The Genesis of the Frankish Aristocracy (Part 2 of 4

Part 1 of this piece can be found here

Transformations around 400


Thus far, the evidence points overwhelmingly to the facts that the northern Gallic social élite was, outside the Triererland, not especially wealthy and that, along with the region’s economy and most of its social structures, it was intimately connected to the imperial state focused upon Trier. Considering the main issue with which this article is concerned, we can conclude that, even were the Merovingians handed control of northern Gaul via treaty in a smooth transfer of political authority, they would not have inherited a powerful, independently wealthy regional aristocracy.

The preceding discussion renders almost predictable the effects on the region produced by political changes after c.380. In 381 Emperor Gratian moved the imperial court from northern Gaul to Italy and Milan. A series of changes is then visible across the region. In most areas villas enter a final phase of desertion, being abandoned by the second quarter of the fifth century. There were exceptions of course. In more southerly areas, around Paris, there is much better evidence of villa survival until rather later in the century, something that seems also be true in the Triererland. The picture, as before, is rarely a straightforward one of economic decline. In the south of the modern Netherlands, around 400 there is a late phase of construction on some rural sites, such as at Gennep. However, these are not villas of the old type. Even with these caveats, however, the impression cannot be avoided that the very late fourth and earlier fifth centuries constituted a period of profound change in the northern Gallic rural settlement pattern and economy. The development is again incompatible with an explanation in terms of an alleged ‘de-Romanisation’ (as is made clear by the continuing – indeed the increased – usage of Roman symbols in burials) or simply through a new military culture. The fifth-century end of the villas makes the latter explanation unlikely. The fourth-century aristocracy of the region had already, as we have seen, been very largely militarised and even those not involved in the army directly were linked to it economically. We cannot be sure that fifth-century aristocrats were markedly more militarised than most of their predecessors. Indeed, sixth-century Frankish law suggests that civic, Roman aristocrats were still a feature of the area’s social structures. If the fifth-century insecurity led to more fighting and greater (and more violent) competition for local leadership, then this affected the survival of villas not through a shift towards a more military state of mind, allegedly eschewing elaborate building, but through the need to spend surplus on local alliances and the equipment of a retinue, leaving little for the upkeep of stone buildings. Aristocrats had to choose where to spend their limited resources and the times ultimately demanded that they choose politics and security over architectural embellishment. Ultimately, the final demise of the northern Gallic villa is an economic issue, not one of a shift in mentalities – even if the latter can reasonably be postulated.

This impression is underlined by study of the region’s towns, which underwent further dramatic contraction and in one or two cases died out completely. There is little trace of occupation on the intermediate settlements, the vici and castra. This is partly related to the problems of dating very late Roman occupation. The two principal supports for such chronologies are coins and finewares and both are problematic after c.400. The latest developments of Argonne Ware pottery, to which we shall shortly return, were not recognised as such until about 1990, which probably means that traces of fifth-century occupation had earlier been wrongly assigned to the fourth century instead. Additionally, the region’s coin supply dried up early in the fifth century after the closure of the Trier mint. While undoubtedly making the identification of late Roman levels very difficult, these changes are themselves significant. The end of coinage and the failure of local powers to mint replacements, after the end of a series of silver imitation solidi in the middle quarters of the century, imply a significant reduction in the scale and complexity of the economy.

Truly monetized commerce requires a neutral medium of exchange and a guarantee of a coin’s value, accepted by both parties to a transaction. The government of a state or polity has the power to provide such a guarantee, moreover one which can be accepted across large distances. With the crisis of the imperial state in northern Gaul around 400, such guarantees disappeared and the areas over which objects were traded shrank accordingly. In whose name the silver imitation solidi, already mentioned, were struck remains mysterious but these coins nevertheless enabled some monetary transactions to take place across a reasonable distance in the middle quarter of the century. Their face value was nevertheless fairly high and the absence of small change is a crucial index of a downturn in the extent of the economy’s monetization. Such coins possibly served other purposes than the strictly commercial, as was the case with the gold solidi. When these silver coins, which are not numerous in any case, ceased to be struck, coinage in the region was limited to imported Eastern Roman solidi until the Frankish rulers began to strike solidi themselves in the sixth century. The function of this type of high-value coinage (1/72 lb. of gold) might very well have been more political than economic. Small denomination coinage remained absent until the seventh century.

Other coins were available nonetheless. The frequency with which Roman coins are found in the pouches buried with sixth-century Merovingian males suggests that such coins continued to serve as handy units of bullion. Their use was more limited than that of a properly minted and guaranteed currency. It has long been known that, in the sixth century, scales or balances are known in northern Gallic burials. Frequently found in lavishly-furnished graves, their symbolism seems to refer to a role in vouchsafing ‘weights and measures’ and this might (though there are other interpretations) have been related to determining the correct quantity of precious metal in old coins. Although these data come from a later period than that which under consideration, they seem suggestive of mechanisms that could have existed as the late imperial monetary economy collapsed. If we combine this evidence with the conclusions just reached about the relative power of the local aristocracy, it is clear that the word of such a local leader would not be recognised by both parties to a transaction over wide areas: another feature in restricting the distances over which commercial exchanges might be made. Some evidence, to which we will return, suggests that the standing of northern Gallic aristocratic families might have been somewhat more secure in the early fifth century than it was a hundred years later and this could have extended the zones over which their word was held to be good, but the general point will surely stand. With the collapse of monetary exchange, the only other mechanism for long distance movement of goods was that associated with the imperial economy but, in the context we have outlined, this too was fading fast.

It is here that Wickham’s attention to the ceramic data is important. His account is as follows:

In northern Gaul around 400 by far the commonest fine ware in the sigillata tradition was Argonne ware … often quite elaborately decorated with a roller wheel … with a 400km radius of distribution from the Rhine to well south of the Loire … [I]t continued into the late sixth century; it reached less than 200km by now … but survived a century into the Merovingian period as a production on a substantial scale.

If this conclusion can be reached from this evidence, then there must – clearly – be something wrong with the model I have sketched. Something about the other evidence, whether of the rural and urban settlement sites or of the burials, to which I will shortly return, must conceal a crucial element in the equation or else the way we read such data is fundamentally mistaken. The picture of imperial crisis and collapse in the region, after c.380, that I have drawn from the written sources must also be wide of the mark. Wickham has (as we have seen) ways of explaining the exiguous settlement evidence in terms of a shift in aristocratic culture to a more military model, which would fit with the idea of the region’s militarisation. This latter proposal is not entirely satisfactory for reasons that have been discussed, but the main point is that Wickham presents a coherent, rounded argument.

Whether intended this way or not, a fair and straightforward reading of the passage quoted is as follows: this pottery was distributed over an area in excess of 500,000 km2 and continued to be produced ‘on a substantial scale’ through the fifth century to the end of the sixth century, even if the area over which it was distributed had shrunk by half by then. The image presented by such a reading is, however, misleading. If we examine Didier Bayard’s study of this form of ceramics, a rather different picture emerges. We find (figure 1) that in his early fifth-century Phase 2, almost all Argonne ware is found within a 300km-radius of the kilns (6 sites yielding such pottery beyond that radius compared with 66 within it) and within in a ‘box’ 500km (east-west) by 300km (north-south). That is an impressive area of 150,000 km2, but still considerably less than that implied by Wickham’s statement. More to the point, by the time of Bayard’s Phase 3 (roughly 440s-460s) this had contracted further. All of the finds he catalogued from the middle decades of the fifth century lay within a 300-km radius and most (67-79%) of them within 200km. Most lie in a box covering 120,000 km2, less than half the area calculated on the basis of the 300km radius of distribution. Thus, this contraction, which a straightforward reading of Wickham’s account implies was something that happened slowly over the fifth and sixth centuries, actually happened quite suddenly around the middle of the fifth, with the abandonment of the Rhine forts. By the time of the political end of the western Empire in the late fifth century (Bayard’s Phase 4) the distribution of Argonne ware had contracted so that 98% of it was found within a 200km radius – in fact within a 200kmx200km box (a considerably smaller surface area) – though fairly evenly distributed within that zone. Argonne ware does continue into the late sixth century but it is important to clarify that the last decorated phase dies out around 540 and that thereafter only standard undecorated forms were produced. So, rather than being distributed across somewhere between 125,000 and over half a million square kilometres during the late fifth and sixth centuries, the impression easily gained from Wickham’s statement, this pottery was in fact only traded across 40,000km2 during this period. In comparative terms, nevertheless, that might represent a widespread distribution of material, but how it relates to other post-imperial ceramics needs to be reassessed. It is now, for example, suggested that some post-imperial wares made in Leicestershire were distributed over an area ranging from the Channel coast to Yorkshire, a not dissimilar reach. It is also important to note the end of decoration in the early sixth century and the restriction in the range of forms, both of which features underline an economic change not unfairly characterised as decline.

