This is an illustrated study of towns and trade in the age of Charlemagne, in the Debates in Archaeology series, which analyses urban continuity and discontinuity in Europe during the Dark Ages. It examines the important continuing discussion of the rebirth of urbanism in Carolingian Europe. Drawing upon new archaeological evidence from southern and northern Europe, Richard Hodges looks at the end of towns in Roman antiquity, the phenomenon of the Dark Age emporium, and the hotly disputed mechanisms which led to the inception of market towns during the age of Charlemagne. He...

"Villa to Village" challenges the historical view that hilltop villages in Italy were first founded in the tenth century. Drawing upon recent excavations, the authors show that the makings of the medieval village lie in the demise of the Roman villa in late antiquity. The book describes the lively debate between archaeologists and historians on this issue. It also examines the evidence for the first manorial villages of the Carolingian era and describes how these were transformed into the familiar feudal villages that are characteristic of much of Italy.

"In Goodbye to the Vikings?," Richard Hodges uses new archaeological evidence to re-read the familiar history of the early Middle Ages. Taking his examples from the fifth to the tenth centuries, he re-examines many familiar themes, including the identity of King Arthur, the Pirenne thesis, Marc Bloch on feudalism, the significance of nationalism in early medieval archaeology and the place of the Vikings in European history. Some of the studies are wide-ranging, while others re-examine the archaeology of the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno (Italy) in detail. This book shows how...

The archaeology of the period A.D. 500-1000 has taken off in the Mediterranean (where prehistoric and classical studies formerly enjoyed a virtual monopoly in most areas) and in the Islamic world. Here, as in northern Europe, field survey, careful excavation and improved methods of dating are beginning to supply information which now is not only more abundant but also of much higher quality than ever before. The 'New Archaeology', pioneered in the United States in the 1960s, has taught the archaeologist the value of anthropological models in the study of the past. The new data and models...

It was in the second half of the first millennium A.D. that northern Europe took on the basic configuration that it now presents. Recently a wealth of new archaeological evidence has emerged to enable historians to assess the growth of international trade and the evolution of towns in this crucial period. This book analyses models of economic evelopment in the light of this new evidence to evaluate not only the changing character of the first post-Roman urban centers but also the organization of the countryside which supported them. Boat remains, coins and trade artifacts are all examined....

Butrint has been one of the largest archaeological projects in the Mediterranean over the last two decades. Major excavations and a multi-volume series of accompanying scientific publications have made this a key site for our developing understanding of the Roman and Medieval Mediterranean. Through this set of interwoven reflections about the archaeology and cultural heritage history of his twenty-year odyssey in south-west Albania, Richard Hodges considers how the Butrint Foundation protected and enhanced Butrint's spirit of place for future generations.

Hodges reviews Virgil's...

For 250 years encrusted wonders have been turning up in fishermen's nets: everything imaginable from prehistoric animal bones to priceless Roman statues. Fishing trawlers annually sweep an area equivalent in size to half the world's continental shelves. Everything in the wake of these bulldozers of the deep is battered. A devastating trail of smashed shipwrecks runs from the North Sea to Malaysia.

The profound threat of the global fishing industry remains a black hole in marine archaeology, poorly understood and unmanaged. Fishing and Shipwreck Heritage is the first global...

How do archaeologists work with the data they identify as a record of the cultural past? How are these data collected and construed as evidence? What is the impact on archaeological practice of new techniques of data recovery and analysis, especially those imported from the sciences?

To answer these questions, the authors identify close-to-the-ground principles of best practice based on an analysis of examples of evidential reasoning in archaeology that are widely regarded as successful, contested, or instructive failures. They look at how archaeologists put old evidence to work in...