ERC Advanced Grant · 2016
Rural Riches. The bottom-up development of Post-Roman Northwestern Europe (450-640)
The question as to how Europe emerged from the collapse of the Roman state in the West has been the subject of academic debate for over a century. Most modern authors agree on the idea that the post-Roman economic development was the result of the initiatives and the demand of the elite. This paradigm of elite control of production and (long-distance) trade seems to be at odds with the vast amounts of objects, often precious and of exotic origin, that are found in the thousands of richly furnished cemeteries of even the smallest rural communities. This project will analyse the importance of the rural population as consumers with access to global trade networks to the post-Roman economic…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.