Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- 1 Texts, Discourses, and Devices: Reading Visigothic Society Today
- 2 Presence of Augustine of Hippo in Isidore of Seville: Some Provisional Remarks
- 3 The Bishop and the Word: Isidore of Seville and the Production of Meaning
- 4 Unearthing Peasant Societies: Historiography and Recent Contributions in the Archaeology of the Rural World during Visigothic Times
- 5 Excolentes sacra fontium vel arborum: Pagan Cults, Kinship, and Regimes of Sacralization in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo
- 6 Ervig and Capital Penalties: The Way of Exile
- 7 ‘Put All Your Trust in Ansemundus’: A Look at Distrust in Visigothic-Byzantine Diplomatic Relations
- 8 Visigothic Currency: Recent Developments and Data for Its Study
- Index
4 - Unearthing Peasant Societies: Historiography and Recent Contributions in the Archaeology of the Rural World during Visigothic Times
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- 1 Texts, Discourses, and Devices: Reading Visigothic Society Today
- 2 Presence of Augustine of Hippo in Isidore of Seville: Some Provisional Remarks
- 3 The Bishop and the Word: Isidore of Seville and the Production of Meaning
- 4 Unearthing Peasant Societies: Historiography and Recent Contributions in the Archaeology of the Rural World during Visigothic Times
- 5 Excolentes sacra fontium vel arborum: Pagan Cults, Kinship, and Regimes of Sacralization in the Visigothic Kingdom of Toledo
- 6 Ervig and Capital Penalties: The Way of Exile
- 7 ‘Put All Your Trust in Ansemundus’: A Look at Distrust in Visigothic-Byzantine Diplomatic Relations
- 8 Visigothic Currency: Recent Developments and Data for Its Study
- Index
Summary
Abstract
Until very recently, the analysis of Visigothic peasant societies has remained a pending task. This was mainly due to the lack of historical sources for tackling the issue, which generated an extremely dark perspective on peasantry, based on the idea of isolated and miserable societies. In recent decades, however, the excavation of hundreds of peasant archaeological contexts all over the Iberian Peninsula has enabled the reformulation of the role of these communities in the configuration of post-Roman economics and politics. In this chapter, I critically consider the most significant contributions of archaeology to the analysis of post-Roman peasantry in the light of the latest studies. Furthermore, the chapter proposes an academic agenda for advancing this topic in coming years.
Keywords: Early Medieval Archaeology, Peasantry, Rural Villages
Introduction
In 1986, L.G. Moreno wrote:
If we translate these figures to the fifth-seventh centuries Iberian Peninsula, there immediately comes out a panorama of subsistence agriculture, permanently threatened by the spectre of hunger following any natural mishap. All of which will be reflected in the low standard of living and the poor nutritional condition of the peasant population, and also in the low rate of seigniorial rents paid by the dependent peasantry.
Even though this narrative was ‘of its time’ – inasmuch as it was the product of the scant sources available at the time – it clearly reflects an intrinsic pessimism when analysing the condition of the early medieval Iberian peasantry. Within this frame, peasants are presented as passive agents, constrained by low levels of technological development and natural forces, which led them to a Malthusian struggle against pests, famines, and plagues. This apocalyptic vision of peasantry is, in fact, one of the strongest myths to have fed the commonly held (both academically and socially) view of the ‘Dark Ages’.
In fact, this was not the only perspective regarding early medieval peasantries inferred from the documentary sources and, certainly, there has been great development in the analyses in the last thirty years. Traditional topics related to post-Roman and early medieval peasantries – addressing questions such as rural legal categories, rural political movements (mainly the bagauda), or rural settlements (vici, pagi, villae) – have now been complemented with deep insights into the social, economic, and political conditions of these rural communities.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Framing Power in Visigothic SocietyDiscourses, Devices, and Artifacts, pp. 75 - 108Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020