The Roman empire tends to be seen as a whole whereas the early middle
ages tends to be seen as a collection of regional histories, roughly
corresponding to the land-areas of modern nation states. As a result,
early medieval history is much more fragmented, and there have been
few convincing syntheses of socio-economic change in the post-Roman
world since the 1930s. In recent decades, the rise of early medieval
archaeology has also transformed our source-base, but this has not
been adequately integrated into analyses of documentary history in
almost any country. In Framing the Early Middle Ages Chris Wickham
combines documentary and archaeological evidence to create a
comparative history of the period 400-800. His analysis embraces each
of the regions of the late Roman and immediately post-Roman world,
from Denmark to Egypt. The book concentrates on classic socio-economic
themes, state finance, the wealth and identity of the aristocracy,
estate management, peasant society, rural settlement, cities, and
exchange. These give only a partial picture of the period, but they
frame and explain other developments. Earlier syntheses have taken the
development of a single region as 'typical', with divergent
developments presented as exceptions. This book takes all different
developments as typical, and aims to construct a synthesis based on a
better understanding of difference and the reasons for it.
Les mer
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780191622632
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
OUP Oxford
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter