EARMEDcastile project

First results of EarmedCastile Project were presented on September 2016 at the International Conference “Archaeology of social inequality in Early Medieval Europe. A tribute to Chris Wickham” held in the Faculty of Arts of the University of the Basque Country, in the University Campus of Vitoria-Gasteiz (https://socialcomplexitysite.wordpress.com/venue/).

The conference was organized by the group GIPyPAC (Research Group on Cultural Heritage and Landscapes-  http://www.ehu.es/en/web/culturalheritage/home) headed by professor of medieval archaeology at UPV/EHU Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo, who also supervise my project.

The aim of this conference was to discuss the theoretical challenges posed by the study of social and political inequality in early medieval societies in Western Europe. It focused mainly on archaeology of rural communities. Traditional approaches have defined them as poor and unstable, in the framework of a self-sufficient economy that prioritized animal husbandry over agriculture. However, available archaeological evidence has upended that picture in recent years. It is also unfolding both the relevance of peasant agency and the true complexity of those small worlds. All these novelties are currently being discussed in the light of a research agenda centred on the emergence of villages, the formation of local elites, the creation of socio-political networks and the state, intensification of agrarian production and the role of identities and other strategies in the legitimation of social inequalities.

First slides of my presentation

 The videos of my contribution and of the whole conference are available here: http://ehutb.ehu.es/es/serial/2303.html