Chris Wickham’s contribution to the renewal of our understanding of the social processes at work in the (not only) European Early Middle Ages is universally renown--and deservedly so. His recent retirement has offered the chance for a range of celebrations of his multi-faceted research activity, each focusing on some of its specific issues. This volume is one of them, the tribute especially paid by Spanish historiography--even though not all its authors are Spanish. Its fourteen papers (plus an introduction and a brief conclusive chapter), mostly resulting from an international congress held in Vitoria-Gasteiz in September 2016, are grounded on two of the keys of Wickham’s approach, namely, the intersection between written documentation and archaeological data on the one hand, and his scope on social structures, investigated from a perspective of historical materialism, on the other. As underlined in the Preface, especially the latter “has been particularly noticeable in places like Spain, where intellectual renewal and the overcoming of the Francoist historical discipline has been remedied through social history” (8). By placing the dynamics, expressions, reasons, and consequences of social inequality--or rather inequalities--in the Early Middle Ages at the core of their reflections, the volume’s editor and contributors equally show their debt towards other authors and streams, both in the field of history and socio-political thinking. Microhistory and its jeux d’echelles play a clear role in the special focus on the local level of inquiry. The considerations on contemporary socio-economical inequalities by Charles Tilly and, more recently, Branko Milanovic and Thomas Piketty are equally obvious references. But how much of this can be usefully applied to the study of early medieval societies? How can one cope with the condition of the sources from that period? The cooperation between history and archaeology is an absolute necessity from this perspective. But how should it be managed in order to produce satisfactory results? These are the key issues at stake in all the papers.
In his brilliant introduction, the editor Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo traces not only the structure and contents of the volume, but also its historiographical and intellectual framework, starting from the inequalities of our globalized society and their readings by social and human scientists. Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, experiencing dramatical changes and experimentation in the structures of political and social organization, are described as especially interesting times for the study of inequalities and their transformations. Local communities developed as small worlds provided with logics of their own, but also had to deal with the processes pertaining to the redefinition of public and royal power, and the rulers’ attempts to establish their authority on the localities. This scenario provided chances and spaces for strategies of social distinction by individuals or groups emerging as interlocutors between their communities and the kings and their aristocracies, and thus setting themselves as local élites. And this is but one of the possible ongoings one can appreciate in the enormously wider framework of the transformation of Roman inequalities.
In the first sub-section of the volume, the processes of State Formation and their role in social stratification are sketched. Julio Escalona focuses on North-Western Iberia between the 5th and 9th century. He points to four dynamics, intermingled with one another, that took to the (re-) establishment of the State after the political collapse of the Roman government: 1) direct inheritance from the Roman past; 2) reintroduction of an idea of State by ecclesiastics fleeing from the Muslim South; 3) “satellitisation” by external political entities, i.e., the Emirate; incorporation into the Asturian-Leonese kingdom. In the appreciation of these processes, the contribution of archaeology, by now quite exclusively visible in the rulers’ building politics and fortifications, is highly promising but still strongly underrated. The choice to include the anthropologist Robin A. Beck’s contribution on the Mississippian world between ca AD 1000 and 1250 is a very smart one. In the context of the volume his paper is interesting for at least two reasons. In its first part he reflects on a range of categories used by anthropologists and sociologists in their investigations of social inequality, such as status, class, differentiation, discrimination and so on. Then he takes them together in his own model of the processes defining individual and collective inequalities. His model, like anyone else’s, can be debated but it takes the whole volume’s contribution on these issues on an even higher level. The other reason why Beck’s paper is important is the role it assigns to environmental history in the social and political transformation of the Mississippian world. Both the introduction of new crops (maize) and the river’s waterfloods determined the amount of available resources and their distribution, as well as the consequential social differentiations. Far from “advocating a simplistic return to environmental determinism...bottlenecks are social phenomena that may be conditioned by environmental as well as social factors” (71).
The second sub-section of the volume, dedicated to economic specialization and elite demand, is the one that most directly focuses on archaeology. In his account on Northern Italy, Sauro Gelichi proposes a reconsideration of the traditional approaches to pottery as a marker of inequality. The modes of production traced so far by scholars--household production, household industry, individual workshop--though rarely documented in their ideal shape, are nonetheless still effective as descriptive tools. Yet more parameters should be introduced and considered: resources, technology, consumption, audience. Pottery production is best understood only when reintroduced in its context of origin and circulation. “Not only must we conceptualize our heuristic approaches better--all too often theoretically weak, if not generic--but also, and above all, must we return to rigorous philological approaches to the contexts” (96). Gelichi’s remarks are indirectly shared and supported by Francesca Grassi’s paper. The four sites she considers are located in the Basque Country, a peripheral area with no central places or a strong political authority. While slipping aside from the patterns of international circulation of pottery in the 6th-7th century, internal production and distribution remained active all along the period. Items from outside reappear in archaeological contexts from the 8th century, becoming markers of distinction for new elites. In Edith Peytremann’s paper the focus shifts to the organization of rural settlements in Northern France and Western Germany. The case-study of Sermersheim, Bas-Rhin-Alsace, attested in the charters as a dependance of the monasteries of Ebersmunster, Hohenburg and Seltz, shows a stratification of activities most probably connected to the needs and dynamics of these monasteries’ curtes dominicae. “Specific activities areas,” for instance for the production of textiles, were detected. Peytremann’s account is especially clear in highlighting the heterogeneous nature of the sites usually classified as rural settlements and the urgency to “display their singularity” (146). Catarina Tente’s analysis of four rural sites in Northern Portugal equally underscores heterogeneity between them, but also their strong connections. In the 9th century these local communities show some degree of specialization in their activities and productions, probably in the frame of regular contacts. In the 10th century signs of social differentiation start to emerge from archaeological evidence. The competition between Muslims and Asturians for the control of the area created chances for the rise of new local elites negotiating their military support for one side or the other, and thus obtaining further acknowledgement for their position of pre-eminence. So Tente demonstrates how social inequalities could work on a regional level, and that they can be better understood when different sites are compared. In the final paper of this section, Richard Hodges wonders whether early medieval rural settlements in Italy can be defined as primitive and poor, in comparison to both Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages. His answer is resolutely and desolatingly positive. In his view archeologists have acritically relied on the written sources, only underlining the elements of continuity and liveliness in the Italian countryside.