The last phases of occupation on the Rhine forts are shadowy and a sophisticated reinterpretation, pondering whether they were still bases for regular troops or, moving away slightly from the usual narrative, centres for local warlords, is overdue. Either way, it seems clear that after the middle of the fifth century whoever did control these forts was no longer in a position to be able to guarantee a market for the products of the Argonne kilns on anything like the old scale. Overall, the link between the collapse of the state and severe economic contraction could not be clearer.

The archaeological cemetery evidence fits this picture of crisis. From about the time that Gratian moved the court back to Italy, the number of lavishly furnished burials in northern Gaul increases steadily. In these burials, men are interred with weapons and, more frequently the belt-sets and brooches that were the insignia of imperial office. In some cases they were accompanied by burials of women and children, the former buried with a wide range of new jewellery forms, notably brooches. The latter and the desire to fit this change in the record into the old narrative of barbarian conquest led to the assignment of these graves to incoming ‘Germanic’ settlers. A closer examination of the archaeological data (the rite itself and the artefacts deposited), freed from these assumptions, combines with the lack of any documentary historical support for the notion to compel a more subtle reading. This sees the subjects of these burials, as yet comparatively few in number and found in small clusters, often on larger cemeteries, as representing locally powerful families whose status was called into question by the death of a member. Given what has been said about the bases of the northern Gallic aristocracy’s power, so closely related to the presence and legitimation of the Roman state it should be no surprise that their local standing should have been jeopardised by the removal of effective, regular governmental presence. It should equally be unsurprising that the Moselle valley, where the wealthiest nobles seem to have been concentrated, is largely free from such burials at this time. The choice of items, and their symbolism, also makes sense in the context described. In the absence of effective imperial presence, the bases of a family’s legitimate authority were proclaimed, especially when an adult male member died, questioning the inheritance of such authority. In this situation, legitimate power was proclaimed by the use of badges that made a link with imperial power. Otherwise they stressed traditional Roman aristocratic virtues and pastimes, such as hunting. The women’s costume, one imagines, made a comment about their status as a chaste wife, a good mother, and so on. As imperial presence grew ever more distant, the use of the badges of office waned accordingly, although other symbolism persisted. Nonetheless, examination of the ritual in comparative perspective suggests that, as yet, the power of these families was not decisively threatened. In a slightly later period, the distribution of furnished burials was far more widespread across communities, and the choice (and number) of goods related to the life-cycle and gender. Rather than being concentrated in the burials of a particular kindred, but spread across subjects of both sexes and all ages, grave-goods were focussed upon mature adult males and younger women.

On the eve of incorporation into the Merovingian kingdom, the northern Gallic aristocracy was even less wealthy than it had been before and its status within local communities was more under threat as the effective legitimacy of a claimed link with the Empire faded. Although this does not imply that many aristocratic families had necessarily lost their local pre-eminence, it seems to be the case that the social, political and economic arenas within which they lived had shrunk considerably. It is against this backdrop that the famous passages of Salvian’s De Gubernatio Dei should be understood. Long taken, doubtless wrongly, as the paradigm for late Roman western aristocracy, Salvian’s comments must be placed in a very specific chronological and geographical context. The assumption that his tirades against the corrupt aristocracy of his times were aimed at the magnates of the Trier region whence he hailed (and whence he had fled, not least as a result of the actions of these rapacious individuals) is not certain but is a reasonable working hypothesis. We have already seen that the Triererland was an exceptional region of northern Gaul. Archaeological data make it clear that we should have no reason at all to generalise from the aristocrats of the lower Moselle valley. What has perhaps been less fully discussed is the precise moment that Salvian was describing. Writing in the 440s, it is reasonable to suppose that his account of the tyrannical curiales belongs to the 430s or perhaps slightly earlier; the issue turns on how recent one supposes that Salvian’s arrival in the south was at the time of his writing. If the picture he painted does belong to the 430s then it is quite instructive when viewed against the archaeological evidence.

In our current state of knowledge, this decade would lie towards the end of the period of occupation of the Triererland’s villas. The sharp decline in the distribution of Argonne ware and the end of occupation of the Rhine forts in the 440s have also been mentioned, and the politically-active generation of the region would largely have been children (at most) when even a usurper emperor last ruled at Trier. The area was fast approaching a severe, critical point and it is unsurprising that it had become a political hot-house. There was no imperial presence to regulate those who claimed to wield power in its name and none of the usual rotation of offices that was part of the efficient management of patronage. Thus those who could continued to cling onto their ‘legitimate’ power, and in the critical situation of the second quarter of the fifth century they exploited it to the maximum. Without the opportunity to share this power, their opponents could only adopt the strategies mentioned by Salvian: either to wield local authority without formal imperial legitimation, that is to say to become rebels or bagaudae (in the eyes of the imperial government or of those who claimed to act in its name) or to turn to the barbarians for support. The three responses to crisis described by Salvian (claiming legitimate power; claiming power without allegedly imperial legitimation; and turning to the barbarians for support) were, in general, the options available to the political classes throughout the fifth century west, but around Trier they took on a particular form and intensity. The fourth option, the one taken by Salvian, was to flee to areas where the Empire’s writ still ran, and he does not seem to have been the only one to have chosen this course of action. In the Triererland of the 430s-440s, this must have seemed an attractive choice, especially as (unlike us) contemporaries did not know that the Empire would not return. Indeed their knowledge of history doubtless suggested that, eventually, inevitably, it would. For these reasons, the decisions to join the barbarians or to follow the ‘bagaudic’ course – those that seem to modern observers to be the ‘far-sighted’ or ‘realistic’ options – must have been taken by contemporaries very much in extremis. On their periodic forays back into northern Gaul (fizzling out in the 440s – as we know but contemporaries did not), the representatives of the Empire dealt equally harshly with bagaudae and barbarians. As well as creating these risks, turning one’s back on the traditional bases of political power brought all sorts of other identities into question, not least one’s masculinity. That the depredations of those who claimed a legitimate imperial basis for their power should have driven their rivals to take these actions is a graphic indication of how critical the situation on the lower Moselle had become.

Part 3 here.

The Genesis of the Frankish Aristocracy (Part 1 of 4)

[Here - broken down into four parts for - comparative - ease of reading, is a piece I have been working on of late.  It is still very much in first draft form and thus very woolly, un-foot-noted and unchecked.  When it is foot-noted, checked and edited down, I will send it off to a journal and take it down from the blog, so if you wish to comment or otherwise have any input - which will duly be acknowledged - now is the time. 

Essentially the piece confronts a key element in the debate over whether or not the Merovingian aristocracy was an independently wealthy magnate class or - essentially - a service aristocracy dependent upon the kings.  It deals with the assumption, which would be very important, if not fatal, for the second interpretation (which has generally been my own), that there were established Gallo-Roman and Frankish aristocracies/magnate classes existing in northern Gaul when the Merovingians took over.  Using a full range of evidence and paying close attention to regional diversity, the paper demonstrates (I hope!), first, that outside the Triererland the late Roman aristocracy was not an independently wealthy nobility of the type known elsewhere, second (Part 2) that the crisis of c.400 reduced the Gallo-Roman aristocracy's wealth and power further, third (Part 3) that, via a close study of Frankish migration and its mechanisms, we can see that the Frankish leaders who settled in Gaul in the fifth century were already closely dependent upon the Merovingians by c.500 at least, and fourth (Part 4) that a consideration of the archaeological traces of the northern Gallic aristocracy between 475 and 525 underline the point established in the rest of the article: that neither the Franks nor the Gallo-Romans presented the Merovingians with a powerful landed aristocracy with which to contend.  The mighty landed aristocrats of the seventh, eighth and especially ninth centuries were members of a class that was a later creation (of c.600).]

