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

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people in exchange for the right to settle in south-

ern France. Ataulf accepted the contract, and the

Visigoths wiped out the Alans and some of the Van-

dals. At this point, in

A.D. 415, Honorius belatedly

realized the danger that the Visigoths would cross

from Spain to invade Africa; fearing that the Visi-

goths would cut off the food supply of Rome, and

he hastily recalled them to France, leaving the re-

maining Vandals and Sueves in place in Spain.

The Visigoths were happy to settle down in

southern France, establishing their capital at Tou-

louse. It seems that they received tax revenues from

the whole area, although it is unclear by what mech-

anism. By the death of King Theoderid in 451, they

had established a kingdom essentially independent

of Rome and even proposed their own candidate for

emperor in the 450s. The Visigoths fought along-

side Roman generals against Attila and the Huns in

the 460s. Under King Euric (r. 466–484), they es-

tablished their own laws, with separate codes for the

Goths and for their Roman subjects.

After the Vandals abandoned Spain for Africa in

A.D. 429, however, the Visigoths gradually expand-

ed into the power vacuum in Spain. At the same

time, the Frankish king Clovis was pushing south-

ward from his base in northern France. In

A.D. 507

Clovis defeated the Visigoths at the battle of Vouillé

and killed the Visigothic king Alaric II. The Visi-

goths ceded southern France to Clovis and took

over Spain instead, establishing their new capital at

Toledo in central Spain.

With the death of Alaric, the Visigoths were left

with a child king, Amalaric. Amalaric’s grandfather

was the powerful Theodoric the Ostrogoth, ruler of

Italy. Theodoric announced that he would act as re-

gent for his grandson, and in this way the Ostro-

goths dominated Spain and the Visigoths for the

rest of Theodoric’s long life, until

A.D. 526. Even

after Theodoric died, Amalaric soon was assassinat-

ed in favor of another Ostrogothic ruler, Theudis (r.

531–548).

A civil war starting in 549 resulted in an invita-

tion from the Visigoth Athanagild, who had

usurped the kingship, to the Byzantine emperor

Justinian I to send soldiers to his assistance.

Athanagild won his war, but the Romans took over

Cartagena and a good deal of southern Spain and

could not be dislodged. Starting in the 570s

Fig. 1. Gothic gold eagle ﬁbula with garnet and cloisonné

inlays. GERMANISCHES NATIONALMUSEUM. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

Athanagild’s brother Leovigild compensated for

this loss by conquering the kingdom of the Sueves

(roughly modern Portugal) and annexing it, and by

repeated campaigns against the Basque separatists.

Leovigild’s son, Reccared, converted from Arianism

to Catholicism, which did much to wear down the

old distinctions between Hispano-Roman and Visi-

goth. This newfound unity found expression in in-

creasingly severe persecution of outsiders, especially

the Jews.

After Reccared’s death, the seventh century saw

many civil wars between factions of the aristocracy.

Despite good records left by contemporary bishops,

VISIGOTHS

ANCIENT EUROPE

421

such as Isidore and Leander of Seville, it becomes

increasingly difﬁcult to distinguish Goths from Ro-

mans, as the two became inextricably intertwined.

Despite these civil wars, by

A.D. 625 the Visigoths

had succeeded in expelling the Romans from Spain

and had established a foothold at the port of Ceuta

in Africa.

In the late 600s, however, the great Islamic

conquest of the Mediterranean coast was in full

swing. The Moors, recently converted to Islam,

seized the port of Ceuta, attacking unexpectedly on

Easter Sunday in 711. Then, in a reprise of the

events of the late 500s, one of the Visigothic parties

to a civil war invited the Moors to help him, and the

Moors invaded Spain. They found no army that

could mount any serious opposition, and by 712

Spain was ﬁrmly under Moorish control. The Visi-

goths, by then entirely assimilated with the Ro-

mans, retreated to the Pyrenees, from where they

began the long, slow process of reconquest.

