Land, People, and Power in Post-Roman Britain and Gaul c. 400-800. A Documentary and Archaeological Analysis

As an agrarian society, agricultural land lay at the heart of the early medieval world. Yet the social relationships which governed the holding and exploitation of that land remain opaque. In particular, conflicting ideas about how barbarian incomers were settled on and held land in post-Roman Britain and Gaul continue to fuel fierce debates. These often focus on the interaction between such settlers and a remaining Roman elite, while the position of the peasantry, so poorly represented in the sources, is rarely explored. This thesis approaches a series of questions about who held land and on what terms by analysing the relationships across society which were affected by tenure. It does so by examining both documentary and archaeological evidence. The primary documentary source is the collected appurtenance clauses of charters from Gaul and Britain between the sixth and eighth centuries. The primary archaeological source is the evidence for settlement between the fifth and seventh centuries. Documentary sources are used to generate a series of hypotheses which are then tested in an analysis of the archaeology. This suggests that elites in Gaul were already seeking to exert ownership over land and lordship over people by the sixth century, at a time when agriculture was still largely a domestic and dispersed activity. By contrast, elites across Britain at this time seem to have been content with a form of tributary overlordship, and were less quick to see land and people as possessions. This analysis supports the view that, in both areas, the use of charters, widely acknowledged as establishing written title, finally supplanted a complex mix of custom and Roman law, with drastic consequences for peasant proprietors.