[Sca-cooks] TMR 04.01.32, Pestell/Ulmschneider, eds., Markets (Randsborg) (fwd)

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

Might be of interest to some of us...

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:23:06 -0500 (EST)
From: tmr-l at WMICH.EDU
To: tmr-l at WMICH.EDU
Subject: TMR 04.01.32, Pestell/Ulmschneider, eds., Markets (Randsborg)

Pestell, Tim and Katharina Ulmschneider, eds. <i>Markets in
Early Medieval Europe. Trading and 'Productive' Sites, 650-
850</i>. Bollington, UK: Windgather Press, 2003. Pp. xvi +304.
$45.00 (hb). ISBN: 0-9538630-7-7.

   Reviewed by Klavs Randsborg
        University of Copenhagen
        randsb at hum.ku.dk


This quite beautifully produced volume contains nineteen
interesting contributions towards the understanding of the rise
of trade production and commerce from the seventh century AD
on, as studied in the main from the so-called production (here
"productive") sites. In the volume, these sites comprise both
settlements particularly rich in small finds, and ditto
scattered on the coasts, of North Western Europe, thus
obviously with commerce as an important activity.

In earlier research, the latter have often been considered
"towns" (or proto-towns). No doubt they constitute a category
of their own, prior to the regional or provincial towns and
cities of the tenth-eleventh century, while the former sites
seem in the main to be estate centres. Nonetheless, much
excavation and discussion of typologies of settlements are
needed, perhaps in particular a holistic vision.

Few of the coastal production sites start before, but many of
them continue after, the chronological phase of the volume
("650-850"). The crucial seventh century--where everything ends
and everything begins--as well as the ninth century, where the
new order of the (late) tenth century is not yet established,
certainly defines a period important in its own right, and in
several respects, of which the crucial question of the
formation and re-formation of estates is probably not the least
important.

The work, the result of an Oxford meeting by prominent scholars
in 2000, is in three parts: I. History, Numismatics and the
Early Medieval Economy; II. Trading and "Productive" Sites in
the British Isles; III. Markets and Settlements on the Early
Medieval Continent. An introduction to the theme is given by
the editors, centered on the (coastal) <i>emporia</i> in
particular in England.

Part I contains contributions on Anglo-Saxon England
(Campbell), coins (and hoards) (Blackburn), currency at
different sites and in ditto regions (Metcalf), another
quantitative approach, and, hinterland studies (Palmer),
including transportation routes.

Part II holds contributions on markets in western Britain
(Griffiths), around the Solvent (Ulmschneider), including
Hamvic and Isle of Wright, in East Kent (Brookes), the
important crossing to the Continent, Suffolk with Barnham and
Sutton Hoo (Newman), in West Norfolk (Rogerson), and elsewhere
in East Anglia (Pestell), in Lincolnshire (Leahy), and,
finally, in East Yorkshire (Richards). A part of these studies
takes us way into the "countryside," as well as into other
phases than the main one stipulated.

Part III includes contributions on "markets" in Norway-Sweden
(Sawyer), strangely devoid of archaeology, on Tisso
(Jorgensen), a key site on West Zealand/SjC&lland including a
magnate farmstead complex and a huge coastal production site
(in fact larger than Ribe, Southwest Jutland/Jylland, which
incidentally did grow into a proper town), Gross Stromkendorf
in Mecklenburg, a Slavonian coastal centre (Tummuscheit),
Tjitsma/Wijnaldum in the Netherlands (Tulp), a Frisian terp, on
ports on the lower Seine (Le Maho), again a contribution devoid
of archaeology, and, finally, on S. Vincenzo, the South Italian
monastery made famous in archaeology due to the excavations of
Richard Hodges (Moran).

No doubt among the third group of contributions, the paper on
Tisso is the archaeologically most important one, perhaps in
particular since the site joins the function of the coastal
production sites (with an eye to commerce) and an "inland"
estate centre. Tisso no doubt is an important clue to an
understanding of the rise of coastal production sites in the
seventh century. The latter should per se no doubt be
understood in terms of the following two crucial factors.

The first one is the international, indeed inter-continental
tendencies concerning commerce and the larger market. Thus, in
the late seventh century happenings in Central Asia are linked
with the arrival of the Bulgarians in the Balkans and with the
Moslem pressure on Byzants, as well as on Western Europe.

The second factor no doubt rests with the formation of the
estates of the Carolingian era. These competing entities and
groups of such would have been in high need of outlets and
nodules of transformation of their productive agricultural and
related potential. Thus, both the archaeologically rich estates
centres (inland "markets," etc.) and the "emporia" (production
sites meant for regional as well as supra-regional commerce)
appear in the archaeological data as "rich" (in metal finds,
etc.). However, the two functions should be kept separate.

The decline of said coastal production sites, indeed their
transformation, is no doubt linked with the decline of
Carolingia, in turn connected with crises in the Moslem and
other worlds. It is hardly a coincidence that the Viking raids
on the West take place exactly at the decline of this "world
system," only to come to a halt as the provincial Islamic
silver (coins of Samarkand, Bukhara) joins the Russian trade
towards Scandinavia.

The present volume no doubt brings together several very
important studies, but in other respects it does not set new
agendas (as collective volumes rarely do). Thus, in terms of
understanding the larger forces at work, it hardly brings us
further than the scholarship a generation or more ago. Not the
fault of the contributors, though, but hardly truly
"groundbreaking", as the publishers would have it. Less
English, please; more Europe, and the World.