See also Huns (vol. 2, part 7); Ostrogoths (vol. 2, part 7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carr, Karen Eva. Vandals to Visigoths: Rural Settlement Pat-

terns in Early Medieval Spain. Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 2002.

Collins, Roger. Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity,

400–1000. 2d ed. New Studies in Medieval History.

Basingstoke, U.K.: Macmillan, 1995.

Heather, Peter. The Goths. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

Stocking, Rachel L. Bishops, Councils and Consensus in the

Visigothic Kingdom 589–633. Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 2000.

Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, trans. and ed. Conquerors and Chron-

iclers of Early Medieval Spain. 2d ed. Liverpool, U.K.:

Liverpool University Press, 1999.

Wolfram, Herwig. History of the Goths. Translated by Thom-

as J. Dunlap. Berkeley: University of California Press,

1988.

AREN CARR

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

422

ANCIENT EUROPE

EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

VIKING SHIPS

■

The region settled by the Vikings during the ninth

to eleventh centuries consisted of the Scandinavian

Peninsula and Jutland, the Danish archipelago, and

islands in the Baltic and the North Atlantic as well

as areas along the coasts and larger rivers of Britain,

Ireland, northern France, and Russia. There were

no overland routes connecting these areas, and con-

sequently all communication relied on the ships and

boats that rightfully became a trademark for Viking

expansion as recorded in contemporaneous sources

and in the archaeological record.

Several ships of the Viking period have been

found in graves and as wrecks, and reused ships’

parts have been excavated in Viking towns, giving

a detailed insight into the boat- and shipbuilding

traditions of the period. There are few remains

found of Nordic ships from the ﬁfth to eighth cen-

turies, the crucial period during which ship design

in this area changed from large rowing vessels of the

Migration period to the ships of the early Viking

Age, combining propulsion by oars and sail. In con-

trast, wrecks of the medieval period and later pro-

vide evidence for the study of the region’s ship-

building heritage and traditions from the Viking era

to the twenty-ﬁrst century.

All Viking ships were built by the clinker tech-

nique—that is, starting from a central keel, with

identical stems fore and aft and with the overlapping

edges of the planking riveted together. After shap-

ing the lower planks to give the desired shape of the

bottom, the ﬂoor timbers were inserted and fas-

tened to the planking, with lashings in the early

phase and later using treenails. The sides were sup-

ported by side timbers and by knees positioned on

the deck beams (biti) over each of the ﬂoor timbers.

A light, strong, and resilient hull was evidently the

goal of Viking shipbuilders when constructing ves-

sels for various purposes. Oak and pine were the pri-

mary materials for the hulls, with ropes of linden

bast and sails of sheep’s wool. The ships were

steered with a side rudder to starboard and pro-

pelled primarily by a single square sail stepped amid-

ships in a keelson, a longitudinal timber with the

step for the mast. The sail was set from a horizontal

yard and adjusted by means of several ropes to bring

the ship forward with the wind from astern, abeam,

or up to 60 degrees to the wind in tacking. Viking

ships had no cabins or weather decks, and all water

coming inboard had to be bailed out.

The ships from the large burial mounds in

southeastern Norway at Oseberg (c.

A.D. 820, exca-

vated in 1904) and Gokstad (c.

A.D. 895, excavated

in 1880), now exhibited in Oslo, represent the early

Viking Age multifunctional ship type. With a length

of 21.6 to 24.2 meters, a beam of 5.1 meters, and

sides 1.6 to 2.1 meters high amidships, these vessels

were propelled equally well by their square-sail

of about 90 to 110 square meters or by their 30 to

32 oarsmen. The Oseberg ship is considered the

personal vessel for the high-ranking woman

buried in it with her elaborately decorated belong-

ings. The Gokstad ship has higher sides and is

slightly more robust, making it ﬁt for deep-sea navi-

gation with its crew and a moderate cargo of trade

goods or booty.

