particular place, rather than other dimensions of their individual identity. Where the aboveground monument stresses a burial group, encloses a cluster of graves or is a family mausoleum or funerary church, the point is underlined. Indeed I had suggested from other aspects of the changes c. 600 that seventh-century burial was more concerned than sixth-century with familial identity and standing. At about the same time, Christianity developed technologies which facilitated this type of memorialisation. Note though that, as these only slowly emerged within Christianity from the seventh century, Christianisation cannot be adduced as an explanation, whether in Gaul or in Anglo-Saxon England. The difference between the transient display of artefacts in a grave (and one cannot dispute that the display is transient) and the more permanent display involved in above-ground monuments leads us to another aspect of Williams’ work: the use of already existing historical monuments.68 Williams carried out a very thorough and rigorous

68 H. Williams, ‘Ancient landscapes and the dead: The reuse of prehistoric and Roman monuments as early Anglo-Saxon burial sites’ Med. Arch. 41 (1997), pp. 1–31; id., ‘Monuments and the past in early Anglo-Saxon England’, in World Archaeology 30 (1998), pp. 90–108; id. ‘Placing the dead: investigating the location of wealthy barrow burials in seventh-century England’, in M. Rundkvist (ed.), Grave Matters: Eight

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analysis of the nature and location of Anglo-Saxon burials in or near such things as prehistoric barrows, Roman buildings or other monuments from previous eras. Sometimes one can ask whether there were any visible remains of the monument surviving at the time of the inhumation but Williams demonstrates that in a very significant percentage of cases (perhaps as many as one in four of all known AngloSaxon burial sites) such doubts cannot be substantiated. There are, it should be said, differences within this phenomenon, such as the use of existing monuments by whole communities, as in some Yorkshire cemeteries,69 or their use by more restricted groups. The situation described by Williams for Anglo-Saxon England matches, as is frequently the case, that in northern Gaul. In the region of Metz it is certainly the case that seventh-century cemeteries are far more frequently found inside the remains of villas: two examples in that area are Berthelming and Bettborn.70 At Audun-le-Tiche, the ruins of a Gallo-Roman fanum were used as the location for what was, within the early phase of that cemetery, a fairly prestigious burial (grave 147: a ‘rule-breaking’ burial of an old woman with, for the site, lavish jewellery—indeed the most lavish female burial on the site).71 Two similar graves lay just outside. As the cemetery progressed at Audun, the community began to construct its own grave-markers rather than reusing monuments. Sixth-century sites could be found relatively near villas or other Roman sites, as at Ennery and Lavoye for example, but the graves do not tend to be found inside the structures. In the past I have possibly made too much of the fact that the Lavoye graves stray into the ruins in the seventh century. This may be significant but it may, equally, simply be a function of the growth of the cemetery. My concern is with placing this usage of monuments in the context of the construction of new barrows and other above-ground monuments at about the same time. Again there are variations: a distinction Studies of First Millennium AD burials in Crimea, England and Southern Scandinavia (BAR(I) 781; Oxford, 1999), pp. 57–86. I am most grateful to Dr Williams for sending me copies of his works. This was the focus of Williams’ early post-graduate study, and led him to a wider interest in commemoration and attitudes to the past. 69 I cannot think of a certain direct analogy for this practice in Gaul, although there are sites such as Berthelming (below, n. 46), wherein a large number of graves (in this case twenty-two) lay inside the ruins of a villa. Whether this constituted a whole community or the majority of one such is difficult to say as the excavation primarily concerned the villa itself. 70 S&S, pp. 96–98. 71 Ibid., p. 156.

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should probably be made between ‘barrow cemeteries’ wherein small barrows are quite numerous within sites, and major barrows constructed away from such cemeteries (as at Sutton Hoo, although that became a significant cluster of barrows). There are some earlier newlybuilt barrows, such as (in northern Gaul) that plausibly assumed to have lain over the grave of Childeric in Tournai. A similar barrow may have existed above Lavoye 319, given the large area devoid of burials that remained around that ‘tombe de chef’ throughout the period of the cemetery’s use.72 Other sixth-century above-ground funerary monuments exist in northern Gaul in the form of the churches constructed in towns. As in England, though, the phenomenon is not widespread until the seventh century, when it takes on a variety of forms, of which the reuse of monuments is only one. I am here concerned with the seventh-century developments. One reason, I assume, why Williams wishes to play down the distinction between the two forms of funerary display concerns his thesis about the role of association with the past in the choice of burial in or near to a monument. Whereas I see the above-ground monument as manifesting a concern with projecting current status into the future, Williams’ thesis tends to view it as demonstrating a desire to link the present with the past. The use of the monument therefore shares with the ‘mnemonic composition’ of the furnished burial the aspects of looking back and of linking with the past through the telescoping of time and thus the two commemorative options come within the same analytical sphere. It is necessary, at the outset, to stress that my interpretation is not necessarily incompatible with Williams’. Nevertheless I have some general concerns about his theory, which, it is fair to say is widespread within archaeology in Britain and elsewhere.73 My first reservation concerns the element of change. As noted, postimperial burials appear to have been sited near monuments from quite early on (just as there are above-ground monuments before c. 600) but their actual reuse as grave sites is (as with the construction of aboveground markers) very much more common from c. 600 onwards. This appears to be true for England and for Northern Gaul. If this upsurge was connected with an attitude to the past then what is required is an 72

Ibid., p. 120. I deal at length with John Moreland’s flawed interpretation of the Wigber Low burials and their relevance for the relationship of written and excavated data above, pp. 72–78. 73

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explanation of the fact that there was evidently a change in such attitudes around 600. Williams has not as yet (to my knowledge) offered an explanation for this change. As discussed above, currently available explanations in terms of religion or religious change do not plausibly account for the construction of new monuments like barrows and I do not think they can be applied to the more frequent reuse of visible ancient monuments for burials in the seventh century.74 The ancient monuments used as locations have, in common with the new barrows, churches, grave-stones and similar markers, their permanent visibility above ground. At Ailcy Hill, Ripon (North Yorkshire), the local community used an entirely natural small knoll as a focus for their burials.75 Local legend might have had it down as a burial site (later traditions certainly thought it was some sort of a monument);76 it might not. The crucial thing was that it was a distinctive and visible landscape feature. However, we must note that all sorts of other parts of the landscape might have had associations with the past in local community lore: particular fields, hills, streams or springs, groups of trees, or other things not necessarily recoverable from a ‘flat cemetery’. In the seventh-century, if people were associating their dead with traditions about the past, then they were associating them with a particular form of tradition manifested in a particular type of visible, above-ground marker and it is this aspect which requires us to examine this upsurge in reuse in the context of the construction of other sorts of monument that took place at the same time. If we see this reuse as manifesting a desire to associate with the past, it is important to clarify that it is impossible to know what sort of past the people interring their dead in ancient monuments may have thought they were associating with, or even how they viewed, or what sort of knowledge they had of, ‘history’. A difference is sometimes implied between the choice of prehistoric and Roman monuments as

74 S. Semple, ‘A fear of the past: the place of the prehistoric burial mound in the ideology of middle and later Saxon England’, World Archaeology 30 (1998), pp. 109–26, places the reuse in a slightly different religious context which might have something more going for it, although the argument relies on a number of untestable assumptions about Anglo-Saxon paganism. 75 R.A. Hall & M. Whyman, ‘Settlement and monasticism at Ripon, North Yorkshire, from the 7th to the 11th centuries, AD.’ Med. Arch., 40 (1996), pp. 62–150 (e.g., p. 117 & plan, p. 85). 76 Ibid., pp. 67–67.

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locations, but it seems to me to be impossible to know whether early medieval folk had any idea that Roman and ‘prehistoric’ monuments belonged to separate eras; if prehistoric features are often associated with gods and mythical beasts, then the Old English poem The Ruin also, famously, describes what seems to be a Roman settlement as enta geweorc: the work of giants. Indeed the phrase ‘the work of giants’ appears to be used quite indiscriminately for all sorts of traces of the pre-Anglo-Saxon past.77 We cannot even be sure that they had any clear sense that these remains belonged to the remote past, as is often supposed. Gildas (a highly educated author with some sense of Roman history and access to a library) placed the construction of the Hadrianic and Antonine walls possibly as little as three generations, rather than (more accurately) three or four centuries, before his time of writing.78 What constituted the remote past for the ordinary seventh-century Frank or Anglo-Saxon? The time of his or her great-grandfather? None of these points in any way negates the argument about a possible intention to associate with the past but they are necessary caveats and clarifications. If the currently dominant explanatory paradigm for the reuse of monuments is as a desire on the part of early medieval people to associate themselves with the past, and if that is very clearly an explanation I have used myself,79 I would now propose an alternative, which does not (in this context) appear to have received the attention it deserves. The use of extant monuments from previous eras may share with the construction of new above-ground markers a desire not to create a link with the past but to over-write it. Here again some comparison with other documented instances of the use of existing ‘historic’ sites might be instructive. Urban monuments provide an interesting analogy. In Rome itself successive regimes added their own elements to the monumental landscape, sometimes

77 J.J. Cohen, ‘Monsters, Cannibalism, and the Fragile Body in Early England’, http://www.gwu.edu/~humsci/facpages/cannibal.html (accessed 25 August 2007). 78 The date of Gildas’ composition might be placed any time between c. 475 and c. 550 and I am increasingly of the opinion that he may well have been writing in the fifth century rather than c. 540, as is still usually stated. 79 Cp. S&S, p. 181, written in 1993 and antedating by a few years the cluster of publications on this theme in Anglo-Saxon archaeology. A similar paradigm is manifest in T. Bell, ‘Churches on Roman Buildings: Christian associations and Roman masonry in Anglo-Saxon England’ Medieval Archaeology 42, (1998), pp. 1–18.

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demolishing and building over the constructions of previous rulers.80 The construction, in Vespasian’s and Titus’ reigns, of the Flavian amphitheatre on the site of Nero’s earlier great lake and colossal statue (whence the amphitheatre derives its usual name of the Coliseum), is perhaps the most obvious instance. Simple adoption of and association with a present élite with a prestigious past was often far from easy. Many sixth-century kingdoms adopted what we might think of as second-rank Roman towns as their principal centres. Metz is a case in point, but so too are Paris, Toledo in Visigothic Spain, and Pavia in Lombard Italy. The Merovingians quickly found the heavily imperial landscape of Trier too overpowering and soon moved up the Moselle to Metz, where their political ideology could more easily be inscribed on, or written over, the existing city.81 Metz provided the Austrasian kings with a monumental royal centre but one which they could adopt, not simply to claim that they were heirs of Rome and thus to some extent appropriate the past but also to compete with the Constantinopolitan imperial régime in the present. Other instances point in the same general direction. The construction of martyrial basilicas in the former cemeteries of Roman towns was a means of inscribing new foci on the urban landscape, and changing the meaning of earlier centres. It may be significant that, as has often been remarked, intra-mural church-building (and especially intra-mural burial in churches) in northern Gaul only becomes common from the seventh century. Sometimes, as at Saint-Pierre-auxNonnains in Metz, old Roman civic structures were taken over for the purpose. In the same vein, we might also cite the relocation of relics to new sites to appropriate their cult and overwrite their previous associations and connotations. A good example is provided by Gregory of Tours’ relative Gregory of Langres who, when he was unable to convince the inhabitants of his diocese that the holy man whose tomb they venerated was in fact a demon or pagan, ‘miraculously’ had a dream in which the martyr revealed himself as a certain Benignus and told Gregory his life story. Gregory was then able to appropriate the saint’s cult and translate his relics to a new church.82 In another instance, when a local bishop was unable to prevent the locals from 80 C. Machado, ‘Building the past: Monuments and memory in the forum Romanum’, in W. Bowden, A. Gutteridge & C. Machado (ed.), Social and Political Life in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2006), pp. 157–92. 81 BMRW, pp. 493–4. BW, p. 72 (above, p. 229). 82 GM 50.

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throwing votive offerings into a lake, he constructed a church at the site and redirected their rituals there.83 The holy man Vulfolaic countered ‘rustic’ use of an old statue of Diana as a focus for some sort of ritual and attendant drunken celebrations, by building a pillar next to it, from which he lectured these ‘pagans’. A church had already been built nearby, presumably for similar purposes.84 Churches were built on the sites of buildings which Christians regarded as dangerously pagan, such as amphitheatres. These examples can be multiplied from documentary and archaeological sources.85 The persistence of the classical tradition of town-foundation as a means of political commemoration (e.g. as Reccopolis and Vitoria in Visigothic Spain) manifests similar desire to inscribe identity on the landscape in monumental fashion. It may be that the renaming of settlements from Latin to Germanic forms (Argentoratum became Stratoburgium for example) is also about over-writing the past. My interpretation, not for the first time, to some extent stresses competition and conflict, rather than the cosily communal or consensual.86 I have suggested that one reason why cemeteries are often cited by Roman villas is that these structures remained the foci for dispersed communities in the post-imperial period.87 The intrusion of burials into these focal points might have been an attempt by the emergent, more secure northern Gallic aristocracy to claim their leadership of those communities. Here, therefore, rather than dealing with a desire to ‘collapse and command time’ we might rather be seeing the results of the intention to appropriate history. Similar points might well apply to the use of extant mounds in England. This and the construction of new monuments would, in this reading, all be symptoms of a greater security of tenure of local authority, such as is visible in a wide range of other evidential forms in which I would include the introduction of

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GC 2. LH 8.15. 85 J. Moralee, ‘The Stones of St. Theodore: Disfiguring the Pagan Past in Christian Gerasa’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 14.2 (2006), pp. 183–215; B. Effros, ‘Monuments and memory: repossessing ancient remains in early medieval Gaul’, in M. de Jong & F. Theuws (ed.), Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 2001), pp. 93–118. See also the instructive study of Annabel Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical City. Dura Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravenna (Cambridge, 1995). 86 In this it shares some general features with the approach of S. Tarlow, ‘The dread of something after death: violation and desecration on the Isle of Man in the tenth century’, in: J. Carman, Material Harm: Archaeological Studies of War and Violence (Glasgow, 1997), pp. 132–42. 87 VTC. 84

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new forms of document and their retention, in Anglo-Saxon England and in northern Gaul. The appearance of the charter in later seventhcentury Anglo-Saxon England should, in my view, like the changes in burial ritual be seen in broader European context and not just in terms of conversion and the Augustinian mission. Thus, as well as having the confidence to overwrite or appropriate local tradition and to insert their families (literally) into that history in a way that, let us be clear, made such an appropriation permanent,88 these families were sufficiently self-assured as to create their own, new monuments that appropriated the landscape, whether as points to be seen or as points from which that landscape could be viewed.89 Smaller above-ground markers in communal cemeteries should probably be seen as less ambitious manifestations of analogous factors. Whether or not looking to history, the crucial concern with the reuse of existing monuments or the construction of new ones was with permanence and the future. The religious dimensions of these changes are further dealt with in the next chapter.

88 At this point I agree with Moreland insofar as whatever stories were current about these landscape features before their reuse, they were irreparably altered once the new burials were created. One might see this in the traditions about Ailcy Hill (above, n. 51). 89 For this suggestion I am indebted to an excellent paper by Stuart Brookes given at a conference in Exeter on ‘Early Medieval Mortuary Practices: New Perspectives’ in February 2004, published as: S.J. Brookes, ‘Walking with Anglo-Saxons: Landscapes of the Dead in Early Anglo-Saxon Kent ’ in S. Semple & H. Williams (eds.) Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 14 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 143–53.

CHAPTER SEVEN

EXAMINING THE CHRISTIANIZATION OF THE REGION OF METZ FROM ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES (5TH–7TH CENTURIES): PROBLEMS, POSSIBILITIES AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND*

The region of Metz1 has always featured prominently in the archaeology of Merovingian Gaul.2 Several leading figures of the discipline worked on this area: Victor Simon, perhaps the first to understand the correct chronological potential of Roman coins in Merovingian graves; Édouard Salin, author of the monumental four-volume La Civilisation Mérovingienne;3 Frauke Stein, pioneer of the study of eighth-century lavish burials in Germany and whose knowledge of the cemeteries of

* Some of this chapter originally appeared, in French, as ‘La Christianisation de la région de Metz à travers les sources archéologiques (5ème–7ème siècle): problèmes et possibilités.’ L’Évangélisation des régions entre Meuse et Moselle et la Fondation de l’Abbaye d’Echternach (Ve–IXe siècle), ed. M. Polfer, (Luxembourg, 2000) pp. 123–46. The middle of that paper was essentially a translation of the bulk of ch. 5, above. That is omitted. What remains has been rewritten, with an added discussion of the implications for Anglo-Saxon archaeology. Some of this is founded on a paper, ‘Inhumation avec mobilier, la réligion et les relations entre la haute politique et la politique locale dans la Gaule mérovingienne et l’Angleterre anglo-saxonne, ca. 450–ca. 700’, given to the 54th Sachsensymposium/24th Journées Internationales de l’Association Française d’archéologie Mérovingienne at St-Germain-en-Laye in September 2003. This was originally intended to form the basis of a contribution to the memorial volume for Richard Fletcher. As I was unable to deliver that contribution I should like to dedicate this chapter to Richard’s memory in gratitude both for his work on conversion and for all I learnt from him about history and its teaching. 1 The ‘region of Metz’ discussed in this paper is that, centred on the diocese of Metz but extending slightly to the west and south, which formed the subject of S&S. 2 See the excellent history of the discipline given by Patrick Périn in La Datation des Tombes Mérovingiennes (with contribution by R. Legoux) (Paris & Geneva, 1980), pp. 3–92. B. Effros, Caring for Body and Soul: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World (Philadelphia, 2002), and ead., Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, 2003) contain, between them, a splendid critical history of Merovingian archaeology. I am grateful to Prof. Effros for kindly allowing me to read her works in advance of publication and for many discussions of the issues relevant to this chapter. 3 E. Salin, La Civilisation Mérovingienne d’après les Textes, les Sépultures et la Laboratoire (4 Vols; Paris, 1949–59).

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the region of Metz is unsurpassed;4 and so on. Consequently, some of the region’s sites are equally well-known: Ennery (Moselle), Lavoye (Meuse), Dieue-sur-Meuse (Meuse), and most recently Audun-leTiche (Moselle).5 The author of perhaps the first real critical study of the problems involved in using archaeological data to study processes of Christianization, Professor Bailey K. Young, has also turned his attention to the cemeteries of this region.6 With this in mind, it seems appropriate to think once again about the archaeology of the region of Metz and what it may, or may not, tell us about the processes of Christianization in the north of Merovingian Gaul.7 The first body of archaeological evidence to which we may turn in considering this topic is the cemeteries. In 1990 I catalogued 305 possible cemetery sites from the fifth to seventh centuries within the diocese of Metz alone.8 From about 500 AD it became usual for the people 4 F. Stein, Adelsgräber des 8. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland (Germanische Denkmäler der Völkerwanderungszeit. Serie A, vol. 9; Berlin, 1967); ead., ‘Precarolingian graves in South Germany’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 3rd ser., vol. 21 (1968), pp. 1–18; ead., ‘Les tombes d’un chef franc et de sa famille à Güdingen: Considérations sur la rôle de l’aristocratie dans l’implantation franque entre la Meuse et la Sarre.’ Saarbrücker Studien und Materialen zur Altertumskunde 1 (1992), pp. 117–44. 5 A. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery (Moselle). Fouilles d’Émile Delort (1941) (Woippy, 1993); R. Joffroy, Le Cimetière de Lavoye (Meuse) (Paris, 1974); J. Guillaume, ‘Les nécropoles mérovingiennes de Dieue/Meuse (France).’ Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 5–6 (1974–75), pp. 211–349. A. Simmer, Le Cimetière Mérovingien d’Audun-le-Tiche: Archéologie d’Aujourd’hui No. 1 (Mémoire de l’A.F.A.M. no. 2; Paris, 1988). 6 B.K. Young, Merovingian Funeral Rites and the Evolution of Christianity: A Study in the Historical Interpretation of Archaeological Material. Univ. of Pennsylvania PhD thesis (Ann Arbor, 1975); id. ‘Paganisme, christianisme et rites funéraires mérovingiens.’ Archéologie Médiévale 7 (1977), pp. 5–81; id. Quatre Cimetières Mérovingiens de l’Est de la France: Lavoye, Dieue-sur-Meuse, Mézières-Manchester, Mazerny (BAR(I) 208; Oxford, 1984); id. ‘Quelques réflexions sur les sépultures privilégiés, leur contexte et leur évolution dans la Gaule de l’Est’ in Y. Duval & J.-C. Picard (ed.), L’Inhumation Privilégiée du IVe au VIIIe siècle en Occident (Paris, 1986), pp. 69–88. 7 On the Christianization of this region, see, above all, N. Gauthier, L’Évangélisation des Pays de la Moselle. La Province Romaine de Première Belgique entre Antiquité et Moyen-Age (IIIe–VIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1980). See also E. Morhain, ‘Les origines du christianisme à Metz et en Moselle.’ ASHAL 60 (1960–61), pp. 87–129; H.W. Hermann, ‘Zum Stande der Erforschung der früh- und hochmittelalterlichen Geschichte des Bistums Metz.’ Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 28 (1963), pp. 131–99. 8 G. Halsall, ‘Civitas Mediomatricorum: Settlement and Social Organization in the Merovingian Region of Metz’, D.Phil. Thesis, University of York, 1990, Appendix 2.a, pp. 414–511. Some sites there are clearly of dubious value, only being recorded on old archaeological maps, but even discounting these the total would still clearly be very close to 300. To that catalogue should be added Fontoy (Moselle; Archéologie

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of this region to be inhumed with grave-goods (analysed more fully elsewhere in this volume) in large communal cemeteries: the famous Reihengäberfelder or cimetières par rangées. Perhaps the most immediately relevant piece of evidence for understanding the religious import of the region’s Merovingian burial data is the story told by Gregory of Tours in Book 8, chapter 21 of his Historiae, the so-called ‘History of the Franks’.9 A relative of Duke Guntramn Boso’s wife died childless and was buried ‘with much gold and a profusion of ornaments’ (cum grandibus ornamentia et multo auro) in a church in Metz (in basilicam urbis Mettensis). That the ‘gold and ornaments’ are to be understood as grave-goods, specifically as the woman’s jewellery, is made clear by the subsequent events: Guntramn Boso’s pueri (retainers) entered the church, opened the grave and took the ornaments from the woman’s body. Archaeological evidence exists which exactly confirms this implication of Gregory’s story. The lavish burials under Cologne cathedral are well-known,10 and, in the region of Metz, the grave was found of a woman buried with rings, necklace, ‘rouelle’, comb and a belt-set, under the parish church of Tarquimpol (Moselle). This burial was, to judge from its alignment in the corner of the church, clearly associated with the church building and may well be a founder-grave.11 In Toul, similarly lavish burials, including one of a bishop, were found under the church of St-Evre.12 In Metz, in 1239 builders discovered what were evidently the remains of lavishly furnished burials under the choir of the church of St-Arnoul.13 Thus, we have clear proof, both documentary and archaeological, that interment with grave-goods did not reflect pagan belief.

Médiévale 1991, p. 386), and the recent excavations at Daspich-Florange (Moselle; Archéologie Médiévale 1991, pp. 385–6). 9 LH 8.21. On the archaeological implications of this story, see also FSP, at pp. 1–2 (below, pp. 289–90). 10 See, in English, J. Werner, ‘Frankish royal tombs in the cathedrals of Cologne and St-Denis.’ Antiquity 38 (1964), pp. 201–16. 11 M. Clermont-Joly (with P.E. Wagner) L’Époque Mérovingienne (Catalogues des Collections des Musées de Metz 1; Metz, 1978), pp. 39–40. J. Guillaume et al. ‘Les nécropoles’ in X. Delestre (ed.) La Lorraine Mérovingienne (Metz, 1988), pp. 61–109, at pp. 104–5; Wichmann, ‘Decempagi-Tarquimpol’ JGLGA 4 (1892), pp. 116–66. 12 A. Liéger, R. Marguet & J. Guillaume, ‘Sépultures mérovingiennes de l’abbaye de St.-Evre à Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle).’ RAE 35 (1984), pp. 301–17. 13 Ex Historia S. Arnulfi Mettensis, ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS 24 (Hanover, 1879), pp. 529–49, at p. 533.

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This observation is, to many, now so obvious that it barely needs to be restated.14 Sadly, however, the idea that burial with grave-goods is an index of pagan belief, whereas burial without such furnishings is indicative of Christian religion, is still very common in early medieval studies and it remains in Anglo-Saxon archaeology, even if sometimes as an almost subconscious assumption. Yet more persistent is the belief that the end of the grave-goods custom is a reflection of Christianization. Avowedly theoretically advanced works of Anglo-Saxon cemetery archaeology have until very recently continued to describe inhumation with grave-goods as ‘pre-Christian’, and conversion and Christianity are still employed as an explanation for changes in interment rite. When made at the Sachsensymposium in St-Germain-enLaye, this remark provoked a great deal of scholarly harrumphing and shaking of heads from the Anglo-Saxonists present. Some chapter and verse will, however, demonstrate that my comment was entirely justified in 2003, and it may well still be so. In a paper on religion, John Hines, a most subtle commentator on Anglo-Saxon archaeology, has the following to say: In consequence [of a claimed ecclesiastical preference for and enforcement of particular burial rites] a trend towards the orientation of graves and the abandonment of grave goods must, in the historical context of the advance of Christianity, be seen as a form of Christian influence.15

Quite apart from doubting the claim that the Church did have any sort of preference for burial without grave-goods in the relevant period, I would maintain that the pinning of the abandonment of grave-goods on the ‘advance of Christianity’ results from simple chronological coincidence and, as I hope this chapter will show, comparison with mainland Europe renders it unlikely as an explanation. Closer study of the chronology of Anglo-Saxon grave-goods weakens the degree of chronological coincidence in any case, and further points up the parallels between developments in England and on the mainland.16 14 See Effros, Body and Soul, ch. 3 for what ought to be the final, detailed demolition of this idea. 15 J. Hines, ‘Religion: The limits of knowledge’, in J. Hines (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century. An Ethnographic Perspective (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 375–401 (with discussion pp. 401–10), at p. 381. See also p. 282, where grave-goods are listed as a continuation of pagan practice. 16 J. Hines, ‘The sixth-century transition in Anglian England: an analysis of female graves from Cambridgeshire’, in J. Hines, K. Høilund Nielsen & F. Siegmund (ed.), The Pace of Change: Studies in Early Medieval Chronology (Oxford, 1999), pp. 65–79.

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Also in 1997, summing up an argument for rethinking gender in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, Sam Lucy said: Contextual investigation of this symbolism, exploration of the variation within and between graves and cemeteries and study of how they change over time can furnish Anglo-Saxon archaeology with more dynamic interpretations of pre-Christian burial rites.17

The discussion of these burials as pre-Christian again uses religion as a defining characteristic, implying that Christianisation would change them. From someone who repeatedly and loudly proclaimed an objection to historical narratives, this retention of the documentary master narrative of conversion is jarring. Five years later, in the introduction to a volume of essays by a range of Anglo-Saxonists, established scholars and younger researchers, Lucy, with Andrew Reynolds, claimed that the redating of furnished graves extended the period of conversion ‘from the 680s to the 730s’. Clearly, furnished inhumation is an index of the unconverted.18 In that volume, Helen Geake, certainly the most thorough of recent researchers into ‘conversion period’ cemeteries also argues for a link between grave goods and paganism, or at least between Christianity and the absence of grave-goods.19 Geake’s argument is essentially that whereas in Francia one finds grave-goods in burials under churches, in England one does not and that this difference must be important. There is, however, an explanation for this difference, which a greater familiarity with the Frankish material would have revealed and to which I shall return. A better awareness of the evidence from mainland Europe would also call into question probably the best known of recent English manifestations of the idea that grave-goods are pagan: Martin Carver’s reading of the Sutton Hoo mound burials.20 Carver sees grave-goods as indicating freedom 17 S. Lucy, ‘Housewives, warriors and slaves? Sex and gender in Anglo-Saxon burials’, in J. Moore & E. Scott (ed.), Invisible People and Processes. Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology (London, 1997), pp. 150–68, at p. 164. 18 S. Lucy & A. Reynolds, ‘Burial in early medieval England and Wales: past, present and future’, in S. Lucy & A. Reynolds (ed.), Burial in early medieval England and Wales (Leeds, 2002), p. 3. 19 H. Geake, ‘Persistent problems in the study of conversion-period burials in England’, in Lucy & Reynolds (ed.), Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, pp. 144–55, esp. p. 149. 20 The idea has often been published. For a sample, see M.O.H. Carver, ‘Kingship and material culture in early Anglo-Saxon East Anglia’, in S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (London, 1989), pp. 141–158; id., ‘The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Sutton Hoo: An interim report’ in M.O.H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton

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from taxation, their lavish use manifesting an opposition to Frankish, Christian, taxing monarchies. Grave-goods have to be pagan for this idea to work. The idea is enormously problematic, however.21 In 2003, Catherine Hills correctly stated that ‘[t]he renewal of Christianity in England during the seventh century did not result in a rapid complete abandonment of grave goods’.22 Quite so, but, unless one accepts some linkage between paganism and grave-goods, why should it have done?23 Without such an acceptance the statement has no force. One suspects that we will only finally be rid of the idea that Christianity and paganism had distinctive burial rites, and that the difference at least partly related to the furnishing of the grave, when the term ‘conversion period’ is abandoned as a chronological descriptor. Since 2003 there seems to have been a shift away from the use of cemetery evidence to study religion in Anglo-Saxon England which may explain the lack of references to paganism and grave-goods after that date.24 Also in 2003, however, there appeared Bonnie Effros’ work which exhaustively discussed religion and Merovingian burial and, perhaps more importantly, was published in English and in an accessible form.25 Certainly Christianisation continues to be invoked as the great (and literal) deus ex machina for the explanation of seventh-century changes in Anglo-Saxon England.26

Hoo The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992, pp. 343–71; id., ‘Reflections on the meanings of monumental barrows in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Lucy & Reynolds (ed.), Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales, pp. 132–43. 21 See TSI, for some critique; above, p. 249. 22 C. Hills, Origins of the English (London, 2003), pp. 97–98. 23 H. Williams, Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 44–45, still does not appear to have entirely moved away from the idea that there is something non-Christian about grave-goods or, by contrast, something Christian about their absence. 24 See, e.g., H. Williams, ‘Rethinking early medieval mortuary archaeology’, EME 13 (2005), pp. 195–217, for recent survey. 25 Effros, Body and Soul. For the depressingly ‘anglolexic’ nature of Anglo-Saxon archaeology, see above, p. 15. 26 Recently, R. Hoggett, ‘Charting conversion: Burial as a barometer of belief’, in in S. Semple. & H. Williams (eds.) Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 14 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 28–37, has continued to argue that the grave-goods:unfurnished burial opposition relates to a difference between Christianity and paganism, but on the basis of a series of extremely weak arguments, mainly that of chronological coincidence, which familiarity with the mainland European evidence would completely overturn. He is evidently unaware (p. 31) that the re-adoption of inhumation in Roman western Europe pre-dated even the official adoption of Christianity by a century or so, so there is not even a chronological coincidence in that case. That apart the argument relies upon the citation of the questionable conclusions of earlier

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The linkage of furnished inhumation and non-Christian belief remains even stronger in the archaeology of mainland Europe. Returning to the region of Metz, we may consider the republication of the famous site of Ennery.27 Alain Simmer states that ‘à Ennery, aucun indice ne trahit une christianisation’.28 This conclusion is presumably based solely upon the ubiquity of furnished inhumation, the absence of ‘obviously’ Christian symbols, and upon Simmer’s predilection for interpreting aspects of burial as ‘magico-religious’ practices.29 Frauke Stein has continued to discuss the funerary archaeology of the region in terms of an opposition between two burial styles, one pagan and Frankish (with grave-goods) and one Christian and Roman (without grave-goods).30 In addition to the written and archaeological evidence just cited, which demonstrates very clearly that there was absolutely no contradiction between interment with grave-goods and Christian belief, it is, therefore, necessary to repeat the observation that the Merovingian church never outlawed burial with grave-goods, except where these were liturgical objects.31 In fact, as has been noted before, the church took comparatively little interest in controlling the rites of burial before the seventh century, and usually much later.32 archaeologists (some discussed here) and a claim (p. 30) that the absence of ecclesiastical legislation about allegedly pagan burial rites is just one of ‘a lot of things which are not mentioned in the early sources’. Hoggett’s unfamiliarity with the written data renders him unaware of the corpus of early church conciliar legislation about burial, which makes the failure to discuss grave-goods or cremation rather more significant than he thinks. The idea that Christian missionaries could have stamped out ‘pagan’ cremation throughout the countryside, within a generation, before even the social élite was entirely converted in East Anglia, defies all credibility. 27 Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery. See below, pp. 315–7. 28 Ibid., p. 115. 29 See further, below, p. 320, n. 24. 30 F. Stein, ‘Frühmittelalterliche Bevölkerungsverhältnisse im Saar-Mosel-Raum. Voraussetzungen der Ausbildung der deutsch-französischen Sprachgrenze?’ in W. Haubrichs & R. Schneider (ed.) Grenzen und Grenzregionen (Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Saarländische Landesgeschichte und Volksforschung 22; Saarbrücken 1994), pp. 69–98. 31 E. James, ‘Burial and status in the early medieval West.’ TRHS 5th ser., 29 (1989), pp. 23–40; Y. Hen, Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, A.D. 481–751 (Leiden 1995). 32 D. Bullough, ‘Burial, community and belief in the early medieval west’, in C.P. Wormald, D. Bullough & R. Collins (ed.), Ideal and Reality in Frankish and AngloSaxon Society (Oxford, 1981), pp. 177–201; F.S. Paxton, Christianizing Death. The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1990); B. Effros, ‘Beyond cemetery walls: early medieval funerary topography and Christian salvation.’ EME 6.1 (1997), pp. 1–23; H. Gittos, ‘Creating the sacred Anglo-Saxon rites for consecrating cemeteries’ in Lucy & Reynolds (ed.) Burial in Early Medieval England and

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We must, therefore, ask why it is that burial with grave-goods has been considered to have been pagan. Partly, this belief has stemmed from an assumption that grave-goods are necessarily representative of a particular view of the after-life, incompatible with Christian belief. Anthropological study has revealed this to be quite without foundation,33 even without the specifically early medieval testimony of Gregory of Tours’ account of the burial in Metz and the archaeological examples cited above. It has also been assumed to be a pagan rite because it has been associated with the non-Christian Franks who were settling in Gaul and taking political control of the former Roman provinces at this time. This explanation is unsatisfactory for several reasons. First of all, there is little or no evidence to associate this rite with the Franks in any straightforward way.34 When furnished burial first appeared in late Roman northern Gaul (in a form, it must be said, subtly different from that common between c. 500 and c. 700), it seems most likely that it was a development of traditional provincial Roman rites, rather than a type of funerary custom to be associated with incoming barbarians.35 After all, in their homelands, the Franks did not inhume their dead with grave-goods; instead, where their burials are known, they are cremations.36 As Edward James has noted, the Franks only adopted this rite at the time of their conversion to Christianity.37 It began to be more commonly practised in northern Gaul from about the 470s,38 but only

Wales, pp. 195–208; E. Zadora Rio, ‘The making of churchyards and parish territories in the early-medieval landscape of France and England in the 7th–12th centuries: A reconsideration.’ Medieval Archaeology 47 (2003), pp. 1–19. 33 P. Ucko, ‘Ethnography and the archaeological interpretation of funerary remains.’ World Archaeology 1, no. 2 (1969), pp. 262–77; Young, Merovingian Funeral Rites and the Evolution of Christianity; id. ‘Paganisme, christianisme et rites funéraires mérovingiens’. 34 E. James, ‘Cemeteries and the problem of Frankish settlement in Gaul’ in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Names, Words and Graves. Early Medieval Settlement (Leeds, 1979), pp. 55–89. 35 Above, pp. 93–167. 36 As at Gennep in the Netherlands: p. Van Ossel, ‘L’Insécurité et militarisation en Gaule du nord au Bas-Empire. L’Exemple des campagnes.’ Revue du Nord 77 (1995), pp. 27–36, at p. 36 (‘Discussion’). Most of the Frankish homelands are blank on archaeological maps, suggesting an archaeologically invisible rite, probably cremation without containers. 37 E. James, The Franks (Oxford, 1988), p. 139; id. ‘Burial and status in the early medieval west’, p. 26. 38 See CGCS (above, chapter 4), for the origins of this phase and its relationship with the burial of King Childeric.

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became general in rural cemeteries from the first quarter of the sixth century. Clovis himself may well have been an Arian Christian rather than, as Gregory of Tours would have us believe, a pagan; even Gregory admits that Clovis’ sister Lanthechild was.39 The same is probably true of many of the Franks themselves. After almost two centuries of close contact with the Christian Roman Empire, during which many leading Franks, like Childeric himself, rose to high command in Roman service,40 it is most unlikely that the Franks were entirely untouched by Christianity. Gaul had been part of the Christian Roman Empire and Christianization must already have taken place to some extent before the Merovingian period. Indeed, it must also be noted that there is very little unambiguous evidence for paganism in Merovingian Gaul in any case.41 Most of our evidence is concerned with nominal Christians continuing with pre-Christian practices. The famous story of St Vulfolaic and the statue of Diana near Carignan is not, as is often claimed, a story of the conversion of rural pagans.42 It is clear from the story that there was already a church near the statue, and the mention of any kind of conversion or baptism (such as we should surely expect, were this a tale about the conversion of non-Christians to Christianity) is quite absent from Gregory’s account. This story, like most of the rest of our information, is concerned with the church’s attempts to establish its control over a rural community by stamping out practices of which it did not approve. Gregory’s reference to a pagan temple in the region of Trier 43 is one of very few occasions when we may legitimately infer actively non-Christian religious belief. We are also probably mistaken in assuming a clear and sharp dichotomy between Christians and pagans. The extremes of clear non-Christian religious belief, and the sort of hard-line Christianity represented by Caesarius

39

LH 2.31. I.N. Wood, ‘Gregory of Tours and Clovis.’ Revue Belge de Philologie et Histoire 63 (1985), pp. 249–72; D. Shanzer, ‘Dating the baptism of Clovis: the bishop of Vienne vs. the bishop of Tours.’ EME 7 (1998), pp. 29–57. See also, J. Moorhead, ‘Clovis’ motives for becoming a catholic Christian.’ Journal of Religious History 13 (1984–5), pp. 329–39. 40 Others were Bauto, Merobaudes and Arbogast. The Franks became particularly important in Roman military command in the late fourth and fifth centuries; see, for example, M. Martin, ‘Zwischen den Fronten. Alamannen im Römischen Heer’, in K. Fuchs et al. (ed.), Die Alamannen (Stuttgart, 1997), pp. 119–24, fig. 119. 41 Hen, Culture and Religion in Merovingian Gaul, pp. 154–206. 42 LH 8.15. 43 VP 6.2.

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of Arles were sparsely populated poles, between which lay many different combinations of Christian and non-Christian beliefs and practices.44 Rather than simply being a question of dramatic conversion from pagan to Christian religious belief, Christianization was a long, gradual process with many stages.45 Such nuanced ideas make it a mistake to search the archaeological data for sharp dichotomies relating to religious belief. How then should we interpret the practice of burying the dead with grave-goods? I have set out my interpretation of the Merovingian furnished burial custom in detail in several other places, including in this volume,46 and there is no need to recapitulate it here. This chapter builds upon the ideas developed above about furnished burial as ritual.47 How might these conclusions relate to religious belief? We do not know what was said over the grave as part of the ‘funeral service’ or feasting, and our evidence gives us but few clues in this. In an important recent contribution, Bailey Young has shown that a religious credo might be identifiable in the precise symbolism of individual objects buried with the dead.48 However, Young’s argument does not affect the essential point that the funerary rite of inhumation with grave-goods is not in itself a sign of paganism. That the elements of ritual which are visible in archaeological remains are not primarily to be explained in terms of religious creed is an important conclusion which can be supported elsewhere. The Jewish communities of Merovingian Gaul and Visigothic Septimania are more or less archaeologically invisible in their burials. Their graves themselves cannot now be distinguished from those of Christian contemporaries and the two Jewish gravestones currently known from Gaul hardly differ at all from Christian epitaphs: it is only the fairly small and marginal Jewish symbols and brief Hebrew addenda which reveal the religion of the commemorand at all.49

44

See W. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles. The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1994); V.I.J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1991). 45 R.A. Fletcher, The Conversion of Europe. From Paganism to Christianity, 371– 1386 AD (London, 1997), esp. pp. 34–96. 46 S&S; EMCems; above, pp. 203–31. 47 BRMS; BW (above, pp. 215–31). 48 B.K. Young, ‘Pratiques funéraires et mentalités païennes’, in M. Rouche (ed.), Clovis: Histoire et Mémoire, tome 1: Le baptême de Clovis, l’événement (Paris, 1997), pp. 15–42. 49 I am very grateful to Dr. Mark Handley for his advice on this topic. Mark A. Handley, ‘The Early Medieval Inscriptions of Britain, Gaul and Spain. Studies in

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Another important implication of that conclusion is that it tallies well with other forms of evidence available to us. Merovingian sermons and conciliar legislation make very clear that many social rituals, viewed as pagan by bishops and other senior churchmen, were carried out by professed Christians. By their very nature such writings can only have been aimed at a Christian audience, yet it was an audience which wore amulets, celebrated old, pre-Christian festivals, and sang non-Christian songs. These feasts and festivals continued to be marked because they were important, like funerary rituals, in maintaining the structure of Merovingian communities; not because of clearly articulated non-Christian belief. This conclusion should prevent us from drawing conclusions about religious belief from the presence of amulets in burials.50 When we repeat the point, made earlier, that the Church did not outlaw the archaeologically visible remains of Merovingian funerals in any case, it becomes clear that the archaeological impossibility of distinguishing ‘Christian’ from ‘pagan’ in Merovingian cemeteries, far from being a problematic discrepancy between written and excavated forms of evidence,51 is in fact an instance where the two forms of data correspond quite closely. Funerals obviously involved a supernatural element, but the information we have is concerned with other elements of cosmology. This is fundamental. As discussed above, ritual is about the definition and redefinition of cosmology, including man’s relations with man (or woman), child with adult, young with old, man’s relation with nature, as well as man’s relations with the divine. Accepting this, again as noted in the previous chapters, permits us to sidestep the common idea that ritual must incorporate a supernatural element.52 Thus these burials may tell us about Merovingian cosmology, society and ritual, even if they are silent about religious belief.

