Bogucki P., Crabtree P. Ancient Europe 8000 B.C.-A.D. 1000: Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World. Volume 2

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EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

AGRICULTURE

■

FOLLOWED BY FEATURE ESSAY ON:

Mills and Milling Technology . . . . . . . . . 376

■

By 1000 B.C. farming, which had originated in

Southwest Asia, had been established throughout

Europe for millennia. In parts of southeastern Eu-

rope agricultural communities existed from 7000

B.C. or earlier, and even in Norway cereal farming

was present beginning at least around 2000

B.C. Ag-

ricultural changes from around 1000

B.C. to A.D.

1000 therefore represent developments from a

long-established tradition. Agricultural systems

over this period had two main sets of inﬂuences.

BACKGROUND

One set of inﬂuences was economic and political.

The border between “barbarian” and “civilized”

Europe was ﬂuctuating and permeable. In parts of

western Europe, for example, agricultural systems

that were both more intensive and more extensive

developed in the ﬁrst millennium

B.C. to meet in-

digenous requirements, and subsequently changes

were imposed to satisfy the demands of the Roman

Empire for larger-scale cereal production. Follow-

ing the collapse of the imperial economic system in

the ﬁfth century, agriculture reverted to subsistence

production in some areas. Eventually agricultural

systems capable of producing a surplus to support

the newly established polities of early medieval Eu-

rope were developed. At any given location there-

fore the economic context of agriculture could vary

markedly through time. Trade in plant products and

crops and exchange of knowledge also transpired

across the ﬂuctuating cultural contact between civi-

lization and “barbarity” and within the two.

The other major set of inﬂuences on early farm-

ing systems was environmental. Farmers are prag-

matic. They are well aware of the potential produc-

tivity of their local environment—its geology, soils,

topography, and climate. Although from the begin-

nings of agriculture cropping systems were almost

certainly developed with local adaptations to en-

hance productivity, it is only in this period that we

can unequivocally demonstrate such adaptations in

Europe. The effects of climate change over this peri-

od are difﬁcult to evaluate. The data currently avail-

able are not so regionally precise as to permit dis-

crimination between the effects on agriculture of

climatic or cultural change.

DATA SOURCES

Information on early agriculture comes from vari-

ous sources:

• Field systems. These are known both from relict

systems in areas which, as a result of climate

change, are now too marginal for arable pro-

duction and from ancient systems now sub-

sumed into modern patterns of ﬁeld bounda-

ries.

ANCIENT EUROPE

371

• Implements. The artifactual technology of agri-

culture is known from ﬁnds of plows (initially

ards, which could score only a thin furrow in

the soil; later true moldboard plows capable of

turning and inverting sod), hand-digging im-

plements (such as spades), and harvesting tools.

• Crop-processing installations. These include

corn driers.

• Storage facilities. In some parts of Europe cere-

als were stored in belowground silos—during

the Iron Age, typically large cylindrical pits—

but it is thought that aboveground storage may

also have been accomplished in structures

marked at many settlement sites by settings of

four or nine postholes. Granaries, often with ce-

ramic, basketry, or barrel containers, have been

reported from the post-Roman period.

• Historical sources.

• Biological remains. Most directly these com-

prise remains of crop plants (macrofossils) pre-

served by charring (carbonization), as impres-

sions on ceramics, by mineral replacement, and

in waterlogged anoxic or oxygen-deﬁcient de-

posits. Data from palynology (analysis of pollen,

spores, and other microscopic entities), ento-

mology (e.g., the presence of scarabaeoid dung

beetles or grain pests), and soil science are also

very informative. Dating Iron Age deposits by

radiocarbon presents difﬁculties because of a

plateau in the calibration curve, therefore

palynological analyses of sediment sequences

must be linked rigorously to a scientiﬁc dating

program that permits enhanced precision of cal-

ibration by mathematical modeling, as Alex

Bayliss has shown. Where this has been done, a

detailed picture of land use and agricultural

change during the Iron Age can be proposed

(as, e.g., at Scole, England, which has been de-

scribed by Patricia Wiltshire and Peter Mur-

phy).

This article is concerned principally with plant

macrofossils, the study of which is known as ar-

chaeobotany or palaeoethnobotany, although data

from other sources will be mentioned. Cereals and

pulses (the edible seeds of legumes) are the domes-

ticated descendents of wild plants native to South-

west Asia. Once they were transplanted to entirely

new habitats in Europe, a process of adaptation and

intentional human selection began. The full eco-

nomic potential of the crops available took millen-

nia to realize. Some of the earliest direct evidence

for cropping patterns that are closely attuned to

local conditions of soil and climate dates from the

ﬁrst millennium

B.C.