ANCIENT EUROPE

423

Fig. 1. The Hedeby 1 and Hedeby 3 Viking ships. DRAWN BY SUNE VILLUM-NIELSEN. © THE VIKING SHIP MUSEUM, DENMARK. REPRODUCED

BY PERMISSION

Viking ships of the tenth and eleventh cen-

turies have been found at several sites, the most

important ones being Ladby (burial, c.

A.D.

925), Hedeby (two wrecks, c.

A.D. 985–1025), and

Skuldelev (ﬁve ships in a barrier, c.

A.D. 1030–

1050). The Ladby ship imprint in the ground, exca-

vated 1935, is preserved in the Kerteminde

region of Denmark, whereas the Hedeby ships,

excavated 1979–1980, and the Skuldelev ships,

excavated 1962, are exhibited in the Schleswig

region of Germany and at Roskilde, Denmark,

respectively. Additional evidence comes from

excavations in the Viking towns of Hedeby and

Dublin.

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

424

ANCIENT EUROPE

These ships display the range of types and sizes

of vessels that had been developed for different pur-

poses in that period. The primary division was be-

tween the relatively long and low “personnel carri-

ers,” built primarily to satisfy the requirements for

fast propulsion by rowing (demanded by longships

used as troop transporters and by boats used for

communication and ﬁshing), and the broader and

higher “cargo carriers” that required a proper cargo

capacity, relying mainly or fully on sail propulsion.

This specialization is not found in vessels dating be-

fore the tenth century.

The longships that served in the Danish waters,

the North Sea, and the Irish Sea are represented by

the Irish-built Skuldelev 2 ship and the Hedeby 1

ship (ﬁg. 1) built locally, both about 30 meters in

length but only 3.8 meters and 2.7 meters wide re-

spectively and manning about 60 oars each. Skul-

delev 5 was a small 26-oared longship for local de-

fense. These three warships represent different levels

of craftsmanship, from the royal standard of Hede-

by 1 to the “discount version” Skuldelev 5. In the

longships, the oars were worked through holes in

the ships’ sides, and shields could be mounted along

the rail. Figureheads were carried on prominent

longships, and others had gilt weather vanes, but

most longships probably had no decorative ﬂourish-

es other than their stemposts ending elegantly at a

point.

Smaller, boat-sized vessels had their oars

mounted along the rails. They could be used as

ships’ boats, for communication, for general trans-

portation, and for harvesting the sea, such as the

Norwegian-built Skuldelev 6.

The cargo-carrying vessels range in sizes from

the small Danish-built 14-meter-long general-

purpose vessel Skuldelev 3 with a cargo capacity of

4 to 5 tons, to the 16-meter-long Baltic trader Skul-

delev 1 (from western Norway) with a capacity of 20

to 25 tons, to the Hedeby 3 ship (ﬁg. 1) with an es-

timated capacity of about 60 tons. The largest

cargo-carrying ships were entirely dependent on sail

propulsion, and their hulls were more solidly built

than the longships. This type of ship was further de-

veloped in size during the eleventh and twelfth cen-

turies to match the needs of trade in this period of

urbanization around the Baltic and the North Sea.

The seaworthiness of the Gokstad ship was

demonstrated as early as 1893 when a full-scale re-

construction of this ship crossed the Atlantic under

sail. Since then several of the ships mentioned here,

including all ﬁve Skuldelev ships, have been recon-

structed at full scale and tested in order to study

their potentials for the many needs of the maritime-

oriented society of the Vikings.

See also Viking Harbors and Trading Sites (vol. 2, part

7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bill, Jan. “Ships and Seamanship.” In The Oxford Illustrated

History of the Vikings. Edited by Peter Sawyer, pp. 182–

201. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Bro

⁄

gger, Anton Wilhelm, and Haakan Shetelig. The Viking

Ships: Their Ancestry and Evolution. Oslo, Norway:

Dreyers, 1951.