Function and Culture’ (unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1998); id., ‘This stone shall be a witness: Jews, Christians, Death and Identity in early Medieval Gaul and Spain’ (forthcoming). The inscriptions are from Auch and Narbonne: D. Noy (ed.), The Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1993), nos. 189 & 191. 50 B. Dübner-Manthey, ‘Zum Amulettenbrauchtum in frühmittelalterlichen Frauenund Kindergräbern’, in W. Affeldt (ed.), Frauen in Spätantike und Frühmittlelalter. Lebensbedingungen—Lebensnormen—Lebensformen (Sigmaringen, 1990), pp. 65–87. 51 AH, p. 820 (above, p. 42), n. 74. 52 BRMS, pp. 330–1 (above, pp. 207–8).

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The arguments proposed here do not simply aim to show how we can understand and explain Merovingian furnished burial if we reject unsatisfactory religious explanations; they may also shed light upon Christianization in an indirect way. In a classic article of 1971, Karl Ferdinand Werner made clear the vital role played by the aristocracy in the Christianization of north-eastern Gaul.53 Another implication of the thesis proposed here is that this reading of the archaeological evidence supports the idea that the early Merovingian north Gallic ‘Frankish’ aristocracy was essentially a service aristocracy, not a powerful hereditary nobility.54 Its position within local society was precarious, constantly renegotiated and maintained, as we have seen, through rituals and gift-giving. That aside, its position was dependent upon holding office in royal service. Werner made the excellent and irrefutable point that it is more or less impossible to envisage any Frankish aristocrat in royal service, particularly at the royal court, being a pagan after the first decade of the sixth century.55 We may combine Werner’s argument with my interpretation of Merovingian society in the region of Metz to propose mechanisms by which the rural areas of northern Gaul may have become Christian at a time when the church was hardly established at all in the countryside, apart from the presence of holy men like Vulfolaic (of whom, as Gregory’s account makes clear, bishops were very wary). Power in the localities was insecure, and best maintained by the acquisition of offices in royal service, which brought with them control over royal landed and tax resources,56 legal authority and wealth. Therefore, the local élite competed for Merovingian royal patronage. The kings were able to maintain their power by frequent and effective redistribution of this patronage, demoting some people from their offices and promot53 K.F. Werner, ‘Le rôle de l’aristocratie dans la Christianisation du Nord-Est de la Gaule’, Revue Historique de l’Eglise de France 63 (1976), pp. 45–73. Reprinted in id., Structures politiques du monde franc (VIe–XIIe siècles) (London, 1979). C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 169–203, argues in favour of an unusually wealthy northern Gallic aristocracy: see above, pp. 210–11, for discussion. 54 Thus supporting, for example, H. Grahn-Hoek, Die fränkische Oberschicht im 6 Jahrhundert. Studien zu ihre rechtlichen und politischen Stellung (Sigmaringen, 1976). My argument is developed (with full references) in S&S, pp. 33–39. 55 Werner, ‘Le rôle de l’aristocratie dans la Christianisation du Nord-Est de la Gaule’, pp. 58–59. 56 On villae as ‘assiettes fiscales’, see J. Durliat, Les Finances Publiques de Dioclétien aux Carolingiens (284–889) (Beihefte der Francia 21; Sigmaringen, 1990). VTC for further discussion.

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ing others to replace them.57 This, in turn, strengthened royal authority in the localities by preventing the build-up of a powerful, independent nobility and the redistribution of patronage meant that, in effect, competing local families had the opportunity to share power, thus increasing their acceptance of royal legitimation of power.58 To acquire the support of a Merovingian king one would have to be Christian. Therefore we may conclude that all those families in the rural areas of the region of Metz who wanted to gain royal patronage, not only at the high levels of the duces, comites or grafiones, but also at the levels of centenarii, rachimburgi, and even by entering the royal household or those of powerful royal officers as pueri (retainers), would rapidly have adopted Christianity. We can, therefore, envisage that, even if there had been no Christianization in the Roman period and even with the settlement of a large number of pagan Franks, in the fluid social structures of the sixth century in northern Gaul, at least nominal Christianity could quickly have quite deeply penetrated local society. Quite how fully the people of rural communities like Lavoye, Dieuesur-Meuse or Ennery understood the complexities of Christian belief is, naturally, less easy to establish. Even in its most nominal form, however, Christianity requires the renunciation of all other gods as gods (even if it permits an appreciation of the diabolic power of such ‘demons’).59 The mechanisms by which Christianity could have been drawn down through society along the arteries of patronage may be visible archaeologically. Plotting the distribution of lavish burials in the region of Metz (Figure 7.1) reveals that an area extending for about 20 kilometres beyond Metz itself has not yet yielded such graves. Following the arguments set out above, this distribution may be interpreted as showing that within this distance, interpreted elsewhere as a day’s journey to the city, the sort of competition for local power, which was elsewhere resolved partly by lavish funerary display, was decided by reference to the sources of power and patronage available at Metz: king, duke, count, and bishop. The distribution also suggests, however,

57

E.g. LH 9.12. This argument is developed in S&S, pp. 33–39, 259–60, & SISR. For further discussion of how the acceptance of the arbitration and adjudication of royal officers drew kingly authority into the localities, see VSEMW; REMV. 59 Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe, pp. 20, 146–57. Cp. LH 2.29. 58

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that such lavish displays were used at Metz itself. Here, we may propose that, at or near the court of the Austrasian kings themselves, the high aristocracy displayed their wealth and power competitively and conspicuously. In conjunction with Werner’s argument above, this must further support the notion that burial with grave-goods had no pagan connotations. Even leaving aside that, from the fragmentary records of these burials, it is clear that they took place in urban churches and their associated cemeteries, it is difficult to imagine the Austrasian aristocracy demonstrating their prestige and importance by engaging publicly in pagan rites at the heart of a Christian kingdom! That Metz, principal royal urban residence in Austrasia, was used as a focus for competitive aristocratic display, is underlined by consideration of the distribution of church foundations in the region, to which we shall return. The burial custom underwent profound changes from about 600 AD, summarised above.60 Grave-goods became fewer and more standardized, until by the last quarter of the century the custom of furnished burial had more or less been abandoned. Around 700 the old cemeteries began to be abandoned and moved to new sites around churches, although this process took much longer than often supposed,61 and the extent to which these churches were built on the site of the old cemeteries should not be underestimated. Traditionally these changes have been held to mirror the progress of Christianization. Since this explanation starts from the premise that burial with grave-goods is pagan, its flaws are immediately apparent. We can explain these changes better if we look at them in a more rounded context, and in the light of the interpretation of this evidence as the result of rituals stemming from social instability. Around 600, the focus of display, at least in terms of surviving material culture, seems to shift from the transient display of grave-goods and feasting during the funeral itself, to permanent, above-ground markers. It has been suggested that the use of stone coffins in the seventh century is a sign of Christianization, because they imitate things urban and Roman, like Christianity itself.62 Though this argument is

60

BRMS, pp. 336–7 (above, pp. 212–13); BW, pp. 72–73 (above, pp. 229–30). As above, n. 32. 62 Simmer, Le Cimetière Mérovingien d’Audun le Tiche, p. 130 ff.; id., ‘Le nord du département de la Moselle à l’époque mérovingienne.’ RAE 38 (1987), pp. 333–96, at p. 388. 61

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more interesting than many previous attempts to identify Christians in the cemeteries of Merovingian Gaul, it is nevertheless deeply flawed. The distribution of sarcophagi within Lorraine is uneven and governed by the availability of suitable stone, and by the ease of transporting such stone to cemeteries.63 This alone would mean that sarcophagi would only be a manifestation of Christianity in geologically and geographically suitable regions. The reappearance of sarcophagi in the region, around 600, should instead be taken with the other evidence for social and economic developments in the region at this time. These stone coffins were visible at surface level and should be viewed with the other permanent, above-ground markers, such as stone crosses, slabs and walls around groups of graves which have been found, for example in the later phase of the cemetery at Audun-le-Tiche.64 These monuments made a permanent display of a family’s status in burial. This may be taken alongside other evidence to suggest an increased stability of social structure, and thus an increased ability to project social status, monumentally, into the future.65 These developments, whilst occurring primarily for social reasons, may nevertheless not have been entirely without religious significance. It has been argued that the Church was taking an increased interest in the topography and spatial organization of burial in this period.66 The ultimate expression of this trend is, of course, the building of a church. The new, more established aristocracy aligned itself with the ‘Columbanian’ monastic movement to bolster its position. This, was probably not, as Prinz believed,67 to replace lost pagan legitimation; such noble status is unlikely to have existed in the sixth century and, in any case, as we have seen, the Frankish aristocracy had probably been

63 P. Cuvelier, & J. Guillaume, ‘Inventaire et typologie des sarcophages en Lorraine.’ Actes des Xe Journées Internationales d’Archéologie Mérovingienne. Metz 20–23 Octobre 1988 (Sarreguemines 1989), pp. 87–96. 64 Audun-le-Tiche furnishes the best evidence of this process (Simmer, Le Cimetière Mérovingien d’Audun-le-Tiche) but evidence suggests similar developments at ChâtelSt-Germain (Moselle): J. Guillaume, C. Lefebvre & A. Wieczorek, ‘La nécropole de Châtel-St.-Germain (Moselle)’, in Actes des Xe Journées Internationales d’Archéologie Mérovingienne, pp. 107–110. 65 S&S, pp. 262–70. 66 Effros, Body and Soul: The Evolution of Mortuary Ritual in Merovingian Gaul; ead. ‘Beyond cemetery walls.’ 67 F. Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum in Frankenreich (Munich/Vienna, 1965), pp. 489–93; id. ‘Heiligenkult und Adelsherrschaft im Spiegel merowingischer Hagiographie.’ Historische Zeitschrift 204 (1969), pp. 529–44.

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Christian for about a century by 600 AD. Instead this was a means of achieving better control of landed resources, making a Christian statement of their power, also manifested in new saints’ lives.68 The construction of churches and monasteries in Metz itself became common in the seventh century.69 This probably represents the results of competition, in the arena of the royal capital, between the aristocratic lineages of the kingdom. A few churches seem to have been founded in the vici and castella of the region;70 again, this would associate the founders with the administrative nodes of the kingdom. On the whole, however, rural churches seem to be rather later in this region than seems to be the case elsewhere in northern Gaul. The church at Mousson (Moselle) does not seem to be any earlier than the middle decades of the seventh century.71 The aristocratic rural churches mentioned in the charters of Wissembourg Abbey (Bas Rhin)72 seem to have been built around the middle of the century too. It was, therefore, only in the later decades of the century that the aristocrats of the region of Metz were able to remove themselves from the local arenas of the display of power and bury their dead in separate, private churches. The tensions involved in this process are perhaps visible in the double-burial, grave 103, at Audun-le-Tiche. Here, in the mid-seventh century, two young males were buried with, for that site, quite lavish grave-goods in a stone chamber, partially marked above ground by a stone wall, but their heads were deliberately removed before burial.73 This may be interpreted thus: their family, of clear 68 S. Wittern, ‘Frauen zwischen asketischem Ideal und weltlichem Leben. Zur Darstellung des christlichen Handelns der merovingischen Königinnen Radegunde und Balthilde in den hagiographischen Lebensbeschreibung des 6. und 7. Jahrhunderts’, in W. Affeldt & A. Kuhn (ed.), Frauen in der Geschichte VII. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Geschichte der Frauen im Frühmittelalter. Methoden—Probleme—Ergebnisse (Düsseldorf, 1986), pp. 272–94. 69 S&S, pp. 233–4; This is founded on the fine study of N. Gauthier, Topographie Chrétienne des Cités de la Gaule des Origines au Milieu du VIIIe Siecle Vol. 1, Province Ecclésiastique de Trêves (Belgica Prima) (Paris, 1986). Archaeologically, the best known example is St-Pierre-aux-Nonnains: see, most recently, C. Heitz & X. Delestre, ‘Metz: Église Saint-Pierre-aux-Nonnains, ou Saint-Pierre à la Citadelle’, in N. Gauthier et al. Les Premiers Monuments Chrétiens de la France, 3: Ouest, Nord et Est (Paris, 1998), pp. 252–9. 70 e.g. Tarquimpol, above, n. 11. 71 pace p. Cuvelier, ‘Mousson, chapelle, puis église Saint-Cyriaque’, in Gauthier et al., Les Premiers Monuments Chrétiens de la France, 3, pp. 243–7. 72 K. Glöckner & A. Doll (ed.), Traditiones Wizenburgenses: Die Urkunden des Klosters Weissenburg, 661–864 (Darmstadt, 1979), e.g. nos. 234 & 237. 73 Simmer, Le Cimetière Mérovingien d’Audun-le-Tiche.

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local standing, still paid some respect to the tradition of burial within the community grave-yard, though displaying their standing clearly within that context; however, the heads of the two young men were interred separately, perhaps in a private chapel. A slightly earlier phase of the process of the funerary separation of the local aristocracy from their communities may be revealed at Hayange (Moselle),74 where a small group of tombs was found to the south-west of the rest of the cemetery, aligned differently from the other graves. These may represent the funerary plot of a higher-status group, not yet fully removed from the community. If the process whereby the local elites removed themselves from their communities in death, took place slightly later in this region than elsewhere, this might be because the royal court, at Metz, was able to exercise a greater degree of control in this area. It may also be that the royal fisc and (from later documents) the bishops of Metz (closely associated with the royal court) controlled much of the land of the region, preventing the build-up of large aristocratic estates here. Thus the region also lacks the great private, aristocratic monasteries known in the regions to the north (like Echternach), north-west and east. Outside the episcopally-controlled arena of Metz itself, it is striking that such rural monastic foundations as are known in the region are also episcopal foundations.75 Only in the last half-century of the Merovingian period can we see a significant level of donation of estates in this region to aristocratic monasteries. By the eighth century there were powerful aristocratic dynasties within the region of Metz who could bolster their power by supporting abbeys like Wissembourg, Prüm and Echternach. We may now return to Anglo-Saxon England to consider the implications of this discussion for religion and funerary custom there. The first thing that ought to be obvious is the overall similarity in the archaeological data on both sides of the Channel. The furnished inhumation custom practised in England differed, naturally, in its details from that employed in the north of Gaul. Nevertheless, recent social analyses of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries have demonstrated numerous

74 Simmer, ‘Le nord du département de la Moselle à l’époque mérovingienne’, pp. 346–9. 75 E.g. St-Avold, founded in the early eighth century, by bishop Sigibald, and of course, Gorze founded at the end of the Merovingian period by Sigibald’s successor, Chrodegang.

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similarities with the results of my own studies of the cemeteries in the region of Metz.76 That many of the Anglo-Saxon studies were conducted using far better quality data than those available for my own analyses ought, incidentally, to support the general plausibility of the latter (some objections being based more or less entirely on the age of the evidence used). Studies of the chronology of early Anglo-Saxon England have suggested that transformations in the styles and forms of artefacts took place there at the same time as changes in Frankish artefacts.77 The changes that occurred in the archaeology of Frankish Gaul around 600 are very similar to those that took place in Anglo-Saxon England in the so-called ‘Final Phase’.78 The construction of barrows, for example, should be seen in the context of the development across the Merovingian world (and discussed above for the region of Metz) towards greater investment in above-ground, permanent commemoration of the dead. On the fringes of the Merovingian world, as in Alamannia, barrows were a common feature of this development.79 These points alone ought to make us think long and hard before ascribing the changes in England to the influence of conversion or of Christianity. If the archaeological traces left by the inhabitants of Merovingian northern Gaul and of early Anglo-Saxon England demonstrate considerable similarities, there nevertheless remains one important difference. No one can deny that while the rulers of the Franks were Catholic Christians those of the Anglo-Saxons were pagans. The Christianity of the Merovingians’ subjects is well attested, as we have seen, but one cannot really doubt that the Anglo-Saxon kings ruled a population that was largely pagan. The paganism of the cremation rite that was popular in the fifth and sixth centuries may very well have been overstated but it remains difficult to reconcile with professed Christianity.80 Recent studies have also tended to stress, and very plausibly, the Christianisation of the population of late Roman Britain, something that

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Above, p. 8, n. 22. See, e.g., the essays collected in Hines, Høilund-Nielsen & Siegmund (ed.), The Pace of Change. 78 A point I made long ago in SC600. 79 R. Van de Noort, ‘The context of early medieval barrows in western Europe.’ Antiquity 67 (1993), pp. 66–73. For discussion, see above, p. 250. 80 On the religious import of cremation, vitally important points are raised by B. Effros, ‘De partibus Saxoniae and the regulation of mortuary custom: A Carolingian campaign of Christianization or the suppression of Saxon identity?’ RBPH 75 (1997), pp. 267–86. 77

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only makes the differences between Gaul and England all the more interesting.81 They would suggest that furnished inhumation was introduced, in England, into a population among whom Christianity was in decline, in what we might perhaps even call a period of conversion to ‘Germanic’ paganism, whereas in Gaul it appeared in an era of conversion to Christianity. All this demands that the explanation adduced for the funerary archaeology, and the changes therein, on either side of the Channel accounts for the evidence and transformations on both shores. As chapters 2 and 3, and commentary 2, have argued, one cannot explain the similarities in rite according to a shared ‘Germanic’ identity. Leaving aside the absence of prima facie archaeological evidence for such a supposition, it is surely time now to abandon appeals to common ‘Germanic’ culture. The Franks and ‘Anglo-Saxons’ practised different funerary rituals when living outside the Empire; to assume that they began to employ similar rites once within their different regions of the former Empire because of the fact that they spoke similar Germanic languages is patently absurd.82 The explanation must, in my opinion, be sought in comparable changes taking place around the North Sea at the time of the end of the Roman Empire and particularly in relation to the end of the socio-economic hierarchy represented in the villa system.83 Both lowland Britain and northern Gaul reveal analogous changes in the abandonment of villas and the decline of towns.84 In both areas, albeit in somewhat different ways, the distribution of furnished inhumation cemeteries reveals a relationship with that of villas occupied in the late Roman period. In England and in Gaul it appears that we have a rite wherein the status of the deceased was manifested by families in a transient burial ritual to a comparatively large audience; in both areas it seems that the sixth century saw the use of large communal cemeteries—whether of cremation or inhuma81 See, e.g. D. Petts, Christianity in Roman Britain (Stroud, 2003), though the evidence adduced is not always very clear. 82 J. Jarnut, ‘Germanisch. Plädoyer für die Abschaffung eines obsoleten Zentralbegriffes der Frühmittelalterforschung’, in W. Pohl (ed.), Die Suche nach den Ursprüngen: Von der Bedeutung des frühen Mittelalters (Vienna, 2004), pp. 107–13. The general point was made by Walter Goffart nearly thirty years ago and by František Graus even earlier. 83 VTC draws attention to the possible importance of comparison of the settlement archaeology of northern Gaul with that of early Anglo-Saxon England. 84 A general European survey of social changes and their archaeological manifestations may be found in Chapter 11 of BMRW.

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tion in England—and in both it seems at this time that the symbolism of artefacts was fairly precise, with a wider range of objects being employed. Comparison of my analyses of the cemeteries of Lorraine with those of early Anglo-Saxon England suggests analogous investment of resources in the interment of those whose death would cause the most serious ruptures in local social relations. My explanation would, in both areas, revolve around local power precariously and expensively maintained and transmitted with difficulty from generation to the next.85 Obviously, as noted above, religion would have played some part in the justification of the rite. When burying artefacts with their dead it is highly probable that people sang or recited prayers or other invocations of gods or supernatural powers. Certainly, it is hardly to be supposed that contemporaries justified the burial of objects with the dead in the modern sociological terms outlined above! However, as discussed earlier, the fundamental reason for these rites should not be sought in religion but in social instability and the difficulties in the transmission of power. That being said, this non-religious hypothesis nevertheless provides a basis on which we can examine the religious changes of the era. As outlined above and in other works the social instability and competition for authority manifested in the furnished inhumation ritual is not antithetical to the existence of a powerful Merovingian state. As we have seen, one of the most effective strategies in underlining local authority was to obtain a post in the royal administration and this was probably a means by which Christianisation was drawn down through society along lines of patronage. Now, it is probable that the general situation in England was similar, but with one appreciable difference. The Anglo-Saxon kings retained their paganism, but this paganism was, essentially, political: a means of distinguishing the newcomers from the inhabitants of the old province. One might see in this a similar strategy to the use of Arianism by the Gothic, Vandal and, in slightly different ways, Burgundian and, at times, Lombard kings. We might, in this connection, do well to remember that Æthelberht of Kent began the process of Anglo-Saxon conversion, by asking the Pope to send him a bishop, less than a decade after the king of the Spanish Goths, Reccared, abandoned his Arianism

85 As elaborated in BRMS, p. 334 (above, pp. 210–11); BW, pp. 68–69 (above, pp. 224–5).

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in favour of the Catholicism of his Spanish subjects. Again, we should see Anglo-Saxon history within the general currents of post-imperial Europe rather than as an insular ‘special case’. I would therefore suggest that the political power of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and the importance of their patronage in local socio-political struggles, might have produced conversion to paganism by hitherto Christian Romano-Britons in directly analogous fashion to the ways in which Merovingian patronage led to Christianisation. The similarities between England and Gaul can be explained, in spite of religious difference, by reference to the competition for power at the level of local politics, on the one hand, and the relationship between these politics and those at the level of the kingdom, on the other. Placing Anglo-Saxon England back in the mainstream of postimperial history permits a very different appreciation of the changes that took place in the seventh century. Many of the transformations in burial practice that are observable there are, as has been remarked, similar to those in northern Gaul. The comparisons are not limited to those. The appearance of charters and other written documents in England in the course of the seventh century (from c. 675) is very generally ascribed to the influence of the new religion.86 Yet it is from not very much earlier, c. 600, that documents begin to survive across the Channel in northern Gaul. Gregory of Tours refers to numerous written instruments of government and communication in the sixthcentury Merovingian kingdom;87 almost none survives. The documentary survivals from Gaul north of the Loire before c. 600 comprise the correspondence collected (again probably around 600) in the Epistulae Austrasiacae, the Pactus Legis Salicae (the oldest manuscripts of which are nevertheless considerably later), the Testament of Saint Remigius (presumably retained as a relic by the church of Reims), some writings of Victricius of Rouen, and little or nothing else.88 It is clear that the earliest surviving charters from Merovingian northern Gaul

86

See above, pp. 72–74, for example. E.g. LH 6.22, 6.41, 7.24, 7.42, 10.7 &c. 88 Ep. Aust.; Remigius’ Testament: People, Personal Expression and Social Relations in Late Antiquity, ed. & trans. Mathisen, R.W., (Ann Arbor, 2003), vol. 1, pp. 242–8, vol. 2, pp. 192–6; Victricius, In Praise of the Saints: Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 64, Scriptores Minores Galliae, ed. R. Demeulenaere (Turnhout, 1985); G. Clark, ‘Vicricius of Rouen, Praising the Saints.’ Journal of Early Christian Studies 7.3 (1999), pp. 365–99. 87

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belong to the generation around 600.89 The social changes referred to above had, as one important effect, a change in the attitude to written documents and the more systematic retention of the latter. We are entitled to suppose that, had we a sixth-century British observer of events comparable to Gregory of Tours (a Gregory of Cirencester, perhaps), we would be able to see that the sixth-century rulers of Britain were as literate as their Frankish contemporaries. Alas we do not, but that must nevertheless force us to rethink the idea that England went from a pre-literate (‘post-literate’ would be a technically more accurate description) to a literate condition in the seventh century as a result of Augustine’s mission. It is certainly difficult to see Gildas’ De Excidio Britanniae or Patrick’s Epistula ad milites corotici being composed against a background of general illiteracy. If nothing else, the fact that Æthelberht had the means to write to Gregory the Great ought to compel us to reconsider our assumptions about the absence of literacy in pre-Augustinian England. What of the difference, between Gaul and England, in the furnishing of churchyard burials? There may be some regional variation at work here but it cannot be explained in terms of religion. Burials in rural churches in England are datable with difficulty largely because they are generally without grave-goods, but they can hardly be supposed to be common before the middle of the seventh century at the earliest. By contrast the furnished burials under churches from Merovingian Francia, cited (from written and excavated data) at the start of this chapter, belong to the sixth century. The Cologne burials belong to the first quarter of that century, for example, Gregory’s tale of the grave-robbing in Metz to the 580s. The burial of ‘Arnegund’ at St-Denis (if indeed it took place inside the church, which, it seems to me, is not entirely clear from the stratigraphy) occurred either at about the same time as the Metz funeral or about a generation later, depending whose interpretation of the artefactual chronology one prefers. By the time that burials began to take place in English churches, grave-goods would be rare in Merovingian Gaul. The fact that there seems to have been a spatial shift to churchyard burial in England to a greater degree than in Gaul might also explain why the interment of artefacts with the dead was not continued in these burials; the continuation of long-standing custom, even if in ever more attenuated form,

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might explain the occasional burial of objects in later seventh-century Frankish churches. The chronological difference between early Frankish and early Anglo-Saxon church burials appears to me to explain the divergences between the two in terms of furnishings more than adequately. This chapter has argued that archaeological evidence tells us very little about the processes of religious conversion in any direct fashion. We may, however, use this evidence to examine the period’s social structures, and suggest how they may have affected the nature of the different forms of religious change in Britain and Gaul. We may also deduce much about the role of ritual in these social structures. The archaeological evidence can suggest a chronology, later than is often proposed, for the use of church-foundation and other Christian strategies to strengthen aristocratic power in Gaul. However, we must see this chronology in terms of the history of social structures, not in terms of a crude binary polarity of Christianity and paganism, or of conversion from one to the other.

PART FOUR

AGE AND GENDER IN MEROVINGIAN SOCIAL ORGANISATION

INTRODUCTION TO PART FOUR

The final four chapters in this volume explore the crucial part played by sex, gender and the life-cycle in organising Merovingian society in northern Gaul, especially during the sixth century. The first chapter in the section, which considers female status and the roots of power, is the only one to have been published before in the form in which it appears here. Chapter 9 is a substantially rewritten version of a paper which elaborated and extended the argument in chapter 8, and which deals with some critiques of the methodology employed there. Chapters 10 and 11 appear here for the first time. The first of these takes up some of the issues of the increasingly bipolar nature of gender in the post-imperial period by considering, in a sense as a partner article to chapter 8, the roots of male status and power in Merovingian Austrasia.1 The final chapter follows up other points about the acquisition of gendered identity and other forms of social status by looking at childhood and adolescence in Merovingian Gaul. All chapters lay some stress upon the important changes that took place in Gaul, as elsewhere, around 600.

1 The title of chapter 8 seems, amusingly, to have caused particular problems for the Blackwells type-setters in the production of publicity material after that publishing house took over the journal from Longmans. Early fliers listed the then recent article as ‘Female status and power in Merovingian central Australia: the burial evidence’, suggesting a hitherto unsuspected Merovingian presence in the antipodes. Alas when that error was corrected it was only to give the title as ‘Female status and power in Merovingian central Austrasia: the burial of evidence’. Whatever the theoretical problems with my methodology, as discussed in chapter 9, I can assure the reader that I have never knowingly concealed any of the relevant data.

CHAPTER EIGHT

FEMALE STATUS AND POWER IN EARLY MEROVINGIAN CENTRAL AUSTRASIA: THE BURIAL EVIDENCE*1

A grave-robbing in Metz In September 585 a woman was buried in a church in Metz. Dying childless, she was interred with ‘much gold and a profusion of ornaments’.2 Such circumstantial written evidence about a burial, gravegoods and the deceased’s status is rare indeed in early Merovingian northern Gaul. Gregory of Tours recorded this story because the woman in question was an affinal relative of Duke Guntramn Boso, who then dispatched his retainers to open the grave and retrieve the grave-goods whilst the civitas’ population went on the annual procession to St-Remy-de-Scy (1 October). The episode ended in disgrace. His men were caught red-handed; Guntramn was brought before Childebert II of Austrasia and charged, presumably with grave-robbing (one of the few crimes punishable with outlawry in early Merovingian Gaul);3 defenceless, he fled in secret, and his property was recovered by the fisc. Two years later, never having regained favour, he was tried again and killed on Childebert’s orders.4 The tale suited Gregory’s * Originally published in Early Medieval Europe 5.1 (1996), pp. 1–24. Reprinted with kind permission of Blackwells publishers and the editors of Early Medieval Europe. Footnotes have been standardised and occasionally corrected, and the diagrams redrawn. Otherwise the article remains the same. I should also like to take this opportunity to thank the then general editor of EME, Professor Rosamond McKitterick, for bibliographical assistance. 1 I should like to thank Edward James, Tania Dickinson and Steve Roskams (Univ. of York), Prof. Dr. Frauke Stein (Universität des Saarlandes), Mme M. ClermontJoly (Musée de l’Histoire du Fer, Jarville), Mme C. Aptel (Musée Historique Lorraine, Nancy), Mme M. Sary (Musées de Metz), M.P. Thion (Direction des Antiquités de la Lorraine) and M.C. Lefebvre (Metz), for their help in gathering the data for the initial doctoral thesis and later book upon which this paper is based. I should also like to thank Edward James, together with Janet Nelson, Ross Balzaretti, Paul Fouracre, Pauline Stafford and Joanna Bourke for valuable comments upon previous incarnations of this paper. 2 LH 8.21. 3 PLS 55.4. 4 LH 9.10.

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purpose admirably. [2] Guntramn Boso was no friend of Gregory’s, though, like anyone else, he merited miraculous reprieves when he showed true piety.5 Boso’s chief fault, says Gregory,6 was greed, and this, ultimately, was his downfall. Once again Gregory could demonstrate the overall lesson of his oeuvre: the futility of worldly life, as compared with the godly.7 Thus, whilst the story is unusual, the reasons for its telling are clear. On the way, Gregory coupled the phrase sine filiis (‘without children’), irrelevant to the thrust of his account, with the description of the grave’s lavishness. Burial archaeology in the region of Metz sheds further light upon his statement, and permits an insight into the nature and roots of female status and power in sixth-century northern Gaul.8

The region and period under study This paper deliberately examines only one region, modern Lorraine, focusing on the diocese of Metz (fig. 8.1). This, the north-eastern corner of the Parisian basin, forms a geographical unity, and the archaeological cemetery data reveal general similarities across the sites examined, although there are differences in detail. Cursory examination of cemeteries in other parts of Austrasia (the Triererland, the middle Rhineland, and Alsace) reveals clear differences in custom, which might be explained by reference to physical geography: the Triererland is far hillier than the Plateau Lorrain; the Vosges cut off Alsace from the region under discussion. Alternatively, this region’s particularities may result from its centrality within Austrasia. Thus the conclusions suggested here are not necessarily applicable to other regions. The paper deals primarily with the period c. 525–c. 625, drawing attention to observable changes within this time-span. It is a rigidly contextualised sketch of female status and power in one region during one century. Occasionally, for comparative purposes, data have been adduced from other periods and places; no one-to-one correlation is

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[3][4] implied. Contrasts and similarities with other regions will present themselves, but no attempt is made to stress or pursue these.

The evidence Written evidence for women’s conditions in this region at this time is scarce and problematic.9 To study female status in due regional context, a different source of data is required; in this case the region’s cemeteries.10 306 possible Merovingian cemeteries can be catalogued in the diocese of Metz.11 Only a handful of small sites have been excavated and published.12 Ennery, the largest, contained only eighty-two graves, fifty of which were intact. Some additional information could

9 Cp. S. Wemple, Women in Frankish Society. Marriage and the Cloister, 500–900 (Philadelphia, 1981), ch. 2; S&S, pp. 61–62, for a critique. 10 The most recent introduction to Merovingian burial is B.K. Young & P. Périn, ‘Les Nécropoles (IIIe–VIIIe siècle)’, in Noel Duval et al. (ed.) Atlas Archéologique de la France: Naissance des Arts Chrétiens. Atlas des monuments paléochrétiens de la France (Paris, 1991), pp. 94–121. Other archaeological studies of Merovingian women can be found in W. Affeldt & A. Kuhn (ed.), Frauen in der Geschichte VII: Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Geschichte der Frauen im Frühmittelalter. Methoden—Probleme—Ergebnisse (Düsseldorf, 1986); and W. Affeldt (ed.), Frauen in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter. Lebensformen—Lebensnormen—Lebensbedingungen (Sigmaringen, 1990). Largely dealing with southern German, ‘Alamannic’ material, they are more descriptive than analytical, and sometimes flawed in approach and interpretation. 11 G. Halsall, ‘Civitas Mediomatricorum: Settlement and social organization in the Merovingian region of Metz’, D.Phil. thesis, Department of History, University of York, (1990), appendix 2.a. To this should be added Fontoy (Moselle). 12 Ennery (Moselle): E. Delort, ‘Le cimetière franc d’Ennery’, Gallia 5 (1947), pp. 351–403; M. Heuertz, ‘Études des squelettes du cimetière franc d’Ennery.’ Bulletin et Mémoire de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris 8 (1957), pp. 81–147; M. ClermontJoly, L’Époque Mérovingienne (Catalogues des collections des Musées de Metz 1) (Metz, 1978). Berthelming (Moselle): M. Lutz, ‘La villa gallo-romaine et la nécropole mérovingienne de Berthelming.’ Revue Archéologique de l’Est et de Centre-Est 1 (1950), pp. 180–184. Bettborn (Moselle): A. Laumon, ‘La nécropole mérovingienne de Bettborn.’ Annuaire de la Société d’Histoire et d’Archéologie Lorraine 77 (1977), pp. 51–71. Bouzonville (Moselle): P. Scheneker, ‘Das alamannisch-fränkisch Grabfeld bei Busendorf.’ Jahrbuch des Gesellschaft fur lothringische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 11 (1899), pp. 367–72. Güdingen (Kr. Saarbrücken)): F. Stein, ‘Les tombes d’un chef franc et de sa famille à Güdingen: Considérations sur la rôle de l’aristocratie dans l’implantation franque entre la Meuse et la Sarre.’ Saarbrücker Studien und Materialen zur Altertumskunde 1 (1992), pp. 117–44. Hayange & Moyeuvre-Grande (both Moselle): Clermont-Joly, L’Époque Mérovingienne, pp. 24–25 & pp. 36–37 respectively; A. Simmer, ‘Le nord du département de la

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be gleaned from isolated grave assemblages recorded on other cemeteries. A number of excavated sites remain unpublished in any detail. In the absence of these data, a few larger, published cemeteries were [5] selected from the remainder of northern Lorraine.13 Altogether, these total about 1,130 burials, though only about half were suitable for analysis, the remainder being damaged by later burial, building or ploughing.14 It is worth stating at the outset that this paper presents a model which might be tested with better quality data. A descriptive picture will first be made of the ways in which sixth-century gravegoods were associated with gender and age. After a brief examination of how this changed around 600 AD, an explanatory model will be proposed, taking into account the fragmentary written evidence.

Establishing the gender associations of sixth-century grave-goods The means by which gender was established from grave-goods are described in full elsewhere15 and there is no room to repeat them here.

Moselle à l’époque mérovingienne.’ [‘Le Nord Mosellan’] RAE 38 (1987), pp. 333–96, at pp. 346–53. Walsheim (Saar-Pfalz-Kreis): W. Schähle, ‘Die Reihengräber von Walsheim.’ Bericht der staatlichen Denkmalpflege im Saarland. Beitrage zur Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 12 (1965), pp. 107–20 (+ Taf. 17–18). Wittersheim (Saar-Pfalz-Kreis): Klein, ‘Neue Funde der Merowingerzeit im Saarland.’ Bericht des Konservators der geschichtliche Denkmäler im Saargebiet 4 (1932), pp. 85–86 (+ Taf. 17–18). 13 Audun-le-Tiche (Moselle): A. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Audunle-Tiche (Paris, 1988). Chaouilley (Meurthe-et-Moselle): J. Voinot, ‘Les fouilles de Chaouilley, cimetière mérovingien.’ Mémoires de la Société Archéologique de la Lorraine 54 (1904), pp. 5–80. Dieue-sur-Meuse ‘La Potence’ (Meurthe): J. Guillaume, ‘Les nécropoles mérovingiennes de Dieue/Meuse (France).’ Acta Praehistorica et Archaeologica 5–6 (1974–75), pp. 211–349. Lavoye (Meuse): R. Joffroy, Le Cimetière de Lavoye (Meuse). (Paris, 1974). Villey-St.-Etienne & Sion (both Meurthe-et-Moselle): E. Salin, Rhin et Orient 1: Le haut moyen-âge en Lorraine d’après le mobilier funéraire (Paris, 1939). In each case in this and the previous note, only the most useful publication is cited. 14 S&S, cc. 3–4, for further, detailed discussion of these sites, their excavation, the problems of their data, and for the methods and results of these analyses. For sensible comments on the use of old data, see J. Huggett & J.D. Richards, ‘Anglo-Saxon burial: The computer at work’, in E. Southworth (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: A reappraisal (Stroud, 1990), pp. 65–85, at 69ff. 15 S&S, pp. 79–83, with acknowledgment of the problems involved.

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It should, however, be noted that that method is presented only as a useful heuristic device for small-scale cemetery analyses, not as a rigid, statistically valid ‘test’. Within these parameters it certainly worked. At most sites, analysis of the grave-goods’ patterns of association revealed three general groupings, two of which never associated with each other. In one of these were found weapons and in the other jewellery (see below, Fig. 8.2). Comparison with physical anthropological analyses (see below, Fig. 8.3) [6] suggested that it was justifiable to call the ‘weapons group’ masculine and the ‘jewellery group’ feminine, and to refer to the objects included in these groups as gender-specific, with those of the intervening group referred to as ‘neutral’.16 This process of determining masculine and feminine artefacts was, in the first instance, based upon cemetery- and period-specific study of the artefacts’ own patterns of associations, and not upon untested preconceptions. Analysis of late fifth- and sixth-century sites showed that artefacts exclusively associated with women were items of jewellery: necklaces, bracelets, earrings, hairpins and brooches. These were joined on some sites by châtelaines, dress pins and spindlewhorls, and on others by bone [7] or antler amulets, iron buckles, shoe or garter buckles, finger rings and even shears (see Fig. 8.4). The latter group, particularly, could change from one community to the next.17 Even disc brooches were found in men’s graves,18 though closer inspection reveals that the three examples [8] in mid-late sixth-century graves at Lavoye19 were being reused as purse-fasteners. On most sites, there were far more types of object reserved for men than for women. Adult males were almost always buried with a higher average number of grave-goods than adult women. They were usually buried with a higher average number of artefact-types too, though the numbers are sometimes far closer in this regard,20 suggesting that the symbolism of individual feminine objects was stronger than that of masculine and thus required less underpinning through repetition. On many sites feminine artefact-types associated with each other less

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S&S, p. 80, for caution about the use of this term. Lavoye 110, the only example of a spindlewhorl in a male grave of which I am aware. 18 E.g. Toul ‘St-Evre’ 1. A. Liéger, R. Marguet & J. Guillaume, ‘Sépultures mérovingiennes de l’abbaye de St.-Evre à Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle).’ RAE 35 (1984), pp. 301–17, at pp. 304–5. 19 Lavoye 92, 159 and 188. 20 S&S, p. 125. 17

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Ennery Date Bronze hairpin Earring(s) Brooch Bronze ring bracelet Necklace Disc brooch (Lavoye Phase 2 only) Spindlewhorl Iron buckle Flint Bronze, silvered bronze or bronze buckle Comb Shoe or garter buckle Shears Bone or antler medallion Knife Grey or black ceramics Red/orange ceramics Glassware Intaglio Coin(s) (except mounted in a necklace) Bronze needle Bronze tweezers Awl Spear (any type except ango Purse fastener or purse buckle Single bead Axe (including francisca) Belt-fittings Scramasax Sword Plaque-buckle Strike-a-light Châtelaine Key Bone pin Truss Fork Shells Dress-pin Shield-boss Ango Bronze vessel

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frequently than masculine types. Nonetheless, male graves were better furnished than female in terms of the numbers and the variety of grave-goods. [9]

[10] Sixth-century grave-goods, gender and age The analysis can be pursued further by examination of the relationships between grave-goods and the deceased’s age. As before, the problems of the data must be highlighted.21 In particular, traditional methods tend to telescope ages above forty, and consequently underrepresent old people. Against these difficulties, it may be claimed that, once above childhood and adolescence, broad, twenty-year tranches were used, permitting a fair margin of error, although with the concomitant drawback of making major changes appear at the ages of forty and sixty, whilst in reality thirty and fifty may have been equally important.22 Dividing the cemeteries first by gender and then by age reduced the sample for any particular age group to statistical insignificance. This was, unfortunately, especially true at Ennery, which provided the most detailed model. The resulting picture was nonetheless remarkably consistent across the sixth-century sites examined, and a model must be proposed to explain it. We will never have perfect data, but a model proposed now may provide a starting point for future work with better evidence, which might as easily bring more subtlety and refinement in support of this model, as compel its rejection. The results described represent only a tentative sketch, but nevertheless one which seems interesting, and deserving of attention. Analysis of these cemeteries shows that, in terms of grave-goods, children were ‘neutral’. Gender-specific objects were rarely placed in their graves. Masculine types were hardly ever buried with them and, in the cemeteries analysed, only one child was buried with weapons.23 Any gender-specific artefacts were almost always feminine, and usually necklaces. 21 I. Morris, Death Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 1992), ch. 3, is a valuable introduction to these problems; see also the papers in C.A. Roberts et al. (ed.), Burial Archaeology. Current research, methods and developments (BAR (B) 211; Oxford, 1989). 22 This is the lesson of a cursory examination of southern German material, to which I hope to return in future. 23 Ennery 70.

