Session: #195

Content:

For many medieval historians, the Carolingians, who ruled ca 750- ca 900, dominated Western Europe, creating a unified, culturally coherent empire with a shared reform ideology, that is often defined as the ‘correctio’. The historical narrative tells us that the ‘correctio’ provided a normative and top-down standardisation of governance, culture, liturgy and even economy between Italy and the North Sea, including northern Spain. Archaeologists of this period have often confirmed the shared architectural language of church buildings and the idea of Carolingian innovation of the economy (via the so-called emporia or the wide circulation of the Carolingian denarius).
Today historians state that the reception of the ‘correctio’ in society was a much more negotiated and complex process, in which bottom-up practices were as important as the official ideology. Material Culture studies equally suggest the importance of regional patterns and networks (for instance of trade as well as coin circulation, and even church building and monastic architecture). Material practices and life in the Carolingian world may have been much more local than we have been given to believe. Even in Francia, there are indications that the Carolingian age was not necessarily ‘successful’.
The fist aim of this session is to compare the praxis of material culture about economy, culture and governance of the Carolingian age in different parts of Europe. The second aim is to compare this with the alleged historical narrative of Carolingian success (the importance of ‘the correctio’). The third aim is to study both the importance of regionality as bottom-up processes in the material record related to Carolingian Europe. We welcome proposals considering a range of archaeological topics, including standing buildings, landscape studies, burial archaeology, artefact studies and artisanship and more.

Session: #195

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