Crumlin-Pedersen, Ole. “Splendour versus Duty: Eleventh-

Century Warships in the Light of History and Archaeol-

ogy.” In Maritime Warfare in Northern Europe. Edited

by A. N. Jo

⁄

rgensen et al., pp. 257–270. Studies in Ar-

chaeology and History 6. Copenhagen: National Muse-

um of Denmark, 2002.

———. “Ships as Indicators of Trade in Northern Europe,

600–1200.” In Maritime Topography and the Medieval

Town. Edited by Jan Bill and Birthe Clausen, pp. 11–

20. Studies in Archaeology and History 4. Copenha-

gen: National Museum of Denmark, 1999.

———. Viking-Age Ships and Shipbuilding in Hedeby/

Haithabu and Schleswig. Ships and Boats of the North,

vol. 2. Schlesvig, Germany: Provincial Museum of Ar-

chaeology; Roskilde, Denmark: Viking Ship Museum,

1997.

Crumlin-Pedersen, Ole, and Olaf Olsen, eds. The Skuldelev

Ships I. Ships and Boats of the North, vol. 4.1. Roskilde,

Denmark: Viking Ship Museum, 2002.

LE CRUMLIN-PEDERSEN

VIKING SHIPS

ANCIENT EUROPE

425

EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

JEWELRY

■

Almost universally, individuals adorn themselves

with jewelry that may indicate rank, gender, age,

marital status, ethnicity, and religious beliefs—and

barbarian Europe was no exception. Jewelry gives

an important view into how peoples of the early me-

dieval period from

A.D. 400 to 1000 identiﬁed

themselves and their groups. In the absence of stone

architecture and sculpture, jewelry making was a

primary art and sometimes is the only medium that

has survived from these cultures. Though much of

barbarian jewelry comes from loose or undocu-

mented ﬁnds, whether accidentally lost or deliber-

ately hidden, examples found in inhumation graves

allow archaeologists to re-create details of cos-

tumes, since jewelry was used to fasten clothes to-

gether as well as to adorn the elite. Some jewelry,

such as buckles and brooches, was functional, re-

gardless of the degree of decoration, whereas other

types, such as pendants and earrings, were more or-

namental and symbolic, distinguishing individuals

from each other.

Knowledge of various groups, such as Anglo-

Saxons, Burgundians, Franks, Goths, Langobards,

Ostrogoths, Vandals, Vikings, and Visigoths, has

sometimes been based on spatial distributions of

jewelry styles, since these “tribes” had diverse cloth-

ing fashions that required distinctive jewelry types

to fasten and adorn them. Thus it has sometimes

been assumed that peoples can be identiﬁed from

jewelry found in graves; however, it is difﬁcult to

distinguish groups based on artifacts dating to this

proto-historic age. As Helmut Roth points out in

From Attila to Charlemagne (edited by Katharine

Brown, Dafydd Kidd, and Charles T. Little), it is

often difﬁcult to establish that an object was pro-

duced by, for instance, a Frank, just because it was

found in an area later associated with the Franks. Is-

sues of “ethnic” identiﬁcation are also discussed by

Herbert Schutz in the introduction to his Tools,

Weapons, and Ornaments (2001). Finally, extra

caution is necessary when making assertions about

ethnicity based on classiﬁcations of jewelry without

documented provenance.

JEWELRY TYPES

Common jewelry types included hair ornaments

and headdresses, straight pins to hold veils and hair

ornaments, necklaces of beads and pendants, ear-

rings, brooches, belt buckles, strap ends, bracelets,

wrist clasps (cuff fastenings), ﬁnger rings, and thin

metal plaques sewn to clothing. In particular,

brooches (or pins) have been studied and classiﬁed

according to their myriad forms, including annular

(ring), penannular (broken ring), quoit (ﬂattened

ring), disk, saucer, bow, cruciform, square-headed,

equal-armed, oval, trefoil, bird, and animal types.

