Small Worlds and Relational Agencies: Local Societies in Early Medieval Iberia: Pequeños mundos y Agencias relacionales: Sociedades locales altomedievales en la Península Ibérica

Early medieval Iberia is often told through kingdoms and conquests, yet most people lived within much smaller worlds of farms, villages and local institutions. Edited by Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo, this collection asks how those communities negotiated power and how their relationships could shape changes that appear, from a distance, to belong chiefly to rulers.

Archaeological studies follow peasant communities in western Iberia, settlement networks in the centre, movement and migration in the northwest, and the growth of economic complexity in Cantabria. Research from early medieval Italy widens the comparison. Instead of assuming each village simply mirrored a larger kingdom, the contributors look at what happened between households, religious centres and local networks—and how those connections could become sources of both cooperation and conflict.