CROPS, PROCESSING, AND TRADE

Palaeoethnobotanical studies indicate that a wide

range of crop species was cultivated during the two

millennia under consideration. These included ﬁeld

crops: wheats (einkorn, emmer, durum wheat, rivet

wheat, spelt, bread wheat), barley, rye, oats, millets,

pulses (peas, horsebeans, vetches, lentils, chick-

peas), and ﬁber and oil crops, such as hemp, ﬂax,

and gold of pleasure. The latter is an oilseed no lon-

ger grown commercially but well represented, for

example, by threshing remains from Iron Age sites

in the Assendelver Polders, Netherlands. Some

plants that in modern times are generally regarded

as weeds may also have been cultivated. In Denmark

seeds of Chenopodium album L. (a garden weed

commonly known as lamb’s-quarter or fat hen)

have been reported from the gut contents of Iron

Age human bodies preserved in peat bogs, and large

caches of the seed have been found at settlement

sites. Experiments by Paul Stokes and Peter Row-

ley-Conwy have demonstrated that seed yields

comparable to those of cereals may be obtained by

cultivating this proliﬁc goosefoot green. Early culti-

vation of fruits and nuts (including olives, grapes,

ﬁgs, plums, cherries, walnuts) is evident in regions

bordering the Mediterranean, but in the north and

west only native wild fruits and nuts have so far been

identiﬁed from Iron Age sites. Orchard crops and

other plants, including culinary herbs (e.g., corian-

der, dill), spread with the expansion of the Roman

Empire. Results from later sites indicate a cessation

of fruit and nut cultivation in many areas formerly

under Roman control and then reestablishment of

production once new trade contacts were estab-

lished. Orchard crops represented a long-term in-

vestment very vulnerable to destruction during con-

ﬂict, so their apparent absence in these areas in the

immediate post-Roman period is unsurprising.

Factors determining the relative economic im-

portance of ﬁeld and orchard crops were in part en-

vironmental, in part economic. The northern and

western limits of cultivation for some crops (e.g., ol-

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

372

ANCIENT EUROPE

Fig. 1. Late Iron Age British gold coins. These coins of the British king Cunobelin (CVNO) depict

cereal ears alongside an attribution to his capital Camulodunum (CAMV). COLCHESTER MUSEUMS.

REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

ives, lentils) were climatically determined. Rye

seems to have reached Europe as a weed in other ce-

reals. By the Iron Age it was being cultivated in

some areas, and it spread farther as a result of post-

Roman population movements. Its capacity to pro-

duce adequate yields on nutrient-deﬁcient upland

and sandy soil, by virtue of its extensive root system,

made it of great economic importance in parts of

North and West Europe. Other marginal soil types

occurred in the coastal marshes of Germany and the

Netherlands, where there was large-scale occupa-

tion from the Iron Age to the Early Middle Ages,

eventually associated with mounded settlements

known as terpen or wurten. Archaeobotanical evi-

dence from sites such as the Wurt Elisenhof and the

Feddersen Wierde indicates a farming system based

on salt marsh grazing and arable production. Barley,

a salt-tolerant crop, was the main cereal associated

with an early form of broad bean, oats, ﬂax, and

where conditions permitted, other crops. Early

1990s excavations at Anglo-Saxon sites dating from

around the eighth century

A.D. in the fens of eastern

England indicate development of comparable farm-

ing systems, perhaps independently. Economic

change, and in particular a shift to more extensive

forms of production, was associated in parts of

Northeast England (and perhaps in the lower

Rhineland) with a replacement of emmer wheat by

spelt, a hardier crop more tolerant of marginal soils.

Plant macrofossils can also provide information

on the economic function and status of sites. It is as-

sumed that the types of plant wastes discarded at a

farm (where cereals were being threshed, win-

nowed, and sieved on a large scale) would differ

from those at a higher-status “consumer” site

(which might receive only cleaned grain). The rela-

tive proportions of grain, chaff, and weed seeds in

samples from a site can therefore be informative in

terms of the types of activities undertaken there. In

fact interpretation is not simple due to the complex

range of processes leading to incorporation of

macrofossils into archaeological deposits (tapho-

nomic processes). Archaeobotanical results have to

be considered alongside other archaeological data

and may also draw on ethnographic information

from studies of modern peasant agriculture. Martin

Jones (1984) has proposed a model for economic

interrelationships between Iron Age sites in the hin-

terland of the hillfort at Danebury, southern En-

AGRICULTURE

ANCIENT EUROPE

373

Fig. 2. Castle Mall, Norwich. Evidence for Late Saxon malting, using barley and oats. Pictured here are germinated grains of