Several brooch types derive from the Roman ﬁbula,

whose name recalls its formal resemblance to the

human leg bone. Its function is based on the princi-

ple of the modern safety pin; it uses a wire spiral to

provide ﬂexibility for opening and shutting and usu-

ally has ornamentation on the enlarged head and

foot plates that conceal the coiled spring and the

catch plate for the pin. Certain types of jewelry were

appropriate for particular clothing styles, and as

fashions changed, so too did jewelry.

426

ANCIENT EUROPE

Fig. 1. Pair of Viking cast oval brooches of gilt bronze with silver details and beads of carnelian

and glass—some with silver and gold foil, from Birka, Sweden, c. A.D. 900. © TED SPIEGEL/CORBIS.

REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

RAW MATERIALS

Late Roman styles inﬂuenced the types of jewelry

that were made, and the gold used in much early

jewelry originated from melted down Roman coins.

In the Viking Age, silver became more common

than gold, as the supply of late Roman coins had

long since died out and the source of metal by this

time was Arabic silver coins. Copper, bronze, and

iron were also used, particularly for functional jew-

elry. Bone and walrus ivory were carved for pins and

rings. Glass, amber, and semiprecious stones (par-

ticularly quartz, rock crystal, jet, and garnet) were

made into beads and also inserted into metal jewel-

ry. Glass was produced in provincial Roman work-

shops in the Rhineland, and garnets came to Europe

through Roman trade.

CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

The techniques used to produce barbarian jewelry

also derive from Roman methods and changed very

little throughout the early medieval period, except

for the introduction of the draw plate to produce

wire (discussed below). The best source of informa-

tion about production methods often is an examina-

tion of the artifacts, though some conclusions can

be based on archaeological discoveries of tools and

workshop debris. Important early medieval jewelry

workshops have been discovered in Scandinavia at

Helgö, Birka, Ribe, and Hedeby.

The most common method of jewelry construc-

tion was fabrication, which entails mechanical ma-

nipulation and joining of sheets of metal by ham-

mering, folding, and soldering. Inscriptions,

patterns, and images can be made on sheet metal by

chasing or engraving, that is, using a pointed tool

to displace or gouge out metal. The sheet can also

be impressed with a stamp or die having a relief de-

sign, worked in repoussé by having designs ham-

mered from the reverse, or embellished with small

hammered punches. The central designs on Scandi-

navian Migration period (

A.D. 450–600) gold pen-

dants called bracteates were stamped with a die, but

punches were used around the perimeter of these

objects.

Casting was the other major method of jewelry

construction. During the early medieval period, a

two-piece mold was used rather than the ancient

“lost-wax” technique. In casting, metal is melted in

a crucible and then poured into the mold; used cru-

cibles with residue as well as broken molds were

found at workshop sites such as Birka in Sweden.

After casting, rough edges must be ﬁled away and

polished; after this cleanup, the piece of jewelry

might receive additional embellishment. Often jew-

JEWELRY

ANCIENT EUROPE

427

elry cast in bronze or silver would be coated with sil-

ver or gold respectively to give an impression of a

more valuable material.

DECORATIVE TECHNIQUES

Jewelry made by either casting or fabrication may be

further adorned by surface decoration, including

granulation, ﬁligree, and inlays of stones or glass.

Filigree, also known as wire work, consists of pat-

terns of plain or decorative beaded wires soldered to

the surface of a piece of jewelry. In the ﬁfth and

sixth centuries, wire was made by techniques called

strip twisting and block twisting, in which a strip of

metal is twisted, rolled, and hammered until it is ap-

proximately circular in section like a drinking straw.

Drawn wire, manufactured by pulling a thin metal

strip through a series of successively smaller round-

sectioned holes in a draw plate, gradually replaced

strip- or block-twisted wire from the seventh

through the ninth centuries in northern Europe.

A decorative technique called granulation con-

sists of soldering small spheres of gold or silver onto

the jewelry surface. Granules are simple to produce

by heating small pieces of metal until they roll up

due to surface tension, but they are difﬁcult to sol-

der into place accurately. They were often used in

large quantity and in combination with ﬁligree, so

individual mistakes are difﬁcult to see without a mi-

croscope while the overall effect is impressive. Both

ﬁligree and granulation created glittering effects

that are impressive by ﬁrelight.