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In adolescence, whilst males usually remained artefactually ‘neutral’ and were hardly ever buried with weapons, females received their full complement of gender-specific artefact-types which was, mainly, jewellery. At about twenty, males received gender-specific items, particularly weapons. Women of this age were often buried with the highest numbers of grave-goods, but, whilst frequently receiving lavish feminine grave-goods, they not uncommonly had less such artefacts than teenagers. This trend appears to have been exaggerated as one approached forty. At Ennery, when forty or so was reached, another important distinction [11] between men and women became apparent. Males were now buried with fewer weapons and more frequently with no grave-goods at all. Their grave-goods now included many of the other masculine artefact-types—flints, strike-a-lights (perhaps hearth symbols) and so on—and high overall numbers of grave-goods. Women, however, suffered drastic reductions in the numbers of artefacts placed in their graves, rarely having more than one or two feminine-specific objects, usually necklaces. This distinction between women over forty and those younger than this age was supported by the limited data from Chaouilley, where older women were artefactually ‘neutral’. At Lavoye, the unspecified ‘young adults’ conformed to the picture of twenty- to forty-year-olds drawn from Ennery and Chaouilley. On all sites old age saw a further fall in the numbers of grave-goods, but whereas old men were still occasionally buried with gender-specific objects, women were almost always artefactually ‘neutral’. Thus there were clear mores governing grave-goods deposition. These were suggested in general terms on all the sites examined, though interesting variations were notable from one site to the next. Female burials were much more lavish, with many more feminine artefacts, at Dieue-sur-Meuse than at contemporary Lavoye, barely twenty kilometres to the west. These mores argue that roles based upon gender and position in the life-cycle were of paramount importance in contemporary social theory.24

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chapter eight Changes in the seventh century

For the seventh century we can examine the later phases at Lavoye and Dieue-sur-Meuse, and at the bulk of Royaumeix, but we can also add the numerous new cemetery foundations: Berthelming, Bettborn, Hayange, Moyeuvre-Grande, Walsheim, Wittersheim and above all Audun-le-Tiche. Some observations were possible at Villey-St-Etienne and Sion. One of the most important seventh-century changes is the move from fewer, larger cemeteries, probably shared by several settlements, to more numerous, smaller grave-yards, perhaps with a settlement to cemetery ratio closer to 1:1. On most sites sixth-century variability was replaced by ever-increasing standardization. In Dieue-sur-Meuse’s seventh-century phase the distribution patterns appeared almost random. This made age and even gender predictions increasingly difficult (obviously, no predictions were [12] possible at Dieue). Artefact-types, especially genderspecific ones, became much fewer. In 100 or so seventh-century burials at Lavoye, there were only a half dozen artefactually female graves. General standardization spelt the end of the clear association of age groups and genders with particular types and numbers of gravegoods, though, at least in the early seventh century, some general rules remained. Part of the break-down of artefactual gender distinction is, it is important to note, brought about by women adopting hitherto masculine artefact-types, such as plaque-buckles (if still smaller and less decorated) and knives. The artefact forms themselves changed importantly around 600 AD as has long been known.25 It is noteworthy that seventh-century feminine artefacts, apart from certain disc brooches, are much plainer as well as more standardised. The primary locus of decorative display shifts to masculine artefacts, above all the new, large iron plaque-buckles, with frequently intricate gold and silver inlays. This increasing decoration may have partly resulted from women wearing plaque-buckles, and forcing the use of decoration to recreate the material construction of gender difference.

25 Cp. P. Périn (with contribution by R. Legoux), La Datation des Tombes Mérovingiennes (Paris & Geneva, 1980), pp. 28–98.

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Interpretation A clear picture emerges of the role of gender and age in sixth-century grave-furnishing. The evidence is problematic but the picture seems consistent; I suggest it is real. Any attempt to use it to examine the roots of sixth-century female power and status in this region must begin with a cursory examination of the reasons for furnished burial itself. Here, there is space only to state briefly the major premises upon which this interpretation is based. When considering the reasons behind this form of mortuary expression, we must first reject the ideas that grave-goods represent Germanic or ‘pagan’ (or Germanic pagan) ‘custom’.26 Similarly discredited [13] are attempts to see grave-goods as passive reflections of social strata.27 Grave-goods are, it must be stressed, a temporary display. To be effective, they require a significant audience. Hence sixth-century cemeteries are large, apparently serving several settlements. The evident strength of the customs governing grave-goods deposition supports this. To be meaningful, display requires clear norms, forming what might be termed a ‘grammar of display’. When taken with archaeological evidence of funeral feasting (pits on cemeteries, containing ashes, potsherds and animal bones; similar evidence in grave fills; food-offerings in graves), grave-goods should be seen as part of an active strategy to maintain or enhance standing within the community. This was done by participation in public ritual; by depositing grave-goods a family showed its ability to furnish the deceased’s grave appropriately. The funeral was thus part of a continuum of public ritual in which families redefined or confirmed the relationships of power between them,

26 Rejection of religious interpretation: above all, B.K. Young, ‘Merovingian Funeral Rites and the Evolution of Christianity: A study in the historical interpretation of archaeological material’ (Univ. of Pennsylvania PhD thesis) (Ann Arbor, 1975); id., ‘Paganisme, christianisme et rites funéraires mérovingiens.’ Archéologie Médiévale 7 (1977), pp. 5–81. Rejection of ethnic interpretation: E. James, ‘Cemeteries and the problem of Frankish settlement in Gaul’, in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Names, Words and Graves. Early medieval settlement, (Leeds, 1979), pp. 55–89; ORz (above, pp. 93–106). 27 E.J. Pader, Symbolism, Social Relations and the Interpretation of Mortuary Remains (BAR(S) 130; Oxford, 1982). For recent critiques of continental material, see R. Samson, ‘Social structures in Reihengräber: mirror or mirage?’ Scottish Archaeological Review 4, part 2 (1987), pp. 116–26; E. James, ‘Burial and social status in early medieval Europe.’ TRHS 5th Ser., 29 (1989), pp. 23–40.

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others being rites of passage28 and betrothal ceremonies.29 The sixthcentury grave can be regarded as a text, a statement in a frequently competitive discourse.30 The ‘grammar of display’ was structured, as we have seen, largely around the biological categories of sex and age but, within these norms, there was clear competition. Whilst practically all young adult males in the region were buried with masculine grave-goods, and usually weapons, some graves were better furnished than others. The corollary of this interpretation is the instability of sixth-century north Gallic society. The burial’s lavishness should relate directly to the extent of the stress brought about by the death of the individual in question. The greater a death’s potential to rupture the fabric of social relations, the greater the need to expend resources on recreating those relationships through display and gift-giving. We may now examine the cemetery evidence’s implications for the nature of female power and status. The generally poor furnishing of children’s burials is probably above all a recognition that a child’s death forced but little renegotiation of the ties and barriers which made up the ‘social map’. These burials’ ‘neutrality’ perhaps indicates that the material attributes of gender identity were not acquired at birth. However, [14] some children (most numerous at Dieue-sur-Meuse) were buried with feminine artefacts. This can be interpreted variously. It might show that some young girls’ potential gender roles were recognised very early. It might, perhaps with more likelihood, signify that the deceased child was betrothed, the recognition of the child’s female status stemming from this fact. Very early betrothal for some girls is attested in contemporary written data, although from other parts of Gaul.31 An alternative possibility is that young children were regarded as extensions of their mothers, and thus given some feminine artefacts regardless of sex. This is attested in anthropological literature and in

28 Though problematic, see J.H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, 1986). 29 J.A. McNamara, & S.F. Wemple, ‘Marriage and divorce in the Frankish kingdom’, in S.M. Stuard (ed.) Women in Medieval Society (Philadelphia, 1976), 3–20; Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 44–50. 30 S&S, pp. 245–8. 31 E.g. Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina 4.28. L. Leo, (ed.), MGH AA Vol. 4, part 1 (Berlin, 1881); C. Nisard & E. Rittier (ed. & trans.), Venance Fortunat: Poésies Mêlées Traduites en Français (Paris, 1887).

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other periods of history.32 At Chaouilley, some children buried with necklaces were also interred with black-glazed vases otherwise found only in adult males’ graves, giving them one feminine and one usually masculine artefact. This suggests that certain artefacts’ gender message might be less significant amongst children than amongst adolescents and adults. It also emphasizes that the analyses used serve only as a preliminary stage in the detailed examination of the material construction of gender. The burial of one masculine and one feminine artefact (one from each parent?) in the Chaouilley burials might reveal private grief rather than the exigencies of public ritual. The material attributes of female identity appear to have been acquired at puberty. These, as stated, largely comprised dress and bodily adornments in which was invested much technical and artistic complexity, making the burials of adolescent and young adult females amongst the most lavish, and archaeologically visible, of the period. What kind of social status does this reflect, and why were these artefacts chosen to symbolise it? Initially we might look simply at biological factors. The acquisition of femininity comes with puberty, and the possibility of child-bearing. Here it is noteworthy that, in sixth-century Frankish law, free women from puberty onwards were ascribed a wergild of 600 solidi, three times that of other members of society, explicitly related to their child-bearing capacity.33 As has been argued, the types and numbers of grave-goods buried with women seem to have changed after the age of twenty, with older women receiving more lavish grave furnishings, sometimes at the [15] expense of jewellery. This difference suggests that feminine artefacts in adolescent women’s burials might not relate simply to child-bearing ability but rather to marriageable status. This interpretation means that the resources expended on adolescent women’s graves indicated a ‘passive’ form of status; the woman’s value to her family derived from her potential to have children, and thus her value as a marriage counter in alliances with other families. The high wergild for child-bearing women would be based upon

32 T.S. Turner, ‘The social skin’, in J. Cherfas and R. Lewin (ed.), Not Work Alone. A cross-cultural view of activities superfluous to survival (London, 1980), pp. 112–40; A.J. Fletcher, ‘Childhood and the construction of gender in early modern England’. Paper presented at the University of Durham, 18 January 1991. 33 PLS 24.8; 41.16; 65E.3.

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similar considerations, rather than upon any concern for ‘vulnerable’ members of society.34 Here we should discuss briefly the low numbers of adult women on some cemeteries. Attempts to explain this discrepancy by reference to the vagaries of the data are not wholly convincing, and a real imbalance in the numbers of adult males and females seems plausible.35 Any explanation must acknowledge the possibility of differential female infanticide. Such practices are well attested in medieval European rural societies, such as in later Merovingian Frisia, and thirteenth-century England.36 Though the attempt to demonstrate female infanticide from the polyptych of St-Germain-des-Prés37 has failed to convince, effective criticism of this theory concerning the documents’ composite nature,38 rather than statistics,39 it is dangerous to dismiss the concept as ‘improbable’.40 Burnell, working with better quality cemetery data from later Merovingian ‘Alamannia’ and Bavaria, has reached a similar conclusion.41 Other evidence suggests similar concerns to restrict family size in [16] sixth-century Burgundy and Provence.42 The prac-

34

Cp. H. Grahn-Hoek, Der fränkische Oberschicht im 6 Jahrhundert. Studien zur ihrer rechtlichen und politische Stellung (Sigmaringen, 1976), pp. 29–31, contra F. Irsigler, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des frühfränkischen Adels (Bonn, 1969). 35 S&S, p. 141 & pp. 255–6. 36 S. Lebecq, ‘La famille et les apprentissages de Liudger d’après les premiers chapitres de la Vita Liudgeri d’Altfrid’, in M. Sot et al. (ed.), Haut Moyen Age. Culture, Éducation et Société. Études offertes à Pierre Riché (Paris, 1990), pp. 283–99, at pp. 292–5; P.J.P. Goldberg, ‘The public and the private: Women in the pre-plague economy’, in P.R. Coss and S.D. Lloyd (ed.), Thirteenth-Century England III (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 75–89, at pp. 78–9. 37 E.R. Coleman, ‘Infanticide in the Early Middle Ages’, in Stuard (ed.) Women in Medieval Society, pp. 47–70. 38 Y. Morimoto, ‘État et perspectives des recherches sur les polyptyques carolingiens.’ Annales de l’Est 40, no.2 (1988), pp. 99–149, at pp. 115–25, and refs. 39 Cp. D. Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge Mass., 1985), pp. 62–72, which fails to reduce the sex ratio to a normal, rural level. 40 H.-W. Goetz, ‘Serfdom and the beginnings of a ‘seigneurial system’ in the Carolingian period: a survey of the evidence.’ Early Medieval Europe 2, no.1 (1993), pp. 29–51, at p. 45. 41 S. Burnell, ‘Merovingian to early Carolingian churches and their founder-graves in southern Germany and Switzerland: The impact of Christianity on the Alamans and Bavarians.’ D.Phil. thesis, Univ. of Oxford (1988). My thanks to Dr. Burnell for permission to consult his thesis. 42 Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Germani cc. 2–4. B. Krusch (ed.) MGH AA vol. 4, part 2, (Hannover, 1886) 11–27; Caesarius of Arles, Sermons 1.xii, 51.iv, 52.iv. M.M. Mueller (trans.), Caesarius of Arles: Sermons, Vol. 1 (New York, 1956). The existence of infanticide in the classical world is, of course, well attested. Cp. most recently S. May’s ‘Infanticide in Roman Britain’, Antiquity 67 (1993), pp. 883–8.

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tice can then be suggested, even without reference to non-European comparanda amongst the Yanomamö or Eskimo.43 Female infanticide combined with a male ‘warrior cult’ (here represented by the use of weaponry as the main basis of young male identity) is well attested in anthropological literature as a pre-industrial population-control mechanism which, if brutal, was perhaps more effective than other options available.44 Restricting the number of female children, for whatever reason, would of course increase the marriageable value, of those which remained. There is, however, more to it than this. A teenage woman dying before or, like the Parisienne Vilithuta,45 during first child-birth, or even marriage, was no longer valuable to marriage strategies, and had no important inheritable social position. The effort spent upon her funeral cannot have related to potential heirs’ concerns,46 or, in any simplistic sense, to her passive value. We must consider such women’s ‘public’ role. A marriageable woman would presumably appear in public with her family, to attract alliances with other kin-groups. This would explain the stress laid upon physical appearance in the material construction of this age. In this society, where local power was very much up for grabs, marriage alliances were extremely important and daughters thus the linchpins of political strategies. There is probably a link, therefore, between the public nature of a marriageable young woman’s life, and the ‘publicity’ of the funeral. Her death created some rupture in social relations, which required healing through a demonstration of the family’s ability to bury her with appropriate grave-goods. This would be especially true if the woman was betrothed or recently married, variations in this kind of status possibly reflecting the diverse furnishing of teenage women’s burials. That jewellery was deposited in the grave suggests that it was somehow regarded as the deceased’s possession. This highlights an important

43 N. Chagnon, Yanomamö: The fierce people (New York, 1963); A. Balikci, ‘Female infanticide on the Arctic coast.’ Man New Series 2, no. 1 (1967), pp. 615–25; C. Schrire & W.L. Steiger ‘A matter of life and death: An investigation into the practice of female infanticide in the Arctic.’ Man New Series 9, no. 2 (1974), pp. 161–84. I am grateful to Will Coster for the Eskimo references. 44 M. Harris, Culture, Man and Nature. An introduction to general anthropology (New York, 1971), pp. 228–31. 45 Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina 4.26. 46 Thus drawing attention to a major flaw in the interpretation proposed by Samson, ‘Social structures’.

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point. The status manifested in lavish funeral display might have been [17] ascribed in terms of passive value to a kin-group, and based upon marriage and child-bearing potential. The same can be said about the bulk of the Pactus Legis Salicae’s legislation about women. Nevertheless, this high status, like the protection envisaged by the law, could be used actively, to create power for a woman. The fact that a young woman’s status was, institutionally, mapped out in terms of marriage and child-bearing should not prevent us from seeing that this nevertheless gave her a certain space and power base within and from which to act for her own benefit. The analysis should not stop with the oppressive ‘protection’ afforded by law and custom, and with the passivity of the status ascribed to women by such social theory. Before leaving adolescent women, we should draw attention to one discrepancy between the cemetery data and the law. The latter47 suggests that male and female children reached legal majority at twelve years of age. This tallies with the archaeological evidence in the case of women, but not in that of men, who, according to the burials, only acquired the material attributes of manhood at about twenty. We might draw the two forms of data together if we assume that this legal coming of age only marked the beginning of a longer, slower process of socialization for men, who probably married rather later than women, perhaps at about thirty.48 Given that women seem to have married at about the time of legal majority, this might explain why their socialization came about all at once. In young adulthood (between twenty and forty), a subtle change appears to have taken place in the furnishing of women’s graves (see above). There appears to be a shift towards artefacts which might symbolise the home, such as pottery. Up to the age of about forty, women’s burials continue to be well furnished. Again, we can consider ‘biological’ roots for this kind of burial status first. Puberty and about forty mark the approximate age limits of the women buried with the

47

PLS 24.7, 65E.2. The evidence for this is insecure, deriving partly from the epitaphs in Venantius Fortunatus’ Carmina, Book 4, which mention wives only for men over thirty, and partly from a study of Alamannic cemeteries, mentioned above (n. 22). A significant discrepancy in age at first marriage between men and their wives is suggested by the extent to which sixth-century women are known to have long outlived their husbands; Van Dam, Saints, p. 52, n. 10. This age difference is supported by the fact that Gregory of Tours was about the same age as Gundulf, his mother’s grandfather’s brother; LH 6.11. 48

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most grave-goods, especially feminine ones. It seems reasonable to see the status as deriving from child-bearing and a status within the family as a mother. Here a rare neat correlation with written data presents itself. Seventh-century Lex Ribvaria specifies that the high, 600-solidus wergild for women of child-bearing age applies to women between puberty and [18] forty.49 The parallel clause of the Pactus Legis Salicae gives sixty years as the end of child-bearing, but, although the text has the number written in full, this could result ultimately from an error of LX for XL.50 If accepted, this correlation between the cemetery data and the law has important implications for interpretation of post-Roman legislation. However symbolic the law’s creation may have been, and however rarely its actual text may have been used,51 this shows that it reflected contemporary social mores to some extent. This coincidence might very well be significant, but there are reasons to mistrust it.52 The wergild scheme’s concerns, to compensate for the damage done to one family by another, need not coincide with those of the burial display, to reflect the extent of damage done to the social status quo by a death within a family. Furthermore, ‘forty years’ is probably symbolic. Few sixth-century people would have known their exact age. Gregory of Tours almost invariably gives ages as round figures. It might be dangerous to compare a symbolic structural age with a physiological one. There seems to be more to the deposition of grave-goods with women of this age than simply their continuing value as child-bearers, which is the law’s implication. Their domestic importance, in rearing

49

Lex Ribv. 12.1. PLS 65E.3. 51 C.P. Wormald, ‘Lex scripta and verbum regis: Legislation and Germanic kingship from Euric to Canute’, in P.H. Sawyer & I.N. Wood (ed.), Early Medieval Kingship (Leeds, 1977), pp. 105–38. For arguments against Wormald’s thesis, see R. McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 23–75; W. Sellert, ‘Aufzeichnungdes Rechts und Gesetz’, in W. Sellert (ed.), Das Gesetz in Spätantike und frühen Mittelalter. 4. Symposion der Kommission ‘Die Funktion des Gesetzes in Geschichte und Gegenwart’, Abhandlung en der Akadamie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, phil. hist. Klasse. Dritte Folge 196 (Göttingen, 1992), pp. 67–102; I.N. Wood, ‘Administration, law and culture in Merovingian Gaul’, in R. McKitterick (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 63–81; P. Fouracre, ‘ “Placita” and the settlement of disputes in later Merovingian Francia’, in W. Davies & P. Fouracre (eds.), The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 23–44, especially p. 34. 52 Albeit ones not recognized in S&S! 50

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children, and perhaps controlling the work done by children around the home (though see below for the lack of stress upon work symbols), gives them a certain, possibly more active, form of high status. The expense lavished upon her burial perhaps indicates that this role gave a woman more than value within a family. Clearly, to maintain or further the family’s standing within the community, the woman had to be interred with due ceremony and grave-goods display. This might result from a need to maintain the ties created by the woman’s marriage between her family and her husband’s. It might also demonstrate that a mother had a prominent [19] place in local society, and that her role within the household gave her some standing outside it. This would again highlight the unsatisfactory nature of rigid oppositions between the ‘private’ household and the ‘public’ community.53 Sixthcentury women might have had more scope for power, and more legal freedom, than is often implied. Many commonplaces of post-Roman female legal status are based upon filling in the Pactus Legis Salicae’s perhaps significant silences from other codes such as Burgundian or Lombard law.54 Even the idea that all women lived under a man’s legal control (mundium) is, for sixth-century north Gaul, based upon assumption rather than proof (the Pactus Legis Salicae nowhere mentions mundium). To some extent, the gloomier interpretations of the laws can be confirmed; sixth-century social institutions delineated the area within which women could act fairly exactly, in terms of marriage and childbearing. However, pointing out the essential fact that a woman’s social space was defined by men, for their purposes, is only part of the story. High social value for wives and mothers, and the consequent possibilities of power, might as often coincide with a woman’s plans for her own life as contradict them. The institution might be clearly maledefined but the demands of everyday co-existence, of the habitus,55 might easily allow women to turn this into opportunities for active power. A major shift in the nature of women’s burials occurs when women pass the age of about forty (see above). As a first step towards expla-

53 See also J.L. Nelson, ‘The problematic in the private.’ Social History 15, no. 3 (1990), pp. 355–64, at pp. 363–4. 54 S&S, pp. 62–65. 55 P. Bourdieu, An Outline of a Theory of Social Practice (trans. R. Nice; Cambridge, 1977).

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nation, we can again consider the correlation with the law’s ending of ‘child-bearing age’ at forty. It may not be unreasonable to see forty as a practical upper limit to child-bearing (given the early start to motherhood, and the perils of giving birth, it is perhaps rather generous), but, once again, there must be more to the change than simple biology (and see above for reservations about the correlation between gravegoods and the law). It was argued that the high status in burial of women between about twenty and forty related at least partly to their role as mothers of young children. If we took literally the law’s claims that a woman could have children up to about forty, then this high status ought to persist until around fifty years or even later, when the youngest child reached legal majority. This might explain the inevitable blurring between age-groups. The change in a woman’s status is likely to reflect a perceived reduction in her household role, as her children reached legal majority and married. In this sense it represents her supplanting by the next generation [20] of wives and mothers. Here we might consider what could be called the ‘end of the line’ hypothesis. Women over forty are not buried with jewellery because they have passed it on to their daughters. This idea receives some support in written data from other parts of sixth-century Gaul,56 and in central Austrasian archaeology, demonstrably old jewellery sometimes being buried with young girls.57 Younger women do not yet have daughters old enough to receive their jewellery, and so are buried with it. This, surely, is behind Gregory’s description of the woman’s burial in Metz. Dying without children (sine filiis), she was buried with the customary finery (cum grandibus ornamentis et multa auro). This nevertheless supports the idea of a reduction of at least those forms of status manifested in well-furnished burial. Although jewellery was regarded as the woman’s possession, she was nevertheless expected to pass it on when female children arrived, and especially when the possibility of providing more children was past. Comparison with men of the same age is instructive. After about forty, they appear to be buried less often with weaponry; perhaps they passed it on to their sons. The eldest son of a man who married at thirty would reach legal independence when his father was in his early forties, begin to

56 57

Caesarius of Arles, Sermons 78.4. E.g. Lavoye 114.

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bear weapons when his father was about fifty, but perhaps not marry until his father was sixty.58 Nevertheless, as their sons reached adulthood, older men seem to have acquired new roles, and new symbols representing their importance as heads of households; their sons had not yet married and settled down. Given that some evidence suggests that status was achieved during young adulthood, the deaths of these men, before their sons had proved themselves, created significant tension. Their heirs had to spend considerable resources to establish an entitlement to succeed to their social position; thus the most lavish burials are those of men between about forty and about sixty.59 Women, however, were not ascribed similar new symbols. Their power rested upon their position as wives and mothers within a household. Their death created less tension within society once their children reached majority. The latter lived to continue the links between their mothers’ and fathers’ families. The loss of a woman’s household position to the next generation reduced her ‘public’ status, something else which [21] diminished the family’s need to mark her death with significant display. Given the difference in age at marriage, many women of this age were probably widows, this reducing further the stress caused by their death. These factors would be exaggerated with old women’s graves. Buried with few or no grave-goods, almost always without the material attributes of womanhood, and usually in small graves, their deaths caused little social tension. As wives and mothers they had long been replaced by younger generations, and they were almost certainly widows. We might not expect an ageing widow to dress in the jewellery and other finery associated primarily with teenagers; such items had probably been passed on and, even if not, they would hardly be suitable symbols of her social role. Yet again, though, whilst this explanation goes a long way towards explaining the nature of the material record, it does not go the whole way. Grave-goods seem to reflect forms of status relating to the family and to the tension within social relations which death caused. There

58 Here we are at the mercy of the twenty-year brackets used in ageing at Ennery. A change at about fifty would not be visible in our evidence. This might explain the sometimes fuzzy distinctions both within graves of men between forty and sixty, and between burials of men older than forty and those younger than that age. 59 Cp. Güdingen 4 and Lavoye 319 for the most extreme examples, both aged between forty and fifty.

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are, however, other forms of status. When a familial role was lost, it might well be replaced by communal importance. In a society like that of sixth-century northern Gaul, age might well have brought respect for the individual’s knowledge of long years of custom. Old women may have become ‘wise women’. The law’s implication60 that certain widows were the king’s responsibility, might, in local terms, mean that the local community was somehow responsible for them. Communal respect, if not appropriately manifested by grave-goods, may have been demonstrated by other means. Analyses showed a general correlation between the strength of the gender-related message of the grave furnishings and the grave’s size, but there were anomalies.61 Villey-St-Etienne 6, for example, was an intact grave of a woman with few grave-goods, but was of huge dimensions. There were no data on the deceased’s age, but it is possible that grave-goods were no longer deemed appropriate for her. We should not assume that older women were universally figures of low status, just because their burials were not marked by grave-goods display. We might, however, read the burial evidence to show that a widow’s economic position was not such that her death created significant stress. This might simply be because, by her forties, she probably had adult sons with their own wives and families, men whose right to succeed was well established. Old men’s burials suggest similar factors. At about sixty, a man’s sons would have their own households and legal domains, thus reducing his social role much as a woman’s role was reduced at about forty. However, [22] old men sometimes retained masculine grave-goods, occasionally even weaponry, showing that they could retain some power and influence. The general similarity between the graves of old people and children (usually ‘neutral’ or unfurnished), demonstrates that deaths amongst neither group caused much social stress.

Conclusions In the first instance, this survey’s conclusions will surprise no one. That the arena of female power was defined by men in terms of childbearing and the family is hardly revolutionary, though, given that the

60 61

PLS 100.1. S&S, pp. 148–9, 156–7.

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early middle ages are still occasionally regarded as a ‘golden age’ for women,62 it might yet be valuable to demonstrate this. But this is only part of the story. More interesting is the way in which this study highlights the interplay between the institutional (represented not only by the law but by the community mores governing the appropriate grave-goods) and everyday practice. The roots of female status lay largely in child-bearing value to the family, this being very neatly represented in the laws’ wergild system. The burial evidence illustrates the ways by which women nevertheless actively acquired prestige within the community. The high value placed upon them by men, and the familial roles which were mapped out for them, left women a social space within which to act for themselves, to create this prestige. It is not only erroneous but arrogant to assume that this social space necessarily differed from that within which many women wished to act. Furthermore, it is worth reiterating that the interpretations of sixth-century law which deny this freedom to act are based largely upon the uncritical transfer to this area of legal concepts from other post-Roman periods and places. Women with households of young children were, or at least could be, important people within sixth-century north-eastern Gallic communities. This is shown by the care and attention lavished upon their burials. Their deaths threatened a family’s status, and had to be smoothed over by expenditure in funerary display and attendant ritual and gift-giving. However, this prestige was transient, like almost all forms of high status in sixth-century northern Gaul. Inevitably, the next generation would supplant a woman in her household roles. She needed to work hard during her tenure of this important position to acquire communal respect, authority over her daughters-in-law, or other forms of high status which she could carry forward into later life. Such forms of [23] authority and prestige are visible with difficulty in the cemetery data because, in institutional terms, her period of importance was past and her death no longer required expenditure of resources in gravegoods. Older women may have had significant social status for other reasons. The symbols of female identity are generally items of dress and bodily adornment. In this region the only work symbol found with

62 Cp. K. Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens. Writing rape in medieval French literature and law (Philadelphia, 1991), p. 21.

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any frequency is the spindlewhorl, and even that is uncommon. Breadcutters and weaving swords are found in exceptionally lavish assemblages.63 This implies that female work, vitally important though it certainly was, did not receive institutional recognition in the furnishing of burials. As has been said repeatedly, burial status appears to reflect the tension which a death caused. This was highlighted when the deceased was a woman with a family of young children under her tutelage, and the social roles which that implied. This position seems to have been signified by the wife’s jewellery and dress adornment, and other household symbols such as châtelaines, pottery and keys. These apparently represent the woman’s domain and status, rather than the work she did. Only exceptionally, in this region, were symbols of work (or, more probably, the control of work) added to these. This study of burials was carried out independently of an examination of the written evidence for female status, with which comparisons have been made in the interpretation. There are no simple correlations, and, superficially, some discrepancies. Nevertheless the examination of these is interesting. It shows how interpretation is advanced not by discarding one or other evidential form, but by highlighting the different purposes served by the creation of each, perhaps permitting a more sophisticated understanding of sixth-century female roles. The developments in the burial evidence can be taken alongside written evidence to suggest widespread social change around 600 AD,64 central to which was the emergence of a more secure aristocracy. This had profound repercussions, not least of which was the reduced need to compete for, or constantly reaffirm, social position, and the consequent reduction in grave-goods’ importance. Cemeteries appear to serve more local communities; burials ‘spoke’ to smaller audiences. Permanent surface or above-ground markers became more important than temporary demonstrations of grave-goods. Increasingly secure local position meant more permanent family status. Women were perhaps rather less important as linch-pins in local politics. Written data suggest that lineages were more widely known, and [24] that the law recognised more attempts to keep certain forms of land within the male line. Thus young men, potential heirs,

63 Güdingen 1; Bassompierre (dép. Moselle): Simmer, ‘Le Nord Mosellan’, 345; Villey St-Etienne 46. 64 S&S, pp. 262–70.

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seem to have been given elaborate iron plaque-buckles, the most decorative seventh-century dress adjuncts, whilst feminine artefacts often became standardized and rather plain. In burial, feminine artefacttypes became increasingly rare. The results of the analyses of sixth-century graves, and the changes which took place around the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century, draw attention to certain key points. Gender is not a binary divide, across time, place or even within a lifetime, but one of a number of identities which might be employed in social relations. As such, gender identity may be ascribed, but also actively adopted for one’s own purposes. Other social identities might be based upon ethnicity, rank, age, family, legal freedom and so on. All of these represent different, but intimately inter-related, dimensions of social organization. The biological ubiquity of sex ought not to turn gender, the social identity constructed from it, into the necessarily essential dimension of social structure any more than the biological inevitability of ageing should make us consider structural age as the primary feature of all social relations. We cannot talk, for example, of ‘class transcending gender’.65 An aristocratic woman may have been able to do things a peasant woman could not, but the peasant might have been able to do things which the noblewoman could never have done. The spaces within which the genders could act were drawn differently among various social groups, but gender and the social group in which it was constructed were surely interconnected. It is not a question of one dimension of social identity transcending another. As a historically contingent social identity, gender is not a constant, and so may be constructed variously at different times, in different places, amongst different classes or even, as demonstrated here, at different stages in the life-cycle.

65 J.L. Nelson, ‘Women and the word in the early middle ages’, in W.J. Sheils & D. Wood (ed.), Women in the Church (Studies in Church History 27; Oxford, 1990), pp. 53–78, at p. 63.

Commentary Five Grave-Goods, Female Status and the Cemetery of Ennery

The preceding chapter largely distilled some findings of the analyses published in more detail in S&S but developed them in some significant regards. It has, pleasingly, been much cited as an example of how one can go about the exploration of women’s lives using archaeological data. The interpretation is pursued in some ways in the next chapter but broadly I would stand by the argument as presented. In this brief commentary I shall present a little historiographical background and point out some areas where I would somewhat modify my comments. When I began my doctoral thesis on the Merovingian region of Metz I had no very clear idea of the way my research would go, the plan being simply for a ‘regional survey of its history and archaeology’. While reading Édouard Salin’s four-volume La Civilisation Mérovingienne1 I came across references to the cemetery of Ennery (Moselle), the initial publication of which site, fortunately, was held in the University of Leeds’ library.2 This seems an appropriate place to say a little more about the history of this cemetery which, while quite famous among Merovingian archaeologists, is little known outside that group (other than, perhaps, among typologists of plaque-buckles, one type being named after this site). The site was discovered in 1935, when a single burial was excavated by a local archaeologist, Émile Delort, working with Roger Clément, then director of the Musées de Metz, and Clément’s assistant, J. Scheffer.3 The remainder of the site was unable to be investigated because of Delort’s and Clément’s professional commitments and as a result a substantial swathe of it was destroyed in sand-extraction by the landowner, a Monsieur Barbé.

1 E. Salin, La Civilisation Mérovingienne d’après les Textes, les Sépultures et la Laboratoire (4 Vols; Paris, 1949–59). Reading this is the ‘rite de passage’ of all students of Merovingian archaeology. 2 E. Delort, ‘Le cimetière franc d’Ennery’ Gallia 5 (1947), pp. 351–403. 3 This discovery was signalled in M. Toussaint, ‘Étude sur la question franque en Lorraine: Répertoire des nécropoles et sépultures isolées de l’époque franque découvertes en Lorraine. IV: Département de la Moselle’, Revue des Questions Historiques 6 (1938), pp. 3–33, p. 6.

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The German invasion of 1940 resulted in Delort’s expulsion from his post at the Lycée in Metz, whereupon, to occupy his time, in 1941 he resumed his excavation of the Ennery cemetery (Barbé also apparently having been expelled),4 reporting (in what must have been difficult circumstances) to the superintendent of the newly installed Landesdenkmalamt Lothringen, Wilhelm Reusch.5 This situation might well have influenced the interpretation of the site. Reusch, as has been pointed out,6 was concerned with providing archaeological proof of the ‘German’ ancestry of the département of the Moselle, justifying its recent re-annexation by the Reich. The ‘Germanic’ nature of graves like those at Ennery and Bouzonville (Moselle; also discussed in his report) was thus of importance and Reusch decided that those interred in the Ennery cemetery were the followers of a newly-established ‘Germanic’ lord.7 It is perhaps significant that Delort, publishing the site just after the war, wished to identify the occupants of the cemetery not with free ‘Germanic’ settlers but rather with laeti, that is with barbarian prisoners of war settled on lands by the Roman Empire in return for military service: the ownership of the land by the occupants of the Ennery cemetery (whom Delort and Reusch agreed were ‘Germanic’) was thus shifted from being the result of ‘Germanic’ conquest to stemming from the merciful generosity of the Roman state. Delort’s interpretation was proposed on the basis of the fourth-century coins found in the burials, but even he realised that this was impossible to square with the dating of the objects, which he thought (rightly) were sixth-century. His desire to take the cemetery and its ‘German’ settlers back into the Roman period is nevertheless illustrated by his response to his own rhetorical question, asking if these people could be laeti: if a reply in the affirmative appears too rash, and if the graves cannot be pushed beyond the sixth century or the end of the fifth, one astonishing fact remains to be explained: no coin of the fifth or sixth century has

4 Delort, ‘Le cimetière franc d’Ennery’, pp. 353–4, for discussion of these ‘tristes événements’. 5 The cemetery was reported in W. Reusch, ‘Fränkische Funde aus lothringischem Boden; Bericht über den gegenwärtigen Stand der frühgeschichtlichen Spatenforschung in Lothringen’, Westmarkische Abhandlungen 5 (1941–42), pp. 39–58, at pp. 40–52. 6 B. Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, 2003), p. 158. 7 Reusch, ‘Fränkische Funde’, p. 52.

grave-goods, female status and the cemetery of ennery 317 been found amid the tens of coins of the fourth century that have been recovered.8

Nevertheless, regardless of its interpretation and a somewhat curious means of excavation,9 subsequent investigation has suggested that the data obtained and published are fundamentally reliable. In 1987 I obtained a copy of Magdeleine Clermont-Joly’s invaluable catalogue of the Merovingian collections of the Musées de Metz,10 which contained a much better plan of the site than that published in 1947 and an illustration of most of the artefacts recovered (although others were held at the Musée du Pays de Sarrebourg), which added significantly to Delort’s published inventory. The assembly of this information and the physical anthropological report on the site11 made it possible to undertake a social analysis. The crucial moment came via one of those happy accidents that give the lie to the idea that we are locked into a hermeneutic circle; that we approach the evidence with particular ideas in mind, stemming from our specific social and cultural background and interpret the data in such a way as to reinforce those preconceptions.12 Some, then recent, work on Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, which had interested me as an undergraduate, had been concerned with the establishment of gender-specific artefact-kits. With the Ennery inventory available, I decided to see if it was possible to establish the existence of such kits at that site. The methodology I adopted is discussed in S&S and in the preceding chapter, and its integrity defended in the next chapter. The analysis seemed to reveal that there were genderspecific artefact-types and that one could predict the gender of the deceased according to whether their assemblage gravitated towards the masculine or feminine end of the seriation of artefact types. So far, the research had indeed been driven by a particular set of preconceptions contingent fundamentally upon the fact that I was an archaeology student in the UK in the third quarter of the 1980s working on early medieval cemeteries. The serendipitous element came when, looking

8 Delort, ‘Le cimetière franc’, p. 390: ‘Si une réponse affirmative paraît trop téméraire et si les tombes ne peuvent pas remonter au delà du VIe siècle ou de la fin du Ve, il resterait à expliquer un fait étonnant: aucune monnaie des Ve ou VIe siècles ne se trouve mêlée aux dizaines de pieces du IVe siècle qui ont été recueillies.’ 9 The burials were left on plinths of earth and the site excavated around them. 10 M. Clermont-Joly, L’Époque Mérovingienne (Catalogues des collections des Musées de Metz 1) (Metz, 1978). 11 M. Heuertz, ‘Études des squelettes du cimetière franc d’Ennery.’ Bulletin et Mémoire de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris 8 (1957), pp. 81–147. 12 Some brief and simplified criticisms of this stance are presented above, pp. 37–38.

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at the diagram which plotted the individual artefact assemblages along the X-axis against the final ‘gendered’ ordering of the artefact types on the Y-axis,13 I decided, for no reason other than that I had the information available, to colour in the grave assemblages according to the age of the deceased. It was at that point that I noticed that the assemblages of the teen-age and young adult females and of the young and mature adult males were those which clustered closest to the gendered poles of the Y-axis, whereas old people, children and adolescent males were concentrated in the middle. That chance discovery encouraged me to examine age as well as gender, with the results described in chapter 8, demonstrating the inextricability of the two variables. The explanation of those patterns within the distribution of grave-goods, in turn, led me towards the first steps in my conclusions about the reasons for the custom of furnished burial, developed in chapters 5 and 6. There are a few areas in which I would modify the chapter. A slightly closer examination of the cemeteries of the Triererland suggests that they differ rather less significantly from those in the region of Metz than I had imagined from a cursory study of Böhner’s classic survey.14 The different terrain might explain why lavish burials come closer to civitas-capital, rather than being distributed more than about a day’s journey away as in the Metz area. The diverging existence and distribution of lavishly furnished burial may have led me to overestimate the variations in custom between the two neighbouring areas. The crucial difference, however, comes with the inscriptions at Trier. These aspects have been more fully explored in chapter 6. Another area dealt with in that chapter is the textual metaphor, which I would not now apply to cemetery data in quite the same way as I do in chapter 8.15 At the time that chapter 8 and S&S were written, I was unaware of the republication of the data from Ennery by Alain Simmer,16 although I had known that Simmer, having ‘inherited’ Delort’s notes from Marcel Lutz, was working on such a report. This contains a more accurate grave inventory and further particulars about various aspects of the 13 Cp. FSP, figure 3 (above, p. 296), or S&S, p. 82, fig. 3.6, although here the graves are arranged in a series from the most heavily masculine to the most strongly feminine. The diagram I was studying simply arranged the graves in numerical order. 14 Cp. BW, p. 69 (above, p. 225); below, pp. 394–5; K. Böhner, Die Fränkischen Altertümer des Trierer Landes. (Germanische Denkmäler der Völkerwanderungszeit, Serie B, Band 1), 2 vols. (Berlin, 1958). 15 Cp. FSP, p. 13 (above, p. 302). 16 A. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery (Moselle): Fouilles d’Emile Delort (Woippy, 1993).

grave-goods, female status and the cemetery of ennery 319 site, as well as a revaluation of the physical anthropological data by Luc Buchet. This republication, however, makes little difference to the results of my analyses. The inventory I had put together by comparing the original publication of the site with the catalogue of the Musées de Metz was largely identical to that provided by Simmer from Delort’s notes. There were some changes necessary. At least one burial that I had thought was intact was, it would seem, disturbed.17 Another burial which, following Delort, I had assumed was Merovingian is seen by Simmer as late Roman, although principally from its north-south orientation.18 As the grave was always known to be disturbed it had not featured in my analysis of grave-goods associations and its exclusion from the list of Merovingian burials therefore forces no change to my results. However, what I had interpreted from Delort’s report as a pit on the edge of the cemetery, possibly associated with funerary feasting, is clearly, from Simmer’s republication, nothing of the sort.19 Simmer confronts my analyses, although without citing them, when he declares that ‘[l]’âge ne semble jouer aucun rôle’.20 I had presented the first results of my research at the 10th ‘Journées Internationales d’Archéologie Mérovingienne’ at Metz in October 1988. Simmer was present at that lecture and would also have access to the accompanying Bulletin de Liaison which contains a summary21 so it seems reasonable to assume that this curt and unsubstantiated dismissal is directed at them. Nevertheless, as stated, the inventory published by Simmer made little if any difference to the results of my analyses and Simmer does not support his comment with any extended argument or discussion of the grave-goods’ patterns of distribution. He satisfies himself with the statement that young people were as well provided with grave-goods as the old, which is simply untrue. Subsequent work, with better-quality data, has in any case demonstrated the validity of my conclusions about the linkage between grave-goods and age.22 17

See below, p. 331. Grave 38. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery, p. 48. 19 See BW, p. 63 (above, p. 218), n. 6. 20 Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery, p. 114. 21 G. Halsall, ‘La Civitas Mérovingienne de Metz: Quelques idées pour la recherche archéologique’, Bulletin de Liaison de l’Association Française d’Archéologie Mérovingienne 12 (1988), pp. 50–52. 22 See, e.g., E. Stauch, ‘Alter ist Silber, Jugend ist Gold! Zur altersdifferenzierten Analyse frühgeschichtlicher Bestattungen’, in S. Brather (ed.), Zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Archäologie des 4. bis 7. Jahrhunderts im Westen (Erganzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 57; Munich, 2008), pp. 275–95. Stauch has a forthcoming monograph on the subject (entitled Alte Menschen im 18

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Another area where the republication coincidentally comes into contact with some of my conclusions comes when Simmer declares that ‘it would be equally adventurous to invoke infanticide among female neonates’ in explaining the difference between the numbers of adult males and females on the site.23 He may be right, although again he presents no further argument as to why the suggestion would be so ‘adventurous’.24 Simmer’s own explanation is that the settlement associated with the cemetery was refounded by a group of young men in the sixth century, after being abandoned in the difficulties of the fifth, and that women remained a minority.25 I am not sure that this suggestion demonstrates a very sophisticated or secure grasp of demographics. Especially with the comparative data from other pre-industrial societies, including western European medieval ones, adduced in the previous chapter, I would maintain that female infanticide remains one of the possible—indeed one of the more sober, if unpalatable— explanations for the marked imbalance in the numbers of men and

frühen Mittelalter. Soziale Definition durch Alter und Geschlecht), which is awaited with interest. See also, above, pp. 8–9, below, pp. 396–400. 23 Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery, p. 112. ‘Il serait également aventureux d’évoquer l’infanticide à la naissance des nouveaux-nés feminines.’ I do not recall whether I had mentioned my thoughts on this in my paper at Metz. An early draft study of the site, on which I based the lecture, contains a discussion of the possibility but the typescript submitted for publication (and rejected on the grounds that it missed a submission deadline of which I had not been informed) does not. 24 Simmer is himself no stranger to adventurous interpretation, having explained the removal of heads in some Merovingian burials as being simultaneously a continuation of Iron-Age Celtic cults of head veneration and a manifestation of the Christian cult of relics (A. Simmer, ‘Le prélèvement des crânes dans l’est de la France à l’époque mérovingienne.’ Arch. Méd. 12 [1982], pp. 35–49), the latter explanation later extended to the absence of long bones and other skeletal components (id., Le Cimetière Mérovingien d’Audun-le-Tiche: Archéologie d’Aujourd’hui No. 1 [Mémoire de l’A.F.A.M. no. 2; Paris, 1988]), although the division of corpses for use as relics is not well attested in the West until somewhat later than the burials in question. When Simmer presented this interpretation at the 1988 Metz conference it was met with open laughter, which seemed excessive even to me. Simmer has also suggested (ibid., p. 103; id. La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery, pp. 101–2) that the presence of nails in burials results from a ‘pratique magico-réligieuse’ of throwing nails into graves for ‘phylacteric’ purposes. Perhaps the person who managed to land one such nail in the pot in Audun grave 157 won the deceased’s inheritance. We possibly underestimate the scope for fun and games at the Merovingian funeral. Alas these nails clearly stem from wooden funerary structures (S&S, p. 160) but such moments of light relief are rare enough in the study of cemeteries and should be treasured. My own attempt to introduce a humorous note in the ‘appendix’ to EMCems met with a certain amount of po-faced tut-tutting. 25 Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery, p. 115.

grave-goods, female status and the cemetery of ennery 321 women at Ennery and elsewhere. Simmer’s own interpretation of the site is strictly functional and appears very dated even for 1993. He views, for example, the absence of large numbers of weapons as a sign of the peacefulness of the community and its distance from warfare.26 A more detailed critique would be ungenerous. Dr Mark Handley has suggested that the age of sixty years given for the end of child-bearing age in the Pactus Legis Salicae, rather than stemming from a scribal error of LX for XL, as I suggested,27 results from the use of biblical exemplars in the shape of 1 Timothy 5.9–11 and Leviticus 27.3–7.28 Given that the extant manuscripts do not give the number in Roman numerals but written out in full, this attractive proposition may well be preferable. The manuscript history of the Pactus remains notorious, however, and the earliest extant version is 200 years younger than the usually presumed date of original redaction. This might, when taken alongside Lex Ribvaria’s age of forty years in the parallel clause, lend some possible support to my suggestion. I would end with two further slight modifications of my argument. I originally pointed out that it might be seen as arrogant to assume that the areas of society wherein women could acquire prestige and power, although institutionally mapped out by men, were not also those which many women wanted for themselves. To this I would add a comment that much ‘women’s history’, which has been concerned to show the involvement of women in what might be considered ‘masculine’ areas of life (warfare and high politics, for example), has, by arguing that women were thereby more important in the past than often assumed, tacitly accepted the traditional idea that those roles and arenas dominated by men were more important than those occupied by women. They thus implicitly valorise the masculine, although I appreciate the ‘equal and opposite’ danger inherent in my counter-argument, which is that valorising those areas of activity dominated by women in the

26 See the many works of Heinrich Härke on how the incidence and number of weaponry cannot be equated to the frequency of warfare or to whether or not the deceased interred with them were actual warriors. Seminal was H. Härke, ‘ “Weapon graves”? The background of the Anglo-Saxon weapon burial rite.’ P&P 126 (1990), pp. 22–43. See also id., Angelsächsische Waffengräber des 5. bis 7. Jahrhunderts (Cologne, 1992). For the symbolism of weaponry at Ennery, see further below, pp. 359–65. 27 FSP, p. 18 (above p. 307). 28 M. Handley, Death, Society and Culture: Inscriptions and Epitaphs in Gaul and Spain, AD 300–750 (BAR (I) 1135; Oxford, 2003), p. 77, n. 125.

