Polity and Neighbourhood in Early Medieval Europe

Archaeologists and historians working in southern and northern Europe, explore diverse evidence - from landscape and burial archaeology to charters and chronicles - to discuss the relationships that constituted neighbourhoods and roles these played in the processes of state formation that can be observed in the peripheries of the Frankish world. How were early medieval people connected to each other and to the wider world? In this collection, archaeologists and historians working in very different areas of early medieval Europe explore diverse evidence - from landscape and burial archaeology to charters and chronicles - to discuss the relationships that constituted neighbourhoods and the roles these played in the processes of state formation that can be observed in the peripheries of the Frankish world. What these case-studies teach us, the contributors argue, is that polities are formed not through the exclusive operation of either top-down or bottom-up agencies, but from the interplay between them. By exploring the ways in which local knowledge, social ties, and understandings of landscape interacted with higher-level authorities and institutions, we can gain real insights into t