Enameling and inlay of colored stones and cut

glass were also used to enhance the surface appear-

ance of jewelry with color, or polychrome, effects.

Cloisonné, a technique in which materials are set

into small cells (cloisons) fabricated by soldering up-

right strips of metal onto the surface of the jewelry,

was often used in the early medieval period. Garnet

cloisonné was used extensively on Merovingian jew-

elry. Well-known Early Anglo-Saxon examples are

the shoulder clasps from Sutton Hoo, in which cut

garnets as well as milleﬁori glass, composed of col-

ored glass rods fused together and sliced into thin

sections, are placed in cell work. Enameling during

the early medieval period was achieved by placing

broken or powdered glass within cells, which were

then heated, and the glass was allowed to melt and

fuse with the metal jewelry surface. Finally, glass was

also used to make colorful, patterned beads, as evi-

denced from workshops at Ribe in Denmark.

See also La Tène Art (vol. 2, part 6); Sutton Hoo (vol. 2,

part 7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arrhenius, Birgit. Merovingian Garnet Jewellery: Emergence

and Social Implications. Stockholm, Sweden: Almqvist

and Wiksell, 1985.

Axboe, Morten. “The Scandinavian Gold Bracteates: Studies

on Their Manufacture and Regional Variations.” Acta

Archaeologica 52 (1981): 1–100.

Bayley, Justine. “Anglo-Saxon Non-Ferrous Metalworking:

A Survey.” World Archaeology 23, no. 1 (1991): 115–

130.

Brown, Katharine Reynolds, Dafydd Kidd, and Charles T.

Little, eds. From Attila to Charlemagne: Arts of the

Early Medieval Period in the Metropolitan Museum of

Art. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000.

Cherry, John. Goldsmiths. Medieval Craftsmen Series. To-

ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.

Coatsworth, Elizabeth, and Michael Pinder. The Art of the

Anglo-Saxon Goldsmith. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.:

Boydell Press, 2002.

Duczko, Wladyslaw. Birka V: The Filigree and Granulation

Work of the Viking Period: An Analysis of the Material

from Björkö. Stockholm, Sweden: Almqvist and Wiksell,

1985.

Hines, John. A New Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Great Square-

Headed Brooches. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: Boydell

and Brewer, 1997.

———. Clasps, Hektespenner, Agraffen: Anglo-

Scandinavian Clasps of Classes A–C of the Third to Sixth

Centuries

A.D.: Typology, Diffusion, and Function.

Stockholm, Sweden: Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och

Antikvitets Akademien, 1993.

Hougen, Bjo

⁄

rn. The Migration Style of Ornament in Norway.

2d ed. Oslo, Norway: Universitetets Oldsaksamling,

1967.

Jensen, Stig. The Vikings of Ribe. Ribe, Denmark: Den antik-

variske Samling, 1991.

Jessup, Ronald. Anglo-Saxon Jewellery. Aylesbury, Bucking-

hamshire, U.K.: Shire Archaeology, 1974.

László, Gyula. The Art of the Migration Period. Coral Ga-

bles, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1974.

Ogden, Jack. “The Technology of Medieval Jewelry.” In

Ancient and Historic Metals: Conservation and Scientif-

ic Research. Edited by David A. Scott, Jerry Podany, and

Brian B. Considine, pp. 153–182. Marina del Rey,

Calif.: Getty Conservation Institute, 1994.

Ryan, Michael. Studies in Medieval Irish Metalwork. Lon-

don: Pindar Press, 2002.

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

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ANCIENT EUROPE

Schutz, Herbert. Tools, Weapons, and Ornaments: Germanic

Material Culture in Pre-Carolingian Central Europe,

400–750. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001.

Suzuki, Seiichi. The Quoit Brooch Style and Anglo-Saxon Set-

tlement. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: Boydell Press,

2000.