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past might (but must not) be turned into an argument that women accept domesticity and removal from active politics in the present. The other point I would add to my discussion concerns the equation of women and children.29 As discussed in chapter 8, children are occasionally buried with feminine artefacts but almost never with masculine for which various explanations might be proposed, my preference being for the earlier age of female betrothal leading some female children to acquire gendered identities earlier than others and, especially, earlier than males. However, the equation really becomes clear in the fact that the masculine array of artefacts, which appear to be acquired rather later in life than the feminine, are not found in either female or child burials (even male ones). Some of these are to be associated with ethnicity, which is itself thereby gendered. Women and children, in not apparently being assigned an ethnic identity (in the sixth century anyway)30 are thus opposed to the male. However, there are some differences. Sub-adults, male children especially, may be defined by their absence of adult male characteristics, and their distance from the pole (or perhaps poles, still, in the sixth century) represented by the adult male. However, women—and in this there seems to be a difference between the late Roman and post-imperial periods—seem not to be defined simply by difference and distance from the male, but to have their own distinct characteristics. Female identity and power can be defined by closeness to or distance from a particular feminine ‘pole’. The suggestion that gender was more ‘bipolar’ in the post-imperial period is explored in the next two chapters, when the issues of Merovingian masculinity will be broached to provide the necessary complement to the discussion in the preceding chapter.

29 GEE, p. 30, draws attention to the fact that this equation was ignored by FSP. I think the general thesis of GEE and the theoretical position adopted remain valid, but the overall argument is marred by errors of detail, especially in the discussion of the archaeology and artistic styles. 30 This argument is presented in GEE and in BMRW, pp. 484–7, with necessary caveats.

CHAPTER NINE

MATERIAL CULTURE, SEX, GENDER, SEXUALITY AND TRANSGRESSION IN SIXTH-CENTURY GAUL*

Introduction: Poitiers, 590 Like chapter 8, this chapter begins with an illuminating tale from that rich mine of illuminating tales, Gregory of Tours’ Histories, written between 576 and c. 592. At the end of the revolt of the nuns of Holy Cross, Poitiers (589–90), an intriguing episode that would still bear more analysis, the rebel leaders Clothild and Basina appeared before a tribunal of bishops, including Gregory himself. Here, they hurled one allegation after another at their Abbess, Leubovera. One was that the abbess kept a man dressed in woman’s clothing at the nunnery, so she could have sex with him whenever she pleased, without anyone suspecting. “There he is!” cried Clothild, pointing with her finger. Whereupon he stepped forward, in front of everyone, dressed in woman’s clothing as we have said. He said that he was unable to perform the manly act (se nihil opus posse virile agere) and that that was the reason he dressed himself up in this way. He maintained that he had never set eyes upon the Abbess, although, of course, he knew her by name. He had never spoken to her in his life and, in any case, he lived more than forty miles out of Poitiers. Clothild failed to prove her Abbess guilty on this count.1

And so, his fifteen minutes of fame over, this nameless but nevertheless distinctive Poitevin disappeared back into the abyss of history. Gregory of Tours passed no further comment, moving straight on to

* An essay with this title first appeared in Sexuality, Society and the Archaeological Record, ed. L. Bevan, (Glasgow, 2001), pp. 130–46. It is here substantially rewritten, especially the central section. My great thanks go to Jody McGill whose University of London undergraduate dissertation on Merovingian women (1994) drew my attention to the similarity between the foci of sixth-century female bodily adornment and those of contemporary legislation about the female body. What I have made of this interesting point, however, is my own responsibility! 1 LH 10.15; translation modified from L. Thorpe, (trans.) Gregory of Tours. The History of the Franks (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 570.

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the next charge levelled at Abbess Leubovera (that she kept a eunuch in Byzantine fashion; the servant in question had had his testicles removed for medical reasons), and the episode has hardly attracted any attention since.2 Yet it is surely very interesting, especially to archaeologists concerned with the material construction of sexuality. Opus virile need not imply anything sexual.3 But, whether we understand the man’s statement that (literally) ‘he could perform nothing of manly work’ as meaning that he was impotent, or (if perhaps unlikely) as implying his involvement in homosexual sex,4 or simply as meaning that was not up to traditional ‘manly’ work out in the fields, we still have a valuable insight into the material construction of gender and sexuality. Whatever the case, if a man could not function in the ‘normal’ heterosexual male way then, apparently, he may as well dress up as a woman. Obviously it is difficult to know how typical this story was. That Gregory passes no comment upon the man’s explanation for his decision might be taken to imply that it was not unusual, but this would be too hasty. Gregory habitually exposed the worldly to ridicule and satire, something only too possible at the tribunal of the rebellious nuns, which frequently descended into farce: men dressed up as women; alleged eunuchs; squabbles over having to share a bathroom with the servants; bickering over the partitioning of a piece of silk; and so on. To Gregory, this three-ring circus, this freak-show, was all that could be expected to come from high-born nuns expecting their worldly sta-

2

The notable exception is the excellent article by N.F. Partner, ‘No sex, no gender’, Speculum 68 (1993), pp. 419–43. Partner discusses this incident pertinently at pp. 419–23 and 439–43. I am grateful to Professor Bonnie Effros for this reference. 3 C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), p. 557. 4 It is difficult to say for sure but on balance the signification of the Poitevin’s female costume seems to me, from his statement (if Gregory’s eyewitness report is accurate and I can see no compelling reason to suppose otherwise), to be rather different from that of John/Eleanor Rykener in the once-excised but now celebrated case of 1395. D.L. Boyd & R. Mazo Karras, ‘The interrogation of a male transvestite prostitute in fourteenth-century London’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1 (1995), pp. 459–65; eidem, ‘ “Ut cum muliere”: a male transvestite prostitute in fourteenth century London’, in L. Fradenburg & C. Freccero (ed.) Pre-modern Sexualities (London, 1996), pp. 99–116; P. Halsall, ‘Medieval Sourcebook: The questioning of John Rykener, a male cross-dressing prostitute, 1395’ (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ source/1395rykener.html, accessed 16 April 2009); C. Beattie, ‘Gender and femininity in medieval England’, in N.L. Partner (ed.) Writing Medieval History (London, 2005), pp. 153–70. If, on the other hand, Chlothild and Basina’s allegation were true, and Abbess Leubovera did keep the Poitevin with her in women’s clothing so she could have sex with him, then I am not sure where my analysis proceeds!

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tus to be perpetuated into the sphere of religion, not realizing that such things are transient, unlike the eternal merit of the truly saintly.5 Gregory’s narrative strategy means we are left with absolutely no idea of how typical or atypical was a man’s decision to dress as a woman because of his ‘unmanliness’. It is, nevertheless, a useful tale to bear in mind when thinking about the archaeologically detectable remains of Merovingian society. In this chapter I shall explore the construction of gender in earlier Merovingian society and its relationship to ideas of sex. I also investigate the possibility of the use of archaeological data to confront issues of sexuality and instances where heterosexual norms might have been questioned or breached.

Detecting sex and gender in sixth-century Lorraine For the most part, in spite of ever-increasing attention devoted to Merovingian rural settlements,6 the archaeological remains of Merovingian society come from cemeteries. In the north of the Merovingian realms,7 these cemeteries contain grave-goods and it is from this database that we can most readily confront issues of gender, sexuality and material culture. The empirical basis of this chapter is the same series of sixth- and seventh-century cemeteries in modern Lorraine and Saarland upon which the other chapters in this book are founded. As described elsewhere, each chronological phase of each cemetery was analysed separately, in order to pay due attention to chronological

5 I follow (in general) the interpretation of W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History, AD 550–800. Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, Paul the Deacon (Princeton, 1988), pp. 112–234. 6 See C. Lorren & P. Périn (ed.), L’Habitat Rural du Haut Moyen Age (France, PaysBas, Danemark et Grande Bretagne (Mémoires de l’Association Française d’Archéologie Mérovingienne, Tome VI). (Rouen, 1995) 7 Thus a different part of the Merovingian world, with different funerary customs, from Poitou, where the rebellious nuns’ tribunal took place; this point ought to be born in mind. However, since the reasons for the different funerary customs probably hinge more upon differences in the stability of social structure rather than of mentalities; since the difference between north and south in terms of grave-goods may have been overstated (because of differing post-depositional histories of sites in the two regions); and since there is sufficient evidence, written and excavated, to argue that the material construction of sexuality and gender was fairly similar throughout Merovingian Gaul, this may not to be too drastic a problem. For the Bluffer’s Guide to Merovingian funerary rites, see EMCems, pp. 9–13, 20–24.

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and spatial context, variety and change. This left small, statistically insignificant data-sets, but it is increasingly clear that burial customs, even if subscribing to similar general norms, differed sometimes quite importantly from one cemetery-using rural community to another.8 There are problems in merging the results of the study of a large number of burials from different times and places to establish broader patterns or more ‘statistically significant’ gender correlations.9 This results in considerable blurring when we consider individual communities at particular times. There was chronological change in the material construction of gender; some artefacts, significant in gender-construction in some rural communities, will lose this significance by the fact that other communities had different attitudes. As with so many other aggregating approaches to the early Middle Ages, it prevents us from appreciating, and studying, the diversity and dynamism of the period and its people. I do not wish to spend time restating the conclusions made above about the interpretation of gender and structural age from north-eastern French and south-west German cemeteries.10 Instead, I should like to recast them in the light of archaeological debate, and to comment upon, modify and expand some points in relation to the issue of late antique sexuality. Roberta Gilchrist has, quite rightly, pointed out that the relationship between sex and gender has been left unresolved in

8

E.J. Pader, Symbolism, Social Relations and the Interpretation of Mortuary Remains (BAR(I) 130; Oxford, 1981), for the differences between the neighbouring cemeteries of Westgarth Gardens and Holywell Row, Suffolk. The sixth-century phases of the cemeteries of Lavoye and Dieue-sur-Meuse differed quite considerably in the material construction of gender and age, although only about 20 km. apart. Nevertheless, the general rule of ‘weapons for (adult) males; jewellery for women’ was followed at both sites: S&S, pp. 118–50. 9 T.M. Dickinson, ‘What’s new in early medieval burial archaeology?’ EME 11 (2002), pp. 71–87, esp. pp. 75–78, for discussion of general patterns versus local variability. Although I accept her conclusion (p. 77) that the danger of the latter is a retreat into eternal difference, which then becomes an explanation in itself, I do think that the ‘averaging out’ effect of broad-scale analysis means that the way forward has to be from local study of individual sites up to the search for patterns at a higher level, rather than vice versa. But then, given that this was the approach espoused in S&S, I suppose I would! See also S. Brather, ‘Kleidung, Bestattung, Identität: die Präsentation sozialer Rollen im frühen Mittelalter’, in id. (ed.), Zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Archäologie des 4. bis 7. Jahrhunderts im Westen (Erganzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 57; Munich, 2008), pp. 237–73. 10 S&S; FSP (above, pp. 289–314); BRMS (above, pp. 203–14); BW (above, pp. 215–31). See also below, pp. 357–412.

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previous studies of post-imperial burials; this chapter is to some extent a response to that challenge.11 My methodology of determining the gender associations of gravegoods has been criticised by Bonnie Effros and I should like to respond to her critique here.12 I have been most flattered by the attention devoted to, and generous discussions of, my analyses by Professor Effros in her works but in this case I do not feel that she has followed my argument and analysis sufficiently closely. Effros focuses heavily upon the fact that the excavations I analysed took place a long time ago. Indeed, in spite of claims to post-processualist credentials, Effros’ stance is, fundamentally, one of extreme positivist empiricism: until perfect data is acquired, well excavated and analysed to modern scientific standards, all interpretations are dubious.13 It is useful to have the potential problems with our data, and thus the provisional nature of our conclusions set out as clearly as they have been by Bonnie Effros but we have a duty not merely to critique past approaches but to attempt to move the interpretation forwards. The argument putting analysis on hold until the retrieval of data of a quantity and quality to quell such doubts is extremely limiting. If one accepts that mortuary customs varied over 11 R. Gilchrist, ‘Ambivalent bodies: gender and medieval archaeology’, in E. Scott and J. Moore (ed.), Invisible People and Processes. Writing Gender and Sexuality into European Archaeology (London, 1997), pp. 42–58, at p. 47; I had confronted some of the other areas which Gilchrist suggested could be foci for future work in FSP (above, pp. 289–314). 12 B. Effros, ‘Skeletal sex and gender in Merovingian mortuary archaeology’, Antiquity 74 (2000), pp. 632–9; ead., Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of The Early Middle Ages, pp. 99–100, 154–63. Some of the more serious errors and misrepresentations of my method, which appeared in ‘Skeletal sex’, were, following conversation and correspondence, removed from the discussion in Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology (cp. Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology, p. 160, n. 123). Because Effros’ critique of my work has now been published three times (the discussion in Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology being reprinted in T.F.X. Noble (ed.), From Roman Provinces to Medieval Kingdoms (London, 2006), pp. 189–232, at pp. 209–14) I have felt the need here to defend the integrity of my analyses and results with some vigour. Nevertheless I remain most grateful to Prof. Effros for our many friendly and useful discussions of the social interpretation of Merovingian cemeteries. 13 The tension between claimed post-processualism and actual positivism is well spotted by Tania Dickinson, in review of Effros’ works: ‘Making sense of Merovingian burials’, Antiquity 78 (2004), pp. 457–9. This produces jarring inconsistencies. The security of the identification of Childeric’s grave with the king (which I view as ‘beyond reasonable doubt’: CGCS, p. 117 [above, p. 170]) is doubted (on p. 121) yet on the preceding page the idea that the grave-goods were Childeric’s possessions is questioned because ‘[s]upporters likely deposited many of the objects in his grave in order to display their loyalty’: an hypothesis in my view by no means more likely than many of the untestable theories justly criticised by Effros elsewhere in the book.

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short distances and through time, then even such mythical ‘perfect data’ would only apply specifically to the site and phase whence it was recovered, with all other, old contexts continuing to be excluded from any possibility of analysis. Furthermore, as noted above,14 more sophisticated analyses of larger samples of better recovered data might as easily support the hypotheses advanced here as force their revision or rejection. Specifically, Effros’ argument is essentially that the sexing of the bones at the cemetery at Ennery (Moselle) was not done independently of assumptions about the gender associations of particular types of artefact. Thus, she claims, my comparison of my analyses with those of Marcel Heuertz’s physical anthropology was not the confrontation of the results of independent studies.15 As Heuertz, she claims, used the artefacts to help decide the sex of the deceased, my use of his analyses to check the results of my own tests resulted in a circular argument. Without the demonstration of errors or faulty recovery techniques, the age of data cannot be assumed to be an obstacle in itself. Much of Effros’ critique is asserted rather than demonstrated and is weakened by closer study both of Heuertz’s analysis and of my own methodology. Effros places great weight upon a statement by Heuertz that he used the grave-goods to help sex the bones when the bone evidence was inconclusive.16 Scrutiny of his results, however, reveals that this was far from generally the case. The one indisputable instance where Heuertz must have used the grave-goods to sex the deceased was grave 70, that of a young child, which he sexed as masculine. The bones of such a young individual could not have been sexed from the anthropological data, so it must have been the presence of weapons in the grave that led Heuertz to his conclusion. Heuertz, indeed, sexed every subject buried with weapons as male and up to this point Effros’ critique remains entirely valid. Apart from grave 70, these were all adult subjects, so we cannot now know which of these skeletons yielded clear evidence of male sex and which did not. Effros is therefore absolutely correct to use that fact to undermine my claim that artefactual ‘sexing’ tallied with the anthropological in 82% of cases. Indeed my use of

14 15

FSP, p. 10 (above, p. 298). Effros, ‘Skeletal sex’, p. 634; ead. Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology, pp. 99,

160. 16 Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology, p. 159; Heuertz, ‘Étude des squelettes’, p. 82.

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percentages to describe the extent of correlation between predictions based on the grave-goods and the results of study of the bones gave, on reflection, a misleading impression. This was especially so given my overt insistence that the method was not statistical but a means of sketching patterns within the data.17 Heuertz’s employment of the artefacts seems, however, to have been entirely limited to using weaponry to identify male subjects. He clearly made no use of the other common artefactual assumption, that jewellery was indicative of female sex. This is manifest by the fact that he sexed grave 32 as male in spite of the presence of a necklace. Indeed he left unsexed the occupants of a number of burials which contained artefacts that usual assumptions would have proclaimed as indicative of sex or gender. Examples are graves 48, 49 and 79, all of which contained necklaces (grave 48 a bracelet as well). Thus, whilst it is reasonable to suppose that Heuertz did presuppose that weaponry was a sure index of masculinity in drawing his conclusions, there is no prima facie reason to assume that he made any use of the usual counterpart of that assumption, that jewellery indicated female sex. It is also clear, from the fact that he left unsexed graves 11, 36, 56 and 67, that he did not include the knife in the category of ‘weapons’ (as have many others), even though, ironically, at sixth-century Ennery my analyses suggested that it was an artefact found only in masculine burials.18 The essential independence of Heuertz’s analysis from archaeological presuppositions, leaving aside the weaponry, is also illustrated by the fact that whereas the site’s excavator, Emile Delort, identified the occupants of the double grave—‘graves’ 6 and 8—as man and wife, with the weaponless ‘grave 8’ as the woman, Heuertz showed that both subjects were in fact male.19 From the surviving records, when Heuertz talked of grave furnishings that were, in their implications for sexing the dead, ‘d’une

17

S&S, p. 81: ‘not presented as more than a sketch’; FSP, p. 5 (above, p. 294): ‘presented only as a useful heuristic device for small-scale cemetery analyses, not as a rigid, statistically valid ‘test’’. 18 Heuertz, ‘Étude des squelettes’, pp. 84–87. The republication of the site, A. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery (Moselle): Fouilles d’Emile Delort (Woippy, 1993), pp. 36, 48, 57, 65, states in all cases that these subjects were probably masculine, on the basis of the grave-goods. Similarly, Simmer, ibid., pp. 53, 55 & 70, states that graves 48, 49 and 79 (the unsexed necklace burials) are probably feminine on the basis of their furnishings. As it happens I would agree, but Simmer’s affirmations are based on nothing but presupposition (there is no analysis of artefact associations) and thus probably represent, if anything, a step backwards from Heuertz’s work. 19 Heuertz, ‘Étude des squelettes’, pp. 83–84; see further below, pp. 357–8.

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nature à ne pas laisser de doute’20 he seems very clearly to have meant weaponry—and weaponry alone. Effros’ assertion that ‘archaeological artifacts . . . played a significant role in [Heuertz’s] “anthropological” observations’21 cannot otherwise be substantiated. Unfortunately, Effros does not engage with my actual methods of analysis, which she implies simply consisted of making assumptions about sex based upon the usual ideas about grave-goods, and then comparing these with Heuertz’s anthropology.22 My study of the patterns of association of artefact-types (found in two intact graves containing two or more such artefact-types) revealed two groups of objects which were never found together. One of these included items of weaponry and the other certain types of jewellery. The quality or independence of the anthropological analyses are irrelevant to the fact that this did suggest that, in terms of grave furnishing, weaponry and jewellery were used in defining two opposing poles. Whether or not that proposed polarity was related to sex or gender may, for now, be left to one side. What Effros’ critique ignored in particular was the presence, in that group of artefact-types which included weaponry, of a number of other forms of object (plaque-buckles, belt-fittings, knives, flints, purse-fasteners, keys, carinated black/grey-glazed bowls, iron buckles and bronze needles). While the analyses revealed these never to be associated with jewellery, there was, in 1957 (when Heuertz published his research), no preconceived archaeological idea of which I am aware that linked to men any of these artefact-types. The only possible exceptions were the knives, which, as we have seen, he ignored. If, therefore, we leave the ‘contaminated’ weapon-graves out of the question for the time being, because the physical anthropological sexing of those burials was not carried out independently of the presence of those weapons, we are left with a situation wherein the grave-goods custom at Ennery nevertheless involved some sort of binary polarity. Burials with certain types of jewellery never contained any of another range of objects (plaque-buckles, etc.). The latter group of artefacttypes were often found together with each other in intact graves. We 20

Heuertz, ‘Étude des squelettes’, p. 82. Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology, p. 160. 22 Effros ‘Skeletal sex’, p. 635; ead. Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology, pp. 157–61. Here Effros concedes (p. 157) to ‘simplifying immensely’ but still does not discuss that it was the artefacts’ patterns of association which created the groups of suggested ‘masculine’, ‘neutral’ and ‘feminine’ associations, not preconceived ideas about sex/ gender associations. 21

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can, as noted, demonstrate that Marcel Heuertz did not use jewellery to define the feminine sex of the deceased. There was no archaeological reason for him to assume that a subject was male on the basis of the presence of any of the other group of artefacts and indeed, given that he left unsexed some of the occupants of graves with these types,23 he clearly made no use of them as an indicator. Let us proceed with the prediction that these two groups were related to female sex, in the case of graves with jewellery (BC-and C-graves in my analysis), and to male sex with the burials without weapons but containing the artefact-types (plaque-buckles etc.) never associated with jewellery (AB.2-graves in the terminology of my study). Comparing these predictions with the results of Heuertz’s analyses (which, let us reiterate, were, in these cases, demonstrably not determined by the artefacts) reveals that of the fifteen AB.2-graves, which I predicted to be masculine, in all except one of the ten cases where he felt able to draw a conclusion about the sex of the subject Heuertz estimated the sex as male. The exception was grave 81, which Heuertz concluded was an old (60 years or over) female, buried with a key and some coins (a Roman brooch and some tile fragments were also present). However, the republication of the site data, while confirming the anthropological conclusions, lists no grave-goods and suggests that the burial was ‘probably robbed’.24 In this case the material listed by Delort looks residual or otherwise intrusive (from the Roman settlement on the site) and the grave would cease to be anomalous. In looking at the nine BC-and C-graves (those assumed to be those of women), in five of the six cases where he drew a conclusion Heuertz predicted that the deceased was female (the exception being grave 32, alluded to above). Note that none of the graves with a sex predicted from the bones was that of a child (where such a prediction would be impossible). On the other hand, though one of the BC-graves he left unsexed (grave 49) was a child who could not have been sexed from the bones, the two others were adolescents, in which instances Heuertz must have simply felt that the evidence was insufficient to permit a conclusion. Again this underlines that in these cases Heuertz’s analyses were wholly based upon the physical anthropological data. With this in mind we 23

Graves 11, 36, 42, 55 and 67. Two of these graves (11 and 42) were those of children, where there would have been no physical anthropological means of sexing the subject. 24 Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery, p. 70.

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are entirely justified in suggesting that the binary opposition revealed by study of the artefacts’ patterns of association was connected to sex or gender, the ‘jewellery group’ being related to females or feminine identity and the other to males or masculine identity. We can now return to the graves with weapons. Weapons are found frequently in burials that contain the range of ‘masculine’ objects but never with items of jewellery. Indeed, of the eleven intact graves with weaponry included in the analysis (the A-graves and the AB.1 graves) none contained only weapons and ‘neutral’ items; all contained weapons and items from the ‘masculine’ range.25 This seemed to demonstrate that weaponry did not represent a wholly different dimension of the grave-goods’ distribution patterns from that represented by the other ‘masculine’ artefact types. It thus seems entirely reasonable to conclude that, even leaving aside the contamination of Heuertz’s study of weapon burials by archaeological presupposition, weaponry was another index of masculinity. Effros has implied that my analysis of gender at the much larger cemetery of Lavoye can in effect be discounted or questioned because based upon my study of the Ennery data, which, as just discussed, Effros considers invalid. In the Antiquity article of 2002, she says my ‘discussion is based largely on Ennery’s problematic archaeological and anthropological reports’, whereas in 2003 she wrote that ‘Halsall’s model for the distribution of goods between the sexes derives foremost from the Merovingian cemetery at Ennery’, this model being used to ‘circumvent’ the lacunae in the evidence from Lavoye.26 This is misleading. None of the results, and no ‘model’, from the study of Ennery was applied to the cemetery at Lavoye as Effros implies. Rather, as is clear from my book, the analysis of Lavoye was seen as testing the conclusions or model derived from the Ennery evidence. What I did do was to apply to Lavoye and to the other cemeteries used in my study the method (not the results) used at Ennery to analyse the grave-goods’ patterns of association. Indeed, in order to allow regional diversity and chronological change to be revealed, it was a fundamental starting point of my analyses that every phase of each individual cemetery be

25 S&S, p. 82, fig. 3.6, suggests that grave 5 contained spear, scramasax and an awl (a ‘neutral’ artefact-type in this phase at this site). However, this is an error; it also contained a knife—thus an item from the other range of masculine items. 26 Effros, ‘Skeletal sex’, p. 635; ead. Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology, p. 158 (and cp. p. 157).

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studied in its own right. There would never have been a case where results of one analysis were ‘applied’ to another site, or even to another phase of the same site. Nevertheless the study of the artefacts’ patterns of association once again revealed two unrelated groups, one principally containing items of jewellery, the other including weapons and some of the same artefacts found in the ‘weaponry group’ at Ennery. The precise composition of the ‘masculine’, ‘neutral’ and ‘feminine’ groups differed between the two sites. Whereas knives and flints, for instance, were ‘masculine’ at Ennery, they were ‘neutral’ at Lavoye. Thus while they were taken into account in predicting gender at the former site they played no such role in estimations at the latter. In suggesting that my Lavoye analyses were based upon the Ennery model, Effros did not consider this. There were correlations between artefacts and estimations of sex from the bones, as might, again, be principally illustrated by consideration of the AB.2 burials (graves without weaponry but predicted to be masculine). There were nineteen such graves, of which seventeen were predicted to be male by the site’s excavator, Dr Meunier. Effros has rightly drawn attention to the problems with the Lavoye report and with the reliability of the anthropological data contained therein.27 Nevertheless, it is surely very indicative of a general pattern that Meunier assumed almost all of these to be male, without any reason other than the skeletal data for doing so; again the non-weapon group contained no types of object assumed automatically to indicate masculinity in then available archaeological ideas. The one type that might have carried such a connotation, the knife, was ‘neutral’ at Lavoye and Meunier sexed two graves with knives as feminine, so he clearly did not use knives as an indicator; nor, given that these were in the ‘neutral’ group of burials (‘B-graves’, without either masculine or feminine artefact types), was it the case that he simply over-ruled the knives with the presence of jewellery.28 What the Ennery analyses, more solidly grounded than Effros states, had shown, was that the method of analysing the patterns of associations of grave-goods in intact burials could, where two unassociated groups of artefact types were revealed, be used to predict the gender

27 Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology, pp. 156–7. But cp. S&S, pp. 118–9; it cannot be claimed that I was unaware of these problems. 28 Graves 257 and 103.

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of the deceased, using the group containing weapons as an index of masculine identity and that containing jewellery to predict feminine gender. In no cases were such separate groups found that were not fundamentally based around these oppositions. Even though the figure of 82% accuracy is insecure and misleading, the correspondences at Ennery nevertheless suggested that, even with the problems with the physical anthropology at Lavoye, the general correlations suggested by the method (especially when weapons and jewellery were left out of the equation) were probably representative of a real pattern. This point was only underlined by the comparison of the results of similar analyses with physical anthropological estimates at other sites. There were evidential difficulties at all sites, as is clear from my own discussions, but let me reiterate that there was never a case of the results from one site influencing the study of another, so my studies of different sites and phases were all, fundamentally, independent analyses and the cumulative weight of these studies was overwhelmingly that the gendering of a subject could be reliably predicted from careful investigation of the grave-goods. I must also underline that, as stated above, these studies revealed geographical and chronological variety and change in the artefacts that were linked to gender. It should, further, be repeated that the study of the patterns of association was only a first stage of analysis. It proceeded by looking at the context of particular artefact-types within a burial or the phase of a site. We must, however, briefly repeat that the analyses discussed in other chapters, concluded that the material construction of gender was related to age.29 Those patterns of association are important because they (and the analysis of them presented in the previous chapter) serve to question one of the conclusions of Sam Lucy’s paper on gender in Anglo-Saxon burials.30 The deduction that ‘Anglo-Saxon burials can no longer be divided equally into males and females (with none left over)’31 does not follow from the preceding analysis. Lucy offers analysis of two sites (Sewerby and West Heslerton in East Yorkshire) which show the same broad groups of graves as I had demonstrated in Lorraine: with weaponry and related items, with ‘neutral’ items, with jewellery and

29

Above, chs. 5, 6, & 8, for description. S.J. Lucy, ‘Housewives, warriors and slaves? Sex and gender in Anglo-Saxon burials’ in Scott and Moore (eds.) Invisible People and Processes, pp. 150–68. 31 Ibid., p. 162. 30

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related items, and unfurnished (respectively, A-/AB-, B-, BC-/C-, and E-graves in my terminology). The ‘weaponry’ and ‘jewellery’ groups did form some sort of a polarity within the grave-goods’ patterns of distribution. This case study, incidentally, underlined what seem to have been some general Anglo-Saxon differences from, indeed reversals of, the norms of the Merovingian northern Gallic burial custom: the ‘jewellery’ group of artefacts contained more types than the ‘weaponry’; the ‘weaponry’ group did not seem to include many types of item other than weaponry itself (in Gaul, it was the feminine group that contained few items that could not be classified as jewellery); and there were more burials furnished with the ‘jewellery’ group than with the ‘weaponry’. Yet the fact that, of the East Yorkshire sample, 44.6–57.6% of the burials contained neither weaponry nor jewellery (or related items) by no means renders the other graves ungendered or implies that gender or even biological sex did not play a determining role in the grave-goods custom. That is sloppy reasoning. Probably over half of the sixth-century graves in Lorraine which I studied contained neither weaponry nor jewellery; in the seventh century the figure rises to well over two thirds (as presented in the article, Lucy’s analysis did not consider chronological change). A large number (the ‘AB.2-graves’ discussed above: artefactually masculine graves without weapons) could nevertheless be gendered. Even with the significant remainder, furnished without gender-related goods32 or without grave-goods at all, it is still possible to show that gender was very important in the grave-goods custom, and ultimately that was based upon ideas of sex, as we shall see.33 This material cultural, archaeologically-visible gendering varied, however, among different age groups, as noted. Lucy is quite incorrect to assume that graves that ‘cannot be sexed by their grave goods’ cannot ‘therefore be given a gender-related identity’.34 The high number of graves without gender-specific artefacts most certainly does not ‘throw doubt upon the whole basis of the weaponry-jewellery dichotomy’.35

32 We must remember that even those objects found equally in the graves of men and women might have been gendered, by the fact that they might have had different, strong but contextual gender-messages. 33 FSP (above, pp. 289–314). 34 Lucy, ‘Housewives, warriors and slaves?’ p. 155. 35 Ibid., p. 162. However one interprets it, Lucy’s own analyses had shown—by the fact that weaponry and jewellery (and its related items) were never found together— that there was a dichotomy between the two groups. The fact that many graves had neither hardly undermines the empirical basis of this fact.

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The artefactually ‘neutral’ children and old people in the cemeteries of Lorraine still had a clearly gender-related identity (as discussed in the previous chapter). Graves can (theoretically) be divided into male and female (whether equally or not is a separate and indeed largely irrelevant issue as far as this question is concerned), but not all individuals received the same material cultural gendering on all sites, at all stages of the life-cycle, or indeed at different periods. Other studies with better data from diverse regions of the post-imperial world have also demonstrated the importance of gender in the post-imperial grave-goods custom.36 Another issue to which Lucy draws attention, and one to which I shall shortly return, is the significance of the instances where biological sex and the grave-goods assemblage do not tally. At Sewerby, three out of the fifteen burials with supposedly gender-specific artefacts and sufficiently good bone survival for a physical anthropological prediction were sexed in such a way as to contradict the grave goods. Lucy concludes from this that only a very small number of burials correspond to the ‘stereotype’ of men with weapons and women with jewellery, which she claims, erroneously, results entirely from nineteenth-century presuppositions about medieval gender roles. As a proportion of all the burials in her sample this is quite true, but as a percentage of the intact burials with ‘gender-specific’ grave-goods and sufficient physical

36 See, e.g., I. Barbiera, Changing Lands in Changing Memories: Migration and Identity during the Lombard Invasions (Florence, 2005); S. Brather, ‘Alter und Geschlecht zur Merowingerzeit. Soziale Strukturen und frühmittelalterlichen Reihengräberfelder’, in J. Müller (ed.), Alter und Geschlecht in ur- und frühgeschichtlichen Gesellschaften (Bonn, 2005), pp. 157–78; D.F. Clark, A methodological examination of aspects of chronological and social analysis of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries with particular reference to Cemetery I, Mucking, Essex (unpub. PhD Dissertation, University of London, 2000); S. Donié, Soziale Gliederung und Bevölkerungsentwicklung einer frühmittelalterlichen Siedlungsgemeinschaft: Untersuchungen zum Gräberfeld bei Schretzheim (Bonn, 1999); H. Härke, ‘Die Darstellung von Geschlechtergrenzen im frühmittelalterlichen Bestattungsritual. Normalität oder Problem?’, in W. Pohl & H. Reimitz (ed.), Grenze und Differenz im frühen Mittelalter (Vienna, 2000), pp. 181–96; L. Jørgensen, K.W. Alt & W. Vach, ‘Families at Kirchheim am Ries: Analysis of Merovingian aristocratic and warrior families’, in A. Nørgård Jørgensen & B.L. Claussen (ed.) Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective AD 1–1300 (Copenhagen, 1997), pp. 102–12; N. Stoodley, The Spindle and the Spear: A Critical Enquiry into the Construction and Meaning of Gender in the Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Rite (BAR(B) 288; Oxford, 1999); id., ‘Burial rites, gender and the creation of kingdoms: the evidence from seventh-century Wessex’, in T.M. Dickinson & D. Griffiths (eds.) The Making of Kingdoms (Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10) (Oxford, 1999), pp. 99–107.

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anthropological data it represents 80% of the graves at Sewerby. It is worth stating that, from Lucy’s own presentation of the data, most of the supposed ‘anomalies’ were represented by the anthropologist only as ‘possibly’ male or female. This potentially reduces the proportion of problem cases still further. Indeed diverse, careful studies tend repeatedly to show that even the crudest gender assumptions about gravegoods, that jewellery goes with females and weaponry with males, tally with available physical anthropology in well over 90% of cases. That leaves out of the question the other types of artefact which site- and phase-specific analysis would reveal to be gender-specific and that many supposed anomalies result from an absence of such artefactual analysis and sometimes from careless assumptions about what constitutes ‘weaponry’ or ‘jewellery’.37 That nevertheless leaves the problem of what, analytically, one does with the anomalies for, however numerically small these may be, they certainly exist. The debate has so far generally retreated into something of a squabble about which set of data is better than the other— in many ways analogous to what Ian Morris called the ‘competition’ between historians and archaeologists.38 Those who defend the value of the grave-goods question the reliability of the physical anthropological data, claiming that the anomalies result from error and poor bone survival; the champions of ‘hard science’, like Effros and Lucy, claim that the discrepancies show that the assumptions about the grave furnishings simply perpetuate nineteenth-century ideals. Lucy, for instance, bands about terms such as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘illogical’ to describe those who disagree with her view and prefer to use material culture to determine the gender of the dead. She goes on to criticise Vera Evison for assuming that a double weapon-burial at Dover Buckland (Kent) might reveal male homosexuality. This is based, she says, simply on questionable assumptions about grave-goods. Of course, however, if she is right that grave-goods have little or nothing to do with sex and gender then, logically, the burial might yet reveal male homosexuality or even lesbianism. Her argument cuts us adrift from any ability to sex the dead without physical anthropology. Lucy seems impervious to the points that her own apparent assumption that this double grave is more likely 37

For instance assuming that knives are weapons or that single beads are items of jewellery. Single beads are often found in male burials, where close analysis frequently reveals them to be associated with scabbard fittings. 38 AH, p. 817 (above, p. 39), n. 62.

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of a man and woman seems to accept that the grave-goods must give an accurate indication in at least one instance and that, in spite of her strictures about contingent nineteenth-century ideas, her scepticism about Evison’s suggestion of homosexuality is itself hardly unrelated to modern assumptions about heterosexual normativity. Effros, similarly, declares that discussions about gender and artefacts must be suspended until good quality osteological analyses and DNA can provide reliable answers.39 What both sides in this ‘competition’ (like those in the ‘competitive game’ between historians and archaeologists) seem to ignore is the possibility that their respective data sets—physical anthropological and material cultural—might confront different dimensions of the problem. Advocates of the primacy of physical anthropological data on the one hand, and of grave-goods on the other, all reduce the dimensions of the problem to an equation of sex with gender. Study of the bones shows, via discrepancies, that the grave-goods have nothing to do with gender (Lucy); discrepancies suggest problems with the physical anthropology and that those buried with masculine and feminine gravegoods were indeed men and women respectively (Härke; Halsall).40 This is especially ironic in the case of Lucy, who argues that gender need not have anything to do with biological sex.41 Before we proceed further, therefore, we must explore the relationship between sex and gender.

Sex and gender It has become fashionable for archaeologists to critique the oft-made statement that gender is the social identity constructed out of biological sex, by saying that ‘biological’ sex is as much a social construct as gender. In part, this is correct; in part it is an overstatement, masking some rather muddled thinking and seriously hindering archaeology’s potential to contribute to the study of this important topic.42 39

This seems to betray undue faith in the possibilities of historical DNA. I am grateful to Dr James Barrett for advice on this subject. 40 I include myself here because of S&S, pp. 82–83, to which I return below. 41 Lucy, ‘Housewives, warriors and slaves?’ p. 154. 42 E.g. J. Nordbladh & T. Yates, ‘This perfect body, this virgin text: between sex and gender in archaeology’, in I. Bapty & T. Yates (ed.), Archaeology after Structuralism: Post-Structuralism and the Practice of Archaeology (Oxford, 1990), pp. 222–37 (above, p. 54, n. 16, for comment); K.S. Lesick, ‘Re-engendering gender: some theoretical and methodological concerns on a burgeoning archaeological pursuit’ in Scott and Moore (ed.), Invisible People and Processes, pp. 31–41. A useful survey and critique (if

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Much of this work confronts the idea that there are two biological sexes and centres on several issues. One is the epistemological status of the physical anthropological scientific data. There are several problems with this avenue of attack, the most important of which is that it is to some extent itself based upon modern biology, to show that there is not a rigid separation into two classes which are entirely separable on the basis of mutually exclusive sets of characteristics. Further problems are presented for the argument by the fact that it to some extent misrepresents by caricature the assumptions and methods of biological science. Another is that although there are ‘grey areas’ where the physical anthropological features do not permit a clear determination of sex, and others of hermaphroditism, where individual cases have the features of both sexes, these do not furnish evidence of a ‘third sex’. The argument ignores the fact that ‘grey areas’ remain nevertheless located on a scale between two poles and that hermaphroditism is the possession of the features of both sexes, not the possession of a separate set of characteristics proper to a third sex. Archaeological argument against the separation of biological sex from gender has also drawn upon psychoanalysis to suggest (simplifying greatly, of necessity) that one’s awareness and experience of one’s sex is socially conditioned and in that sense—of personal lived experience—difficult to separate from gender. The conclusion is important and valuable but the archaeological argument presents some problems. One is that, as noted above,43 it represents an uncritical account of some results of the work of Freud and Lacan, with little or no discussion of the differences between (or indeed within) the works of these writers and no evident awareness of the critiques made of these from within gender studies.44 A pertinent problem is that these approaches

not always entirely clear) of this archaeological approach may be found in M.L. Stig Sørensen, Gender Archaeology (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 42–59. See also E. Rega, ‘Age, gender and biological reality in the Early Bronze Age cemetery at Mokrin’, in Scott and Moore (ed.) Invisible People and Processes, pp. 229–247, with eminently sensible comments at pp. 231–2. More extensive and lucid theoretical critiques of the ‘social constructionist’ view of sexuality than that presented here may be found in Partner, ‘No sex, no gender’, esp. pp.423–33; and D. Neal, ‘Masculine identity in late medieval English society and culture’, in Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History, pp. 171–88. 43 Above, p. 54, n. 16. 44 E.g. J. Butler Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (2nd edition; New York, 1999); G. Rubin, ‘The traffic in women: notes on the “political economy” of sex’, in R.R. Reiter (ed.), Toward an Anthropology of Women (New York, 1975), pp. 157–210.

