Investigating the Europe-wide connections of early medieval commoners

One simple question has stirred the imagination of scholars since the seventeenth century: what happened to Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire?

“In the well-known discourse on this formative period of Europe (450-900) it is kings, aristocrats, and their ethnic tribes as well as bishops and saints who play a primordial role in a Europe that re-invented itself,” Principal Investigator Frans Theuws (Leiden University) notes.

“But is that a correct image? What about the role of the mass of the population, were they passive participants lacking creativity to contribute to this re-invention?”

Data collected by archaeologists

In the written texts it seems to be so, however the data collected by archaeologists from the thousands of cemeteries and settlements excavated across Europe show a different image.

“I hope that the project will produce radically new understanding of how people across Europe rebuilt community life in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire”, says Alison Klevnäs, Researcher at the Department of Archaeology, Ancient History and Conservation at Uppsala University.

Her expertise is in the funerary archaeology of early medieval Europe. Together with her colleague Dr Astrid Noterman, she is part of the team which will be investigating burial practices across Europe and how they reflect shared ideas about life as well as death.

Pandora’s box

The archaeological record provides indications of well-connected communities, sharing material culture, ideas and burial rites.

“This immense volume of data has been given insufficient recognition resulting to the opinion of the consortium to an undervaluation of the major contribution of the mass of the population to the development of Europe in the post-Roman period,” Theuws adds.

“We will unlock pandora’s box of available data in the service of re-assessing the role of the mass of the population using the latest scientific methods to analyse material culture and make use of a Europe-wide recording of data, unseen before.”

Beads and iron

In the course of the project, several material categories widely available to the mass of the population will be analysed such as beads and iron objects.

“To analyse the exchange of ideas among the population the shared burial rituals across Europe are subject of in-depth analyses. The project will analyse the moment people met to share material culture and ideas at places with a complicated infrastructure as well as ephemeral ones such as meadows that remind of modern pop festivals.”

Pushing frontiers of knowledge

Thanks to generous funding from ERC Synergy Grants, research teams within the EU can pool their skills, knowledge and resources to push the boundaries of knowledge.

“Uppsala University is one of eight partners that have got together to create the synergy behind this large-scale project. Geographic scope is key to the project, so the centres are widely spaced across Europe. Scandinavia is often treated separately in the archaeology of this period, but there are lots of interconnections with the Continent, so it's important for a fuller picture that we are part of it,” says Alison Klevnäs.

Annica Hulth