Making Provincial Kingship in Early Ireland: Cashel and the Creation of Munster

This chapter explores the development of a kingdom of Munster through the lens of the evolution of the Rock of Cashel, Co. Tipperary. Traditionally regarded as the provincial capital of Munster from at least the beginning of the early medieval period, it is argued instead that the provincial status of the Rock emerged out of political discourses associated with the creation of a kingdom of Munster during the 7th to 9th centuries. Alternative seas of kingship, rivals to Cashel and the politics associated with these early centres of kingship are explored with reference to their wider implications for provincial models of later prehistoric and early medieval Ireland.

Locating Meaning in Later Anglo-Saxon England: Meeting-Places of the witan, 924–1016

This chapter examines the meeting-places of royal assemblies (‘the witan’) in later Anglo-Saxon England. By means of four case studies, it demonstrates that these sites were carefully chosen and intimately associated with the business conducted at such events. In this respect, archaeological and onomastic studies of assembly sites, which have tended to focus on their local context, can be profitably brought together with more recent historical scholarship, which highlights the importance of ritual and demonstration at such gatherings: the former reveals the significance of the stages of these events, whilst the latter provides a framework for understanding the nature and meaning of the acts played out there.

‘Folk’ Cemeteries, Assembly and Territorial Geography in Early Anglo-Saxon England

This chapter examines the evidence for open-air assembly places existing at cemeteries of the 5th and 6th centuries in eastern and southern England. Contrasts are drawn between the types of cemetery (i.e. primarily inhumation or cremation), and types of legal assembly taking place at these sites. A small number of associated sites are identified and discussed, but it is argued that in general ‘folk’ cemeteries were not reused by later Anglo-Saxon communities as places of legal assembly. Examination of the available evidence identifies some of the features of palimpsest landscapes and attempts to provide an explanation for their continued significance through the early medieval period. Particular emphasis is given in this discussion to the role of elite power, and its appropriation of the symbolic landscape.

Community Meetings in Early Medieval Castile

Local community meetings have long been considered an essential component in the institutional development of the medieval kingdom of León and Castile. Yet the early medieval phases of that development are often seen from a teleological perspective, as the formative phase of the more developed and better-known central and later medieval municipal assemblies. This chapter intends to explore the Castilian local community meetings of the period up to AD 1038 in themselves, as a fundamental aspect of the structuring of local sociability, regardless of subsequent evolutions. Building upon the evidence of the preserved charters from this period, the vocabulary, functions and location of such meetings are discussed, along with their scale: whether neighbouring communities engaged in assemblies at a supralocal scale and whether local meetings could acquire a supralocal dimension in certain circumstances.

Property and Governance: Making the Anglo-Saxon Agricultural Landscape

The chapter focuses on ancient traditions of collective governance over agricultural resources in the context of the growth of early medieval lordship. It begins by drawing attention to the incorporation in highly regular medieval open-field systems found across the English ‘Central Province’ of two contradictory forms of governance: the collective participation of all cultivators in their management and regulation, and highly directive managerialism on lordly demesnes. It investigates that contradiction by exploring the ancient origins of the collective governance of pasture and of irregularly organised open-field arable; and the more recent origins of highly regular open-field systems on middle Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical estates. The chapter concludes that the emergence of distinctive highly organised large-scale open-field systems in the Central Province may represent the deliberate integration in the interests of agricultural efficiency of long traditions of collective peasant governance with the growing directiveness of early medieval lordly power.

Ulpianum–Nyeuberge–Prişthine: Places of Power on the Plain of Kosovo

To this day, the central Balkan region of Kosovo bears an important geostrategic meaning due to its rich metal ore reserves. Consequently, the effort that respective hegemonic powers—Imperium Romanum, Byzantine Empire, Bulgarian, Serbian and Ottoman state—put into controlling these deposits and in establishing administrative and economic centres in the area is traceable throughout history. The development of these places of power that dominate the Plain of Kosovo is portrayed in the light of new archaeological investigations. They suggest that, in addition to accessibility to natural resources including mines, infrastructural connections and political stability decided the success or failure of archaeologically or historically identifiable urban places, which were themselves located according to exogenic circumstances. After emphasising the central role of the Roman urban heritage upon developing early medieval power structures, this chapter looks beyond the Middle Ages at the connection between (urban) ‘place’ and ‘power’ in this Balkan region.

The Language of Justice in Northern Iberia Before AD 1000

This chapter represents an examination of the nature of the records that describe judicial court procedure in northern Iberia in the 9th and 10th centuries. It reveals that most records do not derive from court proceedings but from subsequent construction, sometimes for very partial reasons. This allows us a better understanding of process on the ground and some perception of the power relations that derive from controlling the record.

Accommodating Assemblies, as Evidenced at the 6th–11th-Century AD Royal Residence at Lake Tissø, Denmark

In the 6th and 7th centuries, large elite residences were established in Scandinavia. They differ from the earlier chieftain residences in size and apparent multi-functionality with respect to politics, religion, law and trade. Classic sites include Old Lejre and Tissø in Denmark, and Old Uppsala in Sweden. The growing dominions of the emerging petty-kings at this time presuppose control and cohesion in society, which is evidenced, among other things, by regular assemblies in which the population participated. Some of the larger accumulations of pit houses are here interpreted as assembly sites. Support for this interpretation is sought through analogy with church towns from the medieval and renaissance periods in northern Scandinavia. The pit house is thus interpreted as temporary accommodation for families or persons participating in different kinds of assemblies. Large assemblies emerged in the 6th century probably as a result of the elite’s increasing demand for control and communication.

Meeting in the Shadow of Heroes? Personal Names and Assembly Places

This chapter examines the likelihood that celebrated individuals were commemorated in the names of assembly sites as part of a display of political authority or cultural affiliation. Focusing primarily on the names of Domesday hundreds, it draws comparisons with the personal names in other well-established Anglo-Saxon corpora (including charter bounds, narrative sources, Domesday Book and place-names), in order to assess the social context of those individuals commemorated in hundred-names. The chapter then evaluates the probability that such names could carry specific political or cultural resonance at the time of naming, and there are clear indications that this may sometimes have been the case, perhaps especially in the first half of the 10th century. While the evidence implies that the hundred-names arose in a number of different circumstances, the analysis suggests that reference to heroic figures may have been one motivating factor in the naming of sites of assembly.

Mints, Moneyers and the Geography of Power in Early Medieval England and its Neighbours

Thanks to the inscriptions on early medieval coins, the locations where they were made—mints—are among the best-recorded selections of places in Europe. This chapter seeks to demonstrate that the establishment of mints at particular times and places depended above all on contemporary governmental and social conditions. The later Roman Empire had emphasised the centrality of a few large mints closely tied to the fiscal system, but its successor kingdoms in England, Francia, Italy and Spain followed different criteria. Production was often organised on a more personal than institutional basis through the mediation of moneyers, and commercial activity, administrative functions or military/political significance could all dictate the production of coin. It is essential to consider the interaction of these and other factors in shaping the role of a mint, as well as the diversity in function and scale that could apply within even one territory.