barley (Hordeum sp.). Scale: 20 mm. COURTESY OF PETER MURPHY. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

gland, based on sample composition. He proposes

that partially processed crops were brought to the

hillfort for communal processing and storage. A

similar study of plant material from a hilltop settle-

ment dating from the sixth to the ninth centuries in

the Biferno Valley, Molise, Italy, produced samples

composed mainly of grain with few chaff fragments

or weed seeds. This may indicate that the site was

not a peasant farming village but a higher-status set-

tlement supplied with largely cleaned cereals by

farms in its hinterland.

Evidence also indicates long-distance exchange

of crop products. For example, the Roman writer

Strabo records grain as one of the exports of Late

Iron Age Britain, and the depiction of cereal ears on

gold coins issued in the early ﬁrst century

A.D. by the

British king Cunobelin could well be seen as a state-

ment of the economic basis of his power (ﬁg. 1). Ar-

chaeobotanical evidence for trade in plant food-

stuffs is tantalizingly sparse throughout the period

under consideration, although exotic cornﬁeld

weed seeds in charred grain samples from early me-

dieval Dorestad, Netherlands, suggest importation

of cereals from areas farther up the Rhine. It is possi-

ble that new techniques, including analysis of DNA

and stable isotopes, will enhance understanding of

early trade in crops. A few macrofossils of imported

Mediterranean foods (e.g., dried ﬁgs) have been re-

ported from tenth-century deposits at Cologne,

Germany, and York, England, but indications of im-

ported foods are otherwise very rare in North and

West Europe before the twelfth century. The high-

est-status commodity traded appears to have been

wine. Remains of Italian amphorae have been re-

ported from Late Iron Age burials in Southeast En-

gland (see the report by Rosalind Niblett), and bar-

rels of silver ﬁr originating in the upper Rhine have

been found in eighth-to-tenth-century-

A.D. depos-

its at the southern Baltic trading settlement of

Hedeby and at Dorestad. As an expression of con-

spicuous consumption, wine drinking seems to have

been the preserve of the warrior and proto-urban

elite throughout North and West Europe.

While wine was the drink of civilization (and of

those who aspired to it), beer or ale was the com-

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

374

ANCIENT EUROPE

mon drink of much of Europe. Production of beer

from cereal grain involves several stages, the ﬁrst of

which is a controlled germination to allow conver-

sion of starch to sugar that can subsequently be fer-

mented (malting). Finds of charred germinated

grains can be evidence for the process (ﬁg. 2). The

earliest material reasonably interpretable as malt

comprised charred germinated barley grains in

pots from a burned ﬁrst-century-

A.D. house at

O⁄ sterbo

⁄

lle, Denmark. During the Roman period

malt was generally produced from wheat, but evi-

dence from cellars of early medieval buildings de-

stroyed by ﬁre at Ipswich, England, indicates that

oats and barley were used. Flavorings were com-

monly added, including hops and bog myrtle. Hops

also contain polyphenolic preservative compounds.

Large deposits of hop fruits have been reported

from ninth- and tenth-century-

A.D. contexts at

Haithabu, Germany, and in England from a tenth-

century boat at Graveney and from contemporary

deposits at Ipswich.

Other plant products include medicinal drugs.

Seeds of opium poppy have been found in Bronze

Age and later deposits throughout much of Europe,

whereas Cannabis is known from Iron Age contexts

in Romania and Hungary and from Roman and

later deposits in the north and west. Native wild

plants would also have provided a pharmacopoeia,

but direct evidence for this is sparse. Patricia Wilt-

shire found abundant Artemisia pollen within cor-

rosion products in the spout of a bronze infusing

vessel, which was found in a ﬁrst-century-

A.D. grave

of non-Roman native type at Stanway, Essex, in as-

sociation with a complete set of medical instru-

ments. The Artemisia genus of plants includes spe-

cies that produce antimalarial and vermifuge

compounds.

Dyes, too, were produced. Tenth- and elev-

enth-century Anglo-Scandinavian deposits at York,

England, have produced remains of dye plants

(madder, dyer’s greenweed, woad, and a club moss

probably of Scandinavian origin). Colors produced

would have varied depending on the mordant, but

red, blue, and yellow were certainly available.