The third and longest part of the volume collects a range of case-studies, “small worlds” investigated in search of social inequalities. The lands owned by the monastery of Prüm in the village of Villance, on the Ardennes, and recorded in the polyptych of 893 are at the core of the paper by Jean-Pierre Devroey and Nicolas Schroeder. The different conditions and extension of the tenures both reflected and produced inequalities among their retainers, whose status could also significantly vary during (life-)time; polyptychs “often only provide a decontextualized snapshot” (179). Possibilities for social elevation were connected to the development of special relationships with the monastery and the attribution of specific tasks of responsibility and supervision. Individual success or failure were, as sociologists pointed out, the result of both structural and accidental conditions. Igor Santos Salazar offers a vivid picture of the disputes over fiscal lands in the Po Valley around Modena and their role in shaping rural societies in Carolingian times. Until the mid-9th century public and private charters attest a high level of judicial agency and knowledge by local communities, who support their own reasons and rights against the monastery of Nonantola and build their own identity as collective actors (populi). In the second half of the century, as the monastery’s control over fiscal lands grows and the kings’ authority slowly fades, local elites take the chance to establish special connections with the abbots in order to consolidate their status. Northern Italy is equally the area explored in Fabio Saggioro’s more archaeologically-focused paper. The cases of Nogara, where a castle was built in the early 10th century by royal concession, and the monastery of San Benedetto di Leno near Brescia offer glimpses of a framework in which “not only businesses, but also monasteries and--even though they were often invisible--communities or groups of freemen were part of an economic management system that was much more complex than previously thought” (251). The control of areas where land and water were strictly connected was often at stake in the strategies of these and also other actors’ interventions. Iñaki Martín Viso examines the charter evidence concerning three villages in the 10th-century kingdom of León. Inequalities are especially reflected, and were shaped, by an active estate market fed by exchanges and sells of lands. Individuals and kin groups built both their social status and identity around their patrimonies. While the level of royal presence and intervention was low, monasteries, the other key players in the region, gradually developed their landed wealth by the means of the market, and only later through gifts. The author’s analysis thus helps to reconsider traditional readings, attributing the role of structuring local societies to the kings’ support in the processes of colonization of previously unpopulated areas. Álvaro Carvajal Castro is equally interested in testing historiographical interpretations concerning early medieval North-Western Iberia, in this case the one by Reina Pastor, who attributed to local communities a key role in the political life of the countryside. Conflicts are the perspective chosen by the author to examine social inequalities. Far from being simple expressions of contingent disputes, for villages and their élites judicial conflicts represented arenas for establishing and rethinking balances of power both at the local level and in their relationship with lay and ecclesiastical aristocracies. Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo ideally brings on the considerations of Martin Viso and Carvajal Castro, integrating them with a closer inspection of the archaeological data. Yet his paper is also deeply imbued with theoretical suggestions. The cases he deals with, situated in the areas of Madrid and the Basque Country, are analyzed from the points of view of the elements contributing to the formation of social memories among local communities, i.e., the cultural biography of the household and the role of cemeteries and/or isolated burials. The evidence suggests that villages in Iberia were not the obvious consequence of the transformation of the Roman villae, but rather the result of negotiations between a whole range of social players. What is more, “in Iberia there has not been a single ‘village moment,’ but there were different village formation periods which were articulated at very different speeds and with differing results” (329). The picture of the rural communities in early medieval Iberia resulting from the previous papers is resumed by Carlos Tejerizo-García in the final contribution of this section. His purpose is to verify the validity of what Chris Wickham named the peasant mode of production (PMP), an economical regime structured around the peasant household, the distribution of roles and resources among its members, its relationships with the village and the market. Granted that it must be understood in a flexible way, in Tejerizo-García’s view “the PMP...creates [a] common ground of dialogue between the written sources and the archaeological record as a very exciting and stimulating way to take a step further in the analysis of early medieval peasant societies” (354).
In his conclusions, Wickham traces the big issues at stake and the undisputable successes of the volume. That of the village has proven an ideal context for investigating inequalities. Even though the paucity of sources doesn’t allow a sort of inquiry like those conducted in the tradition of the Italian microstoria, local élites made themselves (and are now to us) visible through their patrimony, their public functions, their relationships with superior authorities. The volume also makes one more step toward the definitive inclusion of the Iberian Peninsula (or at least the Christian part of it) in the European historiographical debates on early medieval societies.
One final remark. This is a political book, in the best sense of the word. By setting social inequality at the core of the authors’ scope, it not only draws the attention on a key issue for present day, but also proves one more time that history, even that of a (relatively) distant past such as the Early Middle Ages, can and must take its own contribution in these debates.