The nature of the Frankish aristocracy has featured heavily in the historiography of Merovingian Gaul. One of the main problems has been whether or not the northern Gaulish aristocracy, which we might term Frankish (as opposed to the more Gallo-Roman magnates of Aquitaine and Provence or the hybrid Gallo-Roman/Burgundian/Frankish élite of Burgundy), was formed of families whose wealth, local standing and power existed independently of the patronage of the Merovingian royal dynasty. This debate has never been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Perhaps, one hopes, it never will be (at least in its entirety) but a new contribution is nevertheless required. Chris Wickham’s monumental Framing of the Middle Ages recently presented a strong case for the wealth and independence, indeed for what he suggested was, in comparative perspective, the quite unusual wealth and independence, of the northern Gallic Frankish aristocracy throughout the early medieval era.

Wickham’s contribution is unusual in that it made well-informed use of archaeological as well as documentary sources and, perhaps more importantly, excavated material other than that normally employed for this kind of enquiry. Most previous studies have drawn mainly upon the evidence of excavated cemeteries for an archaeological insight into local social structures, giving at best a partial image. Wickham however employed ceramic data, which now exists in sufficient quantity and quality for reasonable observations to be made – something that was not true even twenty years ago. This would itself be reason enough for a re-examination of the economic bases of the Frankish aristocracy.

Wickham’s case is solid and well-argued and, for the second half the period covered by his survey (thus c.600-c.800), his conclusions seem entirely valid. Moreover, they are in harmony with what has, perhaps, always been the most common interpretation and with other recent scholarly work which has suggested a more direct continuity between the Gallo-Roman nobility of the region and the land-owning magnates of the Carolingian world. This paper argues against this trend. In a companion essay I deal with the nature of the sixth-century northern Gallic aristocracy and its transformation around the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries. Here, I address a fundamental basis of the ‘established aristocracy’ view. That is the nature of the social élite that existed in northern Gaul at the time of the establishment of the Merovingian kingdom. This paper questions the validity of Wickham’s (and others’) assumption that the Merovingian kings had to confront already-established Gallo-Roman and Frankish aristocracies in the creation of their realm.

Like Wickham’s discussion, it will use the whole range of data available to us, documentary, archaeological, epigraphic and numismatic. As well as chronological change, geographical diversity will be noted. One problem with the period covered by this paper, the late fourth and fifth centuries, is the general absence of written evidence. This means that the overwhelming bulk of the evidence used will be archaeological. Nevertheless, a great advantage of this form of data, and of the cemetery material in particular, is that, as well as being increasingly voluminous, it is securely anchored in time and space, allowing us to explore change through time, something which, as noted, has not always been recognised in previous studies, even Wickham’s. It will also allow us to shed a critical light upon the handful of well-worn fragments of written evidence which do seem to treat with the social structures of the region, most notably Salvian’s On the Governance of God.

Late Roman Background

The obvious preliminary to any discussion of the Merovingian aristocracy in northern Gaul is to examine the regional élite during the late Roman Empire. If a magnate stratum can be shown to have existed there, with secure local pre-eminence and secure control of extensive estates, how the Frankish kings could reduce such a group to the level of a service aristocracy would constitute a sizable historical problem, though not an insurmountable one. After all, such a reduction need not involve forcible displacement or dispossession, let alone the widespread slaughter, of such aristocrats. In fact, however, this problem does not, on closer inspection, really present itself. Across most of the region, the late Roman aristocracy was not composed of independently wealthy, powerful landowners. It seems to have been every bit as dependent upon the state as I would argue that their Merovingian descendants were. There were variations in the degree to which this was the case and at least one region where it certainly was not true but, as a broad categorisation, it will suffice.

This conclusion is based principally upon the archaeological evidence. The northern Gallic aristocracy had never been the wealthiest in Gaul. Studies have suggested that it was less locally dominant than its counterparts in southern Gaul even at the time of the Roman conquest. An exception to this rule might have been found in the civitas of the Treveri, in the lower Moselle valley, and the unusual character of the aristocracy in this area persisted throughout our period and beyond. In the prosperous early imperial era, northern Gaul saw the creation of numerous villas, but these tended to be fairly small establishments. A crucial change occurred after the third-century turmoil, when these settlements were either abandoned or (probably to an even greater degree than is currently known) changed decisively in their form and archaeological visibility. Increasing stress has recently been laid on the fact that better quality excavation and analysis reveal that many fewer of these sites were abandoned than had been believed. This has been vital in reassessing the settlement pattern and economy of late Roman northern Gaul. Nonetheless, even the more subtle analyses suggest that the rates of abandonment were very high, frequently in the region of 50%.

Concentration upon continuity of occupation also ignores a very important aspect of the problem – the change in the character of the settlement itself. The classical villa, stone-built with tiled roofs and, frequently, mosaic floors, often with under-floor hypocausts, manifests a particular set of social and economic relationships between the owner of the villa buildings and other inhabitants of the locality. Whatever the precise function of the site, whether working farm, ‘country house’ or hunting lodge (and this surely varied from site to site and from one phase of occupation to another), the villas reveal an ability to concentrate surplus and spend it upon the construction of a building that made a permanent mark upon the landscape. Such a building made a claim for the owner’s active subscription to a particular set of cultural attitudes associated with the Roman Empire, however those attitudes were played with and modified in local context. Stone-quarrying, tile-manufacture and mosaic-construction all required specialist manufactures and industries, organised transport networks and so on. Though the potential sophistication of timber architecture should not be neglected, it remains the case that the construction and maintenance of stone buildings necessitated a more complex matrix of specialist skills and industries. The change from these structures to timber, thatch- or shingle-roofed halls therefore marks a vitally important change in the nature of the local social élite and of the northern Gallic economy.

Debate on this change has hitherto tended to focus upon whether the shifts involved implied an economic decline. It is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that, in some ways at least, this must have been the case, but the best explanation of the transformation of the northern Gallic countryside in late antiquity seems to be to link it to the nature of the Roman Empire that emerged after the ‘third-century crisis’. It has for some time been noted that the evident change in the region’s settlement actually post-dates the conventional dates of the ‘crisis’, coming after Gaul’s reincorporation into the legitimate Roman Empire by Aurelian, who crushed the separate ‘Gallic Empire’ in the 270s. This precise political historical context can be combined with what we know of the Late Empire’s political economy to produce the following reconstruction.

One effect of the third century’s economic difficulties was, as is well known, an increase in the levying of taxes, and in the payment of state employees, in kind. Another well-known late imperial characteristic was the residence of the emperors on the frontiers, in the west most often at Trier (former home of the Gallic emperors). This presence was associated with a concentration of higher-grade troops near the Emperor himself and renewed emphasis on frontier defence and military operations against the barbarians (classic signs of imperial good management). This change, the shift in the system of taxation and payment, and other reorganisations of the hierarchy of troop-types within the army resulted in troops being concentrated in northern Gaul but spread over a wider expanse of the countryside. These features were crucial to the survival of the ensuing ‘inside-out’ late Roman Empire.