Vida, Tivadar. “Veil Pin or Dress Pin: Data to the Question

of Avar Period Pin-Wearing.” In Pannonia and Beyond.

Edited by Andrea Vaday, pp. 563–573, 811–815. Bu-

dapest, Hungary: Archaeological Institute of the Hun-

garian Academy of Sciences, 1999.

Whitﬁeld, Niamh. “Round Wire in the Early Middle Ages.”

Jewellery Studies 4 (1990): 13–28.

Wicker, Nancy L. “On the Trail of the Elusive Goldsmith:

Tracing Individual Style and Workshop Characteristics

in Migration Period Metalwork.” Gesta 33, no. 1

(1994): 65–70.

Youngs, Susan, ed. “The Work of Angels”: Masterpieces of

Celtic Metalwork, Sixth–Ninth Centuries

A.D. Austin:

University of Texas Press, 1990.

ANCY L. WICKER

JEWELRY

ANCIENT EUROPE

429

EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

BOATS AND BOATBUILDING

■

Archaeologists recovered a great deal of informa-

tion during the last half of the twentieth century

concerning the variety of boats used in central and

northern Europe c.

A.D. 400–1000. Detailed practi-

cal studies also have been carried out regarding the

methods, tools, and materials used to build boats

and ships at this time. The level of study of the ma-

terial and its geographic spread is very uneven, how-

ever; the larger planked craft of southern Scandina-

via are fairly well known, but the important

shipbuilding traditions to the south, east, and west

are far less well known or studied. This essay deals

mainly with small boats and boatbuilding but also

draws attention to the lesser known larger ships

of the Angles, Saxons, Frisians, Slavs, Celts, and

others.

Dugout boats, between 2.5 and 7 meters long,

were the most common small boats in early medi-

eval central and northern Europe, and many survive

in museums across the Continent. Indeed, it is clear

that in countries where systematic surveys have been

conducted, such as the British Isles, most dated

dugout boat ﬁnds belong to this early medieval pe-

riod. The variety of early medieval dugout vessels

built in Britain and central Europe was consider-

able, reﬂecting local peasant boatbuilding tradi-

tions, the function of the craft, and the locally avail-

able trees. Most vessels were built from large whole

or halved oak trunks between about 0.6 and 1.0 me-

ters in diameter. By the end of the early medieval

period in the tenth and eleventh centuries, it is clear

that the very highest quality large oak trees were out

of reach to small dugout boatbuilders in some in-

tensively settled regions, such as England and Den-

mark. The best trees were reserved for building the

large, high-status planked ships, such as the ninth-

century long ship from Hedeby, Jutland. The low

status of dugout vessels also is indicated by the lack

of historical and pictorial sources for them. On the

western fringes of Europe, in parts of Britain and

Ireland, it is thought that skin-covered boats

(“coracles” and more elongated “curraghs”) were

used, but the archaeological evidence for them is

slight. It also is very likely that rafts were used on

some inland waterways where light pines, ﬁrs, and

spruces grew, in montane central Europe and

northern areas.

Detailed experimental work has been done in

England in the ﬁeld of building small early medieval

dugout boats (ﬁg. 1), following detailed analysis of

evidence, such as surviving tool marks and the trees

used. It is clear that such craft were built with axes,

adzes, and splitting techniques to remove the waste

wood, rather than by ﬁre hollowing. It has been dis-

covered that ﬁre was used in building some dugout

vessels, as a means of softening the timber of thin

hulls to expand them, as is still done in some parts

of the world today. The wider shape, with uplifted

ends, produced by this extraordinary process pro-

vided a more seaworthy, capacious shape than can

be carved from a single log, and it often was extend-

ed upward with the use of overlapping planking. It

is clear that this method was employed throughout

the early medieval period in some areas, such as

northwestern Germany, Denmark, England, and

the Netherlands and probably elsewhere. An early

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ANCIENT EUROPE