Life in a royal landscape: evidence from ninth-century Carolingian Royal Charters
Resource type
Book chapter
Creator (person)
Screen, Elina
Date published
2025
Abstract
Royal charters or diplomata regularly transferred "dependent peasants of either sex", sometimes even listing peasants by name. These references to peasants cast valuable additional light on Carolingian record-keeping processes. When combined with insights from anthropology and archaeology on the role of work in structuring people's lives and shaping their experience of the world, the royal diplomata suggest some ways in which the day-to-day activities of peasants and estate managers may have helped to create collective identities for the inhabitants of royal lands. In turn, these communities contributed to embedding the Carolingian empire into lived experience at local level.
Book title
Living in a Carolingian World
Editor
Garver, Valerie L.
Pagination
25-50
Publisher
Brill