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have a tendency to replace an eternal biological reality with a timeless psychoanalytical one. More importantly still, some of these works have nothing to do with archaeology, in that there is no move to examine in practice the effects of such theoretical stances upon the analysis of the archaeological evidence. The point of theory is that it is a way of seeing, not an end in itself. This instance is sadly not untypical of modern British archaeology; rather than engaging discursively either with the theoretical works examined or indeed with the archaeological data, a writer establishes a position simply as an interlocutor, establishing status by presenting to archaeological audiences a perception of the work of another discipline, implicitly at least claimed to have higher epistemological status. It is, in my view, necessary to take something of a step back from purely social constructionist views of sex and gender and remember that experience is grounded in a corporeal reality and basic bodily needs, however they are conceptualised, articulated, valorised and responded to in diverse cultural contexts.45 The human body has not changed significantly for some millennia, the same physical anthropological traits referred to above can be observed in skeletal data across diverse contexts, and the material cultural treatment of them (as revealed by the observation of patterns in the archaeological data) can therefore be compared across time and space. By taking these points together, most importantly of all, we can give archaeology a meaningful and distinctive way of contributing to the debates on sex, gender and sexuality. The social constructionist view is to a large degree textual and discursive in the basis of its argument and it is difficult for archaeology to contribute to such a discussion independently on the basis of its own data, without the acceptance of the results of biological, physical anthropological study as an independent variable against which the material culture can be correlated. Giving archaeology a voice requires a certain level of pragmatism. To refuse the concept of ‘biological sex’, as revealed by the analysis of the physical anthropological evidence, means a retreat into a really disabling relativism. If we do not employ the observations of modern science then we have nothing against which to set the remainder of the material cultural record. If we reject

45 For these thoughts I am indebted to the clear formulation and discussion in Neal, ‘Masculine identity in late medieval English society and culture’.

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the sexing of bones and the use of modern concepts of biological sex, as a ‘socio-cultural construct’,46 then the only means of examining sex and gender in the past is through the grave-goods or other aspects of material culture (the orientation or spatial organisation of sites; arrangement or treatment of the body, and so on). Without the study of the bones through modern analytical techniques we have no way of establishing the reality of associations between these and gender or sex; these would remain questionable assumptions based upon anthropological or historical analogy. This would reduce to ancillary status the potential of archaeological data to explore issues of sex and gender.47 Nevertheless, modern science does more than simply allow us to explore the relationship between particular aspects of material culture or social practice and biological sex; it does more than provide illustration of variation and change; most importantly of all it reveals discrepancies in the construction of gender. The upshot of the ‘competition’ discussed above, between those who assume that only hard science can tell us about gender and those who deny that modern analytical techniques can provide a perspective different from that provided by the socially specific, material cultural construction of sex is, apart from the eradication of any difference between sex and gender (which sometimes, admittedly, is made explicit as a theoretical starting point), the impossibility of ever examining any sort of diversion from the norms of the society in question. This just leaves us with different varieties of essentialism. The most important practical consequence of my stance is that it permits us actually to employ the archaeological record to examine instances where societal norms were breached or inverted. This has an important further implication: it restores to the inhabitants of the past some freedom to choose. Another dimension of the problems of sex and gender, closely related to the psychoanalytical approaches discussed above, is that past societies might analyse differences which we would understand in terms of gender in terms of their medico-religious ideas of sex. It has furthermore been suggested that the concept of two separate sexes was a creation of the enlightenment, with periods before that characterised by a view that there was fundamentally only a single, male sex, the female body being a simple inversion of the male, and female character and

46 47

E.g. Lesick, ‘Re-engendering gender’, p. 34. See above, p. 79.

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characteristics judged by their divergence from masculine norms.48 It has been pointed out that the basis for this conclusion is, as far as the Middle Ages are concerned, difficult to discern.49 There is rather more support for the idea in the treatises of the classical world, however, and that gives the study of the period with which this volume is concerned added value. This chapter opens the question, further examined in chapter 10, of whether the end of the Roman Empire did in some respects lead to ideas of men and women being more heavily based around an opposition between two sexes, and the extent to which the construction of gender was based around ideas of biological sex. That nevertheless compels me to have precise but provisional definitions of sex and gender; I shall employ the idea of sex being related to the different biological roles in the processes of reproduction and gender referring to the broader areas of the conceptualisations, expectations and social roles of men and women. Under the heading of sexuality I shall include the choice of sexual partner.

Sex, gender and sexuality in Merovingian Lorraine In confronting these issues, I should like to reopen the case, alluded to above, of Ennery, grave 32, buried with a necklace, normally a feminine artefact-type, but sexed as male by Marcel Heuertz.50 When I first studied the site I thought this grave was an interesting possible instance of cross-sex gendering, transvestism or possibly homosexuality. Older and wiser heads persuaded me to abandon this idea, on the grounds that it was probably safer to assume that the anthropology was wrong, and so that was the interpretation which I published.51 However, the story from Gregory’s Histories with which I began persuades me that this case ought to be left open. Obviously we will never be sure, but as outlined above this is not a case of deciding which set of data and

48 T. Lacqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge MA, 1990). 49 Neal, ‘Masculine identity in late medieval English society and culture’, p. 176. 50 The anthropological data from the site have been re-examined by Luc Buchet, who thinks Heuertz was right to identify the subject as mature adult (40–60 yrs.) male: Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery, p. 46. 51 S&S, pp. 82–83. This is why I have included myself, above, among those who have preferred the message of the grave-goods over that of the physical anthropological evidence. As this chapter should make clear, this is no longer my stance.

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interpretations is the ‘wrong’ one. The bodies of data are confronting different issues: biological sex on the one hand and social gendering on the other. Regardless of the sex of the occupant, the subject of grave 32 was gendered female. If the anthropological ageing was accurate, the artefact assemblage would not be out of place for an older woman on that site. Yet it seems to me (though, again, we will never know) that this would not be an implausible costume for a feminine-gendered male, like the anonymous Poitevin mentioned earlier. It lacks the extreme highlighting of certain parts of the body which was used to display female sexuality. The necklace is probably the feminine artefact with weakest gender message: it is that which is usually found in ‘feminine’ child-graves in central Austrasia, and seems to be that retained longest by women later in life.52 Older women’s costume (see below) was fairly plain; their status and power related to other gendered issues than their sexuality. The same might be true of a feminine-gendered male. Note though that the subject was also interred with a bowl of red-glazed Roman Argonne Ware tradition, such as are typically buried with women in this region (a fact presumably connected to the contents originally interred in the vessel), so the feminine gendering appears to have gone beyond costume. Gregory’s story, however, also compels us to retain a difference between sex and gender in thinking about this burial. The Poitevin mentioned earlier was a man dressed in women’s clothing; he was not a woman. Leaving aside for the purposes of this discussion the possibilities that the anthropological analysis was ‘wrong’ or that the subject of Ennery 32 occupied one of the biological grey areas mentioned above (that is she was a woman whose body showed various ‘masculine’ traits), the occupant of the grave might have been a man who lived his life as a woman and went to his grave without anyone being aware of his biological sex (if probably unlikely—as such instances tend to be revealed at the moment of burial when the corpse is prepared for interment). It is, however, at least as probable that the other inhabitants of Merovingian Ennery regarded him as a man who wore female costume, even as a man who lived his life as a woman.

52

For similar conclusions see S. Brather, ‘Kleidung und Identität im Grab. Gruppierungen innerhalb der Bevölkerung Pleidelsheims zur Merowingerzeit. Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters 32 (2004), pp. 1–58, at p. 22, and tables 8–9; id. ‘Kleidung, Bestattung, Identität’, p. 264.

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Once again, the discussion has some bearing upon recent discussions of Anglo-Saxon cemetery archaeology. Nick Stoodley has seen evidence of shamanism in the instances of burials whose occupants are suggested to be male by physical anthropological analysis but who were buried with feminine artefacts such as jewellery.53 The interpretation is of course possible but it is not based upon any early medieval evidence; instead it draws upon anthropological analogy.54 It certainly would not apply to the similar evidence from north Gallic burials and one suspects, again, that the possibility of divergence from heterosexual norms is too troubling for modern archaeological analysis.55 Yet, unlike cross-dressing shamanism, the idea that reversals of the usual gendering of material culture relate to such divergences does find explicit support in early medieval data, as in Gregory of Tours’ tale about the Poitevin. Ian Hodder has claimed that detailed investigation of the relationship between physical anthropological variables and grave-goods can reveal ideas about the construction of biological sex.56 Whether or not this might work in other contexts, brief consideration of these data in their wider context, including that provided by written sources, reveals that this would not be the case in sixth-century northern Gaul. The material construction of a feminine identity usually began at about

53

Stoodley, The Spindle and the Spear, pp. 76–77. See above, pp. 55–57, 245–6, for my reservations about this trend in British early medieval archaeology. 55 As with Lucy’s dismissal of the possibility that homosexuality might be revealed in male double-burials: above, pp. 337–8. Historians, too, often find the existence of same-sex love in the early medieval ages troubling. See, e.g., M.D. Garrison, ‘Praesagum nomen tibi: the significance of name-wordplay in Alcuin’s letters to Arn’, in M. Niederkorn-Bruck, & A. Scharer (ed), Erzbischof Arn von Salzburg (Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung 40: Vienna, 2004), pp. 107–27, at pp. 119–21. Garrison in the end wisely leaves the matter open but nevertheless strives hard to dismiss the possibility of homoerotic reference in Alcuin’s letters. Her apparent belief that homoeroticism equates with sodomy (part of the argument being that one would not express homoerotic sentiment in a letter because sodomy was severely punished) is revealing but the principal problem with the approach is assuming that the reference could, or had to, be read in only one way. W.E. Burgwinkle, Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Lierature: France and England, 1050–1230 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 36–37, seems to me to be a rather more sensitive (if brief ) reading of these letters. For further discussion of the usual ways of skirting the issue, see E. Kosofski Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet (New York 1991), pp. 48–59 (esp. pp. 52–53). 56 I. Hodder, ‘Commentary: The gender screen’, in Scott and Moore (eds.) Invisible People and Processes, pp. 75–78, at p. 76. 54

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puberty.57 This is to be associated with the onset of the menarche, at which time Merovingian girls became women, married, and commenced child-bearing.58 In this sense, then, this identity was based upon perceptions of biological sex and reproductive functions. But, as I have argued above, these fairly lavish burials, and costume (to which I will return), are indicative of the importance of such individuals within early Frankish communities, their politics, marriage alliances and so on, an importance not contingent purely upon biological sex, nor even solely on perceptions of that, but upon the nature of sixthcentury north Gallic society. Merovingian writers were well aware that there was a biological and conceptual difference between male and female children—pueri and puellae—so the grave-goods tell us nothing about ideas of biological sex. Grave-goods do, however, inform us about ideas of sexuality, the age at which a full sexual identity was acquired, and about the social identities which were based upon this. This archaeological evidence nevertheless suggests that female status was constructed around women’s reproductive role.59 When compared with classical Roman ideas, this might imply firstly that a woman’s sex was the basis of her status and, secondly, that conceptions of sex encompassed the idea of a binary polarity rather than defining women by their difference from men. This is a point to which we must return. Although the furnishing of female burials reveals some implications for the relationship between sex and female status, with the male burials drawing a similar conclusion from the grave-goods would be quite mistaken. A male was held to come of age at the same time as a woman, but underwent a longer process of socialization before acquiring a full legal, adult identity and marrying probably in his late twenties.60 Fully gendered masculine graves tend, therefore, to be of subjects rather older than their female counterparts. This tells us little about ideas of male sexuality; contemporaries were well enough aware

57 The younger children with female artefacts, always fewer than those buried with their adolescent and young adult sisters, may be interpreted in a number of ways: young children may have been considered feminine, as extensions of their mothers; it could indicate betrothal. S&S, pp. 98, 123, 145–6, 254; FSP, pp. 13–14 (above, pp. 302–3). 58 FSP, pp. 14–17 (above, pp. 303–6). 59 FSP, pp. 14–22 (above, pp. 303–12). 60 See below, pp. 403–7.

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of the sexual proclivities of the young male.61 It does tell us about gender identities, though. One might also consider the burials of slightly older women, with less jewellery but more of other grave-goods, including those which might be associated with the home. Here we have burials of important figures in sixth-century communities.62 Yet, although the roots of this power may in part be traced to their reproductive abilities and these women usually retained some of their feminine artefacts, the furnishing of their burials seems to point to symbolism based upon gendered activity: control of the household.63 The grave-goods, again, tell us mainly about gender roles which are conditioned by other areas than sex. The discussion of the grave-goods does, nevertheless, seem to show a polarisation of society in which gender is to some extent governed by sex. The feminine identity expressed in the grave-goods revolves around a distinctive costume that emphasises aspects of the female body and around particular symbols of the female role in society. These operate on a different pole from the masculine objects and do not appear to be governed by such simple and crude polarities as private:public or inside:outside.64 Rather than being defined simply by distance from a normative male ideal, women seem to have their own symbols, and there are differences between women in the extent to which their position is aptly demonstrated by feminine artefacts. Women appear, at least to some extent, therefore, to be defined by proximity to a feminine ‘pole’, quite different from the masculine. This suggests some changes from classical antiquity.65

61 E.g. Caesarius of Arles, Sermons 43, 44.4: M. Mueller (trans.), Saint Caesarius of Arles: Sermons. Vol. I. (New York, 1956); Cassian, Institutes, 6 passim, 7.3: J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologia Latina 49 (Paris, 1874); E.C.S. Gibson (trans.), John Cassian, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, 11 (Grand Rapids, 1986) (Gibson omitted translation of Book VI, on fornication!); Cummean, Penitential, 2.6, 10: J.T. McNeill & H.M. Gamer (trans.), Medieval Handbooks of Penance. A translation of the Principal Libri Poenitentiales (New York, 1990 [originally 1938]). 62 FSP, pp. 17–19 (above, pp. 306–8). 63 Which is not to say that there was an opposition between the public male, outside, and the private female, inside; FSP, pp. 16–20, esp. p. 19 (above, pp. 305–310). 64 See also FSP, p. 19 (above, p. 308). 65 Some suggestions are made in BMRW, pp. 482–8. The undergraduate dissertation (Department of History, University of York, 2006) of my student, Rachel Sutton, presented the intriguing possibility that secular status was, in this respect, moving in a different direction from religious, with the female holy becoming increasingly

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Finally in this section I should like to draw attention to the double burials of young males that are known in Merovingian archaeology. In the cemeteries in Lorraine which I studied the best examples were ‘graves’ 6 and 8 at Ennery (dating to the sixth century), and grave 103 at Audun-le-Tiche, from about a century later. Logically, the subjects of the graves must have succumbed close in time. What seem at first sight to be linked arms are on closer inspection no such thing; the arms of the subjects of the Ennery double grave simply lie on top of each other. This might have been deliberate or it might not.66 There is a wide range of possibilities behind these double graves. They might be those of relatives, perhaps most plausibly those of brothers. There were a number of other social ties in Merovingian society that might equally have led the community to join two young males in death. For instance, the male child of the foster father or god-parent of another young man would be regarded as that young man’s brother. The son of one family, serving as an apprentice in another might have been regarded as, effectively, kin—a surrogate brother—to the sons of that household. Two young men serving together in a household could have been regarded as sharing a bond. In all such cases the families of the deceased and perhaps that of the head of the household might, following the interpretation of furnished burial proposed above, have come together in funerary ritual to ease the rupture in relations between the families produced by the deaths in question. Alternatively, as will be discussed below, young males might have bonded in age groups. The deaths of two such men might have united their families in grief and led them to create links between them through involvement in a joint funeral. Lastly it is possible that a joint interment might have been a means of smoothing over tensions created by killing and vengeance. Nevertheless, we probably ought not to apply a single explanation to all of the instances of such burials. Double graves might well represent different aspects of society from those manifested by occasional triple burials, such as at Niederstotzingen.67 My purpose in mentioning these graves in this chapter is simply to consider a further issue raised by the possibility that the occupants of

defined by their distance from a male saintly ideal. Alas there is no space to pursue that idea here. 66 See below, pp. 357–60. 67 R. Christlein, Die Alamannen: Archäologie eines lebendigen Volkes (3rd edition, Stuttgart, 1991), p. 89.

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such graves were united other than by close kinship. The close homosocial bonds between young men serving together in various contexts (from the monastic to the military) are well known throughout history, as is the frequency with which these bonds encompass homosexual love and sex. In spite of this, as in other periods of history, accusations of anal sex with men were nevertheless regarded as serious slurs on a man’s standing or honour. Interestingly, the other bases for insult were cowardice and unreliability in battle.68 As has been long debated, such homosexual love is usually not commensurate with a self-consciously gay identity, seen as different from or antagonistic to normative heterosexuality: this seems to be the product of more modern sexual classifications. It is nevertheless surely a mistake either to deny that such emotional and sexual relations existed (in the latter case—sexual relations—the concern of monastic regulators and authors of penitentials with sodomy ought to be proof enough to the contrary)69 or that the classifications of sexual behaviour and the views of male homosexual relationships held by medieval people were automatically similar to those of modern observers. This matters because it presents two possibilities (they are not more than that) to the reading of double burials like Ennery 6 and 8 or Audun-le-Tiche 103. One is that such emotional bonds were given sufficient recognition to result in shared inhumation. The other, possibly the more interesting, perhaps the more likely, takes us to the issue of the polysemy of burial display.70 The ‘dominant’ reading intended by the creators of a funerary monument like this might to have been to stress the social relations between the two families, or to have valorised the comradeship, trust and fidelity of shared military service, traditionally ‘honourable’ within masculine culture. Other readings open to contemporaries at the graveside, however, might have dwelt on different issues, such as real or suspected sexual or emotional relationships between the two men. These might have involved no particular value judgement, simply being alternative. They might also have been subversive, and they might have been derogatory (as in the insults referred to above). The

68

PLS 30, using the translation I proposed in W&S, p. 11. Although what, precisely, was meant by the term sodomy is usually vague; many non-procreative forms of sexual encounter could be bracketed under the heading. Nevertheless, in the context of penitentials I assume it means some form of sexual, physical contact between males. 70 BW, pp. 64–65 (above, pp. 219–20). 69

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latter could be open to members of rival families or to those men barred from participation in what was becoming the normative, military form of masculinity, as discussed in the next chapter.

Costume, sexuality and transgression The material culture which helped to construct the category of ‘young woman’, especially, in my interpretation, that of betrothed or ‘marriageable’ woman, was concerned with costume, a costume in which was invested most of the elaborate craftsmanship of the sixth century. The male body, by contrast, seems to have been relatively unadorned at this date (at least in archaeologically visible ways). The belt, the typical masculine symbol, was usually plain. Male display appears to have concentrated upon other accessories, such as weaponry, the strongly associated sphere of horsemanship and, in more prestigious burials, symbols of the distribution of food and drink (buckets and bronze bowls) or of the control of ‘weights and measures’ (perhaps a tax-collecting role): balances. The only lavish articles of male costume seem to be items of armour (hardly known at all in Francia in any case, in terms of the burial evidence, though surely not in life). This changed by the seventh century. This elaborate female costume may well have been more deliberately put together for the purposes of the public ritual and display of burial,71 but nevertheless in Merovingian society, based heavily upon public display and ritual, it seems reasonable to postulate that something at least closely akin to it was commonly worn in life.72 As far as we can reconstruct it (and we must note that there are a number of possible elements which would leave no archaeological trace), this costume drew attention to a number of key areas of the female body: head and hair, arms/hand and the breast.

71

BRMS, p. 326 (above, p. 204); BW, p. 62 (above, p. 217). Some Anglo-Saxon brooches may have been too heavy for the cloth to which they were attached to have been worn in life: Lucy, ‘Housewives, warriors and slaves?’ p. 163, citing a suggestion by Nick Stoodley. Merovingian jewellery, by contrast, does not include such heavy and cumbersome items as the great ‘florid’ cruciform or square-headed brooches. That costume was a significant focus for display, is confirmed by the fact that the holy man, who so ostentatiously rejects worldly society, usually wears ragged, unclean clothing. On becoming a nun, a woman was supposed to renounce her jewellery and elaborate clothing. 72

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First amongst these are the head and, more precisely, the hair. An important item of the ‘feminine’ artefact-kit is the hair-pin, often elaborately decorated. In some burials is found thread, sometimes gold, interpreted as coming from a head-band or the fringes of a head-cloth. The latter seems more likely, for reasons to which we shall return. The head is also highlighted by the presence of earrings (obviously more visible when the hair is tied back or up). The second area of the body highlighted by female costume was the hand and arms. Common amongst the feminine artefacts of early Merovingian Lorraine are bracelets and finger-rings. Eva Stauch has suggested, from the study of the graves of southern Germany, that hair and dress pins, bracelets and finger-rings were particularly important in demonstrating the age of deceased women.73 The third area of bodily adornment and display is the upper torso or breast. This area of the female body is probably most frequently emphasized by the wearing of a necklace, especially when pendants and amulets were attached to it. Note, however, that, as mentioned above, the necklace appears to have been the item of feminine apparel with the weakest gender-related message, acquired earliest and retained longest. The brooches used to fasten sixth-century Merovingian female costume are sometimes found at the breast, but far from uniformly. Two brooches are often located at the breast because of their use to fasten a mantle over the tunic. There are many other combinations of and locations for brooches, as is underlined in the study of other regions of the Merovingian world, so we might conclude that when brooches were located at the breast this was deliberate. Sebastian Brather suggests that at the breast or neck is by far the most common location for brooches.74 So: head and hair, hand and arms, and breast. With the exception of the breasts, there is no biological or reproductive purpose which might be postulated to lead ‘automatically’, functionally, to the use of these bodily parts to highlight sexuality. And indeed the breast seems to be the least strongly emphasised area of the three. The interest in these areas of the female body is perhaps illuminated further by a consideration of early Frankish law. The earliest Frankish law-code, 73 E. Stauch, ‘Alter ist Silber, Jugend ist Gold! Zur altersdifferenzierten Analyse frühgeschichtlicher Bestattungen’, in S. Brather (ed.), Zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Archäologie des 4. bis 7. Jahrhunderts im Westen (Erganzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 57; Munich, 2008), pp. 275–95. 74 S. Brather, ‘Kleidung, Bestattung, Identität’, p. 244, Tab. 2.

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the Pactus Legis Salicae contains a clause about offences to women.75 In ascending order of seriousness, these are as follows: touching the finger produces a penalty of fifteen solidi; touching the arm (presumably below the elbow) is penalized with a thirty-solidus fine; touching the arm above the elbow incurs a thirty-five-solidus penalty; touching the breast merits forty-five solidi in compensation. In an undated but probably later sixth-century capitulary appended to the Pactus, we find the following clause:76 ‘Concerning the woman who has her hair cut or pulled. i. If anyone pulls a woman’s hair so that her hood (obbonis) falls to the ground, he shall be liable to pay fifteen solidi. ii. But if he undoes her headband so that her hair falls to her shoulders, he shall be liable to pay thirty solidi. iii. If a slave strikes a free woman or pulls her hair, he shall lose his hand or pay five solidi.’

The clause then proceeds to discuss assaults upon pregnant free women, particularly those resulting in the death of the foetus or woman, or both.77 A woman’s hair was thus equally protected by the law. The areas of the female body which were particularly highlighted, and protected, in law were the same as those to which female costume drew attention. The hair was especially important. The social symbolism of hair in the early middle ages has been dealt with elsewhere,78 but it is still worth drawing attention to its sexual connotations, and to its possible archaeological manifestations. Childhood seems to have been an age when hair was worn long and loose; its first cutting was an important occasion in the creation of links between families (unauthorized cutting of a child’s hair incurred heavy penalty), in initiating the process of coming of age, and also, apparently, in the creation of

75 PLS 20.1–4. The text here, as throughout the Pactus, is difficult to reconstruct in all its details with absolute certainty. The code is generally assumed to have been issued towards the end of Clovis I’s reign (c. 480–511). I.N. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (London, 1994), pp. 108–13; S&S, p. 9, for the suggestion that it dates to the last year of Clovis’ reign, 511. I am grateful to Ian Wood for discussion of this possibility. 76 PLS 104. The translation comes from Drew (trans.) Laws of the Salian Franks, p. 147. 77 Rejection of the ‘rose-tinted’ view that this and similar Frankish laws represent care for vulnerable women, and refs. on this issue: S&S, pp. 63–64. 78 R. Bartlett, ‘Symbolic functions of hair in the Middle Ages.’ TRHS 6th ser., 4 (1994), pp. 43–60; E. James, ‘Bede and the Tonsure question’. Peritia 3 (1984), pp. 85–98.

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gendered identity.79 The importance of these rites may be evidenced in the presence of shears in burials of both sexes.80 The comb is also quite frequently found, again with differing symbolic meaning from site to site and region to region. In Merovingian Alamannia, for example, on some sites it seems to have been part of the material construction of the social category of ‘young adult male’, and may be compared with the depiction of a young warrior combing his locks on the Niederdollendorf Stone.81 It seems likely that in this society long, well-groomed hair, as in other historical contexts, symbolized male sexuality. In Lorraine, on the other hand, the comb does not seem to have had such a clear role in symbolizing young male sexuality. A woman’s hair appears to have symbolized her marital status. It would seem that a young unmarried (or perhaps unbetrothed) woman wore her hair down, whereas a married (or betrothed) woman wore hers up, probably also covered by a head-cloth. Loose hair on a woman was frequently regarded as emblematic of unfettered, ‘wild’ (perhaps by extension from ‘childish’) female sexuality—and even madness.82 From one of Gregory’s stories it seems that women let their hair down at their husbands’ funerals;83 loose hair could symbolize the madness of grief. It does not, therefore, seem unreasonable to postulate that the hair-pins and remains of head-scarves found in female burials are symbolic of marital status, symbols, perhaps, of ‘tamed’ female sexuality, and a marker of the woman’s sexual ‘unavailability’.84 A nun’s

79 PLS 24.2–3. The long hair is a symbol of a child, especially a boy, not yet legally of age. Cp. J.H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton, 1986), p. 180; Bartlett, ‘Symbolic meanings of hair in the middle ages’, pp. 47–49. 80 This differs from one cemetery to another; FSP, p. 9 (above, p. 297). Without corroborative evidence it seems difficult to assume, as does Gilchrist, ‘Ambivalent bodies: gender and medieval archaeology’, p. 50–52, that shears are a straightforward female symbol. Hair and its cutting could have numerous semantic meanings depending on context; in a religious context they might symbolize tonsuring and so hardly be inappropriate on an abbot’s grave-slab, leaving aside probable allusion to the abbot’s shepherd-like role regarding his ‘flock’. 81 Schretzheim: U. Koch, Das Reihengräberfeld bei Schretzheim (Berlin, 1977). Niederdollendorf: H. Roth, Kunst der Völkerwanderungszeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), plates 244a & b. The Niederdollendorf warrior is armed with a scramasax, an item also commonly associated with the young adult males of Schretzheim: see below, p. 397. 82 LH 4.36: ‘His wife, Susanna, was possessed of a devil. In her madness she ran through the whole city, with her hair loose about her shoulders . . .’ 83 LH 5.34. 84 Extra-marital sex was severely punished in sixth-century Gaul. See, e.g., Burgundian Law (The Book of Constututions) 34.1, 36, 52.2–3, 68.2: The Burgundian Code, trans. Drew, K.F., (Philadelphia, 1972); GM 69; LH 5.32, 6.36.

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plain head-covering thus symbolized her marriage to Christ and the taming, and her rejection, of worldly sexuality. It is therefore of great interest that the ‘forbidden’ parts of a young woman’s body were not so much hidden, veiled or otherwise plainly concealed, but rather drawn attention to by being the principal bodily focus for display in sixth-century Gallic society. As far as can be discerned, even the head-scarf which concealed a married woman’s hair could be elaborately decorated, sometimes with gold thread, or pinned to the hair with ornate hair pins. Earrings, a further focus for display, would also, as stated, have been most visible on a woman whose hair was tied up. A woman’s sexual identity was highlighted: even advertised. The implications if this point for the idea that society was organised to a significant degree around a binary division based on sex are, however, complex. Rather than being concealed, at the time that sexual activity most defined her social position a woman’s body, and especially those parts that were considered forbidden, was made the focus of attention. Nevertheless, some of the areas most emphasised were not those most obviously physically different from the male body, but rather parts of the body whose signification and treatment differed between men and women. Although the areas highlighted are those protected by law there is, it is worth stating, a difference between the fine imposed for transgression and the archaeologically visible emphasis laid by costume on these areas (the breast could, however, have been the focus for such usually archaeologically invisible things as embroidery). The importance of female costume seems, in Lorraine, to change slightly in later life. The costume, insofar as it is archaeologically visible, of older women is rather plainer, and jewellery in particular is more restricted.85 It seems that their local importance, and it could be considerable, stemmed from other issues than their sexuality, such as the control of households. This conclusion is, however, only valid for Lorraine. It may or may not apply in other regions of the Frankish kingdom; in some it certainly does not. In Alamannia, brief consideration of some sites reveals a possible difference between younger and

85

It would be interesting to investigate, where possible, the age associations of belts, waist bands and chatelaines in female graves. My hunch (and it is only such) is that in Lorraine these are found mainly with women older than twenty, so probably married women. Items associated with female work, like weaving batons and breadcutters seem to be found with older women, but are usually found in exceptionally well-furnished burials and so are atypical in this region.

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older women, but constructed differently. There is difference in jewellery-forms, and younger women seem to be buried with symbols of their work: bread-cutters, spindle-whorls and weaving batons.86 Here the furnishing of their burials drew attention to a wider range of gendered issues than their sexuality.

Some Conclusions I have written above that the young ‘marriageable’ or betrothed woman was very much a public figure in sixth-century Lorraine, something partly shown by the expenditure of resources on her burial, itself a public event.87 This I interpreted as relating to the importance, in north Gallic rural community politics, of marriage alliances, focussed on these young women. With this in mind, it is insufficient to say simply that the social status which her clothing and burial represented were derived from male views of female status, power and sexuality, and of male control of the latter. We must consider the relationship between institutions and social practice. Although the roots of a young woman’s social standing may indeed have been defined by men, for their purposes, this nevertheless created a space within which to act for her own benefit, to further her own aims. The display of sexuality, and the legal protection of such display, surely gave the young woman a significant power-base in social interaction in these communities. This was something which changed by the seventh century. As far as can be discerned, in Lorraine at least, feminine dress accessories usually became much plainer. The elaborate disc brooches of the period could also be found in male burials.88 On the other hand, elaborate craftsmanship was now invested in usually masculine items like large plaque-buckles and belt-sets. Whether the belt had anything specifically to do with male sexuality is difficult to determine, though it did have a number of other masculine meanings.89 Nevertheless this change is significant. I have interpreted it in terms of a transformation 86

This seems to be the case at Schretzheim, for instance. FSP, pp. 16–17 (above, pp. 305–6); BRMS, p. 333 (above, pp. 209–10). 88 E.g. Toul-St-Evre, grave 1: A. Liéger, R. Marguet & J. Guillaume, ‘Sépultures mérovingiennes de l’abbaye de St.-Evre à Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle).’ RAE 35 (1984), pp. 301–17, at pp. 304–5 89 The furnished male burials of the late Roman period in Gaul, discussed above (ORz; ALRF) used brooches to display status. 87

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from a shifting, here-and-now society wherein power was transient and wherein marriage alliances were vitally significant, to one wherein local hierarchies were more established, and membership of particular families more important in determining local status. Thus the male, head of household and key referent in social identity, becomes more clearly signified by costume. This conclusion is difficult to push too far because this transformation itself affected the archaeological record. There was less need for the competitive burial rites of the sixth century, and so graves are far less well furnished. Powerful families gradually removed themselves from such arenas, for separate burial, eventually in their own churches. Some powerful seventh-century families seem to have distinguished their members from the rest of their local communities by prestigious burials, often with lavish costume, regardless of their age.90 At that level of society, it is likely that power strategies remained focused upon marriage alliances. Female sexuality may have been as highlighted in those circles as it had been in the sixth century. This issue would benefit from closer analysis. The archaeology of Merovingian Lorraine tells us much about sex and gender; with the aid of other forms of evidence, it can also suggest the importance of sexuality in the ordering of rural communities. It also shows us how such things rarely remained fixed either in time or space. Change, transgression and subversion are difficult to encompass, let alone explain, in a relativist, social constructionist view of the past, which sees sex and sexuality as entirely constructed by society. Seeing individual sexuality as the nexus of biological givens and social norms—between ‘psychosexual identity and collective culture’—restores to the people of past the freedom to act, to choose, to subvert and to change, and prevents them from becoming, as they so often do, mere two-dimensional ‘passive anthropological exhibits’.91

90

This seems to be the case with the early seventh-century cluster of prestigious burials at Audun-le-Tiche, clustered around the remains of two Roman fana. Female burials are very important within this group. 91 Partner, ‘No sex, no gender’, p. 441, p. 433.

CHAPTER TEN

MEROVINGIAN MASCULINITIES*

I open this chapter by returning to the double grave, ‘Graves’ 6 and 8, at the cemetery of Ennery, discussed briefly in chapter 9. Émile Delort found the two bodies that concern us buried side-by-side in the same grave, with the right arm of ‘grave 8’ lying on top of the left arm of ‘grave 6’—a fact which makes it surprising that he assigned them separate grave numbers, and odder still that he didn’t assign them consecutive grave numbers.1 Nevertheless their exact contemporaneity—that they were buried on or about the same day and in the same funerary structure—seems reasonable.2 The double burial dates to the earlier sixth century and thus to the first decades of the cemetery’s use. Ennery ‘Grave 6’ (to retain Delort’s terminology) was the more lavishly furnished of the two, with a sword, spear, knife, and a bowl, and dressed in a costume which included a belt fastened with a plaque-buckle. A second belt was folded and placed by the subject’s head. Ennery ‘Grave 8’, on the other hand, was accompanied only by a comb, a plain iron

* This paper was originally presented as part of a series of sessions on ‘Gender and the Transformation of the Roman World’, organised by Leslie Brubaker and Julia Smith at the Seventh International Medieval Congress at Leeds (2000). A somewhat modified version was given to the conference of the Society for Gender and Medieval Studies at York in January 2001. My thanks go to Leslie Brubaker and Julia Smith, and to Cordelia Beattie and Isabel Davis, for the invitations to address those gatherings, to the members of the audience at both conferences for discussion, and above all to Ian Wood and Yitzhak Hen for enduring with good humour my naming of Ennery ‘Graves’ 6 and 8 (respectively) after them, at the Leeds meeting. 1 For the story of the site’s discovery, excavation and publication, see above, pp. 315–7. 2 This is impossible to put entirely beyond doubt. The republication of the site, A. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery (Moselle): Fouilles d’Emile Delort (Woippy, 1993), helpfully reproduces two photographs of the burial (p. 98) and the relevant part of Delort’s plan (p. 21). It is difficult to see from these data whether there was any sort of recut, with a second burial (grave 8) being inserted. The absence of kneecaps and toe bones from the plan does not suggest that the excavation was carried out with absolute care, and Simmer’s work does not inspire confidence in his ability to unravel subtle stratification (above, p. 320, n. 24). Nevertheless, the clear lack of disturbance to grave 6’s left arm makes it most unlikely that grave 8 was dug separately at a later date.

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buckle and a strike-a-light. These are clearly the final remains of an event of real local tragedy, the details of which will forever elude us: one frustration of working from the nameless, unwritten but in some ways nonetheless eloquent testimony of archaeology. Delort believed that the grave was that of a man and his wife, with ‘grave 8’ being the woman. Alain Simmer repeated this reading in an article about double graves.3 Simmer had not at that time read the physical anthropological report on the site carried out by Marcel Heuertz,4 which revealed that both subjects of the grave were in fact young males. This is in fact not uncommon in double burials; the two subjects of Audun-le-Tiche grave 103 (about 100 years later than the Ennery burial) were also adolescent men. The subjects of the triple interment at Niederstotzingen were all male too.5 The various possible circumstances behind these multiple burials of males were discussed in the previous chapter, but clearly they cannot represent marriage in the usual sixth-century (or even, in spite of same-sex unions, twenty-first-century) sense of the term. Delort’s—at the time not unusual—assumption was based upon the presence of weaponry in one ‘grave’ but not in the other, and upon what he saw as the linked arms. Weaponry is a key signifier of masculinity in the furnished burials of very late Roman and post-imperial north western Europe. Recent attempts to deny this have generally failed to convince.6 Nevertheless, the simple absence of weaponry is not enough to sex a subject as female and in fact analysis shows that the artefact assemblage in Ennery ‘grave 8’ is, at that site, masculine. The supposedly linked arms are, on closer examination, less than convincing.7 It is possible that the arm of one man was deliberately laid on that of the other but they are certainly not interlinked, and the same is true at Audun and Niederstotzingen. The arrangement might result from the constraints of space in the burial or even from some post-depositional process, with arms placed across the stomach later falling back to the

3 A. Simmer, ‘Les tombes doubles à l’époque mérovingienne: L’exemple d’Audunle-Tiche.’ RAE 34 (1983), pp. 170–2. 4 M. Heuertz, ‘Études des squelettes du cimetière franc d’Ennery.’ Bulletin et Mémoire de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris 8 (1957), pp. 81–147. 5 R. Christlein, Die Alamannen: Archäologie eines lebendigen Volkes (3rd edition, Stuttgart, 1991), p. 89. 6 See above, pp. 327–38. 7 Pace S&S, p. 90 (though the arrangement is correctly given on p. 88!).

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side. If the arrangement was deliberate, some of the possible meanings are discussed above.8 These two young men make a convenient place to begin a discussion of Merovingian masculinities as they raise the topic of how masculine identity was acquired. The ageing of skeletal evidence is a vexed issue but at the ages represented by these two individuals it is less problematic than usual. Heuertz thought that ‘Ennery 6’ was somewhere between his categories of juvenile (14–22 years of age) and adult (22–40), whereas ‘8’ was juvenile (14–22). Luc Buchet more recently suggested that ‘6’ was between fourteen and twenty-two years of age but that ‘8’ was between sixteen and eighteen.9 It is possible, in both readings, to suggest that ‘Ennery 6’ was older than ‘Ennery 8’. I have previously assumed that ‘6’ was about twenty years old and ‘8’ in his teens. There is another possible reading of this data to which I shall return, but for the moment let us assume that ‘6’ was indeed the older of the two. At Ennery, eleven of the other twelve intact graves with weapons were of individuals aged over twenty years, an estimate which would seem reasonable even allowing for improvements in the techniques of ageing human skeletons. This seems to be generally the case in sixthcentury northern Gallic cemeteries. The single exception at Ennery was grave 70,10 one of (as far as I am aware) only two child burials with weapons in Lorraine (in other words out of well over 1,000 decently excavated grave assemblages), and this is clearly a very unusual burial in many ways, as we shall see.11 A few teen-age males (like Ennery ‘8’) are buried with masculine items, but no armament. The acquisition of weapons, therefore, clearly had a particularly important role in the construction of masculinity. In this line of interpretation, which fits the specific evidence, the broader context of the cemetery and what appear to have been the general burial norms of sixth-century northern

8

Above, pp. 347–9. Buchet’s report is contained in the republication of the site: A. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Ennery (Moselle). Fouilles d’Emile Delort (1941) (Woippy, 1993). 10 The other is the clearly lavish burial at Abainville (Meuse), grave 1: J. Guillaume, ‘La nécropole d’Abainville (Meuse)’ in Actes des Xe Journées Internationales d’Archaeologie Mérovingienne: Metz, 20–23 Octobre, 1988 (Sarreguemines, 1989), pp. 97–102. It is unlikely that this picture has changed dramatically since my datagathering. 11 S&S, pp. 92–93. 9

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Gaul, the reason why one man had weapons and the other had not was related to their age. The elder of the two had reached an age where burial with his weapons was deemed appropriate. The acquisition of one’s own weaponry was clearly a significant step in gaining a masculine identity. It seems very likely that younger males bore weapons but it is the point at which weaponry was sufficiently regarded as their own to be buried with them which is important. This same stage of life—the late teens and early twenties—seems to have been important in other areas of the grave-goods burying regions of the post-imperial west, but was elsewhere symbolized in a different way.12 The socialization of the male was a long process, beginning at about puberty but probably not complete until marriage and fatherhood, which seem to have taken place in the mid to late twenties at the earliest. The acquisition of weaponry was not, therefore, the last stage in male socialization.13 The graves of males who died at a later stage of life, when they had presumably married and become fathers, but before their children had come of age, are sometimes the most lavish burials of all, and their masculinity is symbolized differently—at Ennery less often with weapons but with very full assemblages of other masculine items. Elsewhere in Lorraine, the picture seems simply to be of fuller, more complete masculine assemblages. It is difficult to relate the archaeological data directly to written evidence about growing up and sexuality. Although some aspects of this many-phased process—hair-cutting and the bestowal of weapons—are hinted at in the sources, the vocabulary of ageing used in Merovingian sources looks imprecise, largely because, as is discussed in the next chapter, it conflates physiological age with social age; a puer is sometimes a ‘boy’ as we would understand it—a male sub-adult—but at least as often, if not more so, a member of a broad age-class comprising young males who had not yet married and settled down. That would probably include both occupants of the Ennery double grave. Although most Merovingian children are buried without genderrelated artefacts, or are constructed as feminine (the interpretation of which point is discussed elsewhere14), people were well aware of the sex of children: pueri or puellae. At least some early medieval church-

12 13 14

As is discussed below, pp. 403–7. Again, see below, pp. 403–7. FSP, pp. 13–14 (above, pp. 302–3); below, pp. 400–401.

