Becoming Europe: Archaeology and the Making of the Middle Ages

This book uses 50 years of modern archaeology to re-examine Henri Pirenne’s canonical thesis, Mohammed, Charlemagne (1937/39). It advances a new paradigm using material evidence to reinterpret the established narrative of the post-Roman creation of Europe based upon written sources mostly written by ecclesiastical authors.

The book begins by setting out the historiographical argument and the archaeological and anthropological methods used to make sense of the material evidence. It then shows how a so-called temple society emerged in Late Antiquity and, through overweening concerns with the afterlife, set in motion not just the collapse of the Roman world but also led to the creation of new political forces in, first Ireland, then emergent Anglo-Saxon England. Pivoting on events in the later 7th century in England and Frisia, it traces the subsequent evolution of the temple society in Francia, and its fundamental importance to Charlemagne’s cultural and economic revolution that, through many innovations, shaped Medieval Europe. Finally, the narrative examines the immediate aftermath of the end of the temple society in the 10th and 11th centuries. Emphasis is then placed on the role of external forces, the Vikings in north-west Europe and the Arabs in the Mediterranean, as instigators of economic changes that became baked into European town and country life after the turn of the millennium.

Ending with a compelling call for a revision of our contemporary European concerns in an increasingly nationalist era, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of medieval European history and medieval archaeology.