Limitations of space preclude discussion of the

exploitation and management of natural and semi-

natural habitats—particularly woodlands, heath-

lands and grasslands—but sufﬁce to say that these,

too, provided fuel, wild plant foods, drugs, dyes,

tanning agents, and grazing and hay for domestic

animals.

See also Crops of the Early Farmers (vol. 1, part 3);

Danebury (vol. 2, part 6); Ipswich (vol. 2, part 7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bayley, Justine, ed. Science in Archaeology: An Agenda for

the Future. London: English Heritage, 1998.

Bayliss, Alex. “Some Thoughts on Using Scientiﬁc Dating

in English Archaeology and Buildings Analysis for the

Next Decade.” In Science in Archaeology: An Agenda

for the Future. Edited by Justine Bayley, pp. 95–109.

London: English Heritage, 1998.

Behre, Karl-Ernst. “The History of Rye Cultivation in Eu-

rope.” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 1, no. 3

(1992): 141–156.

Behre, Karl-Ernst, and S. Jacomet. “The Ecological Inter-

pretation of Archaeobotanical Data.” In Progress in Old

World Palaeoethnobotany. Edited by Willem Van Zeist,

Krystyna Wasylikowa, and Karl-Ernst Behre, pp. 81–

108. Rotterdam and Brookﬁeld, Vt.: Balkema, 1991.

Crowson, A., T. Lane, and J. Reeve. Fenland Management

Project Excavations 1991–1995. Lincolnshire Archaeol-

ogy and Reports Series no. 3. Heckington, U.K.: Fen-

land Management Project, 2000.

Jones, Martin. “The Plant Remains.” In Danebury: An Iron

Age Hillfort in Hampshire. Vol. 2, The Excavations,

1969–1978: The Finds. Edited by Barry Cunliffe, pp.

483–495. Council for British Archaeology Research

Report 52. London: Council for British Archaeology,

1984.

Kenward, H. K., and A. R. Hall. “Biological Evidence from

Anglo-Scandinavian Deposits at 16–22 Coppergate.”

Archaeology of York 14, no. 7 (1995): 435–797.

Niblett, Rosalind. The Excavation of a Ceremonial Site at

Folly Lane, Verulamium. Britannia Monograph Series

14. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman

Studies, 1999.

Renfrew, Jane M. New Light on Early Farming: Recent De-

velopments in Palaeoethnobotany. Edinburgh: Edin-

burgh University Press, 1991.

Stokes, Paul, and Peter Rowley-Conwy. “Iron Age Culti-

gen? Experimental Return Rates for Fat Hen (Chenopo-

dium album L.).” Environmental Archaeology 7 (Octo-

ber 2002): 95–100.

Van der Veen, Marijke. “An Early Medieval Hilltop Settle-

ment in Molise: The Plant Remains from D85.” Papers

of the British School at Rome 53 (1985): 211–224.

Van der Veen, Marijke, and T. O’Connor. “The Expansion

of Agricultural Production in Late Iron Age and Roman

Britain.” In Science in Archaeology: An Agenda for the

Future. Edited by Justine Bayley, pp. 127–144. Lon-

don: English Heritage, 1998.

AGRICULTURE

ANCIENT EUROPE

375

Van Zeist, Willem, Krystyna Wasylikowa, and Karl-Ernst

Behre, eds. Progress in Old World Palaeoethnobotany.

Rotterdam and Brookﬁeld, Vt.: Balkema, 1991. (A

comprehensive review of European paleoethnobotany

in the 1970s and 1980s.)

Van Zeist, Willem, and W. A. Casparie, eds. Plants and An-

cient Man: Studies in Palaeoethnobotany. Rotterdam

and Boston: Balkema, 1984.

Wiltshire, Patricia E. J., and Peter L. Murphy. “Current

Knowledge of the Iron Age Environment and Agrarian

Economy of Norfolk and Adjacent Areas.” In The Land

of the Iceni: The Iron Age in Northern East Anglia. Ed-

ited by John Davies and Tom Williamson, pp. 132–161.

Norwich, U.K.: University of East Anglia, 1999.

ETER MURPHY

■

MILLS AND MILLING

TECHNOLOGY

In the Roman world, water-powered mills that re-

duced cereal grains to either ﬂour or meal came into

use in locations as diverse as Dacia (modern day Ro-

mania), North Africa, and the province of Britannia.

