Why did emporia trading high-status goods-- such as the spectacular Dorestad brooch-- flourish throughout the 8th century? Who was buying and trading those sort of goods, in large enough quantities to allow the emporia to flourish? One possible explanation is that polities were becoming bigger in northern Europe and some aristocracts were becoming more powerful and richer.

Mayors of the Palace

So-called ‘Throne of Dagobert’, now in the Musée de Cluny, Paris

Merovingian kings established palaces around the Frankish kingdoms. They appointed their most powerful aristocrats to the office of maior domus (“greatest of the household” or “mayors of the palace”). These maiores eventually became as powerful as the various Merovingian kings. Factions of bishops and maiores could influence who the next king would be.

Read This Read "2.12 Judgment of Childebert III" in Rosenwein's Reading the Middle Ages

After King Childeric II was murdered in 675, a civil war broke out among the maiores of the kingdom. The dynasty of maiores descended from Pippin I (580-640) defeated and subjugated the other aristocratic families at the battle of Tertry in 687. After that, the Pippinid maiores effectively ruled Francia with Merovingian puppet kings as mere puppets such as the child King Clovis III. (To be continued next week...)

Competing Kingdoms

Image above: detail of a page from the Lindisfarne Gospels, an illuminated manuscript made in Northumbria at the height of its power (London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero D IV, f. 29r)

In southern part of the island of Britian, no central power emerged in the 8th century the way that the mayors of the palace came to control much of Frankia. However, the landscape of many small kingdoms changed as some kingdoms became more powerful and began to conquer the others. In the early 8th century, Northumbria (in what is now northern England and southern Scotland) was probably the most powerful kingdom on the island of Britain.

Image above: map of the kingdoms on the island of Britain c. 700-800

By the second half of the 8th century, Mercia (a kingdom based in the middle of what is now England) rose to power during the reign of a king called Offa, who expanded his power over the kingdoms of East Anglia and Kent. He also tried (and failed) to set up trade deals and alliances with the Pippinids. Offa was remembered, even a century after his death, as a formidable leader:

‘There was in Mercia in fairly recent times a certain vigorous king called Offa, who terrified all the neighbouring kings and provinces around him, and who had a great dyke built between Wales and Mercia from sea to sea…’

Asser, Life of Alfred, chapter 14 (trans. by M. Lapidge and S. Keynes, Alfred the Great (New York, 1983), p. 71)

Offa is also known for minting some gold coins-- possibly as a gift for the pope-- that were based on the gold dirhams of al-Mansur, the Abbasid caliph. (Offa and his moneyers probably did not understand the Arabic text, since they put Offa's name upside-down relative to the Arabic text. But it does show how far objects and trade could travel, in just a few years.)

Image above: Offa's replica of an Abbasid dinar, now in the British Museum.

Mercia's power waned after Offa's death in 796.

Note: England will not exist as a political entity until 927.

Fences and Rectangles

When thinking about the development of social stratification and kingdoms, it is easy to focus on a few elite, named figures like Pippin and Offa. However, in order for kingdoms to become powerful and wealthy, there needs to be a degree of organization in settlements and power centers. (Without organization, how can you collect wealth or communicate your commands?)

There is evidence, particularly by the 8th century, of social differentiation between different types of settlements in northern Europe. Archaeologists have uncovered 'princely’ settlements with large, hall-like buildings and an enclosure surrounded by a fence. Smaller farms started to get boundaries and fences as well, as did cemeteries. Buildings seem to have been aligned relative to each other within settlements, and also aligned with pits, latrines and wells.

Image above: outline of the boundaries and main halls at Chalton, from Andrew Reynolds, ‘Boundaries and settlements in later 6th to 11th century England’ in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 12, ed. by David Griffiths and others (Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2003), pp. 98-136