Bypassing monolithic entities: diachronic and spatially informed approaches to early medieval towns
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-03-22

The settlement areas of early medieval towns have in the past been subject to generalising interpretations of their character, layout and function. Changes in the towns’ dynamics over generations of town dwellers have not often been addressed, while these changes are the key to a multi-faceted understanding of the daily lives of the inhabitants, and how these may have changed over time. The complex nature of urban deposits has in some cases prompted excavation using a random division in spits, while an opposite reflex is necessary to produce a clearer phasing of each separate case. Before comparisons are made, the individual life trajectory of each town should be understood to its fullest. This paper examines how geoarchaeological approaches (micromorphology, microXRF, and other techniques) contribute to a more nuanced understanding of these towns, with a focus on the earliest and latest phases of the towns under study. Illustrating this approach with case studies from the Low Countries, including Tongeren and Antwerpen, and Scandinavia, such as Hedeby and Kaupang, this paper makes a case for a particularistic examination of early medieval towns before wider comparisons are made.


With current geoarchaeological methods, it is possible to record and interpret separate phases of each town in more detail, to collect finds accordingly and source dating materials more securely. It is also possible to add information about well-dated but unclear phases of the towns, such as in the case of homogeneous deposits, so-called dark earths. The latter often occur precisely at the beginning and perceived end of early medieval towns, making their interpretation a challenging endeavour. Not every single layer, event or nuance is captured by geoarchaeological means, but more details can be added to the state of the art of each individual town, perhaps even narrowing down the scope to particular changes at the scale of generations. Not just a diachronic approach, but one that takes into account diversity on a horizontal level as well, is necessary to further grasp the complexity of
these urban entities. A combination of a diachronic approach and spatially informed one on a micro-scale yields archaeological results with the strongest interpretive value, and, if integrated into the research project design from the very beginning, provides a way to contextualise the enormous amounts of material these sites produce.

Author - Wouters, Barbora, Vrije Universiteit Brussel & University of Aberdeen, Brussel, Belgium (Presenting author)