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men were aware of the sexuality of young males and the problems it could present,15 even if such young men were rarely constructed as fully masculine in the material culture of their burials. Columbanus allows younger boys to escape punishment for masturbation,16 which is interesting in terms of ideas of the acquisition of a sexual identity. The weapons do not seem therefore to have simply symbolized male sex, they would not appear to be used as the symbol for a male of legal majority, and they do not look as though they were something that was acquired when a man married and became the head of a household.17 Furthermore, the interment of weaponry in the funerals of males above the age of about twenty does not match the carrying of weapons in life. As alluded to above and as we shall see in the next chapter, adolescents from their mid-teens could be found in armed gangs or retinues. Nevertheless, the presence of weaponry in a burial seems to have been used fairly consistently to symbolize a particular stage of the male life-cycle: not, however, one that appears to have been recognised in the documentary data (as discussed in the next chapter). Moreover, not all adult males, even those whose graves contained artefactually masculine assemblages, were buried with weapons. Some, within the context of their cemeteries, fairly lavishly furnished graves of adult men lack these items. Ennery grave 28 is one such. In this connection, the belts found with both of the Ennery males are worthy of note. The symbolism is complex and subtle, but the belt is an important aspect of male dress, even when it is as simple as in these cases. The genealogy of this symbol goes back to Roman cingula militiae—worn by civil servants and soldiers—and, in fifth and sixth-century northern Gaul, was very masculine. In the seventh century it became similarly elaborate, and, again, a key marker of masculine status throughout Gaul. There are two points: one is that this masculine symbol clearly works in a slightly different way, with subtly different referents, from that of the weapons. The second is that it was far more negotiable—or even contested—as a symbol, as we shall see. Nevertheless, this shows that weaponry was not the only potent symbol of masculinity.

15 16 17

See above, pp. 345–6. See below, p. 401. For male age of marriage, see FSP, p. 17 (above, p. 306), n. 48; below, pp. 390–2.

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Like the weapon burials, those with other masculine items (‘AB.2graves’ in the terminology used in my study of Lorraine) were also predominantly of men over twenty. At this age, then, it would seem that although the masculinity of an individual was recognised in his burial, there was something of a bifurcation in the way in which this was done. There does not appear to have been an ‘alternative’ group of masculine artefacts, found in the graves without weaponry but not in the weapon burials. Rather, there would seem to have been a broad set of artefacts that were deemed appropriate for males, especially above the age of twenty. To these, in some graves, were added weapons. It is helpful to try and establish a rough idea of the relative size of these two groups.18 Sometimes there was a preponderance of weapon graves. In the small initial phase of the cemetery at Lavoye, all except one of the adult male burials appear to have been provided with weapons.19 In this phase, gender was strongly highlighted and this might have had something to do with the foundation of the cemetery. Similarly, at the sixth-century cemetery at Chaouilley, which, like the first phase of Lavoye, clustered around some lavishly-furnished graves, all of the adult male burials with grave-goods contained weapons (one ‘AB.2-burial’ was sexed by the excavator as female), although here there were a number of unfurnished adult male graves. The same might well have been true at Lavoye but unfurnished burials were impossible to place with confidence in the first phase, which was soon surrounded and infiltrated by the much more numerous interments belonging to what I termed Phase 2 (c. 525–c. 600). It is possible that in such cemeteries there was a dramatic separation into adult masculine burials with weapons, sometimes lavishly furnished, and those without grave-goods at all. The bulk of the sixth century is better represented by the site at Ennery and Phase 2 at Lavoye.20 At the former site the number of adult male burials with weapons (the two A-graves, with masculine items only, the Ax-grave, with a weapon as its only artefact-type, and the AB.1-burials—with ‘neutral’ and masculine items, including weapons) was matched by the number of masculine graves without such items: eleven in the first group, ten in the second (two further AB.2 burials 18

For the publication of the sites discussed in the next paragraphs, see FSP, pp. 4–5 (above, pp. 292–3), nn. 12–13. 19 S&S, pp. 119–21. 20 Ibid., pp. 75–94, 121–132.

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were of adolescents and one was anthropologically sexed as female). There were, however, three further unfurnished burials of adult men.21 At Lavoye, the largest sample, in the period between c. 525 and c. 600 there were thirty-five adult AB.1-burials to twenty adult AB.2-graves. The artefactually ‘neutral’ B- (with ‘neutral’ artefact-types only) and Bx-graves (with only a single, artefactually ‘neutral’ artefact type) and unfurnished E-graves needed, however, to be added to the latter, these three groups totalling no fewer than thirty-four burials. At the sixth-century phase of Dieue-sur-Meuse the number of disturbed inhumations, the quality of the publication and the lack of physical anthropological data made comparison more difficult but here too the number of weapon burials was matched by masculine adult graves without weaponry (four AB.1-graves to five AB.2). By way of tentative conclusion, then (it can be no more than that), we might suggest that in the sixth century among adult males the number interred with weapons was generally matched or even surpassed by those without and that a significant number of the latter (sometimes equalling the number of weapon graves) were nevertheless gendered male. It is possible that the latter group became more significant as the furnished burial custom grew to include whole communities. These points are of major importance to my argument. They suggest the existence of different types of masculinity; they direct us towards a possible link between masculinity and ethnic identity; they lead us to consider dominant and subordinate masculinities; and they point to a crucial change in the nature of masculinity between the Roman and post-imperial periods. They also raise the issue of what was symbolised by the presence of weaponry. In explaining the ‘bifurcation’ described above, into those male burials with weapons and those without, it is helpful to start with this last issue: the symbolism of the weaponry. I am inclined to believe that it relates primarily to inter-personal violence rather than hunting or other activities. As Heinrich Härke has argued for Anglo-Saxon weapon burials,22 the changing frequency of this ritual display of violent imagery (discussed below) should not, however, be understood

21 The only one of the five artefactually ‘neutral’ B-graves at Ennery to be anthropologically sexed was female. 22 E.g. H. Härke, ‘Early Saxon weapon burials: frequencies, distributions and weapon combinations’ in S. Chadwick-Hawkes (ed.), Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1989), pp. 49–61.

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as having any bearing on the frequency of actual violence. It is not enough, furthermore, simply to say that masculinity—or at least a dominant form of masculinity—was constructed violently. This, obviously, is partly true but not wholly. There were plenty of violent women in sixth-century Gaul, largely found in the pages of Gregory of Tours’ Histories.23 Furthermore, Gallic law—Frankish, Roman or Burgundian—contained none of the statements about the theoretical incapability of women to commit violence which we find in Lombard legislation. Burgundian law says that a woman forfeits the extra compensation for injury if she gets involved in a fight, but does not prohibit, let alone deny the possibility of, female violence.24 Frankish law is silent on the subject, although it does only specify women as guilty parties in cases of witchcraft, which it seems to have seen as a particularly female form of violence.25 Women could be violent, and could defend themselves. In addition, Romans could and did get involved in local conflicts, including the vengeance usually (but wrongly) thought to be somehow typically ‘Germanic’.26 Even the unfree can be found participating in violence. 27 If weaponry was selected to make a clear distinction not simply between men and women or adults and children, but also between some men and others, then some more precise form of violence would be required as its referent. Warfare and military service were a man’s business, and the business only of certain types of men at that. Armies had to be called out and assembled, a process which meant moving down various—male—chains of power. Warfare was a very deliberate, planned form of violence and participation in the army similarly the result of a series of specific choices and decisions. I suggest that it is the (at least theoretical) right to participate in the activities of the army that is represented by the selective presence of weaponry in sixthcentury northern Gaulish burials. Thus I propose that military service is the key determinant of these violent identities: the ability to serve in the army, the political assembly

23

LH, 10.5. Burgundian Law (The Book of Constitutions) 92 (The Burgundian Code, trans. Drew, K.F., (Philadelphia, 1972). 25 PLS 64.2–3. 26 REMV; VSEMW; and references. See also I.N. Wood, ‘‘The Bloodfeud of the Franks’: a historiographical legend.’ EME 14 (2006), pp. 489–503. For a Roman ‘feud’, see LH 5.5. 27 LH 10.5. 24

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of the Franks, or to follow those who served in such assemblies. Such service and the rewards it brought were a key factor in local power, and thus much competed for; lavish burials characteristically display power through the use of impressive weaponry. The army was called out regularly. In the 580s, significant armed forces were assembled at least thirty-eight times: nearly four times a year on average.28 The violence which ensued—if any did, for sometimes the army just went back home again—appears to have been carefully limited in scale, with only two full-scale pitched battles. We may be dealing in some ways with an almost fictive form of violence, but one which was necessarily frequent in order to maintain key aspects of social structure. Battle, although rare, was essential to a man’s self-esteem. The Pactus Legis Salicae contains a clause about insults, which makes clear that the principal slurs on a male’s standing concerned cowardice and unreliability in the line of battle.29 In my reading, then, the weaponry deposited in burials cannot be read as symbolising anything other than social identities based upon military activity and the violence involved in this. To see them, in cosier fashion, as ‘simple’ symbols of authority or representing hunting or land-clearance seems to me to represent a wilful refusal to face up to the unpleasant realities of authority in the post-imperial world.30 The suggestion that weapon-burial relates to the right to join the army leads us to the issue of ethnic identity as a plausible line of investigation, though we must be clear about what we mean by ethnicity. There appears to have been, in Gaul as elsewhere in the post-imperial world, a functional side to ethnicity: ‘Barbarians’ fought, whilst ‘Romans’ paid taxes.31 It seems possible, though untestable, that the provision of weapons relates to Frankish masculine identity. In this my interpretation has some similarities with that of Heinrich Härke’s studies of Anglo-Saxon weapon burials.32 Härke has presented sustained 28

W&S, pp. 231–3. PLS 30; W&S, p. 11 for discussion. 30 C. Hedenstierna-Jonson, ‘The Birka Warrior: The material culture of a martial society’, PhD thesis, Stockholm University, 2006, pp. 22–24, makes an interesting critique of the ‘pacification’ of the archaeological record. See W&S, p. 10, for academics’ wariness of dealing with warfare. For my reservations about the non-violent reading of weaponry in late fourth and fifth-century Gallic burials, see above, pp. 157–8. 31 S&S, pp. 26–32; BMRW, ch. 14, and references. 32 H. Härke, ‘Early Saxon weapon burials: frequencies, distributions and weapon combinations’; id., ‘“Weapon graves”? The background of the Anglo-Saxon weapon burial rite.’ P&P 126 (1990), pp. 22–43; id., Anglesächsische Waffengräber des 5. bis 29

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arguments linking weapon burial with Anglo-Saxon identity in the postimperial centuries in Britain. Unlike Härke, however, I do not believe that this necessarily implies that the occupants of these graves were Frankish immigrants from beyond the Rhine or the biological descendants of such. My argument will further suggest how such identity was acquired. While my discussion is based heavily around understandings of ethnicity which move beyond the equation of ethnic groups with biologically- or genetically-identifiable groupings, it by no means suggests that ethnicity was thereby rendered unimportant. Material culture, encompassing not merely artefacts but also ritual behaviour, was vital in creating unity among, and identity for, such otherwise quite fictive groupings. In this sense we might (where, as here, there is some supporting circumstantial evidence) equate particular rites or particular costumes with specific ethnic groups but we must at all times make very clear how we understand these groupings. Although superficially similar, this is an entirely different line of reasoning from the primordialism still common in early medieval German archaeology, which still confidently makes ethnic ascriptions (meaning an identification of a specific, genetic or biological group, usually immigrant) according to brooch styles or the ways in which they are worn. In my interpretation, north Gallic ‘Franks’ and ‘Romans’ had a differently-constructed masculinity; we shall return to the implications of this. This situation seems clearly to be an outgrowth of late Roman developments in the construction of masculinity. Some notes of caution are necessary, however. This particular interpretation of the weaponry is only really possible within a north Gallic context. In southern Gaul we cannot conduct an entirely analogous enquiry because furnished burial is much rarer. If goods were interred with the dead they appear to have been much scarcer and the long periods of use and reuse of the stone sarcophagi in these grave-yards has frequently resulted in the emptying of coffins, the distribution of any goods around their original interment and thus the absence of intact assemblages suitable for analysis.33 The consultation of nonarchaeological sources of evidence suggests that a different picture

7. Jahrhunderts (Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters, Beiheft 6; Cologne, 1992); id., ‘Changing symbols in a changing society: the Anglo-Saxon weapon rite’ in M. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo. The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 149–65. 33 EMCems, pp. 21–22.

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would pertain. Here the ethnic situation was rather different. Franks were sent from the north to take part in the government of the region but there was no military distinction along ethnic lines.34 Without a substantial population of ‘Franks’ it was not possible to limit military service to those claiming this identity. Instead, armed forces appear to have been raised by civitas from land-owners. Gregory of Tours repeatedly mentions the men of particular civitates under arms. It may be that while land owners were liable for military service, tenants were not. Some record appears to have been kept, analogous perhaps to the tax-lists that still existed, of those liable to military service. Indeed in Aquitaine land-owners appear to have been expected to pay tax and provide contingents for the army.35 In this context, there might also have been an age at which it was felt that weaponry was part of the personal possessions of an individual, as perhaps in the north (the evidence for young men serving as pueri in households is common in both areas36). Nevertheless, the bearing of arms cannot have reflected ethnic identity. In Aquitaine the symbolism of weaponry carried by males above the age of about twenty would, I suggest, have related to social rank or class. Weapons would mark aristocratic masculinity, as, rather later, would come to be the case commonly throughout western Europe. To emphasise this variety we may look briefly beyond the confines of Gaul, to Visigothic Spain, where something different again would appear to be the case. On the peripheries of the sixth-century Visigothic kingdom, where grave-goods were occasionally buried with the dead, weaponry was not very commonly deposited, although a functional difference between Goths and Hispano-Romans appears to have existed that was similar to that between Franks and Gallo-Romans.37 Sometimes this has been explained as relating to an age-old Gothic tradition

34 SISR, pp. 150–1, for discussion of the dynamics involved in these relationships in southern Gaul. 35 W&S, pp. 44–45, 48, and references. See also J. Durliat, ‘Episcopus, civis et populus dans les Historiarum Libri de Grégoire’, in N. Gauthier & H. Galinié (ed.) Grégoire de Tours et l’espace gaulois, (Tours, 1997), pp. 185–93; P. Heather, ‘State, lordship and community in the west (c. AD 400–600)’, in A.M. Cameron, B. Ward-Perkins & M. Whitby (ed.), Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 14: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600 (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 437–68. 36 See, further, below, pp. 403–7. 37 D. Pérez Sánchez, El Ejército en la Sociedad Visigoda (Salamanca, 1989).

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of not burying weapons, though this is unconvincing.38 In yet another variation, some burials with weaponry can be found in the northern, Pyrenean extremities of the Gothic realm.39 The symbolic value of weaponry is thus not automatic.40 To take another example, we might return to Gaul and consider the late fourth and early fifth-century cemetery associated with the fort at Oudenburg in Belgium. Here, grave-goods were deposited with half of the mostly male burials, reasonably enough associated with the fort’s garrison.41 Weaponry, however, is almost entirely absent. This is not really surprising. In this military context, weaponry would hardly be a meaningful symbol for differentiating status; instead, the symbols used are brooches and belt-sets: badges of rank. In the sixth-century grave-goods burying regions of north-western Europe it is noteworthy that different weapons were used in different ways, as symbols. The symbolic value of the shield, for example, was quite different, in Anglo-Saxon England and Merovingian northern Gaul. In England it appears quite commonly and appears to symbolise adulthood (above about twenty) in a society where other weapons, notably the spear, could be used as a masculine symbol even for quite young boys.42 A similar situation may pertain in Alamannia where, in at least one section of the cemetery of Schretzheim, shields were found with men in the age range between thirty and fifty—the male ‘head of household’

38 P. Heather, The Goths (Oxford, 1996), pp. 202–7. For a pertinent critique, see R. Collins, Visigothic Spain, 409–711 (London, 2004), pp. 174–86. 39 A. Azkarate Garai-Olaun, (1992). ‘The western Pyrenees during the late antiquity: Reflections for a reconsideration of the issue’, in G.-P. Brogiolo & L. Castelleti (ed.), Il Territorio tra Tardoantico e Altomedioevo: Metodi di indagine e risulati (Florence), pp. 179–91; I. Martín-Viso, ‘La configuración de un espacio de frontera: propuestas sobre la Vasconia tardoantigua’, in U. Espanosa Ruiz & S. Castellanos (ed.), Comunidades locales y dinámicas de poder en el norte de la Península Ibérica durante la Antigüedad Tardía, (Logroño, 2007), pp. 101–39. 40 See above, pp. 157–8, for discussion of the possible symbolism of some items of weaponry in late Roman furnished burials. 41 J. Mertens, ‘Oudenburg, camp du Litus Saxonicum en Belgique?’ in G. Novak (ed.) Archeolski Radovi I Rasprave (Acta et Dissertationes Archaeologiae) III. Quintus Congressus Internationalis Limitis Romani Studiosorum (17–23 Sept. 1961) (Zagreb, 1963), pp. 123–31; id., ‘La nécropole du castellum de Oudenburg’, in S. Applebaum (ed.) Limeskongress 7 (Tel Aviv, 1971), pp. 59–70. For further discussion, see ALRF, p. 179 (above, p. 128). 42 On the Anglo-Saxon shield, see T.M. Dickinson & H. Härke, Early Anglo-Saxon Shields (= Archaeologia 110; London, 1993). For analysis of Anglo-Saxon weapon burials see above, n. 32.

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age grade.43 In the north of Merovingian Gaul, however, shields are rare and generally found in quite lavish male burials. Here the symbolism of the item must have been somewhat different, possibly referring to a broader protective role. This discussion essentially reiterates the basic points that there was a multiplicity of masculinities, and diverse ways of constructing them materially. The meaning of symbols cannot be transferred simply from one area of the post-imperial world to another and, conversely, we cannot assume that a particular role in society will everywhere be symbolised in the same way in analogous rituals. Both intimatelyconnected statements apply even where we are studying exactly contemporaneous societies. Having made these points, we can return to the specific situation of sixth-century Merovingian northern Gaul. The archaeological data suggest that at least in material terms masculine identity was something that was achieved, possibly to a greater degree than was the case in other areas, where even very young children could be buried with weapons, as noted above. Related to this point, the interpretation of the excavated evidence implies something that might not immediately be evident from readings of the documentary sources. That is that ethnic identity itself (or at least the Frankish level of such identity44) might have been achieved rather than being something one automatically inherited from one’s parents. The cemeteries of Merovingian Lorraine permit the suggestion that, while many, perhaps even most, adolescents might have had the chance to become pueri and carry arms from their mid-teens, by the age of twenty a separation was made into those who had proved themselves worthy to carry weapons and be considered Franks, and those who had not. An examination of the Pactus Legis Salicae might underline this point. In this code, ethnic identity appears only to be assigned to adult males with dependents at law. These are the romani and franci of the text, sometimes collectively referred to as ingenui.45 Women or children do not receive ethnic identities in this code 46 and this actually seems to be fairly common in the immediately post-imperial period across the west, when the evidence suggests that

43

See below, p. 403. BMRW, chapters 2 and 14 for the multi-layered nature of ethnicity. 45 S&S, pp. 27–29 for the analysis of the PLS’ usage of ethnic labels. 46 The adjective ingenuus (or ingenua) is added to puer or puella clause 24 in group D of the manuscripts of the PLS. This seems to be a later interpolation. 44

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ethnicity was gendered.47 The situation was dynamic, of course, and by the later sixth century at least had changed significantly. The ‘bifurcation’ discussed above may well have been accentuated in later life. At Ennery, where we have the fullest anthropological data, it seems that although young adult men were always gendered masculine in their graves, later in life there was a more pronounced separation into well furnished graves and those with few or no grave-goods.48 The more problematic data from Chaouilley and Lavoye tended to support this suggestion.49 There are several ways of interpreting this pattern. Rather than, as I have supposed in the past,50 relating to different status, this variety might be better understood as principally resulting from differences in the age and standing of the dead man’s heirs. This would extend the point made in interpreting the female burials in chapter 8. Some men between forty and sixty years of age will have died before their sons were old enough to have achieved status within the community, married and created a household of their own; the deaths of these men would have created tension in social relationships and required easing through funerary display. The eldest sons of other men of this age group, by contrast, will have been able to have established themselves. The deaths of these figures will not have needed quite the same expenditure in funerary ritual. This might explain the growing separation into well- and poorly-furnished burials in the age group about forty. The difficulties of ageing human remains above the age of forty by traditional means would not allow us to explore the possibility further by considering the relative ages of the two groups; indeed Heuertz prudently did not assign ages more precise than ‘between forty and sixty’. One might object that this hypothesis does not seem adequate to explain the difference in the provision of masculine symbols. Did men become any less masculine above the age of forty? Here, however, we need to confront the reasons behind the ritual display. The assemblage of artefacts in the grave was not simply a set of automaticallygenerated symbols that reflected the deceased’s identity. Nor were the aspects or the strength of the ‘message’ transmitted by grave-goods during the funeral uniform. The act of furnishing the grave was the 47 48 49 50

BMRW, ch. 14. S&S, pp. 83–86. Ibid., pp. 115–6, 123–5. Largely implicitly, at ibid., pp. 254–9.

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outcome of the active choices made by those responsible for the burial in response to particular circumstances. Nevertheless, the hypothesis of ‘achieved status’, based upon accomplishments during weapon-bearing young adulthood should perhaps not be entirely rejected. The vagaries of reproduction and inheritance might indeed go a long way towards explaining the differential furnishing of burials in the age-group between forty and sixty, but they are not, it seems to me, entirely sufficient. Unlike the women whose burials were discussed in chapter 8, men continued to be furnished with gender-specific artefacts in their burials right through into old age. We must consider the nature of masculine and feminine artefacts. The artefacts that expressed female power largely related, as we have seen, to costume, adornment and the body. They appear to have symbolised social roles based around sex: marriage and child-bearing. The artefacts that were deemed appropriate for men were, by contrast, while not entirely disconnected from the exigencies of the physical ageing process, less directly connected to them. Even while accepting the reservations about linking weapon-symbolism to actual service in the army, we can note that some men in the early Middle Ages continued to fight until quite late in life. Early medieval warfare might even have been the business of older men than has typically been the case in many other eras.51 These weapons might well, in any case, have been more important in symbolising a particular, dominant type of masculinity than in demonstrating whether the deceased was still actively taking part in warfare. Their symbolic content might well, then, have been considered more appropriate later in life than jewellery was in female burials. Other masculine grave-goods appear to have reflected the man’s role as the head of a household.52 These too might have been thought relevant even in the interments of old men. In the age group above sixty it is perhaps unlikely that a man’s heirs were still too young to have acquired some local standing and established a right to succeed. Yet some such men were occasionally buried with masculine artefacts and even weaponry (though it is probably doubtful that such men were still in regular attendance at military musters.53

51

W&S, pp. 35–36. S&S, p. 256. 53 Sixth-century old men with weapons: Chaouilley, grave 34; Ennery graves 44 and 70; and Lavoye grave 196. Sixth-century AB.2-graves of old men: possibly Chaouilley 52

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With this in mind, it does seem that perhaps there was some sort of separation for males, later in life, into those still thought worthy of interment with masculine artefacts, and those who were not. This might well give some indication that standing in the community was based upon achievements during the life-cycle, although, as with the female burials, we should note that there might have been some dimensions of social status that a focus on grave-goods does not reveal. This conclusion, that differences in standing in later life were made manifest in the burial ritual through the differential employment of masculine items, is supported by another dimension of the analysis of the sixthcentury cemeteries of Lorraine. In this period, competition in the furnishing of burials was often played out using gendered artefacts. In the sixth-century Phase 2 of Lavoye, the group of lavishly-furnished adult male burials was most clearly delineated from the others through the provision of masculine-specific artefacts.54 The competitive display of masculinity was one of the principal foci for rivalry for local power and standing. In this connection, we may return to another reading of Ennery ‘graves’ 6 and 8. As intimated earlier, it is possible that Ennery 6 is the younger of the two, or at least that he is rather younger than twenty years of age. If this is the case, it presents a further example of how masculinity was a focus for the competitive display of family standing. The group of burials within which ‘graves’ 6 and 8 are located is distinguished from the remainder of the cemetery, from which it appears to be slightly removed. In this group cluster most of the skeletons at Ennery positioned with their arms on the pelvis. Here too, the rite of positioning belts and pouches by the head is common, and the local community’s apparent custom of interring women in the northern half of the site seems to be broken.55 As noted, the double-burial is also one of the earliest graves on the site. It might, possibly, even have been the founder grave. In this context it is quite conceivable that the bereaved family displayed its distinction by burying one of its male dead (grave 6) with masculine symbols for which (in this reading of the data) he would generally have been held to be too young. As is clear from the preceding discussion, this does not seem to have been grave 25 (though anthropologically sexed as female); Ennery graves 36, 61 and 75; Lavoye graves 170 and 100. 54 S&S, p. 130, fig. 4.19. For discussion, see S&S, pp. 128–32. 55 S&S, pp. 93–94.

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a common ploy in sixth-century Lorraine; indeed it is the opposite of the usual strategy of distinction: exaggeration. It is worth noting that another of Ennery’s earliest burials, grave 54, is one of the more lavish interments, also lies in an area of distinctive burials, and contains a number of ritual similarities with ‘Grave 6’ (it is the only other sword grave, and both graves had their spear placed point towards the feet, with the point resting on a vessel). Can we see here clear evidence of local socio-political competition played out in the context of the public rituals of the cemetery? Are these tombs ‘speaking’ to each other in competitive ritual discourse? If so, one strategy deployed was breaking the usual norms about the construction of masculinity. The same point was even more clearly made much later, with the double burial, grave 103 at Audun-le-Tiche. Two generations after the deaths of Ennery 6 and 8, it was made yet more obviously, or less subtly, with Ennery graves 70 and 71 possibly relatives of Ennery 54 (they lie in the same general area of the cemetery). These two are oriented away from most of the rest of the site. They also have entirely masculine assemblages; every artefact-type buried with them is otherwise only found with males on this cemetery. They have similar ritual features. But the real point is that 71 was only 6 and 70 was an old man. Both were from categories rarely associated with masculine items. Grave 70 is one of only two burials of old men with weapons at Ennery, and the only one with two weapons.56 As mentioned grave 71 is one of just two child weapon burials in all of northern Lorraine. Again, the subversion, or perhaps refutation, of the usual ideas of masculinity was used to demonstrate social distinction. This examination of the archaeology of sixth-century Lorraine suggests fairly clearly the existence of dominant and lesser forms of masculinity, and it seems that weaponry was employed symbolise the former. Nevertheless at this date it is important to remember the wellfurnished masculine burials without weapons. In some ways this would tally with the Pactus Legis Salicae, in which franci have clear legal privilege and advantage over romani but the latter can still be important members of the community. The seeds of change had, however, been 56

The other burial of an old man with weaponry, grave 44, contained only one artefact-type included in the seriation (i.e. found in two or more intact burials containing two or more such artefact-types) and so does not appear in S&S, p. 82, fig. 3.6; cp. FSP, p. 7 (above, p. 296), fig. 3.

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sown. The privileges that Frankish identity afforded are fairly well attested: the legal advantages have just been alluded to; at least partial tax-exemption appears to have been another benefit of Frankishness, and military service was a right rather than a duty, bringing participation in the key political assembly of the realm and differential access to royal patronage. The discussion of the cemetery data adds a gendered dimension to this; it makes clear the way in which Frankishness was about masculinity. If, as the analysis above suggests, status and, in particular, the right to enter the dominant weapon-bearing group, was achieved, then acquisition of this status would appear to have brought differential prospects in terms of marriage and the reproduction of one’s family.57 The obsession with weaponry as a male symbol par excellence throughout Gaul (even if the precise symbolism differed, as noted above) clearly presented problems for the clergy, a different class of masculinity in itself. Canon 5 of the first Council of Mâcon (581)58 specifies that priests should not wear secular garb or bear weapons. This surely relates to conflicting ideas of masculinity. So, perhaps, does the thirteenth canon of the second Council of Mâcon (585) which forbids priests from keeping hunting dogs and falcons;59 hunting was another key basis of dominant masculine identity. The argument reached above allows us to contribute to recent discussions of ‘gender and the transformation of the Roman world’.60 How

57

Here we touch on an important way of bringing gender into the analysis of general political developments, tentatively explored in GEE. See also W. Pohl, ‘Gender and ethnicity in the early Middle Ages’, in L. Brubaker & J.M.H. Smith (ed.), Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300–900 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 23–43. K. Cooper, ‘Gender and the Fall of Rome’ in P. Rousseau (ed.) Companion to Late Antiquity (Chichester, 2009), pp. 187–200, is dismissive of previous attempts at this tricky topic (p. 190) and promises much, but sadly delivers rather little. She is, for instance, entirely reliant on traditionalist secondary readings of “Germanic” law and its assumptions and putative differences from Roman law. Note that mundium does not appear at all in Lex Salica. C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 554–8, has a rather more nuanced survey of female legal status in the post-imperial world. 58 J. Gaudemet & B. Basdevant (ed. & trans.), Les Canons des Conciles Mérovingiens (VIe–VIIe Siècles) (2 vols; Paris 1989), pp. 430–31. For other conciliar legislation about clergy and weapons, see W&S, p. 34, n. 55. 59 Gaudemet & Basdevant (ed. & trans.), Les Canons des Conciles Mérovingiens, pp. 472–3. 60 J.M.H. Smith, ‘Did women have a transformation of the Roman world?’ in P. Stafford & A.B. Mulder-Bakker (ed.), Gendering the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2001), pp. 22–41. Brubaker & Smith (ed.), Gender in the Early Medieval World. As noted

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did the end of the Roman Empire in western Europe affect the construction of masculinity? We might further ask if any the changes we can perceive in this area, perhaps especially the masculine gendering of ethnic identity, are related to ‘barbarian migration’? To anticipate my conclusions, not least because—at least in their crude outlines—they are not especially surprising, the key change concerned a shift in the dominant form of masculine identity from the civic to the military.61 The details of this change differ somewhat, perhaps, from traditional views which might attribute the militarization of masculinity to the triumph of ‘Germanic’ warriors over Roman bureaucrats. We have probably much underestimated the militarization of late Roman provincial aristocracies. Our view of late Roman aristocratic life tends to be based upon sources which relate to the old Italian senatorial élite, devastatingly parodied by Ammianus,62 and excluded from high military command during the Tetrarchy. However, military service remained—conversely—a route into the nobility, and, more to the point, it is clear that the military career-path remained an option to the provincial aristocracies. Such aristocrats also, it is clear, treated military service in the same way as they did a civilian administrative career, as something to be incorporated within the bipartite aristocratic culture of otium and negotium.63 In the fifth century it is clear that, across the west, Roman provincial aristocrats began to lead armed forces as they participated in the faction struggles that tore the Empire apart, often—indeed usually—alongside or under ‘barbarian’ leaders and their warriors. In Gaul north of the Loire, we might cite

above, the earliest version of this chapter was given as a contribution to the sessions at the Seventh International Medieval Congress at Leeds (2000) upon which that volume was based. I have addressed the general topic subsequently in GEE. 61 See, e.g., P. Heather, ‘Literacy and power in the migration period’ in A. Bowman & G. Woolf (ed.) Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 177–97; id., ‘State, lordship and community in the west (c. AD 400–600)’; E. James, ‘The militarisation of Roman society, 400–700’, in A. Nørgård Jørgensen & B.L. Claussen (ed.), Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective AD 1–1300 (Copenhagen, 1997), pp. 19–24. 62 Ammianus Marcellinus, Res Gestae, 14.6.7–24. J.C. Rolfe (trans.), Res Gestae: Ammianus Marcellinus (3 vols.: London 1935–39). J.F. Matthews, The Roman Empire of Ammianus (London, 1986), pp. 414–20; R. Rees, ‘Ammianus satyricus’, in J.W. Drijvers & D. Hunt (ed.), The Late Roman World and its Historian: Interpreting Ammianus Marcellinus (London, 1999), pp. 141–55 63 GEE; BMRW, ch. 3.

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the bagaudae;64 one Gallic aristocrat appears with his armed following in the eastern Empire65; several of Sidonius’ Gallic aristocratic associates are to be found in military contexts;66 in Spain the aristocratic cabals focused on the cities were capable of raising armed forces that could oppose and even defeat the armies of the Goths and Sueves;67 even in Italy it is clear that the local and even senatorial aristocracy was beginning to take on military functions.68 Furthermore, it is also evident that the fourth-century Roman army had been consciously adopting, as part of the creation of its own military identities, items which it thought were ‘barbarian’—whether these things actually were barbarian, or whether they were constructs, based upon ethnographic tradition, about what barbarian costume ought to be. Aristocratic ‘gentlemen officers’ were quite keen on sporting such costume.69 If the dominant form of male identity in the fourth century remained centred upon the established Roman values of civic masculinity, it is clear that an alternative military or martial Roman identity was emerging, one which, crucially stressed particular aspects that were quite antithetical to traditional ideas of civilised Roman conduct. Many of these were customarily associated with the barbarian.70 We might then perceive, during the fifth century, a gradual evolution from one situation, wherein there was an opposition between civic society and a barbarized army, into another opposition between civilian population and barbarian army. It has been suggested that during the imperial period, renegotiations of the stereotypical qualities of 64 For these figures, see R. Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley, 1985); J.F. Drinkwater, ‘The Bacaudae of fifth-century Gaul’, in J.F. Drinkwater and H. Elton (ed.), Fifth-century Gaul: A crisis of Identity? (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 208–17; C. Minor, ‘Bacaudae—a reconsideration.’ Traditio 51 (1996), pp. 297–307. 65 Life of Daniel the Stylite, 60. E. Dawes & N.H. Baynes (trans.), Three Byzantine Saints (London, 1948); ORz, p. 206 (above, p. 105). 66 BMRW, pp. 334–5, p. 495, nn. 168–9. 67 E.g. Hydatius, Chron. 179. R.W. Burgess (ed. & trans.), The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana. Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1993), pp. 1–172; Isidore of Seville, History of the Goths, 45: K. Baxter-Wolf (trans.), Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain (Liverpool, 1990), pp. 81–110. 68 BMRW, pp. 334–5. 69 Again, these points are presented more fully in GEE (where some caution is required) and BMRW. See also, for a more detailed treatment, M. Harlow, ‘Clothes maketh the man: power dressing and elite masculinity in the later Roman world’, in Brubaker & smith (ed.), Gender in the Early Medieval World, pp. 44–69. 70 GEE; BMRW, ch. 3; ch. 14.

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men and women, with women perhaps appropriating some of the civic virtues (such as learning) formerly appropriate only to men, Roman males had been forced to look to other areas, such as hunting, to symbolise their masculine qualities.71 In this light, we can see how the adoption of weaponry as a symbol of masculinity cannot easily be pinned simply upon barbarian settlement. As we have seen, weaponry was already appearing in Roman burial contexts even in the fourth century, either through the use of military status to claim power in local society, or through the appropriation of such symbols of power by the aristocracy, or perhaps through the use of weapons to symbolise the aristocratic pastime of hunting.72 Developing the fourth-century situation, barbarian ethnic identity was increasingly associated with the army in the fifth century, so that military costume could be described as barbarian costume,73 but this was a much more complex issue than the simple recruitment of non-Romans into the army. If there was an association, in the cemeteries of sixth-century northern Gaul, between weaponry, military service and martial masculinity, then it had developed on Gallic soil. The deployment of weaponry in burial ritual in the barbarian homeland was not particularly common until the fifth century and after, and even then remained less widespread than in the former provinces. There, masculinity seems to have been marked with other symbols, at least in funerary display.74 These changes were very likely exacerbated by the political events of the end of the western Empire and the attendant wars between various factions. All these factors feed into the deployment of weaponry as a crucially important component of the material construction of masculinity, but they also serve to show the complexity and subtlety of the picture. The other issue that might emerge from the examination of male and female burials in this chapter and Chapter 8 concerns whether there might have been a change in the way that gender was envisaged

71 J. Huskinson, ‘Women and learning: gender and identity in scenes of intellectual life on late Roman sarcophagi’, in R. Miles (ed.), Constructing Identities in Late Antiquity (London, 1999), pp. 190–213. 72 ALRF, p. 178 (above, p. 125). 73 P. von Rummel, ‘Habitus vandalorum? Zur Frage nach einer gruppen-spezifischen Kleidung der Vandalen in Nordafrika.’ Antiquité Tardive 10 (2002), pp. 131– 41; id., Habitus Barbarus: Kleidung und Repräsentation spätantiker Eliten im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr. (Berlin, 2007). 74 See above, pp. 143–4.

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between the Roman and post-imperial periods. In the Roman era civic Roman masculinity appears to have represented a single, central gendered fixed point, female identity being judged simply by its degree of difference or distance from this pole. In this, female status was no different from other, lesser forms of masculinity, or barbarism: judged positively (or shedding favourable light on male relatives) by the ability to acquire the characteristics associated with the Roman male, or negatively according to its failure to do so. There does not seem to have been a second, female pole. What seems to appear from the analysis of sixth-century burials is the existence of a more bipolar construction of gendered identity. While, as we have seen, there continued to be a masculine pole, now renegotiated to be strongly based around weaponry and other martial symbols, female burials were not defined (like children or ‘lesser’ men) simply by their failure to have acquired these artefacts. Instead there appears to have been a different focus for female identity based around a different group of artefacts, linked to dress and bodily adornment. One might object to the proposition that there was a ‘bipolar’ construction of gender by stressing the very fact that most feminine objects related to costume and appearance. Leaving dress adjuncts aside, one might claim that women were, like other members of society, positioned according to their failure to acquire the masculine artefacts linked to military service, or the hearth and household. However, the feminine cluster of artefact-types, as discussed in Chapters 8 and 9, was not a simple matter of female dress. Some was bodily adornment with, as suggested in the last chapter, clear symbolism related to female status. This costume was not deemed appropriate for all women, even reduced to simplified or purely functional form: the great majority of women over about forty do not, in Lorraine,75 even wear brooches in their graves. In other areas of the Merovingian world such women wear fewer and less elaborate items of apparel. Finally, in high-status female burials in the region, some women were buried with items not related to dress or adornment, such as bread-cutters and weaving batons, which are never found in male graves. It does, then, seem that there was an opposing, female pole in the conception of gender. As has been noted, whereas most children were artefactually neutral, although a very few had some masculine symbols, it was

75

The pattern is different in other regions.

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more common for children to be artefactually feminine. In Chapter 8 I explained this as, on balance, relating to the young age of betrothal for some girls and that would still be my preferred explanation. If, however, one pursued another option, that the items of jewellery in these graves instead reveal that, as in other societies, children could be constructed as feminine, then one might have a subtle difference from the Roman situation. Rather than being grouped with women on account of their shared failure to acquire the characteristics of the male,76 children would instead actively be placed towards a different, opposite, feminine pole of identity. The topic of change can be pursued by returning to a common theme in my discussion of Merovingian burials, the changes that took place around 600. Archaeologically this might be most clearly visible in the change in the proportion of masculine, especially weapon burials. At Lavoye in Phase 3 (c. 600–c. 675), there were twenty-four adult AB.1-graves to twelve adult AB.2. Sex predictions were less common in this phase of the cemetery but even so the number of adult male ‘neutral’ burials (B-, Bx- and E-graves) totalled only a further eleven burials. Thus from constituting 37% of the sample of adult male graves in the sixth-century phase, weapon burials rose to constitute just over 50%. They increased slightly from 62% to 66% of the masculine burials. Artefactually masculine burials rose from 62% to 76%. B-graves were unsexed at the seventh-century site of Audun-le-Tiche but all of the artefactually-masculine burials had weapons. This was a change in diametrically the opposite direction from that visible among female burials, where a dramatic fall in the number of artefactually female graves and of the number and variety of feminine grave-goods was attested at a number of sites. Comparison of the sixth-century Pactus Legis Salicae with seventhcentury Lex Ribvaria reveals important changes in the discussion of ethnicity. From being a parallel, if less privileged, portion of the male population, the Romans of northern Gaul have sunk to forming part of the semi-free population, dependent at law upon Ripuarian Frankish freemen.77 By this time, we can observe a change in naming practices, with Frankish names dominating all levels of society, even the church, 76

In the Roman case this would be their common inability (shared with barbarians and animals) to overcome elemental passions and acquire the moderation and reason characteristic of the Roman male. 77 S&S pp. 31–32 & references.

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where Graeco-Roman or Christian/biblical names had predominated in the sixth century.78 It is clear that, perhaps with some exceptions in the unusual area around Trier,79 the free population of the region regarded itself as Frankish. It does not seem unreasonable, in the light of the discussion above, to link the proportionate increase (among masculine burials) in weapon-graves with this spread of Frankish ethnic identity. The reasons for this spread are not difficult to find when one considers the advantages of Frankish identity described earlier. Those that had not managed to make this ethnic shift by c. 600, it seems, lost most of their status as freemen. These transformations might possibly be viewed in connection with a change in decorative style. About the middle of the sixth century a new style, known as Salin’s Style II was introduced into Gaul, probably from Scandinavia.80 This style does not seem to reach into the precise area under discussion but what is interesting for our purposes is that this artistic style was (unlike its ‘predecessor’, Style I) in its first phases limited to masculine artefacts. Karen Høilund Nielsen has linked this to ‘Germanic’ political identities but the historical basis for such a supposition is weak.81 One might instead see it as a further emphasis being laid upon a particular type of masculinity on the fringes of the Austrasian kingdom (the fact that the style is peripheral even within Austrasia renders unlikely its use as an Austrasian political badge, deployed in opposition to supposedly ‘Roman’ Neustria). It might be, given the association between the style and weaponry, have been a further way of emphasising the dominant Frankish masculinity, and in this we can retain some elements of Høilund Nielsen’s argument (provided we shear it of the unfortunate term ‘Germanic’). This change is in turn probably to be linked with an interesting renegotiation of the artefacts that symbolised gender. It would seem

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Ibid., p. 32. See BW, p. 72 (above, pp. 228–9). 80 On Style II, see G. Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art and its Germanic Background (Oxford, 1980); K. Høilund Nielsen, ‘Animal art and the weapon burial rite—a political badge?’ in C. Kjeld Jensen & K. Høilund Nielsen (ed.), Burial and Society: The Chronological and Social analysis of Archaeological Burial Data (Aarhus, 1997), pp. 129–48 (with care, regarding the historical conclusions); ead., ‘Archaeology and History: complementary sources’, Archaeological Review from Cambridge 14.1 (1997), pp. 37–57; ead. ‘Style II and the Anglo-Saxon elite’, in T.M. Dickinson & D. Griffiths (ed.), The Making of Kingdoms (Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10) (Oxford, 1999), pp. 185–202. 81 Høilund Nielsen, ‘Animal art and the weapon burial rite—a political badge?’; ead., ‘Archaeology and History: complementary sources’. 79

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that, through time, some women came to be buried with belts, hitherto usually found in male graves,82 and that the plaque-buckle, at one point a male item, was adopted by women too. This shift led to masculinity being symbolized by bigger buckles and plaques attached to the sets. These plaques and the plaque-buckles were often much more lavishly decorated than had been the case earlier. This decoration frequently took a form related to the Style II just mentioned. This, it would appear, was a male response to the adoption by women of hitherto masculine items of apparel. Indeed, by the seventh century, Style II had also begun to appear on feminine items. These points—the increasing dominance of one form of masculinity, based around Frankish ethnicity, its spread and subordination of the alternatives, the adoption by women of some masculine items and symbols, and the increasing rarity of feminine artefacts and assemblages—allow the suggestion that the conceptualisation of gender might have been changing again, back towards one more closely resembling that of the Roman era. Although the dominant form of masculinity had decisively changed from a civic to a martial model, it may be that by the seventh century gender was coming to be defined, again, in terms of distance from a single masculine pole. A separate feminine pole seems rather less important in the seventh-century archaeological data. There were, then, many Merovingian masculinities. In its construction, masculinity changed from place to place, and context to context, being moderated by ethnic identity and age. It was also complex; we can see the nuances of its conceptualization by looking at different forms of data. The case of the Poitevin mentioned by Gregory of Tours, who dressed up as a woman probably because he was impotent, adds a yet further dimension to the discussion, but is discussed separately in the previous chapter.83 Masculinity was also dynamic. It was in constant renegotiation frequently as the result of interaction between different regions, between gender and social class, and through local social competition. In short, like Merovingian female status, as discussed in Chapter 8, Merovingian masculinity was a complex, subtle, diverse and ever changing kaleidoscope.