These points can be combined with the suppression of the Gallic Empire to suggest that the transformation of the northern Gaulish countryside resulted from the harnessing of the region’s surplus to the maintenance of the huge imperial presence now more or less permanently stationed in the area. Confiscation of the lands belonging to supporters of the Gallic imperial regime may have been associated with other expropriations or ‘compulsory purchases’ to ensure that the production of foodstuffs and other materials was geared to the supply of the large number of troops and civil servants. This hypothesis sidesteps the old argument about economic decline. Production could have continued on a scale commensurate with, or even greater than, that which existed before, but far less of the surplus would have accrued to the region’s local élite. This could nonetheless have meant a decline of sorts – in aristocratic wealth and in some of the industries that had hitherto existed to maintain high-status dwellings and way of life. Some slack was nevertheless taken up by the imperial presence in the region. The regional distribution of the late Roman northern Gallic fine-ware, Argonne Ware, seems geared to the supply of the frontier bases and the Rhenish glass industry flourished as well. The scale of production created by this demand might have stimulated the export of these classes of material further afield, to Britain and elsewhere. Indeed northern Gaulish products were traded far beyond the imperial frontier. Bronze bowls known as the ‘Vestland Type’, because of the concentration of find-spots in Norway, seem for example to have been produced in the Meuse valley. The precise form of exchange represented by this ‘export’ doubtless varied between a possibly ‘normal’ market exchange with barbarian communities immediately beyond the limes, through exchange with what resemble ‘gateway communities’ around the Baltic coasts, to diplomatic payments to the interior of Germania Magna. To whom any profits from the commercial transactions included within this range fell is impossible to establish. Some of it doubtless went to the imperial treasury, other elements probably ‘piggy-backed’ upon the empire’s ‘command economy’ and ended up with those to whom this was entrusted, and some surely represented independent commercial enterprises conducted by such producers, perhaps generated by the possibilities attendant upon large-scale imperially-sponsored manufacture. Some, therefore, must have ended up in the hands of the northern Gallic aristocracy, probably explaining the continued existence, as such, and refurbishment of at least some of the region’s villas.

Overall, though, the nature of this élite very likely changed too. If the majority of northern Gallic land was now imperially-owned, it could nevertheless have been leased to palatine aristocrats on long-term emphyteutic leases. Other parcels of land might have been used to reward civil and military service and still others could have been used for the traditional retirement gifts to soldiers. In all of these cases it is easy to see how insufficient surplus remained for estate-owners to continue the construction and maintenance of old-style villa buildings. Either possession of the territories and revenues was temporary or the land was not owned on a very large scale. One imagines that the managers of fiscal or imperial estates would not, furthermore, be retaining more of the fruits of the lands for which they were responsible than was necessary for the upkeep of ordinary dwellings and storage facilities. In this context the observable developments in the late Roman landscape of northern Gaul are easily explicable, without resort of ideas of economic decline or a rejection of Romanitas.

The latter concept, although much promoted in recent years, is particularly unlikely. Building a villa in the fourth century did not make a political statement in the same way as the construction of such a building in the centuries around the birth of Christ, in that it did not represent a new form of monumentalisation that differed from that which went before and proclaimed an adherence to new social, cultural and political modes of life. Nonetheless, the continued centring of Roman aristocratic culture on the villa cannot be denied. Furthermore, if one looks at the symbolism of the grave goods deposited in burials during the time of crisis around 400 (to be discussed shortly) one can see that they focus overwhelmingly upon the traditional symbols of Roman aristocratic life, the bases of social distinction and élite pastimes. A continuing subscription to precisely these well-established modes of Roman aristocratic life is clearly attested. The idea that the regional élite engaged in some form of active ‘de-Romanisation’, let alone ‘anti-Romanisation’ is extremely improbable.

Wickham presents a more interesting and subtle modification of the idea under the heading of the region’s militarisation, a process which is certainly demonstrable. Buildings within late Roman fortifications have frequently proved difficult to detect, leading Wickham to suggest that the late imperial military did not invest resources in lavishly-appointed dwellings. Therefore, runs the argument, a more militarised aristocratic culture would involve much less attention devoted to lavish building. This is an interesting possibility but it seems less plausible if scrutinised closely. The absence of buildings within late Roman forts is sometimes possibly explained by a lack of excavation within the walls, and on occasion, doubtless, by the failure to detect structures on top of more elaborate and indeed more sought-after early imperial phases. Nonetheless a relative reduction in the permanence and elaboration of officers’ quarters is a hypothesis worth testing and, if accurate, could be significant in the ways that Wickham suggests. It might be the case that the Roman army’s officer corps had (when compared with civilian private building) never invested in especially elaborate dwellings within their forts. If so, though, even if there were not a decline in the relative sophistication of their quarters, a militarisation hypothesis could explain a shift from investment in buildings to an investment in other forms of display. The Roman army’s officer corps was especially fond of its ‘awe-inspiring’ costume and adornment. State factories, interestingly known as barbaricaria, were devoted to the gilding and ornamentation of officers’ armour. All these points support Wickham’s idea.

However, other points counter it. One is that the late Roman ‘soldier emperors’ were very far from neglecting their private quarters and constructed new and very elaborate palaces (most notably, perhaps, at Salona in Dalmatia). The lavish villas in the immediate hinterland of Trier, the imperial capital, also suggest that imperial officers, at the higher end at least (some of whom, surely, were military), still desired impressive homes. A vital factor might have been late Roman aristocratic culture, which tended to avoid spending private money on public building, something which doubtless goes far to explaining the changes on urban sites. The early imperial army had sponsored local markets and private craftsmen to a considerable degree, in a way that paralleled the use of private money on civic projects in the civilian sphere. Given the fluidity that existed between civil and military careers at this time, this is not surprising. The later army, by contrast (and again unsurprisingly given the contemporary nature of civilian political life), was supplied overwhelmingly via the state and its workshops. Roman officers might, like their civilian counterparts, have spent money on private dwellings (urban and rural) but not on the public structures of their barracks. Given Late Roman law’s frequent enactments about officers who stayed away from their regiments for long periods of time, this suggestion gains further credibility. These laws demonstrate that military service continued to be an option for the Roman aristocracy and that it was encompassed within the usual aristocratic norms of otium and negotium. Roman officers seem to have spent large amounts of time living away from their barracks. Further, when, during the fifth century, we can examine areas of Gaul where the Roman aristocracy became militarised but remained wealthy, we see that they continued to spend money on their villae (even if, admittedly, less than before) as well as maintaining retinues and taking part in campaigns. A simple militarisation of the northern Gallic aristocratic culture seems, then, to be unsatisfactory as an explanation for the reduction in the number and scale of villas.

This thesis proposed here, relating changes in the region’s settlement pattern and economy to changes in the late imperial state, accounts for the developments on urban as well as rural sites. Late Roman northern Gallic towns famously underwent serious contraction. This has largely been judged from the length of the late imperial walled circuits, a blunt method which must give misleading results in at least some cases, such as that of Bavay, where the town walls only enclosed the forum. Even so, recent excavation confirms the abandonment of large areas of early Roman towns. These restricted urban ‘enceintes’ probably do not mark economic decline as such. Where details of their above-ground appearance are known, they often show care and attempts at decoration. That the foundations (frequently the only element retrieved archaeologically, of course) include large amounts of reused masonry from demolished early Roman buildings and grave monuments permits no extrapolations about the haste or emergency conditions in which the walls were built. The period of these walls’ construction is much less well established than was once thought. Rather than having been thrown up rapidly in the last quarter of the third century in response to barbarian invasions, their construction could have extended through the fourth century and possibly beyond. Nonetheless the use, in the walls’ foundations, of large quantities of often good-quality sculpture from cemeteries and public buildings makes a statement about urban change that cannot be lightly dismissed.

These fortifications and their scale have valuable things to tell us nonetheless. I suggest that their short length results partly from the well-documented unwillingness of late Roman local aristocrats to spend their money upon public building projects. It might also stem, to some extent, from a lack of independently wealthy aristocrats in the towns’ hinterlands. This decline in the prosperity of the northern Gallic elite probably also lies behind the reduction in the scale of occupation in towns as the small landowners, those not employed to manage imperial estates, seem, as we have noted, to have generally lacked the secure control of surplus necessary to sponsor urban development and manufactures, town houses and so on. A further factor, quite well understood in Britain, would be the rise of lesser settlements, the so-called vici (now often themselves fortified as castra or castella). These settlements often arose as markets and by the late imperial period had probably done much to erode the civitas-capitals’ dominance as economic central places, in economic terms. The Gallic urban hierarchy underwent significant changes in the late imperial era, with some sites (like Verdun, in northern Gaul) gaining civitas status. Slightly further south, by the sixth century (when Gregory of Tours famously remarked upon the fact) the castrum of Dijon had become notably more important than its civitas-capital, Langres. Against such a back-drop it should not be surprising if intermediate settlements rose in importance relative to that of the cities.