This relatively widespread distribution has been

conﬁrmed by recent archaeological discoveries in

the territories that once formed part of the Roman

Empire. Both documentary and archaeological evi-

dence attests to their continued use in the various

Barbarian kingdoms established after the empire’s

demise. Several early Latin vitae, or saints’ lives, for

example, composed in the post-Roman period, refer

to the use of such mills: the lives of Orientius (c.

A.D. 380–426); Romanus (c. A.D. 450); Remigius

(

A.D. 486–511), and Ursus (A.D. 484–507). Bishop

Gregory of Tours also provides an interesting de-

scription of the construction of a monastic water

mill at Loches (Indre-et-Loire) c.

A.D. 500 and

mentions the contemporary water mills at Dijon. In

documentary sources dating from the sixth to sev-

enth centuries

A.D., many of which correspond to

the orbit of the Frankish empire, there are, in total,

at least sixteen references to water mills in central

Europe. The law codes of the Germanic peoples

provide further early documentation of the use of

water-powered mills in the Barbarian world, and,

not surprisingly perhaps, only the tribes that had

settled within the frontiers of the Roman Empire

made provisions for water mills in their law codes.

These include the Pactus Alamannorum (early sev-

enth century), the Lex Alamannorum (

A.D. 717–

719), and the Lex Baiwariorum (

A.D. 725–728).

The development of monastic estates was per-

haps the single most important factor in the spread

of water-powered grain mills throughout the bar-

barian kingdoms prior to the tenth century. Indeed,

the growth of the larger religious establishments of

the Carolingian period, such as Saint-Germain-des-

Prés and Lorsh, where large areas of land were

brought under Benedictine control (and from

which the order derived substantial proﬁts), effec-

tively increased the demand for mills. The Carolin-

gian countryside, for example, had a particularly

high density of mills, and the polyptych of Saint-

Germain-des-Prés alone lists a staggering eighty-

four mills, most of them situated on smaller streams.

The increased use of water-powered mills in this pe-

riod may also indicate two important developments:

a growing need to ensure regular supplies of grain

for a rapidly increasing rural population, and its cor-

ollary, an expansion in the cultivation of cereal

crops.

Two basic types of water-powered mill were

used in the barbarian kingdoms, as elsewhere in

early medieval Europe, and as they still are used in

the contemporary Islamic world. The ﬁrst of these

mills employed a horizontal waterwheel set on a ver-

tical axle, in which one revolution of the waterwheel

produced a corresponding revolution of the upper

millstone (ﬁg. 1). In the second type of water mill,

the motion of a waterwheel set on a horizontal axle

was communicated to a pair of millstones via wood-

en gearwheels set at right angles to each other (ﬁg.

2). A large number of early medieval horizontal-

wheeled mill sites have come to light in Ireland,

many of which have been dated by dendrochronol-

ogy to the seventh to eleventh centuries

A.D. The

huge corpus of Irish mill components includes al-

most complete mill buildings; the earliest-known

examples of horizontal waterwheels; the wooden

water-feeder chutes, or penstocks, associated with

them; and tentering beams for adjusting the mill-

stones. In England a well-preserved Saxon site,

dated by dendrochronology to the ninth century,

has been excavated at Tamworth, Staffordshire,

while at Earl’s Bu in the Orkney Islands the remains

of a Viking Age example have come to light. In

Denmark wooden structures at Omgard (c.

A.D.

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

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ANCIENT EUROPE

800) and Ljorring (c. A.D. 960) have been interpret-

ed as the remains of horizontal-wheeled mills.

Vertical-wheeled mills dating to the seventh

century have been investigated at Little Island,

County Cork, Ireland, and at Old Windsor in Berk-

shire, England. At Little Island, a double horizon-

Fig. 1. Reconstruction of seventh-century vertical-wheeled mill at Little Island, County Cork, Ireland. COURTESY OF COLIN RYNNE.

REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

tal-wheeled mill and a vertical-wheeled mill (ﬁg. 2)

operated side by side, the earliest-known close asso-

ciation of the two types of mill in medieval Europe.

As in the case of the majority of the excavated hori-

zontal-wheeled mills, most of the medieval vertical-

wheeled mills that have come to light in Europe had

MILLS AND MILLING TECHNOLOGY

ANCIENT EUROPE

377

Fig. 2. Reconstruction of ninth-century horizontal-wheeled mill on High Island, County Galway, Ireland. COURTESY OF COLIN RYNNE.

REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

substantial wooden foundations. Fragments of early

medieval vertical waterwheels have also been found

at Ardcloyne, County Cork, Ireland (c.

