Social Complexity in Early Medieval Rural Communities: The North-Western Iberia Archaeological Record

The houses of early medieval peasants rarely announce their occupants' wealth or standing. Across north-western Iberia, however, differences in food remains, tools, pottery and settlement can reveal that rural life was neither uniform nor necessarily equal. How much of that social world can archaeologists recover when the written record is thin?

Edited by Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo, this collection draws on the DESPAMED research project to approach that question through nine studies. Animal bones, ironworking, village layouts and traces of household slavery are considered alongside the ways communities produced and consumed goods. The cases range across northern Spain and Portugal, with comparisons beyond the region. Rather than assuming that peasant communities were simple or self-sufficient, the contributors examine what the surviving evidence actually allows us to say about inequality and power.