The general thesis proposed here to explain late imperial change in northern Gaul is confirmed to some extent by exceptions to what seems to be the general rule. One is the region around Trier, which, although quite badly hit in the third century in terms of the rate of villa-abandonment, nevertheless has the largest and most lavish examples of fourth-century northern Gallic villas (as intimated earlier). Trier itself, of course, saw a rash of public building focused on the imperial presence there and that is the crucial issue. With the emperors and their senior palatine aristocrats resident there for much of the late third and fourth century, it is no surprise that resources could be spent on the city, or that wealth found its way into Trier’s immediate surroundings. When one considers that the prosperity of the aristocrats of the Treveri had been unusual in the early and even pre-Roman eras, the fact that the Triererland bucks the general trend should scarcely be unexpected. The idea that imperial patronage was the main factor determining variations from the norm gains further support at Metz, the next city on the Moselle, to the south of Trier. If Trier’s abnormally long walled circuit probably belongs to the early Roman period, then the 72 hectares enclosed at Metz make that city’s walls by far the longest late Roman enceinte in northern Gaul, perhaps in all of Gaul. The castra of the civitas of Metz also have unusually long walled circuits. This exceptional scale of fortification surely relates to the presence around Trier of troops available for such building projects. An inscription documents the construction of the Langmauer, a long wall presumably enclosing an estate, by a unit of primani.

Even if it does not explain the decline in the number and elaboration of villas, the militarisation of northern Gaul is nevertheless a feature of the region’s archaeology which supports the general hypothesis. The fortification of granaries and other rural sites seems to be associated (as indeed may the walling of urban administrative centres and some villages) with a concern to ensure the safety of supplies ear-marked for the army. The deployment of symbols in inhumations in the region, especially when these become more lavish in the century’s last decades, underlines the close link between imperial (probably especially military) service and local status. For most of the period before 400, official belt-sets and brooches, the badges of rank in the army and civil service, are the most common grave-goods in male burials.

Part 2 Here

‘From Roman fundus to Early Medieval ‘grand domaine’: the crucial rupture around 600AD’

This is the text of a paper I gave last week to a conference in Brussels about the Great Estate, in honour of Prof. Yoshiki Morimoto and (informally at least)in memory of Adriaan verhulst.

Abstract
The title of my paper is a little misleading! I will not be arguing for a ‘rupture’ in the sense that might usually be understood, attempting to begin a discussion of ‘les mutations de l’an 600’ that would doubtless become as sterile as that on ‘l’an mil’. Professor Morimoto has correctly argued that the history of the early medieval rural economy can be so much richer by avoiding such debates between entrenched, polarised positions. I will, however, be discussing the rural settlement pattern in terms of a constant, dynamic development rather than a slow, barely perceptible evolution. Within this dynamism I will argue that a crucial role is played by changes in a period that I have referred to in my title – as a form of shorthand – as ‘around 600’ but which in fact spreads across the last third of the sixth century and the first half of the seventh. Their importance lies not simply, retrospectively and teleologically, in establishing the conditions within which the ‘classic’ bipartite ‘Grand Domaine’ could emerge but in definitively breaking any clear line of descent from the Roman fundus to the Great Estate of the later Merovingian and Carolingian period.

Now, the idea that the Grand Domaine was the lineal descendant of Roman latifundia has in most studies long been rejected in favour of the former’s emergence in the seventh century. However, a 2004 article by Peter Sarris restated the old idea of the bipartite estate’s Roman foundations on the basis of a thorough, scholarly – and surely correct – discussion of eastern Roman (especially Egyptian) estate economy. Similarly, an article by Walter Goffart has also proposed extreme continuity in the organisation of the rural landscape and its fiscal and military obligations. I do not agree with these ideas of continuity and will use my defence of what is surely now the consensus view of the origins of the bipartite estate to structure my own argument. This will indeed be to look back to the Roman period in northern Gaul but to see this ‘background’ in rather different terms from those usually envisaged. I will then discuss the ways in which this situation changed in the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, to argue that the debate on rural estate management and organisation cannot be separated from other discussions, such as that on the nature of the earlier Merovingian aristocracy and society more generally. I will therefore underline the variety and dynamism that recent researchers, notably Professor Devroey and Profssor Morimoto, as well – naturally – as the late Professor Verhulst have traced in the history of early medieval estates and add to it an element of unpredictability!



1: Intoduction:
It is a pleasure for me to honour Professor Morimoto. When writing my study of the region of Metz that appeared in 1995, I first discovered one of his immensely useful literature surveys, which was, without exaggerating very much at all, something like a gift from the heavens, not simply revealing some of the enormous bibliography that one tended to miss, working in a comparatively young university in days before the internet and electronic resources, but also in his thoughtful, judicious commentary on it. For that alone I am enormously grateful to have this opportunity to say a formal ‘thank you’.

My use of the word rupture in my title was somewhat misleading. I was possibly being unnecessarily hopeful or dramatic, or it might just have been too early in the morning, but I will not propose a ‘rupture’ in its usual sense, inciting a discussion of ‘les mutations de l’an 600’ that would doubtless become as sterile as that of ‘l’an mil’. Professor Morimoto correctly argued that early medieval rural economic history can be much richer by avoiding such debates between entrenched, polarised positions. I will, however, discuss rural settlement in terms of a constant, dynamic development rather than a slow evolution and argue that a crucial role is played by changes in a period that I have referred to – as shorthand – as ‘around 600’ but which spreads from the last third of the sixth century to the first half of the seventh.

Assigning importance to the period around 600 can hardly be considered revolutionary in the study of the rural estate. In 1962, Georges Duby had good reasons other than simply the end of the ‘Great Migrations’ to start his study of the Medieval Economy in 600. Nonetheless I hope to add something to our conception of this period. The changes at this time matter not simply in establishing the conditions within which the ‘classic’ bipartite ‘Grand Domaine’ could emerge but in definitively breaking any line of descent from the Roman fundus to the later Merovingian and Carolingian Great Estate.

Most of us will accept that the Grande Domaine was a later Merovingian creation, as established most notably by our symposiarch, Professor Devroey and the late and lamented Adriaan Verhulst, whose support and encouragement I must also acknowledge. Nevertheless, an extremely scholarly discussion of the Egyptian papyri by Peter Sarris has recently revived the idea of straightforward continuity from Roman to medieval, famously proposed by John Percival in a 1969 article. Sarris proclaims, indeed, that ‘It can no longer be safely assumed that the early medieval bipartite manor was a post-Roman, let alone a Carolingian creation.’

I don’t agree; I think it can be safely assumed that the classic early medieval bipartite manor was a post-Roman creation in its northern Frankish heartlands. But it is important, as research develops differently in separate but related fields, to reassess our assumptions and Sarris makes very good points on that front. It is valuable to consider, periodically, how we tie research done in one area to that done in others to take account of the progress made in each.

My response to this recent work structures my presentation. In particular, I will discuss the Roman background of the estate in northern Gaul, which in itself makes neat trajectories of continuity unlikely, and then the profound changes around 600, which mark a crucial rupture between the Roman world and the early Middle Ages and make it very difficult to argue – whether in terms of agricultural management or of military and other obligations – for a direct line of descent between the two. I will argue we can only explore some of these issues adequately by adopting a holistic approach, employing all types of evidence, including some which might not immediately seem directly relevant to the topic of estate management.
2: Preliminary ‘theoretical’ questions
First, some preliminary methodological questions:
1: Whether, in looking at rural settlement evidence to examine estate management, our evidence in fact talks about different things
2: related to (1), whether the archaeological evidence of change masks institutional continuity
3: how can we get evidence of one sort to help answer questions related to another?

In the first instance one can argue that, although archaeology shows where people were living, the buildings they used and so on, it cannot answer questions about the terms upon which land was held or about relations of tenancy or dependence between settlements. This is quite true, although we can nevertheless infer some things about social structure and economy and about change through time which bear directly on the issues of continuity, and about the likely existence of a particular type of social relationship at a given time and place. Nevertheless, the archaeological settlement data in itself finds difficulty in answering this important problem.