A.D. 787)

and at Belle-Église (c.

A.D.930–980) in France. An-

other French site, at Audin-le-Tiche in northeastern

France (c.

A.D. 840–960), produced physical evi-

dence for a vertical waterwheel with an original di-

ameter of some 1.4 meters.

One should not forget, however, that through-

out early medieval Europe simple rotary querns

(from O.E. cweorn, O.H.G. quirn), which consisted

of two small-diameter disk-shaped stones with a

central pivot and a wooden crank handle, would still

have been used in many peasant households. In-

deed, querns of imported lava from the Mayern-

Niedermendig area of Germany are relatively com-

mon on Middle to Late Saxon sites in England,

while two lava quern blanks were recovered from

the Saxon Graveney boat (Kent). During the medi-

eval period, the simple rotary quern underwent an

important technical change that made it easier to

regulate the distance between the rotating upper

and the stationary lower stone. The axle was extend-

ed through the base of the lower stone and allowed

to pivot on an adjustable beam, which made it possi-

ble to exert greater control over the distance be-

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

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ANCIENT EUROPE

tween the stones (a process called tentering), a fac-

tor that directly affected the coarseness of the ﬂour

or meal.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benoit, P., and Joséphine Rouillard. “Medieval Hydraulics

in France.” In Working with Water in Medieval Europe:

Technology and Resource Use. Edited by Paolo Squatriti,

pp. 161–215. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2000.

Holt, Richard. “Medieval England’s Water-related Technol-

ogies.” In Working with Water in Medieval Europe:

Technology and Resource Use. Edited by Paolo Squatriti,

pp. 51–100. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2000.

———. The Mills of Medieval England. Oxford: Basil Black-

well, 1988.

Rahtz, Philip A., and Robert Meeson. An Anglo-Saxon

Watermill at Tamworth. London: Council for British

Archaeology, 1992.

Reynolds, Terry S. Stronger than a Hundred Men: A History

of the Vertical Waterwheel. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1983.

Rynne, Colin. “Water-power in Medieval Ireland.” In Work-

ing with Water in Medieval Europe: Technology and Re-

source Use. Edited by Paolo Squatriti, pp. 1–50. Leiden

and Boston: Brill, 2000.

———. “The Introduction of the Vertical Watermill into

Ireland: Some Recent Archaeological Evidence.” Medi-

eval Archaeology 33 (1989): 21–31.

Watts, Martin. The Archaeology of Mills and Milling. Stroud,

U.K.: Tempus Publishing, 2002.

Wikander, O. “Archaeological Evidence for Early Water-

mills: An Interim Report.” History of Technology 10

(1985): 151–179.

OLIN RYNNE

MILLS AND MILLING TECHNOLOGY

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379

EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

MIGRATION PERIOD PEOPLES

■

INCLUDING FEATURE ESSAYS ON:

Angles, Saxons, and Jutes . . . . . . . . . . . 381

Baiuvarii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

Dál Riata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386

Goths between the Baltic and Black Seas . . . 388

Huns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

Langobards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

Merovingian Franks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396

Ostrogoths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402

Picts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403

Rus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406

Saami . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408

Scythians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

Slavs and the Early Slav Culture . . . . . . . 414

Vikings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417

Visigoths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419

■

Migration or population movement is a well-

documented feature of ancient Europe. At the end

of the Ice Age (11,000 years ago), hunters and

gatherers moved into areas of Europe that had been

glaciated during the Pleistocene. Both archaeologi-

cal and skeletal evidence indicate that migration

played a role in the establishment of the ﬁrst farm-

ing communities in central Europe. Archaeological,

place-name, and literary evidence document sub-

stantial population movements in central Europe

during the later Iron Age.

Population movements are also well document-

ed throughout the Early Middle Ages, and the peri-

od from

A.D. 400 to 600 is often referred to as the

Migration period. In the ﬁfth and sixth centuries

A.D. barbarians from outside the Roman Empire—

Visigoths, Angles, Saxons, Franks, and others—

moved into many regions of western Europe. The

nature of these migrations has been debated by

both archaeologists and historians for decades. Do

they represent large-scale population movements,

or are they small migrations of a military and politi-

cal elite who dominated the local sub-Roman popu-

lations and initiated changes in material culture and

ideology? Today, many archaeologists would favor

the latter explanation. This chapter proﬁles many

of the Migration period peoples—including the

Saami, of likely ancient, not migratory, origin—who

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ANCIENT EUROPE