82 83

See above, p. 361, for the symbolism of the belt. Above, pp. 323–5.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GROWING UP IN MEROVINGIAN GAUL*

As with many areas of Merovingian social history, the obvious place to start an enquiry into growing up in Merovingian Gaul is with the saints’ lives. There are important problems with these sources, of which the first is deciding what, in the seven fat volumes of the Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, is reliable material as opposed to Carolingian or later fiction, and this is by no means easy, as there are few ground rules.1 Many Lives once condemned as forgeries have been reinstated; some of those once thought genuine have had doubts cast upon their authenticity. Between the canon of indubitably Merovingian hagiography and the larger corpus of undoubtedly later invention lies a substantial grey area. Other problems concern the filter and the genre of hagiography. Hagiographers, if they knew their subjects at all, knew them late in life and in a religious setting.2 Their view of their

* This chapter originated as a paper presented to a seminar series on ‘youth’ at the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies in spring 1995. Other papers given in the series were published in P.J.P. Goldberg & F. Riddy (ed.), Youth in the Middle Ages (York, 2004). An abbreviated version of this paper was presented to the third International Medieval Congress at Leeds in 1996. My thanks go to the members of the audiences of both papers for feedback and discussion. 1 I.N. Wood, ‘Forgery in Merovingian hagiography’, in MGH Schriften 33: Fälschungen im Mittelalter. Internationaler Kongress der M.G.H., München 16–19 Sept., 1986 (V: Fingierte Briefe Frömigkeit und Falschung Realienfälschung) (Hanover, 1988), pp. 369–84. On the genre, see also P. Fouracre, ‘Merovingian history and Merovingian hagiography.’ P&P 127 (1990), pp. 3–38; W. Levison, Wattenbach-Levison: Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter: I. Heft: Die Vorzeit von den Anfängen der Karolinger (Weimar, 1953), pp. 119–56; F. Lifshitz, ‘Beyond positivism and genre: “Hagiographical” texts as historical narrative.’ Viator 25 (1994), pp. 95–113; W.S. van Egmond, Conversing with the Saints: Communication in pre-Carolingian Hagiography from Auxerre (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 6–11; I.N. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450–751 (London, 1994), pp. 249–51. Compare, for example, the comments on the Vita of Audoin by P. Fouracre, ‘The work of Audoenus of Rouen and Eligius of Noyon in extending Episcopal influence from the town to the country in seventh-century Neustria’, in D. Baker (ed.), The Church in Town and Countryside (Studies in Church History 16) (Oxford, 1979), pp. 77–91, p. 78, n. 5, and those by Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, p. 151. See also n. 9, below. 2 One of the problems with the use of hagiography to study family structures by L. Theis, ‘Saints sans famille? Quelques remarques sur la famille dans le monde franc

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hero’s or heroine’s childhood is necessarily hazy. It can, moreover, be somewhat stereotypical; the youth of the saints often appears rather standardized, often the result of the influence of one text on another or of the rules of the hagiographic genre. There is also a geographical and chronological bias to our evidence. Almost all our sixth-century hagiographies were written by and about southerners; only in the seventh century do northern saints’ lives appear. The latter are the product of clear changes in north Gallic society, which makes arguing back from them fruitless. All these problems will be highlighted in the course of this chapter. The first issue to address is the terminology for childhood and youth.3 As a rule one progressed from being a boy (puer) or girl (puella), through to adolescence, and thence into adulthood. The occasional use of the term iuvenis to describe youth, apparently spanning adolescence and early adulthood, clouds matters somewhat, and the sequence is, overall, by no means clear-cut. Gregory of Tours, as always, sets the tone.4 Writing his Life of Bracchio in the late sixth century, he says that as an adolescent (adolescens), Bracchio served a powerful man called Sigivald. Later in the very same chapter, however, he refers to Bracchio as a puer (boy).5 Another Life in Gregory’s Vita Patrum, that of Venantius, says that Venantius was ordered to marry by his father when he arrived at ‘juvenile age’ (iuvenilis aetas); later in that chapter,

à travers les sources hagiographiques.’ Revue Historique 225 (1976), pp. 3–20. It is no coincidence that one of the most detailed accounts of a saint’s family background, that of Saint Liudger, was written by a relative: S. Lebecq, ‘La famille et les apprentissages de Liudger d’après les premiers chapitres de la Vita Liudgeri d’Altfrid’, in M. Sot et al. (ed.), Haut Moyen Age. Culture, Éducation et Société. Études offertes à Pierre Riché (Paris, 1990), pp. 283–99. 3 E. James, ‘Childhood and youth in the Early Middle Ages’, in Goldberg & Riddy (ed.), Youth in the Middle Ages, pp. 11–23, also discusses this issue. Once again our interests converge. Drawing on many of the same sources, many (though far from all) of our conclusions are similar; they were, however, reached independently. James concentrates more heavily on Gregory of Tours. Other pertinent comments on ideas of the stages of youth in the Merovingian world can be found in M. de Jong, In Samuel’s Image: Child Oblation in the Early Medieval West (Leiden, 1996), pp. 28–40. 4 Curiously, M. Weidemann, Kulturgeschichte der Merowingerzeit nach den Werken Gregors von Tours (2 vols.; Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Forschungsinstitut für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, Monographien 3: Mainz, 1982), has nothing on childhood, adolescence and socialisation except for brief comments at vol. 1, pp. 316–7. 5 VP 12.2.

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he too is also called ‘boy’ (puer).6 In his Life of Nicetius of Lyon, Gregory describes himself at ‘about the age of eight’ as an ‘adolescent’.7 The same sequence of ages is attested in the seventh and eighth centuries. The Lives of Eligius and Lambert both use exactly the same words: ‘leaving the years of boyhood, he passed the age of adolescence with industry’ (pueritiae annos excedens, aevum adulescentiae cum industriae gerebat).8 I assume the Vita Landeberti is copying the Vita Eligii, but the latter is a difficult, much corrupted text.9 The Life of the seventh-century saint Amandus says of its hero, apparently copying the phrase from the Passio of St. Simphorianus, ‘when now passing adolescence, he grew in virile strength . . .’ (cum iam adulescentiam transiens in robur migraret virile . . .).10 The general theory that one progressed through childhood through adolescence to adulthood, is there, but so is the vagueness within texts. The author of the Vita Amandi, having spoken of adolescence and virile strength, saw nothing contradictory in referring to Amandus as a ‘boy’ in the next two chapters.11 Likewise, the author of the seventh-century Vita Balthildis, whilst talking of Balthild’s adolescence, continued to call her a puella.12 The Life of Emmeram more or less begins by saying ‘there was a boy called Emmeram, who, since his boyhood, began to despise the world . . .’13 So, you didn’t have to be a boy to be a boy, but it helped. The confusion is largely produced by other uses of the word puer, to which I shall return. For now, it seems that a puer was a male sub-adult,

6

VP 16.1. VP 8.2: ‘in adolescentiamea cum primum litterarum elementa coepissem agnoscere etessem quasi octavi anni aevo’. 8 Vita Eligii 3. B. Krusch (ed.), MGH SRM 4 (Hanover, 1902), pp. 663–741, at p. 671. A translation may be found at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/eligius. html (accessed 31 October, 2007). Vita Landiberti 2: B. Krusch & W. Levison (ed.) MGH SRM 6 (Hanover, 1913), pp. 353–84. 9 Fouracre, ‘The work of Audoenus of Rouen and Eligius of Noyon’, p. 78, n. 5. 10 Vita Amandi 1. B. Krusch & W. Levison (ed.) MGH SRM 5 (Hanover, 1910), pp. 428–49. 11 Vita Amandi 2 (. . . puer, sicut ipsa paciebatur aetasi . . .), 3 (. . . cum adhuc in puerili esset aetate . . .). 12 Vita Baltechildis 2–3. B. Krusch (ed.) MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1888), pp. 475– 508. 13 Vita Haimrhammi B. Krusch (ed.), MGH SRM 4 (Hanover, 1902), pp. 452–524, at p. 473: ‘ex qua ortus est puer nomine Haimhrammus qui a puerili aetate coepit mundum despicere’. 7

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however defined; Sigibert III, not yet aged forty days, is a puer in the Vita Amandi;14 other pueri might be adolescents or even older. It is very difficult to pin precise ages on the points of transition from pueritia to adolescentia or from adolescence to manly estate. The best we can be is relative. In the sixth century, Gregory of Tours almost universally gives ages as round numbers, usually decades.15 These are, it appears, short-hand for ‘quite old’, ‘old’, ‘very old’, ‘ancient’ and, conversely, ‘boy’ or ‘young man’. When, in his Histories, he says that Sichar, killed at the end of a “feud” in which he had participated for two or three years, was ‘aged about twenty’, we can only doubt that this was the case, for reasons which will be developed below.16 The use of lustra (units of five years) as a convenient unit for the estimate of ages further emphasises the problem about using precise ages, and it would seem that even superficially precise ages given in sources should be treated with some circumspection.17 Gregory of Tours twice refers to small children only learning to walk at the age of three.18 Gregory describes his own childhood in the mid-sixth century, at various points.19 He seems to have begun to read in his own house before being sent for education with his maternal great-uncle, Nicetius of Lyon, by the age of eight. Avitus of Clermont might have been another tutor.20 Gregory was destined for the church but his youth seems to have followed a standard pattern for southern Gallic aristocratic children, and perhaps for northerners too. Radegund was taught to read and write in her adolescence, on royal orders.21 She was being groomed for queenship but there were plenty of other northern, Frankish aristocrats who were well able to participate in the literary culture of the day.22 After school, education could take place in the household 14

Vita Amandi 17. M. Handley, Death, Society and Culture: Inscriptions and Epitaphs in Gaul and Spain, AD 300–750 (BAR (I) 1135; Oxford, 2003), pp. 75–76. 16 LH 9.19. CP. VSEMW; REMV. 17 Handley, Death, Society and Culture, pp. 73–88, for important discussion. 18 GC 82; VSM 3.16; James ‘Childhood and youth’, p. 17. 19 GC 39; GM 83; VSJ 24–25; VP 2.2, 8.2. 20 R. Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, 1983), pp. 50–81, for excellent discussion of Gregory’s life and (at p. 60, n. 48) doubts about the extent to which Avitus was Gregory’s teacher in a formal sense. 21 Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Radegundae 2. B. Krusch (ed.) MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1888), pp. 364–77. J.-A. McNamara (with J.E. Halborg & G. Whatley) (trans.), Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (Durham NC, 1992), pp. 70–86, at p. 71. 22 See the letters collected in the Ep. Aust. On the involvement of the Merovingian Frankish élite in traditional epistolary culture, see Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms, 15

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of a magnate. Patroclus, from earlier sixth-century Berry went into the service of Nunnio, a man at the court of King Childebert I of Paris.23 This pattern continues into the seventh century. Eligius went into the apprenticeship of a goldsmith called Abbo, from whom he learnt his trade, before going north to the royal court and entering the patronage (patrocinium) of the treasurer, Bobo.24 After that he arrived at adult age and, worried about his sins, ‘confessed his whole adolescence’.25 It seems that Eligius’ ‘adolescence’ could well have lasted a long time. After some preliminary education, St. Arnulf was given over to Gundulf ‘the sub-regulus’ (a relative of Gregory of Tours, as it happens) and entered palatine service.26 Lambert, too, was given over to ‘wise men’ before entering the patronage of a bishop and then taking service at the palace.27 What the Lives do not agree about, is at what age all these things happened. Eligius entered Abbo’s service after he ‘left boyish age’ as we saw earlier. He seems to have been considered an adolescent throughout the career just outlined. Praiectus of Clermont (also seventh-century) was given over to be educated whilst a ‘boy’.28 Gaugeric of Cambrai was at school as a puerolus (little boy), whilst Sisebut describes the early seventh-century martyr, Desiderius of Vienne, as having been sent to school only when he legally came of age.29 St. Audoin (if he is to be identified with the author of the extant Vita Eligii) describes himself as living at the royal court as a puerolus, whilst Eligius was working wonders as a goldsmith.30 So there is some

pp. 24–27; id. ‘Administration. law and culture in Merovingian Gaul’ in R. McKitterick (ed.), The uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 63–81. 23 VP 9.1. 24 Vita Eligii 4. 25 Vita Eligii 7. 26 Vita Arnulfi B. Krusch (ed.) MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1888), pp. 426–46. The precise relationship of Gundulf to Gregory is unclear. Gregory may have erred in calling him his maternal great uncle. It is, however, given the differences in male and female age at marriage, just possible that a brother of Nicetius of Lyon was still active as a dux in the 580s. 27 Vita Landiberti 2. 28 Passio Praiecti 2–3. B. Krusch & W. Levison (ed.) MGH SRM 5 (Hanover, 1910), pp. 212–48. 29 Vita Gaugerici 2. B. Krusch (ed.), MGH SRM 3 (Hanover, 1896), pp. 649–58; M. Rouche, ‘Vie de St. Géry, écrite par un clerc de la basilique de Cambrai entre 650 et 700.’ Revue du Nord, 68, no. 269 (1986), pp. 281–88. Vita Desiderii auctore Sisebuto 2. B. Krusch (ed.), MGH SRM 3 (Hanover, 1896), pp. 630–37. 30 Vita Eligii 6. The word may imply modesty rather than age-related or other status within the group.

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vagueness within texts and few or no general rules from one text to another but, in view of the diverse origins (geographical and chronological) of the saints under discussion, that is probably not surprising. Given the rules of the genre, the discrepancies may be more significant than the similarities. We can put together a fairly typical course for ‘growing up’, but we do not know at what biological age the various stages took place, or indeed what general age people were said to be when they were at these stages. * * * Gregory’s Life of Leobardus says that when the holy man arrived at legal majority his parents betrothed him to a girl (puella).31 Here are two key issues: age of legal majority and age of betrothal or marriage. We know something about the age of legal majority. The early sixthcentury Pactus Legis Salicae which, at least initially, applied to Gaul north of the Loire and west of the Ardennes, says quite a lot about youth.32 It says that men and women came of age at twelve. Before that age, it seems that boys, like girls, wore their hair long and were not held liable for crimes. This would appear to be the case from the apparent equation of the puer crinitus (long-haired boy) with a boy under twelve.33 Killing a boy below the age of twelve brought the heavy fine of 600 solidi, three times that for killing an adult free man. Acquiring legal maturity appears to have been marked by some degree of ceremony surrounding the cutting of the boy’s hair and the bestowal upon him of gifts by his father.34 Female children were not valued at the 600-solidi wergild; they acquired that when they began to bear children.35 Apart from these discussions of pueri, the Pactus also mentions the Pueri Regis, the King’s Boys, to whom we shall return. The Burgundian Book of Constitutions, compiled around 518 or so, gives fourteen or fifteen as the age of majority.36 The career of king Childebert II of Austrasia, as unravelled from the Histories of Gregory of Tours, is perhaps instructive. This is not an easy under-

31

VP 20.1. E.g. PLS 24, 41. 33 Cp. PLS 24.1–2, 24.4, 41.18. James, ‘Childhood and youth’, p. 12. 34 PLS 24.2, 67, 97. 35 PLS 24. 8, 41.15–16, 65e.2–3. 36 Liber Constitutionum 47.3, 87.1. L.R. de Salis (ed.), MGH Legum Sectio I (Legum Nationum Germanicarum) 2.1 (Hanover, 1892). K.F. Drew (trans.), The Burgundian Code (Philadelphia, 1949; reprinted 1972). 32

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taking as Gregory clearly describes actions by the young king which must instead rather have been carried out by the senior palace officials who were running the court during his minority.37 Nevertheless some points emerge. Guntramn of Burgundy adopted the young king as his heir in a ceremony shortly after his seventh birthday.38 In his description, however, Gregory of Tours specifies that the leading role was played by the king’s advisors. Childebert is nevertheless said fairly unambiguously to have led (or, more plausibly, at least to have accompanied) the Frankish army into Italy in 584, aged fourteen, and clearly went on campaign with his troops before that, when still thirteen.39 By October of the same year, the adolescent king is encountered sending messengers to his uncle, Guntramn of Burgundy.40 This seems to be the first time that the king is described directly as saying something himself, even if through legates (legatos ad Gunthchramnum regem mittit dicens . . .). Not long after, early in 585, Childebert is depicted in Guntramn’s company, questioning messengers from the pretender Gundovald and the Burgundian king gave his nephew a spear and the governance of various cities at the same time. In this chapter Guntramn clearly envisages Childebert as being able to rule in his own right. This ritual seems to have taken place at about the time of (though perhaps just before) Childebert’s fifteenth birthday.41

37 E.g. LH 6.11, where, still before his twelfth birthday, he sends envoys (legatos . . . mittit) to Guntramn, demanding the return of half of Marseille. 38 LH 5.17. Childebert, we learn (LH 8.4) was born at Easter (6 April) 570, and Gregory tells us that this meeting with Guntramn took place shortly after an earth tremor in Chinon, which took place on Easter Sunday (25 April, 577). 39 LH 6.42. ‘Childeberthus vero rex in Italia abiit. . . . Patratisque cum his omnibus quae voluit, rex in Galliis est regressus . . .’ This happened, as one might expect, between about May and September 584, during the usual campaigning season (on which see W&S, pp. 145–7). It occurred before Chilperic’s murder, which itself took place after 1 September (cp. LH 6.45–46) and after the birth of Chlothar II (LH 6.41). At LH 7.7, which must describe events shortly after Chilperic’s death, Gregory tells us that Chlothar had been born four months previously, thus around May 584. The theological debate related at LH 6.40 took place at Easter 584 (2 April). As Childebert’s birthday was in April (see previous note), the Austrasian monarch must have just turned fourteen at the time of the campaign, and Gregory’s language makes it clear that he accompanied his troops, as indeed he clearly did in the abortive campaign against Guntramn of Burgundy in 583 (LH 6.31), still aged thirteeen. There he is clearly stated to have been accompanied by his leading palatine advisors and the same, one imagines, was the case in Italy. 40 LH 7.6. 41 LH 7.33. The exact chronology is unclear but Gundovald’s arrival at St-Bertrandde-Comminges is mentioned as taking place at the start of Lent (mid-February), 585, in the next chapter, LH 7.34. The events were surely then fairly close in time to Childe-

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When Gregory was inventing his chronology for Clovis’ reign, he made him reign a good, standard thirty years.42 A later scribe appears to have assumed that Clovis therefore died aged forty-five, which might mean that his assumption was that he became king at fifteen.43 In the early seventh century, the Austrasian law-code, Lex Ribvaria, gives fifteen as the age of majority for men and women.44 It does not repeat the Pactus’ comments about lack of legal responsibility, or about long hair. I shall return to try to explain why this may have been. So, legal majority occurred some time around puberty. As we saw, Gregory’s Life of Leobardus appears to say that when he was of legal majority he was expected to get engaged.45 There is a similar tale in Gregory’s Life of Venantius, who was betrothed at juvenile age.46 This, and the laws, would appear to support the idea that men and women married at about the same age. However, if we look at the epitaphs written by Venantius Fortunatus, we can add some important information.47 According to Venantius, girls could be betrothed before puberty, and married at thirteen or so. However, although this is a tiny sample, Venantius never mentions a wife for a man under thirty (Table 11.1). The epitaphs from St. Matthias, Trier, support this picture to some extent.48 Though spanning a broader date-range, again, a wife or children is only attested for one male under thirty years of age.49 By contrast, this evidence again suggests a younger age of marriage for females (Table 11.2). That is not all. It was far from untypical in Gregory’s Gaul for women (apart from those who died in childbirth) to outlive their husbands, often by a long time. Gregory lost his father early, but his mother bert’s fifteenth birthday. The dates in James, ‘Childhood and youth’, p. 22, for Childebert’s accession and coming of age are—curiously—both out by five years. 42 LH 2.43. CGCS, p. 117 (above, p. 170), n. 8. 43 Krusch & Levison believed the age of death to be an interpolation. MGH SRM 1.1, p. 93. 44 Lex Ribv. 84. 45 VP 20.1. Above, p. 388. 46 VP 16.1; Qui dum esset iuvenili aetate florens . . . 47 Venantius Fortunatus, Carmina, Book 4. M. Reydellet, (ed. & trans.), Venance Fortunat: Poèmes: Livres I–IV (Paris, 2002). 48 N. Gauthier, Recueil des Inscriptions Chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures à la Renaissance Carolingienne. 1. Première Belgique, (Paris, 1975). Inscriptions are cited as RICG I + number. 49 RICG I.62, though if Victorinus and his wife were 28 and 16, the idea that their daughter was old enough to raise an epitaph on her own seems peculiar.

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lived for decades afterwards.50 Nicetius of Lyon was the same.51 This would imply, like Venantius’ evidence, a significant difference in age at marriage. The key to the discrepancy may also be found in Gregory’s hagiography. The Vitae of both Leobardus and Venantius both give the impression of a, perhaps considerable, lapse of time between betrothal and marriage.52 We should probably also allow some latitude to Gregory’s ‘when he had arrived at legal majority’ (or ‘at juvenile age’), 53 and not assume that betrothal took place immediately. The key element in bringing about attempts to make Leobardus and Patroclus marry was the death of their fathers, which might be significant. In Gregory’s Life of Bracchio, it only becomes apparent to his relatives that he is not going to marry after the death of his master, Sigivald.54 Patroclus lived, unmarried, at Childebert I’s court for some time before, on his father’s death, his mother asked him to marry.55 Indeed all the seventh-century young men in palatine service appear to have been unmarried. Arnulf of Metz’s marriage took place at some unspecified point during his palatine career (but given that his son Chlodulf allegedly lived into the 690s, he may well have married late).56 50 VP 8.2, where Gregory, aged eight (thus in c. 546), is being taught in the household of his great uncle, Nicetius of Lyon. His mother Armentaria was still alive in the later 580s, when Gregory visited her in Chalon-sur-Sâone (VSM 3.60). 51 VP 8.1. 52 VP 16.1, 20.1. 53 dum esset iuvenili aetate florens (VP 16.1); cum ad legitimam aetatem pervenisset (VP 20.1). 54 VP 12.2 55 VP 9.1. 56 Vita Arnulfi 4–5. The narrative suggests that the marriage took place after Arnulf established himself through his military career. Chlodulf was apparently alive in 659: Liber de virtutibus sanctae Geretrudis 2. B. Krusch (ed.) MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1888), pp. 464–71. Views of the date of the Vita Arnulfi vary: L. Cracco Ruggini, ‘The crisis of the noble saint: The “Vita Arnulfi’’ ’ in J. Fontaine & J.N. Hillgarth (ed.) The Seventh Century. Change and Continuity (London, 1992), pp. 116–153, believed it to be written by a contemporary. Wood, ‘Forgery’, p. 371, argues by contrast that the Life post-dates its subject by up to a century. In S&S, p. 15, n. 7, I suggested a date in the 660s-680s, during the Arnulfings’ removal from the heart of politics. This dating is part of my contention that the Carolingian tradition of descent from Arnulf is accurate (S&S, pp. 15–16, 263, n. 1), which I would still stand by. I.N. Wood, ‘Genealogy defined by women: the case of the Pippinids’ in L. Brubaker & J.M.H. Smith (ed.) Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300–900 (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 234–56, p. 236, n. 11, points out that the use of the word avus in a Pippinid charter of 715 casts doubt on my stress on the word as technically accurate in a charter of 687. This it does, though not, I suggest, decisively; the phrase could have been lifted in its entirety from the earlier document. Whether it casts doubt on my whole case, as

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Study of the evidence available for Merovingian kings suggests that they married and began to have children as soon as they reached majority. It is difficult to generalise from the Merovingians, who do appear to have adopted several strategies to differentiate themselves from the remainder of the population. This might have been one such. However, closer study suggests that early marriage and fatherhood might instead have been a practical response to royal minorities. When a king succeeded as a boy, as did Childebert II, there was a pressing need for him to produce an heir as soon as possible. As the majority of Merovingians after 575 succeeded as children, this practical political requirement may well distort the picture. This section can end by signalling a number of questions. Given the difference in marital age, how significant, and in what ways, was the law’s stipulation of identical ages of legal majority for males and females? What was its significance for gender construction? Where did it leave the sequence of ages—boy, adolescent, man—given in the hagiographies and the ‘theoretical’ sources? From the written evidence we emerge confused: we may have a string of different transitions— those through notional ages, that to legal majority, that to betrothed and married status—which may not run parallel to each other or synchronically between the sexes.57 * * * We can unravel this to some degree by looking at archaeological evidence. Throughout the foregoing discussion, regional, chronological and stylistic provenances of the different sources have been signalled wherever possible and thereby possible differences and changes have been highlighted. The nature of the written evidence is, nevertheless, such that it almost inevitably makes things look more or less the same. The advantages of archaeological evidence are that it is much more plentiful and that it points up very interesting, local, regional and chronological differences in detail. What follows is a brief, provisional

Wood contends, is perhaps more questionable as the 687 charter was only one, albeit important, element of my argument. 57 James, ‘Childhood and youth’, also draws attention to this terminological confusion, using some other sources.

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and preliminary sketch of children’s and adolescents’ burials in some parts of the Merovingian world.58 In the northern regions of the Merovingian realms, where gravegoods were buried with the dead, we may consider whether children and adolescents (in our terms) were buried with gender-specific artefacts. We can examine the overall attention given to the burials of these age groups in terms of the construction of the grave as well as the lavishness of the material placed in it, and we can study the cemetery’s organization to see whether children were interred together or placed with adults in family groups. The survey will begin in Lorraine, with the cemeteries of the region of Metz upon which the other chapters in this volume focus. Child burials here are easily described. In the sixth century, children are very often buried with no grave-goods at all. If they have grave-goods these usually do not include gender-specific grave-goods, but are usually simple pottery and other ‘gender-neutral’ items.59 However, a significant number are buried with feminine artefacts, jewellery, usually necklaces and bracelets. At Dieue-sur-Meuse, however, child burials were buried with, for the region, unusually high numbers of feminine objects, and of grave-goods overall, though still less than adults.60 There are a few older children buried with masculine items like flints and strike-a-lights, but only one with weapons (Ennery grave 70), which is thus extremely unusual, and further examination of the grave only underlines how special it is.61 Whatever the case, child-burials are poorly furnished with grave-goods, though they usually do receive individual burials. Sometimes they are clustered together but generally they appear to have been scattered throughout the site. Males continued during adolescence to be interred in poorly-furnished graves, with very few masculine items and no weaponry. From puberty, however, women received increasing numbers of feminine artefacts and often quite lavish arrays of jewellery.62 Males were buried

58 For another brief survey, see F. Vallet, ‘Die Ausstattung der Kindergräber’, in A. Wieczorek, P. Périn, K. von Welck & W. Menghin (ed.), Die Franken: Wegberieter Europas (2nd edition; Mainz, 1997), pp. 712–5. 59 See FSP (above, pp. 289–314); S&S, pp. 79–83, and above, pp. 327–34, for discussion of how the gender significance of particular objects was established, and discussion of the problems. 60 S&S, pp. 147–9 61 See above, pp. 359, 373. 62 Discussed at length in FSP (above, pp. 289–314).

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with lavish grave-goods, including the full array of weaponry, only from the age of about twenty. They were distinguished from their elders, who often have more lavish burials, but, at Ennery at least, less weaponry.63 There were changes, in this as in most other things, in the seventh century. Though the general rules persisted, quite lavish child-burials are found, as at Lavoye, and at Audun-le-Tiche there are possibly three adolescent males buried with weapons.64 On the whole, though, the increasing standardization of grave-goods means that children are much more difficult to distinguish from adults in terms of funerary artefacts. The prime casualties of the reduction in grave-goods were gender-specific artefacts, which again makes the discussion of adolescent burials more difficult. Also in the seventh century, with the much more common appearance of sarcophagi, a further change might be discerned in the provision of such containers for children as often as for adults (at least at Audun-le-Tiche).65 Although grave-goods were not deemed appropriate, families still expended resources on an expensive receptacle for the corpse. Family groups became slightly clearer in the seventh century, with children included in these, as at MoyeuvreGrande.66 Neighbouring the civitas of Metz to the north of Lorraine is the Triererland. Here, from the catalogues published by Böhner in 1958, it is difficult to draw many conclusions, as the data is old and not given in detail.67 We may note that many sites yield child-graves without gravegoods, and some with isolated jewellery (the child-burials at Hohenfels, where there also seems to have been a cluster of child-graves, look much like those from Lorraine).68 There are, however, some possible child-graves with weapons at Ehrang, Eisenach and Rittersdorf

63

Above, pp. 359–60, 369–70. Audun graves 103 a and b and 178. S&S, p. 155. 65 S&S, p. 157. Graves 5, 6, 14, 23, 24, 40 and 44; A. Simmer, La Nécropole Mérovingienne d’Audun-le-Tiche (Paris, 1988). 66 S&S, pp. 102–3; M. Clermont-Joly, L’Époque Mérovingienne (Catalogues des collections des Musées de Metz 1) (Metz, 1978), pp. 36–37; A. Simmer, ‘Le nord du département de la Moselle à l’époque mérovingienne.’ RAE 38 (1987), pp. 333–96, at pp. 346–53. 67 K. Böhner, Die fränkischen Altertümer des Triererlandes (2 vols; Germanische Denkmäler der Völkerwanderungszeit B.1: Berlin 1958). 68 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 42–53. 64

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(though no case is in any way certain: all could be short adults).69 If they were genuine it would imply a different attitude to the construction of masculinity. These instances are, nevertheless, doubtful and that apart the picture seems generally similar to that in Lorraine. In the civitas-capital, Trier, the epigraphic tradition appears to suggest some different treatment of different age-grades, however.70 This pattern may be typical for northern Gaul. At the large cemetery at Frénouville (dép. Calvados), judging from the length of their graves, there are perhaps sixty child-burials.71 A very similar pattern appears to that in Lorraine. None of these burials has weapons; a few have ‘neutral’ artefacts like pottery and (in the seventh century) belt-sets; a larger number have feminine artefacts like jewellery, but this last group are those which occupy graves towards the longer end of the group examined (into which it is just about possible that some small adults intruded). Weapons do not seem to appear until grave-length reaches well over two metres. Here and in Lorraine we have a situation where children are far more likely to be given feminine gravegoods, and in which female adolescents receive the artefacts associated with their gender whilst males do not. In these terms it does not seem unreasonable to postulate some effective difference in the age of socialization.

69 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 14–19 (Ehrang), 19–33 (Eisenach), 113–36 (Rittersdorf ). Ehrang grave 72 was a child with a sax. Eisenach grave 28 contained a sax. This only was intact but only 1.8m long, slightly longer than the cut-off point I used at Frénouville but considerably shorter than other weapon graves on the site, which tended to be over 2m long. A similar point might be made about Rittersdorf grave 40, which contained a spear. Likelier candidates are Rittersdorf grave 48, 1.5m long, with an axe, and the 1.45-metre-long grave 70 which contained a francisca. Neither grave contained good skeletal remains and, excavated in 1901, their integrity is far from secure. The same must a fortiori be true of grave 60, 1.7 m long, with no skeletal remains and containing a shield-boss alone (an extremely unlikely inventory!). 70 See BW, pp. 69–72 (above, pp. 225–9) for discussion. 71 C. Pilet, La Nécropole de Frénouville (3 vols.: BAR(I) 83: Oxford, 1983). There has been detailed physical anthropology carried out on the Frénouville burials: L. Buchet, ‘La nécropole gallo-romaine et mérovingienne de Frénouville (Calvados), étude anthropologique.’ Archéologie Médiévale 8 (1978), pp. 5–53. No simple report is made, unfortunately, of the age and sex of the occupants of each grave; what we are given instead is skull-shapes; see B. Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages (Berkeley, 2003), pp. 148–9. I looked at all intact graves which were 1.75m long or less. Doubtless this means both that some small adults were included in my sample and, conversely, that some tall adolescents have been excluded. Comparison with better recorded cemeteries suggested, however, that this length of grave would include most of the children of the site.

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Also in Calvados, at Hérouvillette, it was difficult to establish much about the graves of children or adolescents but, from the fragmentary evidence, it seemed that jewellery may have been associated with older women.72 If this was true at Frénouville as well (the evidence as published does not permit us to examine this), this would give us an interesting difference in the treatment of young and old adults. A similar picture emerged from a cursory examination of the Rhineland site of Köln-Müngersdorf.73 The sample was small and problematic,74 and there was little that could be said with certainty. Again, children were buried with few or no grave-goods, though a couple received necklaces. No weaponry was found in child-graves, though a toy axe was placed in one.75 Jewellery was buried from early teen-age, but here lavish displays of jewellery were definitely more common with women over forty.76 This is quite different from the situation in Lorraine. But, again, weaponry, and thus masculinity, seems to have been acquired at about twenty. The nineteenth-century records of the large cemetery at Chelles (dép. Oise) suggest a similar picture, with only three burials containing weaponry, out of 290 supposed to be of sub-adults.77 Although far from common, here too jewellery was found much more frequently in children’s burials. The picture differs somewhat in Alamannia, where probably the most extensive research into the use of cemetery evidence to illuminate age-related aspects of social organisation (within the Merovingian realms) has been carried out.78 Here (and I am simplifying, as 72 A. Decaens, ‘Un nouveau cimetière du haut moyen âge en Normandie, Hérouvillette (Calvados)’. Archéologie Médiévale 1 (1971), pp. 1–137. 73 F. Fremersdorf. Das fränkische Gräberfeld Köln-Müngersdorf (Germanische Denkmäler der Völkerwanderungszeit 6: Berlin, 1955). 74 See Effros, Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology, pp. 133–41, for discussion of the problems of this site. 75 Köln-Müngersdorf grave 148. 76 Köln-Müngersdorf graves 59, 105, and 122. 77 Vallet, ‘Die Ausstattung der Kindergräber’, p. 715. 78 E.g. (with different approaches), S. Brather, ‘Kleidung und Identität im Grab: Gruppierungen innerhalb der Bevölkerung Pleidelsheims zur Merowingerzeit.’ Zeitschrift für Archäologie des Mittelalters 32 (2004), pp. 1–58; id., Ethnische Interpretationen in der frühgeschichtlichen Archäologie: Geschichte, Grundlagen und Alternativen (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 42: Berlin, 2004), pp. 481–513; id., ‘Alter und Geschlecht zur Merowingerzeit. Soziale Strukturen und frühmittelalterlichen Reihengräberfelder’, in J. Müller (ed.), Alter und Geschlecht in ur- und frühgeschichtlichen Gesellschaften (Bonn, 2005), pp. 157–78; id., ‘Kleidung, Bestattung, Identität: die Präsentation sozialer Rollen im frühen Mittelalter’, in id. (ed.), Zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter: Archäologie des 4. bis 7. Jahrhunderts

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there are, as in Lorraine, differences from one site to the next), it is far from uncommon for male children to be buried with weapons. Arrows were by far the most common such items, however, perhaps representing miniature spears, and the numbers rose in adolescence, when the scramasax and occasional spears joined the arrows. There was also a distinction between younger and mature adult males, with, on two of the sites I examined, the latter receiving the full weapon-sets (sword, spear, shield).79 A very similar picture emerges at the site of Pleidelsheim.80 Where anthropological data was available, at Schretzheim combs seemed to be found most often in the graves of juvenile and younger adult males.81 When the fact that the sax was acquired at this age was taken into account, one is instantly reminded of the famous Niederdollendorf stone, depicting a warrior combing his hair and equipped with a very well-portrayed scramasax.82 im Westen (Erganzungsbände zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde 57; Munich, 2008), pp. 237–73; S. Donié, Soziale Gliederung und Bevölkerungsentwicklung einer Frühmittelalterlichen Siedlungsgemeinschaft: Untersuchungen zum Gräberfeld bei Schretzheim (Saarbrücker Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 66: Bonn, 1999); L. Jørgensen, K.W. Alt, & W. Vach, ‘Families at Kirchheim am Ries: Analysis of Merovingian aristocratic and warrior families’, in A. Nørgård Jørgensen & B.L. Clausen (ed.), Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective AD 1–1300 (Copenhagen, 1997), pp. 103–12; B. Lohrke, Kinder in der Merowingerzeit. Gräber von Mädchen und Jungen in der Alemannia (Freiburger Beiträge zur Archäologie und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends 9: Rahden, 2004); B. Sasse, ‘Demographische-soziale Untersuchungen an frühmittelalterlichen Frauengräber im Bereich der Reihengräberzivilisation’, in W. Affeldt & A. Kuhn (ed.), Frauen in Geschichte 7. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Geschichte der Frauen im Frühittelalter. Methoden, Probleme, Ergebnisse (Düsseldorf, 1986), pp. 56–87; E. Stauch, ‘Alter ist Silber, Jugend ist Gold! Zur altersdifferenzierten Analyse frühgeschichtlicher Bestattungen’, in Brather (ed.), Zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter:, pp. 275–95. The possibilities were initially opened up by the groundbreaking work of H. Steuer, Frühgeschichtliche Sozialstrukturen im Mitteleuropa. Eine Analyse der Ausertungsmethoden des archäologischen Quellenmaterials (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften Göttingen, phil.-hist. Kl. 3rd series, 128: Göttingen, 1982), e.g. pp. 471–97. 79 H. Müller, Das alamannische Gräberfeld von Hemmingen (Kreis Ludwigsburg) (Forschungen und Berichte zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Baden-Württemberg 7: Stuttgart, 1976); P. Paulsen & H. Schach-Dörges, Das alamannische Gräberfeld von Giengen an der Brenz (Forschungen und Berichte zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Baden-Württemberg 10: Stuttgart, 1978). 80 Brather, ‘Kleidung und Identität im Grab’, pp. 25–29, Taf.12–13. The same is true at Kirchheim: Jørgensen, Alt & Vach, ‘Families at Kirchheim’, p. 106. I would not, however, as they do, read the differential furnishing of burials in terms of the reflection of a ‘vertical’ hierarchy of social rank. 81 The data is conveniently tabulated in Donié, Soziale Gliederung und Bevölkerungsentwicklung, Liste 3.2, 9.2, 17.2, 21.2, 27.2, & Ausstattungsabellen 11–20. 82 H. Roth, Kunst der Völkerwanderungszeit (Frankfurt am Main, 1979), plates 244a & b.

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Female children were buried with jewellery, and adolescent with quite lavish displays, but, interestingly, lavish jewellery displays went on into old age. There was, at sixth-century Schretzheim, a difference between young and older adult women in the forms of jewellery worn, and in the fact that work and household symbols—châtelaines, spindle whorls, weaving swords and bread-cutters—were found more commonly with young women.83 At Pleidelsheim, the distribution of grave-goods in female burials was rather similar to that found in Lorraine. Interestingly, Eva Stauch has shown, however, that the costume of younger women was characterised by more gold—or gold-looking (e.g. bronzed)—jewellery than was the case with older women, where ‘silver’ (silver, silvered gold, and iron) was more common.84 All in all, it can be seen that whether or not one had reached adulthood played a large part in determining the furnishing of one’s burial, and that there were often differences between younger and older adults (old people, rather like children, tend to receive fewer grave-goods). There were, however, frequent changes in custom and in symbolism which testify to important changes in belief, especially in relation to the construction of gender. Leaving the northern and eastern areas of the Merovingian realms behind, we can look very briefly at more southerly regions. In the Touraine, at Sublaines, children received separate burials (as in the north), but were often grouped together, especially towards the centre of the cemetery.85 Grave-goods are rare in this part of France and little can be deduced from their absence from child’s graves. Slightly further south, in Charente, the excavation of the cemetery of St.-Martin-deCognac produced, according to Brigitte Boissavit-Camus, some child-

83

Such artefacts were found in the following female graves (with age in brackets): Spindlewhorls: 583 (12), 426 (40–45), 551 (45–55), 33 (‘Old’); Châtelaines: 514 (14–22), 440 (20–22), 478 (20–25), 579 (22–30), 530 (25–30), 509 (30), 447 (40), 586 (40–50), 487 (55–60), 513 (50–60); Weaving swords: 440 (20–22), 579 (22–30); Breadcutters: 440 (20–22). U. Koch, Das Reihengräberfeld bei Schretzheim (Germanische Denkmäler der Völkerwanderungszeit A.13: Berlin, 1977). Cp. Brather, ‘Kleidung und Identität im Grab’, pp. 18–25, Tab. 10, for a similar picture. 84 Stauch, ‘Alter ist Silber, Jugend ist Gold!’ 85 G. Cordier, R. Riquet & H. Brabant, ‘Le site archéologique du Dolmen de Villaine à Sublaines (Indre-et-Loire). Deuxième partie: Cimetière Mérovingienne.’ Gallia 32 (1974), pp. 163–201.