The second question is also well founded. We cannot know from archaeological evidence whether changes in settlement types and their distribution took place within contexts of institutional continuity in terms of the rents and services. Good excavation provides means of suggesting change in the landscape’s organisation and management, by using faunal and palynological data, which permit better responses to my first question too. Nevertheless, such high-quality data, though increasing dramatically in quantity, still cannot be said to be very common.

The third question provides my methodological focus. I will be making use of archaeology, of cemeteries and of rural settlements, of which we will hear more later and of which the evidence is increasingly important, as well as drawing inferences from the written documents of the period. My method has been to analyse each form of data on its own terms. The concentration on particular types of data to confront a single historical problematic runs the risk of, either, assigning greater significance than is warranted to changes revealed, or, alternatively, giving a misleading impression of stasis or continuity. Although the northern Gaulish evidence that concerns me has crucial problems and lacunae, it exists in reasonably large quantities and perhaps more importantly in most of the forms that are of relevance to the inquiry.

3: The Roman estate pattern in northern Gaul
This specifically regional focus is important. This is where the bipartite estate first appears in its developed form, so that its spread thence to other regions has been able to be mapped. Thus, for continuity to be plausible, a direct descent must demonstrable, in this specific part of the former Roman Empire.

Peter Sarris discusses the Egyptian data at length before adducing suggestive evidence for general trends, at least across the Eastern Empire, and citing some fragmentary western data, which suggest similarities with the Egyptian situation. I am not going to disagree with Peter’s discussion of Egypt. The question of why it ought to apply to the rest of the Roman Empire, especially places as far away as northern Gaul, is more serious, but, despite Egypt’s distinctive ecology, social structures and history, Sarris makes a good case that its general features might have applied more widely across the eastern Empire.

There are, though, from Peter’s own discussion, several reasons why the Egyptian pattern might not apply to Gaul. The first is that he makes it clear that the sixth-century Egyptian situation results from a trajectory of development from the third century onwards. The outlines of northern Gallic development were quite different. Second, much of the situation described, and many of the crucial changes, belong to the fifth century, when the west, and northern Gaul in particular, was changing in quite different directions. The northern Gallic settlement pattern underwent rapid, dramatic change at this time. Third, the political situation seriously questions the extent to which 5th-century legislation can have been applicable in Gaul north of the Loire or, especially, the Seine. The developments in urbanism in northern Gaul and very important differences and changes in social structure there furnish a fifth reason to doubt the Egyptian comparison. Sixth it is clear that the fifth- and sixth-century northern Gallic economy differed significantly from the Egyptian, not least in the drastic decline of production and in its increasingly non-monetary economy.

We can consider these points in more detail. Peter Sarris is correct to say that we early medievalists tend to discuss estate management and organisation without having a very clear idea of the classical Roman background, but he is also correct that what we know about that background is fragmentary in large swathes of the Empire like northern Gaul.

The points I want to stress first – they are not original – are simply that northern Gaul was, overall, very different from southern Gaul and that there are important differences within this large region. The most important, which we run into again and again, is the distinctiveness of the Triererland. This might provide some possible support for Sarris’ thesis. The constant feature in comparing Gaul north and south of the Loire (to use a crude if convenient borderline) is that the northern aristocracy was, with the exception of that around Trier, generally significantly less wealthy than the southern.

However much more subtly the so-called ‘third-century crisis’ is understood, there were important third-century changes, notably a significant restructuring of the settlement pattern and a dramatic reduction in the number of villas. This is now known to have been less catastrophic than was sometimes once argued. It is also clear, thanks to Paul Van Ossel’s work, that patterns of abandonment varied from one region to another. It nevertheless remains true that in some regions 50% of the villas occupied – as villas – in the early third century had been abandoned by the fourth. Sometimes the number is higher, sometimes lower, but we cannot avoid either this basic fact or the major change that it implies.

A past mistake was to assume that this meant, ipso facto, a decline in agricultural productivity or prosperity. Some recent discussions of the fate of the villa have nevertheless moved too far from the processes of change in counteracting older views of catastrophic desertion. Continuing occupation of a villa-site is often held to outweigh the change in form involved. The villa was more than just a farm built according to more or less Roman norms. Its stone construction, tiled roofs, bath-houses, and especially indications of ‘luxury’ such as wall-paintings and mosaic floors, attest a high level of economic complexity. Stone needed to be quarried and transported; tiles had to be made by specialist craftsmen. This level of complexity is simply absent from wooden structures, however often we are reminded that timber buildings can be quite sophisticated. In turn, that has implications about the ability of the owners of such settlements to extract and control agricultural surplus. The only alternative is to assume that they no longer wished to live in Roman-style houses. I find that recently fashionable argument entirely unconvincing. The reduction in villa numbers does not therefore mean declining agricultural production or the desertion of land, but it does imply important changes in social structure and landscape organisation. I suggest that the major force involved in such change was the Roman state.

State involvement in the northern Gaulish countryside is well-known, most obviously in the Langmauer constructed around the Welschbillig estate by a unit of Primani. The defence of agricultural stores has recently become visible. Where villas have been made defensible, it is, according to Van Ossel, usually storage facilities that are fortified. There are also fortified granaries, two storey silos and so on. It seems reasonable to postulate at least a heavy state involvement in the extraction of agricultural surplus. Given the large number of troops and civic functionaries along the Rhine and its Gallic hinterland and the well-known late Roman changes in the payment and supply of the army and bureaucracy, this conclusion is not surprising or controversial.

If one accepts that the late imperial state began to harness northern Gaulish agricultural production for its own purposes, probably through seizing or otherwise appropriating private estates, then the decline in villas becomes more understandable. Imperial estate managers might have had no incentive or ability to divert proceeds into their own élite dwellings. Where the Empire rewarded its military and civil officers and servants through grants of the tax-receipts or other yields from designated estates, the recipients of such patronage need, firstly, not have actually lived permanently on the estate itself and, secondly, such grants might very well have been made on a short-term basis with an attendant rapid turnover in landlords. This argument also makes it unsurprising that the Trier region, where the imperial court was so frequently located before 388, is an exception to this rule. Its large villas might have been imperial residences, as has been suggested for Konz, or have belonged to high-ranking palatine aristocrats.

This conclusion presents serious problems for the idea of direct, Roman to Carolingian continuity in estate organisation. It need not, however, be fatal. One might suggest that, like the later monastic estates of Saint-Germain-des-Près and the rest, imperial estates were organised as bipartite domains with central farms and dependent tenancies and that they could have passed intact into the hands of local aristocrats. This possibility is best examined by considering the changes that occurred around the end of the Roman Empire and exploring the nature of the villa in early Merovingian documents.

4: Roman to Merovingian
The change from the late imperial to the Merovingian period is marked simultaneously by the demise of élite Gallo-Roman settlement forms and a general continuity in the settlement pattern. This is visible in various regions north of the Loire. The distribution of Merovingian settlement, still best demonstrated through the map of cemeteries from that period, covers the same areas as late Roman settlements.

The old idea that the settlement pattern contracted in the fifth century to the network of modern villages with particular place-names has long been rejected but it remains important to note the close correlation between Merovingian cemeteries and modern villages. Around Metz, perhaps two thirds of such cemeteries underlie or are very close to modern villages, a pattern demonstrated in other areas. There are various means by which this continuity of location can have been effected; one is the construction of a church on or near the old cemetery and a localisation of settlement around that focus. This might have happened at a significantly later date. Studies of rural settlement suggest, furthermore, a certain mobility, so such general continuity need not imply that the settlement remained in exactly the same place for a long time. Nonetheless, the study of old archaeological records shows a widespread linkage between Roman settlements, often of villa-type, Merovingian cemeteries and churches and thus modern villages. This suggests that the network of modern villages is, broadly, an element of the late antique settlement pattern and probably an element of some prestige within it. This model has been quite thoroughly confirmed on a micro-level by J.M. Blaising’s study of the area of Yutz (Moselle). Here the sites occupied in the late Roman period showed Merovingian occupation; those abandoned after the early Roman period did not. It seems, then, that the major contraction of the settlement pattern took place within the imperial period and that the fifth-century developments occurred within that framework.