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burials with jewellery.86 Given that this is an area where grave-goods are not common, this might be significant. Further south still, at the cemetery at Chabannes (dép. Lozère), it seems that children were normally buried in adults’ graves (as is often still the case today): separate graves were usually of adults.87 Reuse of the stone-lined graves was common anyway in this part of the world, but there was only one distinct child-burial. Finally in this survey we might note the grave of an adolescent woman in a decorated sarcophagus under the Abbaye-StVictor, Marseille.88 This evidently fifth-century burial saw the deceased clothed, wearing a floral garland from which was suspended a small cross, and buried with large bunches of herbs. Even in areas where grave-goods were not the norm, young adult women could receive an unusual degree of care in their burial (and it is worth remembering how little of this would survive in normal circumstances). Before moving on to attempt to draw the strands of this discussion together, there are a couple of other instances to which I should like to draw attention, which perhaps help to set the explanation given below in context. The first is that there are some weapon burials of children in the first phase of furnished burial in northern Gaul, in the late fourth and early fifth centuries.89 The second is to make brief mention of the famous boy’s grave under Cologne cathedral.90 This contained

86 B. Boissavit-Camus, ‘L’archéologie funéraire en Poitou-Charentes’. BLAFAM 13 (1989), pp. 20–29, at pp. 23–24; ead., ‘Nécropole de Saint-Martin de Cognac’, in B. Boissavit-Camus et al. (ed.), Romains et Barbares entre Loire et Gironde IVe–Xe s. (Poitiers, 1989), pp. 131–35. 87 L. Rivet, ‘La nécropole de Chabannes VIe–VIIe s. ap. J.-C. (Les Salelles, Lozère).’ Revue Archéologique de Narbonnaise, 13 (1980), pp. 165–193. 88 G. Demians d’Archembaud, ‘Les fouilles de Saint-Victor de Marseille’ Comptes Rendues de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1971), pp. 87–117; P.-A. Février et al. (ed.), Premières Temps Chrétiennes en Gaule Méridionale: Antiquité Tardive et Haut Moyen Age, IIIe–VIIe Siècles (Lyon, 1986), pp. 81–82; M. Fixot, ‘Les inhumations privilégiées en Provence’, in Y. Duval & J-Ch. Picard (ed.), L’Inhumation Privilégiée du IVe au VIIIe en Occident (Paris, 1986), pp. 117–31, at p. 121 & n. 54. 89 For example, an axe was buried with a 6–8-year-old at Abbeville-Homblières (Aisne) and a spear with a boy in grave 30 at Cortrat (Loiret): H.-W. Böhme, Germanische Grabfunde des 4. bis 5. Jahhunderts zwischen unterer Elbe und Loire: Studien zur Chronologie und Bevölkerungsstruktur (2 vols: Munich, 1974), vol. 1, p. 178 & 180. Böhme states (ibid., p. 186) that sixteen child-burials with axes or spears were known from this chronological phase, forming, at 13%, ‘einen erstaunlich hohen Anteil an der Gesamtzahl der Waffengräber.’ 90 J. Werner, ‘Frankish royal tombs in the Cathedrals of Cologne and Saint-Denis.’ Antiquity 38 (1964), pp. 201–16.

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lavish weaponry, including a helmet made to fit the 6/7-year-old, but also a very full set of adult-sized weapons. * * * The key to interpreting the archaeological evidence is to view furnished burial in the light of its context as public ritual.91 The expenditure on grave-goods is in some way commensurate with the rupture in the fabric of social relations caused by the death in question. When one bears this in mind it becomes less easy to make neat and meaningful correlations with the wergild system of the law-codes, where these seem superficially to exist.92 The concerns of the grave-goods display are to reaffirm the family’s standing in the community, and reflect the possible damage to that standing caused by a death within the family; those of the wergild system are to compensate a family for a death inflicted upon it by another family. Stated thus, it is clear that the two need not coincide (although sometimes they do). Thus there is no contradiction between the high wergild exacted for the killing of a young boy, and the lack of attention devoted to the burial of male children. The death of small children posed little threat to the standing of a family within the community, and so could be marked by a fairly minimal display. However, the Alamans at least placed some artefacts associated with gender into the graves of their young children, whilst the Franks did not, and this must be significant in terms of their differing attitudes to gender. In Venantius’ poetry, gender attributes are not mentioned in discussion of young children.93 That leaves us with the children buried with feminine artefacts. Does this mean that female children acquired the material attributes of their gender earlier than men? The skeletons of children cannot be sexed anthropologically, so we do not know independently, for sure, whether these are the graves of girls. On analogy with other societies it may be that all young children were considered, in terms of dress and other aspects of material culture, to be feminine, as extensions of their mothers. This may perhaps be taken in conjunction with the fact that young boys wore their hair long, like girls, and only had it cut when they came of age.94 It seems, inciden-

91 92 93 94

BRMS; BW (above, pp. 203–31). FSP, pp. 17–18 (above, p. 307). Judith George, pers. comm. 1991. Above, p. 351.

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tally, that a girl tied her long hair up, or covered it, when she married (at about the same age).95 This fact might be supported that some of the child burials at Chaouilley in Lorraine contain a necklace, normally a feminine objecttype, and a form of black-glazed pottery otherwise only found on that cemetery in the graves of adult males. The children may have taken to the grave one artefact given by each parent: the custom, as I have written elsewhere, may represent private grief rather than the exigencies of public ritual.96 Penitentials apparently take very little interest in sexual misdemeanours by male sub-adults.97 Columbanus’ penitential at one point allows young boys to escape punishment for masturbation;98 otherwise they all appear to refuse the idea that male children are capable of sexual acts, which would tie in with the laws and the archaeology. Cummean’s penitential is the exception, with its lengthy section on the sexual ‘games’ (ludi)—the word is probably significant—of boys.99 Cummean, incidentally, reckons males up to the age of twenty as pueri.100 This is to my knowledge the only hint of the end of the teens representing a break in male socialisation and it may be significant that it represents a change in ideas about sexuality rather than secular legal responsibility or majority. Puellae, however, feature prominently as the recipients of male sexual attention, without any hint that this represents, for want of a better term, child abuse, and this probably is because, as in the

95

Above, p. 352. FSP, p. 14 (above, p. 303). 97 For a convenient collection and translation see J.T. McNeill & H.M. Gamer (trans.), Medieval Handbooks of Penance. A translation of the Principal Libri Poenitentiales (New York, 1990 [originally 1938]). 98 Penitential of Columbanus B.10. McNeill & Gamer (trans.), Medieval Handbooks of Penance, p. 253. 99 Penitential of Cummean 10. McNeill & Gamer (trans.), Medieval Handbooks of Penance, pp. 112–4. I am grateful to Peregrine Horden for drawing my attention to this unusual text in a paper, ‘The construction of infant sexuality in the early middle ages’, given at the Institute for Historical Research, University of London in 1994–5. 100 This age also features as the age beyond which ‘he who defiles himself with a male’ (presumably mutual masturbation or the masturbation of another male) becomes a serious matter, in the Penitential of Theodore 1.2.4. McNeill & Gamer (trans.), Medieval Handbooks of Penance, p. 185. This text is believed to have been influenced by Cummean’s Penitential, however. See also De Jong, In Samuel’s Image, pp. 28–40, for further relevant comments on monastic authors’ views about the degrees of responsibility that could be attributed to children of particular ages in this period. 96

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archaeological record, female children become ‘gendered’ adults rather sooner than men.101 It is clear from the cemetery evidence that from puberty women begin to be buried with the full set of feminine artefacts, whilst, in terms of their burials, adolescent males remain children. This certainly seems to reflect the attribution of female sexual identity to women from puberty onwards. The lavishness of the graves is probably related to the importance of young women in making marriage alliances between families. Their dress and bodies were the field for the most lavish exhibitions of craftsmanship in the form of jewellery. This jewellery serves to highlight the parts of the body which were also the concern of the Pactus Legis Salicae: hair, arms, breast.102 It seems that these young women were public figures, displayed by their families in the hope of making a useful marriage alliance within the community. The work of Eva Stauch underlines the extent of display in these younger women’s graves.103 The publicity of their lives is matched by the publicity and display of their burials.104 A family had lost a member much seen by the community. Further importance would be attached to the death of the woman if she was betrothed or recently married, as this death would call into question the newly established ties between families. All this explains the lavish burial of women of this age group. The mention just made of betrothal leads us back to an alternative explanation for the burial of children with feminine artefacts. It is possible that these children were girls who had been betrothed early. Again, some display of their femininity might be required, but because the actual marriage was still some way off, this was far more muted than with the graves of pubescent and teen-age women.105 One can see, then, that women gained their gender identity much earlier than men, for obvious reasons. The archaeology appears to support those indications in the written sources of a considerable differ101 James, ‘Childhood and youth’, p. 16, for the point that puella might be used loosely for women after childhood, in much the same way as, today, ‘girl’ can still be used to mean woman—and not just by men of more traditional attitudes. Cp. the use of ‘Girl Power’ in the 1990s. 102 Above, pp. 349–53; again I thank my former student, Jody McGill, for drawing my attention to this. 103 Stauch, ‘Alter ist Silber, Jugend ist Gold!’. 104 See FSP (above, pp. 289–314), for further discussion. 105 See BW, p. 71 (above, p. 228), for discussion of the epigraphic evidence for shared involvement in the commemoration of the deceased woman by her family and that of her husband.

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ence in age at marriage between men and women. This is true even in those Alamannic cemeteries where, even though male children were given masculine symbols, they generally continued to be buried with ‘boyish’ symbols (arrows) until the age of twenty, only then receiving scramasaxes, and only being buried with full sets of weaponry later in life. Women came of age, were married, and began to bear children over a very short space of time. Their socialization came about, in a sense, all at once. This does not appear to have been the case with males. Their legal age of majority seems only to have begun a long process of socialization, which may have lasted ten to fifteen years. It was probably important to allow male children a legal identity from about this age, as they probably began to lose their fathers at about this time. This is something we must always bear in mind in looking at social age: the synchronization of the different age-groups. It is interesting that in Lorraine it seems to be adult males aged between forty and sixty who receive the most lavish burials; in Alamannia, at Schretzheim, men between thirty and fifty have the most complete sets of weaponry. These burials represent men roughly between the age of marriage and the age when their male children received their weapons; in other words those males with important legal responsibilities. Their death, before their sons had established themselves, caused major tension in the ordering of local society, and thus their heirs had to expend important resources on their funerals. It was important for Frankish males to establish themselves. Young adult males in Lorraine receive fairly standardized burials; almost all were buried with weapons. Mature adults, and those in old age, show much greater polarity in the furnishing of their graves. This suggests that one’s status in later life was, to some extent, achieved whilst of the ‘young male’ age-grade.106 * * * We can now return to the course of growing up described at the beginning of this chapter. We can perhaps see why there is no necessary correlation between the different stages of growing up and the legal age of majority. The latter was probably something of a safety measure. The stages of schooling, and training in the household of another

106 See above, pp. 370–2, for different explanations of the variation in the lavishness of grave-furnishing.

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man could presumably take place at different ages at different periods and in different places, and probably from family to family. On the whole, though, it does seem that during one’s teen-age a man left his parents’ home to be trained elsewhere. Amongst the aristocracy, especially in the seventh century and later, this was often at the royal court. Further down the social scale, boys were perhaps sent to the local count or duke, or maybe to other families within the community. In many parts of the north, they were deemed entitled to burial with weapons (perhaps they formally received their own weaponry) at about twenty, which seems to mark the next stage in the process of male socialization, the acquisition of a full gendered or sexual identity; as noted above, this age appears to have been that beyond which churchmen reckoned as faults sexual explorations with other males. Though they may have been betrothed by this age, it seems that they did not marry until their late twenties, or at about thirty. It is probable that the ‘farming out’ of male children to other households was a means of creating extra ‘fictive kinship’ ties within the community, as well as a way of ensuring an extra degree of protection and patronage, should the child’s natural father die before he had reached maturity. The stories of Patroclus and Leobardus107 bring home again the idea of synchronization between different social age groups. It was the death of their fathers which brought on the need to marry. Losing the head of the household probably compelled the next generation to marry and establish their households. At this point we can return to the pueri. As set out at the beginning of this chapter, the word almost invariably simply means ‘male sub-adult’ when used in our sources. However, in some cases, historians often assume it means something quite different.108 We also meet pueri as members of households, and here the term is often assumed to imply some form of unfreedom, or even slavery.109 The reasons for this are unclear. The word almost always simply means ‘boy’; ‘boys’ could, it seems, be anyone up to the age of marriage (so perhaps up to around thirty years of age), and unmarried men very frequently served in the households of others. When we look at the occurrence

107

VP 9 & 20; above, p. 391. P. Périn, ‘Possibilités et limites de l’interprétation sociale des cimetières mérovingiens’, Antiquités Nationales 30 (1998), pp. 169–83, at p. 169. 109 Krusch & Levison, in their index to the Histories, equate puer with servus: MGH SRM 1, p. 625. 108

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of the word puer in Gregory’s Histories, we see that they are retainers, often armed and sent on missions to kill or kidnap, and very ready to quarrel with each other at the drop of a hat: in short typical ‘young warriors’.110 There rarely seems to be any implication of unfreedom in the stories Gregory tells of them. Admittedly, two Saxon pueri killed their ‘master’ because they were fed up with him, but Gregory refers to Sigivald as Bracchio’s ‘master’ and the story of Bracchio makes no hint that he was in any way unfree.111 Then we have the famous story of Duke Rauching’s ill-treatment of his pueri,112 but again there is nothing explicitly ‘slave-like’ about their condition, and there are plenty of other stories in the later middle ages and later of how people abused their young retainers or indentured servants. The point of the story is, in any case, Rauching’s fury when one of the pueri decided to get married. As far as I am aware, Gregory never uses puer as a synonym for servus. These pueri are, therefore, best seen just as unmarried males in their teens and twenties, serving in the households of the influential: everyone who was anyone had pueri in Gregory’s works, from the kings and queens, through the holders of offices like count and duke, and bishops, to any local powerful person.113 The same seems to be true in Fredegar, too.114 This remains the case in the seventh century. A miracle in the Vita Arnulfi talks of the near-death of a puer in a magnate’s household, who was also a relative of the magnate, a certain Noddilo, and of the latter’s great grief.115 It hardly sounds like he was a slave. On the other hand in the Vita Gaugerici mention is made of a slave-merchant near Famars, leading a group of pueri, and in the Life of Amandus, the hero often ransoms captivos vel pueros (captives or boys).116 Finally, we have the famous story of Gregory the Great’s witty remarks upon

110 E.g. LH 2.2, 2.23, 2.24, 3.15, 3.18, 4.13, 4.28, 4.44, 4.46, 4.51, 5.3, 5.14, 5.18, 5.19, 5.20, 5.30, 5.39, 5.39, 6.2, 6.17, 6.32, 6.35, 6.46, etc.. James, ‘Childhood and youth’, p. 16, assumes that the word pueri is, when used by Gregory, ‘often, perhaps normally, used as a shorthand’ for pueri regis. Many of the cases above are clearly pueri regis, but many are demonstrably not; they are simply the pueri of bishops, aristocrats or other more powerful individuals. 111 LH 7.46; VP 12.2. 112 LH 5.3. 113 As above, n. 102. 114 E.g., very clearly, at Fredegar, Chron. 2.62. B. Krusch (ed.), MGH SRM 2 (Hanover, 1888), pp. 1–193, at p. 86. 115 Vita Arnulfi 12: puer et parens. 116 Vita Gaugerici 12.

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meeting captive English ‘boys’ in the market-place in Rome.117 It may be simplest, however, to assume that the word just refers to their age, that they are indeed just boys who have been carried off. Seen in this light, the pueri regis are simply enough the pueri of the royal court (like Audoin, living at court as puerolus). Why, then, do they rate a low wergild, half that of the freeman (ingenuus)? To answer this, we need to consider what an ingenuus was in the sixth century. Examination of the occurrence of the word in the Pactus Legis Salicae reveals that it appears in a very limited number of contexts: in direct opposition to the slave and half-free, of course, but also in relation to crimes against the person and against one’s liberty (tying up, obstructing movement, &c.).118 The latter group of, really rather limited, contexts is the same as that in which we find the handful of appearances of romanus or francus (it is possible that ingenuus is a synonym for francus, as a passage in Gregory’s Histories would also imply).119 The ingenuus was therefore someone with a legal identity, someone who had legal dependents. It may thus be that the ingenui are a rather more restricted class of the free population than one might suppose. I suggest that ingenui are older, married freemen with children and other legal dependents; pueri are younger adults (and not just boys as we understand it). This opposition reflects the oppositions between young and old in the cemeteries. At the court, I propose that the pueri regis are the young, unmarried warriors and that the leudes and antrustiones are the older, married ones. There is a similar distinction between old and young, married and unmarried warriors in AngloSaxon literature.120 Having said all this, it begins to become clear why the Merovingian written sources are so vague about their pueri. To them, pueri were a large group of males from infancy up to marital age, around thirty. They were aware of the idea that one passed from pueritia to adolescentia before manhood, and that young men were

117 Anonymous Life of Gregory the Great, 9: B. Colgrave (ed. & trans.), The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great by an anonymous monk of Whitby (Kansas, 1968). 118 S&S pp. 27–8 and refs. 119 LH 7.15: [Audo had taxed] multos de francis qui tempore Childeberthi regis seniores ingenui fuerant. 120 T.M. Charles Edwards ‘The distinction between land and moveable wealth in Anglo-Saxon England’ in P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Medieval Settlement. Continuity and Change (London, 1976), pp. 180–87.

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iuvenes, but these distinctions were rather technical and subsumed within the broader, social concept of the puer. After serving as a puer, a man married and settled down, as an ingenuus. Returning to the idea of synchronization, when a man’s sons reach this age, his burial ceases abruptly to receive much attention. This ‘career path’ is not dissimilar from that proposed by Thomas Charles Edwards for Anglo-Saxon noble warriors.121 In the north, age-grades appear to have been very important in social organization. There may have been more formal age-groupings or age-sets. The use of the word coaevales or coaetani in the saints’ lives is probably not very significant, but we can also look at the word contubernium. Originally this was a Roman word for the group of legionaries who shared a tent: a ‘squad’. In our period, in the laws, it seems to refer to gangs of armed men, who commit crimes such as robbery and abduction, and occasionally murder, but they are not punished especially harshly.122 The word often therefore has rather negative connotations, but it is interesting, firstly, that the Life of Arnulf says that Arnulf stood out not from his coevals or coaetani, but from his contubernales, and, secondly, that the Life of Desiderius of Cahors (admittedly of late date) first quotes Desiderius’ mother writing him to be worthy of his contubernales (the Vita Desiderii calls the royal household the contubernium) but provides the best evidence when it refers to coevales aut contubernales.123 The two can be synonymous. The rather dubious Life of Menelaus also uses contubernium in the same sense as the Vita Arnulfi.124 So where does that leave the law’s contubernia? Their activities, raiding, kidnapping, theft, are not, it seems to me, untypical of the activities of young warrior age-sets (or indeed of the pueri, as we have seen). Nor is the leniency with which they are treated. In the generally fluid social structure of early Merovingian northern Gaul, social hierarchies may largely have been structured around age-groups. They were important in community politics too. Sending one’s son to be brought up in another’s house created a link between families. 121

See previous note. PLS 14.6, 14.8, 42.1–5, 43.1–3. 123 Vita Arnulfi 3; Vita Desiderii Cadurcensis 9, 6. See also Vita Desiderii Cadurcensis 3 for the royal contubernium. B.Krusch (ed.), MGH SRM 4 (Hanover, 1902), pp. 547–602. 124 Vita Menelei 1.4. B. Krusch & W. Levison (ed.), MGH SRM 4 (Hanover, 1910), pp. 129–57. 122

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Marriage, obviously, did too, but the difference in age at marriage was also important. A thirty-year-old man marrying a fifteen-year-old woman, would create a bond with his new father-in-law, who will often have been in that age-group between the man and his own father. Differential age at marriage, amongst other things, helped to bridge the gap between age-groups. Now we can return to the Frankish graves wherein young boys are buried with weapons. Here, a family shows its distinction by breaking the usual rules.125 This is clearly true at Ennery and also, obviously, with the burial of the famous Cologne ‘prince’.126 Similarly, the early weapon burials are an attempt to maintain local élite families’ distinction at a time when other means of the legitimation of power were failing. The same might also have been true with the Merovingians. At least in some circumstances, the boys of that family, unlike other male children, became men as soon as they were fifteen. In the seventh century we can see certain differences in attitude. Around 600, the northern aristocracy became more powerful, and secure in its tenure of local power and numerous changes took place. As the social hierarchy became more established, then family identity increased in importance too. One way in which transformations were manifested is in the change in the organization of cemeteries from the general ‘rows’ to small groupings, probably families (this is not universal though). The increasing importance of family identity is revealed is in the way in which a leading family buried all its dead with numerous grave-goods, including children (we have seen similar situations in the earlier period). It must be pointed out, though, that, on the whole, the old ideas about gender-related grave-goods still held. This change from an age-based, to a more hierarchical, classbased social organization may also be shown in the seventh-century laws’ lesser concern with gender and age, and greater concern with ties of dependence (references to ingenui are much more general in Lex Ribvaria).127 An interesting change in artefacts comes about, and the most intricately-decorated seventh-century artefacts are not so much the female jewellery, but now the masculine forms of plaquebuckles.128 These belts can be placed in children’s graves as well as in 125 126 127 128

See above, pp. 372–3, for further discussion. Above, n. 90. S&S, p. 32. E.g. Lex Ribv. 1–6, 16–17, 19, 20–22, etc. See also above, p. 354.

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adults’. This may be a further indication of the change from the ‘here and now’—politics in the present, with families bound by marriage with women as the lynch-pins—to a concern with the future, family identity and descent. Hence males, potential family heads, receive the more lavish dress adornments. In the seventh century, the aristocracy appears to used the career path outlined above to increase its own solidarity, and this is seen especially in that famous group of churchmen who spent their youths at the courts of Chlothar II and Dagobert I: Eligius, Audoin, Desiderius of Cahors, and so on.129 There is much still to be said about youth and childhood in Merovingian Gaul, not least by looking at Merovingian ideas about the general characteristics of the young. More thorough study of the archaeological data from other parts of the Merovingian world will present further opportunities to refine, develop and correct the picture sketched here. Nevertheless this chapter suggests that the processes of growing up in Merovingian Gaul were not only conceived of, at least in detail, differently in different areas and at different times, but played a central role in the organization of Merovingian society, especially in the sixth century. As ever, such processes were open to manipulation and change. It is, thus, again insufficient to simply to sketch out the institutions of the Merovingian world, such the legal age of majority and the rituals of coming of age. These institutions not exist separately from ‘everyday’ social behaviour; they were (and could only be) constituted by the repeated enactment of particular norms. Within that was left scope for play with as well as within the rules. Thus we can see, within this chapter, the ways in which the treatment of age was cross-cut by other dimensions of social identity such as gender, class and even, implicitly (by comparison with chapter 10), ethnicity. The regional variations discussed further emphasise this diversity and dynamism. Particular social groups used the opportunities for alliance, which the processes of socialisation afforded to defend, strengthen or improve their standing; we should never forget the ultimately material reasons for such activities—the acquisition of land and other resources; the

129 Vita Desiderii Cadurcensis 5. See also Desiderius’ of Cahors’ letters: E. Dümmler et al. (ed.), MGH Epistolae 3 Epistolae Merovingici et Karolini Aevi 1 (Berlin, 1892), pp. 198–214 (Desiderius’ letters are edited by W. Arndt).

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achievement of local political leadership. Discussion of the interplay of identities can often seem to leave them floating free from such fundamental concerns. Nevertheless in this chapter as in the papers throughout this volume, the combination of contextual documentary and archaeological investigation makes the people of the Merovingian world active agents, not simple, passive occupants of particular social categories. The outcomes of their constant interplay with each other and the attendant renegotiation of the dimensions of social organisation were what determined the course of Merovingian history.

growing up in merovingian gaul Table 11.1 Carmina reference

411

Venantius’ epitaphs showing marital status and age at death

Name

4.1–11

Sundry bishops and abbots

4.12

Hilarius

4.13–15

Various religious

4.16

Sex

Age

Marital status

Comments

Male

[At least 30 because a priest]

Widowed

Priest

Atticus

Male

Old (senex)

?

–

4.17

Arcadius

Male

Juvenis

–

–

4.18

Basilus

Male

55

Married for 20 years to Baudegund

Ambassador

4.19

Aracharius

Male

30

?

Served at court

4.20

Brumachus

Male

40

Married to Frigia

Ambassador

4.21

Avolus

Male

?

?

–

4.22

John & Patricius

Male

5 and just baptised

–

–

4.23

Julian

Male

Old enough to have a son who was a priest (and thus 30 years old)

Presumably Married

Former merchant

4.24

Orientius

Male

Before his 60th year

Married to Nicasia

–

4.25

Theudechild

Female

75

Married

Queen

4.26

Vilithuta

Female

17

Married (at 13) to Dagaulf

Died in childbirth

4.27

Eufrasia

Female

?

Married to Namatius, later bishop of Vienne

–

4.28

Eusebia

Female

Barely 10

Betrothed to Eusebius

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Table 11.2 Reference

Inscriptions from St-Matthias, Trier, mentioning marriage or children Name

Sex

Age

Comments

RICG I.25

Iovina

Female

>10 + 5 days

Epitaph raised by husband

RICG I.33

Macedonia

Female

13

Raised by Pelagius (?husband) and Macedonia’s parents Macedonius and Irene

RICG I.36

Marinus

Male

?

Raised by his wife

RICG I.38

Maura

Female

?20

Wife of Bonifatius

RICG I.39

Maximianus

Male

65 years, 4 months and 20 days

Raised by his sons

RICG I.40

Memorius

Male

37

Raised by his wife

RICG I.47

Nunechius

Male

80

Raised by his daughter

RICG I.50

Perses

Male

50

Raised by his wife

RICG I.55

Revocatus

Male

. . .15 . . . (years, months or days?)

Raised by wife, Francola

RICG I.56

Scotto

Male

65

Raised by his wife

RICG I.62

Valentina

Female

29 & 5 months

Raised by Germanio and their children

RICG I.63

Valentinus

Male

38

Raised by father (Marontius), wife (Agricia) and children

RICG I.68

Victorinus and his wife

Male and female

One 16, the other 28

Raised by their daughter

RICG I.71

Vitalis

Male

85

Raised by his wife

INDEX

acta municipalia 237 adolescents, burials of 228, 303–4, 305–6, 395 Aegidius, magister militum 178–9, 180, 181–2, 190 agri deserti 156–7 Ailcy Hill (Ripon), cemetery 256 Alamannic burials. Merovingian 354, 368–9, 396–8, 403 Roman-period 113–4, 143 Alcuin, abbot of St-Martin’s, Tours 64, 344, n. 55 Amandus, saint 385, 405 Andelot, Treaty of 241 Annales Andecavenses (Angers Annals) (= LH 2.18) 178, 179, 180 Annales School 36, 54 Arbogast, count in Trier 176 Archaeology, integration with history, methods of 84–88 integration with history, multi-disciplinary method of 45–47 on TV 69 relations with history 39–88 Arnegund, burial of 283 Arnulf, saint 387, 391, 407 Attila, king of Huns 176 Audoin, saint 387, 406, 409 Audun-le-Tiche (Moselle), cemetery 9, 229–30, 232, 254, 262, 277–8, 347–8, 358, 373, 379, 394 Austin, David 51–58, 65–66, 80–81, 82, 83 Avitus of Vienne 172 axes, in burials 135, 157–8 Bagaudae (or bacaudae) 104–5, 112, 128, 133–4, 142–3 Balthild, saint 385 barrow burial 249–50, 254–5; see also Wigber Low Basina, wife of Childeric I 179–80 belt-fittings, late Roman 97–98, 120 Bentley, Michael 49 Berthelming (Moselle), cemetery 232, 254, 300

Bettborn (Moselle), cemetery 232, 254, 300 Bierbrauer, Volker 142 Binford, Lewis 26–27, 29, 31, 32, 48 Bintliff, John 38 Bisinus, king of the Thuringians 179–80 Böhme, Horst-Wolfgang 94, 110, 112, 115, 118, 124–5, 131, 137, 156 Böhner, Kurt 109 Book of Constitutions (Burgundian Law) 388 Bouzonville (Moselle), cemetery 232, 316 Bracchio, saint 384, 391, 405 Brather, Sebastian 152, 350 Brictius, Bishop of Tours (= Saint Brice) 179, 193 Britton, Rupert A. 58 Brooches, origins of 115–7, 135–6, 138–9 bucellarii 104–5 burial, and cosmology 207–8, 271 and memory 208–9 and scene-making 208–11, 223–4 and gender 227–8, 301–14, 323–81 and religion 262–71 and ritual 203–214 and time 222, 224, 247–8 as texts 175–6, 205–7 as texts, critique of idea 221–2, 243–4, 318 components of 204–5, 216–8 Jewish 270 Caesarius of Arles 103–4, 269–70 Campbell, Emma 234 Carver, Martin 86–87, 243, 249, 265–6 cemeteries, as ‘places of memory’ 208 as sites of discourse 220–1 Chaouilley (Meurthe-et-Moselle), cemetery 299, 303, 362, 370, 401 Charon’s obol 109, 150–1 Charles Edwards, Thomas 407 Chartier, Roger 58 Childe, V. Gordon 25, 32, 34, 38

414

index

Childebert II, king 238, 239, 241, 289, 388–9, 392 Childeric I, king of the Franks 173, 174, 177–81, 191, 193–4, 195–7 grave of 169–97, 211, 244 date of burial 169–73 children, burials of, late Roman Gaulish 167, 399 burials of, Merovingian 226–7, 302–3, 345, 392–403, 402 concepts of 344–5, 360–1, 384–92 Chilperic I, king 239 christianization 272, 279–80 church burials 263, 265, 283–4 Clark, J.G.D. (Grahame) 25–26, 30, 41, 62 Clarke, David 27–28, 29–30 Clovis I, king of the Franks 170–2, 173–5, 183–7, 191–2, 269 coffins 217–8 cognitive processualism 35–36 coinage, imitation 104 Collins, Roger 68 Cologne Cathedral, burial under 399–400 Columbanian monasticism 276–7 Columbanus’ penitential 401 contubernium 407 cremation, Anglo-Saxon 279 culture-history 23–24 Cummean’s penitential 401

Effros, Bonnie 153, 234, 235, 266, 327–34, 338 Egidius, bishop of Reims, trial of 238–9 Eligius, saint 385, 387, 409 Elton, Hugh 131 Emmeram, saint 385 Ennery (Moselle), cemetery 9, 232, 254, 262, 267, 273, 292, 299, 315–21, 328–32, 333–4, 342–3, 347–8, 357–60, 362, 370, 372–3, 393 Epistulae Austrasiacae 237, 282 Exuperantius, Roman general 134

Dark, Ken 37 Delort, Emile 315–7, 358 Desiderius, saint, bishop of Cahors 407, 409 Desiderius, saint, bishop of Vienne 387 Dickinson, Tania 71, 131 Dierkens. Alain 193–7 Dieue-sur-Meuse (Meuse), cemetery 10, 119, 273, 299, 300, 363, 393 DNA, and ethnic origins 123 documents, survival of 73–74, 230–1, 236–42, 282–3 double-burials 347–9, 357–60, 372–3 Drinkwater, John 131 Driscoll, Steve 44 Duby, Georges 54–55 Duero Valley Civilisation 127–8, 135 Dunning, Gerald 96, 131

Gaugeric, saint 387 Gauthier, Nancy 225, 229, 235 Geake, Helen 265 Geary, Patrick 73 Gender, and the end of the Roman Empire 374–9 Genovefa (Genevieve), saint 174, 182 gesta municipalia see ‘acta municipalia’ Gildas 257, 283 Gloucester, late Roman burial at 98, 127 Goffart, Walter 54 grammar of display 223, 252, 301–2 grave-goods, gender associations of 293–9, 325–38 grave-markers, above-ground 254, 275–6 Gregory, Bishop of Langres 258 Gregory of Tours 169, 170–1, 177, 179–80, 183, 195–6, 207, 236, 240–1, 258, 263, 268, 269, 289–90, 307, 309,

Echternach (Luxembourg), monastery 278

Fehr, Hubert 152–4 female costume, in late Roman Gaul 117–8, 148–50, 166–7 Merovingian 349–54 female infanticide 304–5, 320–1 feud 17 n. 43 final phase, Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of 232, 279 Finley, Moses 61 Flonheim-Gültlingen horizon 173, 185, 188–90, 211, 235 foederati 4, 101–2, 109, 145–6 Foucault, Michel 57 Frederic, Gothic leader 178 Frontiers, historiography of 107–8 functionalism 24–26 funerary feasting 204–5, 218, 235, 301

index 323–5, 342–4, 364, 384–8, 389–91, 405 Grierson, Philip 61 Grubenhaus, origins of 129 Guntramn, king of Burgundy 239, 241, 389 Guntramn Boso, duke 263, 289–90 hair, social significance of 350, 351–3 Hamerow, Helena 68 Handley, Mark 234–5, 321 Härke, Heinrich 71, 363, 365–6 Haßleben-Leuna group, prestigious burials 101 Hatt, Jean-Jacques 24 Hawkes, Christopher 26 Hawkes’ ladder 26, 33, 40, 61, 67, 72, 81–82, 88 Hawkes, Jane 71 Hayange (Moselle), cemetery 278, 300 Herschend, Frans 60, 78 Heuertz, Marcel 329–32, 358 Higgs, Eric 26 Hill, David 56 Hills, Catherine 59, 69, 76, 110–11, 266 Hines, John 264 Hodder, Ian 28, 31, 32, 34, 37, 58, 344 Hodges, Richard 43, 64 Høilund Nielsen, Karen 59, 380 Holy Cross, Poitiers, revolt of nuns of 241, 323–5 Houlbrooke, Ralph 55 iconography, on metalwork 218–9 ingenuus 406–7 inhumation, origins of rite 97; see also North Germany inscriptions, in Trier 225–9, 234–5, 248, 395 of barbarians in Roman Gaul 124 James, Edward 2, 6, 53, 110–11, 136, 153, 268 Johnson, Matthew 49, 84–86 Kossinna, Gustaf 24 Kulikowski, Michael 68 kulturmodelle 142, 144 laeti, settled prisoners of war 109, 126, 316–7 Lambert, saint 385, 387 Langmauer 161

93–94,

415

Lankhills (Winchester), cemetery 98, 127 Lavoye (Meuse), cemetery 10, 190, 211, 226, 232, 244, 254, 262, 273, 294, 299, 300, 332–4, 362–3, 379, 394 Leobardus, saint 388, 390, 391, 404 Leone, Mark 35 lex ribvaria 224–5, 230–1, 238, 240, 241–2, 307, 321 limitanei, border troops 119 Loseby, Simon 67 Lucy, Sam 265, 334–8 Mâcon, councils of 374 Man, Isle of, Viking burials in 78–79 Mann, Michael 56 Marr, Nikolai 24 Marxist archaeology 38 mature adults, burials of 228, 308–10, 370–1 McGeorge, Penny 137 memory 208–9, 223–4, 251–2 Menelaus, saint 407 Metz 229, 237, 248, 258, 263, 275, 277, 278, 283, 289–90 burials in 275, 289–90, 309 region of 203, 225, 234, 254, 262, 267, 273–5, 290–3, 315, 393 military service 364–5, 366 monuments, reuse of 253–6 Moreland, John 44, 61–62, 72–78, 82 Morris, Ian 39, 41–42, 58, 60, 62 Mousson (Moselle), church 277 mundium 308 new archaeology see processual archaeology Niederdollendorf Stone 352, 397 Niederstotzingen, triple-burial at 347, 358 Normandy, child-burials in 396 North Germany, Roman-period inhumations 146–7 objects, as symbolic ‘words’ 205–6, 219–20, 223 old people, burials of 310–11 Oudenburg (Belgium), cemetery 128, 141, 368 pactus legis salicae 224, 238, 240, 241, 242, 282, 307, 308, 321, 351, 373, 388, 402 Pader, Ellen-Jane 4–5, 205, 219

416

index

Patrick, saint 283 Patroclus, saint 387, 391, 404 Paul the Deacon 73, 76–77 Paxton, Frederick 203 peer polity interaction 28 peplos-costume 149–50 Périn, Patrick 8–9, 69–70, 193–7 physical anthropology, and ethnic origins 121–2, 123 Pohl, Walter 134, 160 post-processual archaeology 33–38 Praiectus, saint 387 processual archaeology 26–31, 40 pueri 84–7, 404–7 Radegund, saint 180, 386 Ravn, Mads 60 Reihengräberzivilisation, origins of 93–167 Remigius of Reims 172, 183, 191–2, 193, 282 Renfrew, Colin 28 Reusch, Wilhelm 316 Revolt of the Nuns see Holy Cross, Poitiers Reynolds, Andrew 265 Richards, Julian 64, 219 Rome, monuments in 257–8 Saint-Rimay (Loir-et-Cher), cemetery 125 Saints’ lives, and childhood and adolescence 383–92 Salin, Edouard 261, 315 Salin’s Style II, and gender 380–1 sarcophagi 275–6, 394 Sawyer, Peter 61 Schmauder, Michael 142–51 Schretzheim, cemetery 368–9, 398, 403 Schulze-Dörlamm, Mechthild 110, 144 Scull, Chris 68 sex and gender, archaeology of 342–9 concepts of 338–42 shamanism 344 Shanks, Michael 36, 58 Shiffer, Michael 30, 32 Siegmund, Frank 141–2 Simmer, Alain 267, 318–21, 358 social change, around 600 AD 212–3, 229–31, 232, 247–8, 252, 255–6, 275–7, 300, 313–4, 408–9 sommets vosgiens, civilisation des 105 southern Gaul, Merovingian burials in 366, 398–9

St Matthias, Trier, cemetery of 226–8, 390, 412 (table 11.2) St Paulin/Maximin, Trier, cemetery of 226–8 St-Arnoul, Metz, church 263 St-Denis see Arnegund Stein, Frauke 151, 261, 267 St-Evre Toul, church 263 Stig Sørensen, Marie-Louise 79 Stoodley, Nick 344 St-Pierre-aux-Nonnains, Metz, monastery of 258 subordinate readings of burials 219–20 Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) cemetery 244, 255 Swift, Ellen 138–41, 149 Syagrius, son of Aegidius, leader in Soissons 182–3, 185–6, 191–2 Tarlow, Sarah 78–79 Tarquimpol (Moselle), church, burial under 263 The Ruin, Anglo-Saxon poem 257 Theuws, Frans 91, 136–7, 155–9, 162, 163–4, 167, 194, 243 Thomas, Julian 80–81, 82, 83 Thoringia, region mentioned by Gregory 177, 181, 182, 183, 195–6 Thuringians 177, 195–7 Tilley, Christopher 36, 58 time 222, 224–5, 230–1, 252–3, 255–7 Tracht see female costume Trier, Roman identity of 229, 230, 258, 380 Triererland, burials in 317, 394–5 tutulus brooches 99, 100 (fig. 2.2) 115–6, 139, 147–8 Van Dam, Raymond 104, 112 Van Noort, Robert 250 Van Ossel, Paul 129 Venantius, saint 384, 390, 391 Venantius Fortunatus, poet 390–1, 400, 411 (table 11.1) Vermand (Aisne), tombe de chef 94, 102, 109, 141 Vestland type cauldrons 115 Vilithuta, Parisienne woman 305 villas 161, 176, 177, 259, 281 fortification of 104–5 Visigothic Spain, burials in 367–8

index Vita Germani Grandivallensis 229 Vita-Finzi, Claudio 26 von Rummell, Philipp 154–5, 189 Vulfolaic, holy man 259, 269, 272 Wallerstein, Immanuel 28 weaponry, in late Roman graves 98, 119–21, 140, 144, 157–8 in Merovingian graves 359–69 Welch, Martin 71, 118 Werner, Joachim 93–94, 109 Werner, Karl-Ferdinand 272 Wheeler, Mortimer 23 Whittaker, C.R. (Dick) 132–3

417

Wickham, Chris 67 Wigber Low, Barrow 72–78 Williams, Howard 243–7, 248, 250, 253–4, 255–6 Wissembourg (Bas Rhin), abbey, charters of 277 Wood, Ian 237 World Systems Theory 28 Young, Bailey K. 6, 94–95, 111, 118, 131–2, 153, 262, 270 young adults, burials of 306–8, 346 Zweibelknopffibeln 103, 108

Brill’s Series on the Early Middle Ages (continuation of The Transformation of the Roman World) Managing Editor

Bonnie Effros ISSN 1878-4879 15. Gwynn, D.M. (ed.). A.H.M. Jones and the Later Roman Empire. 2008. ISBN 978 90 04 16383 6 16. Garipzanov, I.H. The Symbolic Language of Authority in the Carolingian World (c.751-877). 2008. ISBN 978 90 04 16669 1 17. Trumbore Jones, A. Noble Lord, Good Shepherd. Episcopal Power and Piety in Aquitaine, 877-1050. 2009. ISBN 978 90 04 17786 4 18. Halsall, G. Cemeteries and Society in Merovingian Gaul. Selected Studies in History and Archaeology, 1992-2009. 2010. ISBN 978 90 04 17999 8 brill.nl/bsem

Published previously in the The Transformation of the Roman World book series: 1. Pohl, W. (ed.). Kingdoms of the Empire. The Integration of Barbarians in Late Antiquity. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10845 9 2. Pohl, W. (ed.). Strategies of Distinction. The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300-800. With H. Reimitz. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10846 7 3. Hodges, R. & W. Bowden (eds.). The Sixth Century. Production, Distribution and Demand. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10980 3 4. Brogiolo, G.P. & B. Ward-Perkins (eds.). The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. 1999. ISBN 90 04 10901 3 5. Chrysos, E. & I. Wood (eds.). East and West: Modes of Communication. Proceedings of the First Plenary Conference at Merida.1999. ISBN 90 04 10929 3 6. Jong, M. de & F. Theuws (eds.). Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages. With C. van Rhijn. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11734 2

8. Theuws, F. & J. Nelson (eds.). Rituals of Power. From Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. 2000. ISBN 90 04 10902 1 9. Brogiolo, G.P., N. Gauthier & N. Christie (eds.). Towns and their Territories between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11869 1 10. Pohl, W., I. Wood & H. Reimitz (eds.). The Transformation of Frontiers. From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11115 8 11. Hansen, I.-L. & C. Wickham (eds.). The Long Eighth Century. Production, Distribution and Demand. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11723 7 12. Corradini, R., M. Diesenberger & H. Reimitz (eds.). The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages. Texts, Resources and Artefacts. 2003. ISBN 90 04 11862 4 13. Goetz, H.-W., J. Jarnut & W. Pohl (eds.). Regna and Gentes. The Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12524 8 14. Barceló, M. & F. Sigaut (eds.). The Making of Feudal Agricultures? 2004. ISBN 90 04 11722 9