Nonetheless those changes were important. However better excavation techniques and advances in our knowledge of the last phases of the late Roman Argonne Ware tradition have nuanced the picture, it remains true that, north of the Seine, villas were generally abandoned – as villas – by the middle of the fifth century, sometimes slightly earlier.

This final abandonment coincides with other transformations suggesting dramatic socio-economic collapse. Towns and other nucleated settlements contract dramatically and industries wither. If Argonne pottery did not completely die out, as once thought, the amount of work necessary to construct a chronology of its latest types testifies eloquently to a reduction in forms and decorations and a huge simplification of its production. Stone quarrying and masonry and tile-manufacture ceased. The regional economy had become effectively non-monetary by the middle of the century at the latest. The appearance of new timber-building types – long-houses, post-built halls and sunken-featured buildings – looks like a response to straitened economic circumstances. Indeed it seems to be a common response, across north-western Europe, to similar crises.

Simultaneously another archaeological feature appears which is, similarly and in my view incorrectly, regarded – ethnically – as a sign of ‘Germanic’ settlement, rather than – socially – as a response to crisis: the rite of furnished inhumation. This appears earliest in areas where the economic decline is most serious and, crucially, hardly at all in the Trier region, where indications of aristocratic wealth and, importantly, continuity into the Merovingian period are strongest. I have argued repeatedly that these burials are a response on the part of local élites – implicitly not especially powerful – to a situation wherein their power was under threat.

These changes must be connected to the break-down of imperial government north of the Loire. Frans Theuws and I have – in different but not incompatible ways – connected furnished burials with landholders with a connection to the Empire. Outside the Triererland, the local aristocracy was not very wealthy; it had not been able to concentrate surplus securely enough to maintain villa life. It was, I suggest, intimately related to the imperial government’s presence in the region. These factors make it easy to understand the profound crisis that the withdrawal of government caused. The early furnished burials, in small clusters on cemeteries of all sorts, represent the local minor aristocracy – what the English might call squires – demonstrating their status and its foundations to their neighbours and perhaps rivals, when this was challenged by the death of a family member, usually an adult male.

How does this affect my earlier suggestion that imperial estates in this region might have been organised like those of the later polyptychs into bipartite estates with demesne and tenancies, and might have passed intact to the control of local aristocracts? I think it renders it improbable. The archaeology I have described suggests that, even if the estates had been organised in the bipartite way, they surely broke up in the fifth century. Without imperial backing the claims to own such estates and their dues would be seriously threatened. The regional aristocracy was not massively wealthy. Competition from rival aristocrats might have led quickly to a loosening of ties of dependence to buy local political support. If the aristocrats had been more powerful one might expect that the wealth of the holders of such estates would increase with the collapse of imperial authority: they would not have to pass as much of it on in tax. The results of this sort of situation might be seen in North Africa or possibly southern Italy. The archaeology of those areas, though, particularly of élite settlements, is quite different from that in northern Gaul, where, to judge from the overall economic decline, whatever surplus remained to our putative estate-holders seems to have reduced rather than increased. It was certainly not being used to support industry and manufacture or to maintain villa-style élite dwellings. Either it was needed to support military retinues or it was being spent in ritual displays and gifts to maintain local standing, as one might expect in these political circumstances. I have said already that I do not find the argument that a simple change of fashion or a rejection of Roman norms at all satisfactory as an explanation for the end of the villa, not least because for the fifth and much of the sixth century the settlements known to us continue to be archaeologically ephemeral.

Overall it seems more plausible to suggest that the Roman state had a simpler method of surplus extraction, based around the collection of taxes from free landholders within designated areas – assiettes fiscales in Jean Durliat’s terms – perhaps concentrating collection at particular points. This would make it easier to pay its servants in the way I have suggested and help explain why there was no wealthy landowning aristocracy in the region, outside the Triererland, that could fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal of state presence. All this becomes more plausible when one considers early Merovingian society and landholding.

5: Early Merovingian society and estate management
In the late fifth- and sixth-century northern Gaul, surplus was not going into the construction of new élite settlements. Cemetery archaeology suggests reasons. By about 525, whole Merovingian communities were burying their dead with grave-goods. I have long argued that the close study of this ritual reveals societies within which local authority was precariously maintained from one generation to the next, open to competition and requiring constant expenditure on ritual and gift-giving. Lavishly-furnished burials are anything but ‘tombes de chef’ (simple reflections of wealth, power and status). Sixth-century grave-goods were distributed competitively, but mainly according to age and gender. The most lavish goods accompanied those people whose deaths caused the greatest rupture in local social relations: mainly mature adult males but also younger adult women. This conclusion has been underlined by other work on better-quality data from other areas.

This tallies well with the scanty written sources, legal and narrative, which do not suggest the existence of a powerful, independent nobility in sixth-century northern Gaul. Salic Law implies that higher social standing was solely based upon a connection with the king. Not only the absence of a legally-recognised noble stratum suggests this (there is no legally-recognised aristocracy in Lex Ribvaria either); the absence from the laws of any indices of ties of dependence and obligation within the free population points the same way.

I am not suggesting that there were no locally-dominant families in northern Gaul, or denying that they could have maintained such pre-eminence over the whole period with which I am concerned. Nor am I suggesting that their position did not predate the Merovingian kingdom’s creation. One problem with Chris Wickham’s argument in The Framing of the Early Middle Ages is his assumption that the argument against a powerful early Frankish nobility has these implications; it does not. What it implies is simply that such aristocrats’ local authority was precarious, expensively maintained and best underpinned by a connection with the administration of the kingdom, quickly making the local élite into a service aristocracy.

The rewards for royal service were considerable: legal privilege, the ability to adjudicate disputes, the possibilities for creating one’s own patronage networks. Kings could thus tax, even if the precise mechanisms involved are obscure in the non-monetary north and even if it seems likely that most of the proceeds remained in the localities as rewards and salaries for royal officials. The fragmentary data suggest a continuation of the late Roman situation; royal officers paid with taxes from designated areas, referred to as villae in earlier Merovingian sources. In Gregory of Tours’ writings, villa frequently meant a small region within which several people held land. Martin Heinzelmann argued that it only really has the sense of ‘estate’ when discussing royal properties. This remains true later in the Merovingian period as I and others have shown.

A politically-important connection to the kings was also behind the spread of Frankish ethnicity, bringing legal status and privilege and permitting service in the army, membership of which increasingly manifested the right to participate in politics. The sixth-century army was mustered by royal officials from the ‘Franks’ within particular administrative areas, enabling the kings to employ it as an independent coercive force. This does not imply a general or unselective levy of freemen, and it does not mean that Frankish identity was something innately connected to descent from incomers from east of the Rhine; both these elements of my argument have recently been misunderstood.

This situation made the kings dominant within their realms. The competition for power within local communities drew royal power down into them. For most of the sixth century kings could distribute and redistribute their patronage among the competitors for authority. This and the fact that the northern Gallic aristocracy had – outside Trier – not been very wealthy and powerful before the creation of the Frankish realm meant that an independently wealthy aristocratic or noble class did not emerge at this early date. The ability to tax and to use the army as a coercive force allows us to call the sixth-century kingdom a state.

In all this, the early Merovingian period can be viewed as a development of the late Roman situation – even if it differed from the latter in many important ways. As far as the northern Gaulish countryside is concerned, I hypothesise that it was essentially organised as free family holdings of various sizes, made up of different types of land, some held in association with Frankish identity and military service and thus subject to particular inheritance provisions but – like the lands of Roman soldiers – with certain tax-exemptions, and other elements acquired through gift, exchange, dowers and dowries, bride prices and so on, and subject to different dues. Little in the northern Gallic evidence suggests significant rural slavery, although, in the working of their farms, free families were doubtless helped by some slaves or semi-free dependents. The precise picture, as I said in 1995, was like a kaleidoscope. Each generation, partible inheritance would break up landholdings, marriage and other exchanges and alliances would lead to changes of owner and new patterns would emerge, only to fragment again in time. The land was organised into villae, small rural areas. Sometimes these were probably based around former villa-type settlements, now deserted but remaining ritual foci for community identity through their use as cemetery-sites. These villae retained some coherence through their use in the organisation of taxation. Dues would be collected by a royal officer, perhaps local, perhaps not, with some passed on to the court or to officers higher up the chain of command and others retained as a salary. Some such villae were directly in the possession of the fisc. From these royal villas all dues would pass directly to the crown. In spite of the changes that took place since the end of the fourth century, Édith Peytremann’s study of Merovingian rural settlement agrees in seeing it, in the late fifth and sixth centuries, within the late antique framework.

It is difficult to imagine large bipartite estates of the classic variety in the picture I am painting. The situation’s fluidity, the absence of powerful aristocrats, the continuing lack of any signs of secure surplus-control over long periods, the royal ability to control and break up aristocratic land-holdings: all this seems to me to make the idea that bipartite estates existed in sixth century northern Gaul quite improbable.

The one area where this might not apply is around Trier. Here the local aristocracy retained its Roman identity through the Merovingian era, as shown by the exceptional series of inscriptions in the city itself. Its sense of identity seems to have made it resistant to reduction to a royal service aristocracy and significantly, although the Austrasian kings tried to make Trier their capital, they soon moved elsewhere, eventually to Metz, further up the Moselle, where their own political ideology was more easily inscribed. How far this self-styled senatorial nobility extended outside Trier itself is unclear. In the rural areas of the civitas, cemeteries are far more like those elsewhere in the north-east. Nevertheless, the indications of continuity in the town make it possible that Trier remained the focus for an exceptionally independent aristocracy, whose estates could have been organised differently.
6: Change around 600
Thus far, I have argued that until the later sixth century the northern Gallic countryside continued to be organised in a way that remained – in general – within the late Roman frameworks. That does not make likely, though – to be sure – neither does it definitively exclude, the organisation of aristocratic estates as classic bipartite ‘grandes domaines’ or anything significantly resembling them. The reasons for this are to be sought in the specific history of northern Gaul from the third century onwards and thus my conclusions have no implicit validity for any other part of the Empire. But for the argument that the later Merovingian bipartite estate has Roman roots to be plausible, it must be specifically applicable to northern Gaul.

In the generations either side of 600, though, it is becoming clear that whatever had persisted from the Roman Empire was definitively swept away by vitally important transformations, visible across all areas of Merovingian society; time permits only a brief catalogue. The minting of coins, tremisses, returns to the north. There is, as has long been known, a major change in the forms and design of artefacts, which manifest an increased degree of craft specialisation. As one might expect from this and the return of a monetary element, the economy shows other signs of entering a phase of growth. Towns start to recover from a period of stagnation and there are greater signs of long-distance exchange. Crucially for Chris Wickham’s argument in The Framing of the Early Middle Ages, pottery of the Roman Argonne tradition, the patterns of distribution of which were his principal support in arguing for a powerful northern Gallic aristocracy before 600, dies out around that date. We see other significant changes in the production of local communal wares, which replace such pottery. Other ceramic types appear some of which are distributed over large areas. Organised stone-working and transportation is visible in the reappearance of stone sarcophagi and in new stone funerary monuments.

All these economic developments are matched by archaeological signs of social change. On cemeteries, evidently communal organisation by rows often breaks down with the emergence of what look like family plots. Cemeteries become more numerous, probably serving smaller communities. Simultaneously, and in clear connection with this, the grave-goods custom declines. Goods buried with the dead become fewer and more standardised; links with age and gender become much less clear. Within such goods as remain, masculine artefacts are now far more common than feminine. The most lavish, such as plaque buckles, are overwhelmingly found in male burials. As the relative investment in the transient ritual of grave-goods deposition, which required a large audience at the grave-side to be effective, is reduced, more resources were spent on permanent, above-ground markers: the sarcophagi-lids and monuments mentioned earlier, but also walls around clusters of burials. As the simultaneous appearance of grave groups removed or otherwise distinguished from the others on a cemetery makes clear, these developments are associated with the emergence of a more secure local élite.

The aristocrats’ new security is manifested, too, as has been suggested for a long time, by noble saints and the establishment of aristocratic family churches and monasteries, at first in or near towns and later in the countryside. Lex Ribvaria gives far more indications of the existence of a stratum of more powerful freemen, repeatedly referring to the possibility that such people might intervene in the normal customs of inheritance through the use of written deeds. Not surprisingly it is from this time that documents begin to survive in the north, through which aristocratic estates can begin to be studied in detail. We can trace northern aristocratic lineages for the first time. And so on. With established local pre-eminence, the evident ability to project this into the future, and some means by which partible inheritance could be circumvented, it is clear that élite control of agricultural surplus was more secure, which explains the economic and urban transformations listed earlier.

This is also visible in the archaeology of northern Gaulish rural settlements. From the second half of the sixth century, but especially the seventh, archaeological traces of rural settlements become very much more numerous and more visible. Furthermore, as Peytremann argues, their organisation and nature breaks definitively with the late Roman or late antique pattern that had persisted until then. Signs of a new organisation of the landscape and of settlements appear, as – perhaps not surprisingly – does more evidence of specialist manufacture on rural settlements. Faunal assemblages suggest more frequent agricultural specialisation, particularly on cereal farming, rather than the more autarchic economies suggested on earlier sites. (Obviously these suggestions are made from the still comparatively few sites where sufficient evidence exists.)

Currently, I put those changes under the general political heading of the end of the late antique western state. The appearance of a more secure aristocracy, and all the changes I have briefly listed, coincide with the end of some of the key features of the sixth-century kingdom. It has long been known that royal taxation fizzles out in the sixth century. The right to such dues now appears to have been passed on to aristocratic landowners. And, famously, we have the appearance of immunities, areas exempt from the exaction of royal dues. This intervention of local aristocrats in the collection of dues – their privatisation of it one might say – is, as I have argued before, matched in the sphere of military history. The spread of Frankish identity made it imperative to find other ways of raising the army and this seems to have been via the aristocratic retinue. This suggestion has recently been declared to be ‘sans la moindre justification’ except for a change in terminology. This is unfair. The change in terminology is significant, for the word scara itself implies selection – not that this system was necessarily any more select than the old one. We have descriptions of armies as being composed of nobles and their satellites, with no reference to old administrative units. There are various other indications which point the same way. The period around 600 was vitally important in the organisation and practice of warfare and – similarly – in a way that marks a decisive rupture with the frameworks of the Roman period.

When charter evidence becomes available it tends to confirm the outlines of the development I have sketched. Villae are units within which several people hold land, organised according to mansi or hobae, apparently synonyms, which seem to represent farms rather than simple tax or assessment units. Where whole villae appear as estates it is when they are royal estates being granted away. But there is still no clear indication of organisation in the classic bipartite fashion, and no evidence of a division into the infield of a nucleated settlement and its outfield. It is clear to me that those developments do indeed come later than the early seventh century as has long been argued.

7: Conclusion
My conclusion that the bipartite estate is a contingent development in northern Gaul that took place probably later than the first half of the seventh century is hardly very interesting. But nor do I think that the important changes that took place between the late sixth and the early seventh century are important simply for putting in place the conditions within which that development could emerge. Descriptively this is true enough, but analytically it is, I believe, as much a mistake to see the Grande Domaine as an inevitable outgrowth of the situation of the period around 600 as it would be to see the bipartite estate as an inevitable development from the Roman latifundia. It is clear from the archaeology of rural settlements that an even bigger surge of development took place from the second half of the seventh century, one which I would link with other political and social changes, but which I cannot discuss today. They further bury any neat link with the Roman estate in this region, but what I would suggest is that they did not have to happen. The development of the rural estate and the organisation of the countryside was always in a state of flux and tension and closely related to high politics and to other aspects of society and economy. What I do want to suggest, though, is that the changes that took place around 600 were vitally important in breaking with the Roman world and its organisation. In this, it shares vital features with many other changes occurring at the same time. This I think allows us to reject the idea of Roman to medieval continuity. In the area of northern Gallic social history and its relationship to rural settlement patterns, new data and methods only underline how true the old conclusion remains.