Sonderdrucke aus der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
HEIKO STEUER
Archaeology and history:
Proposals on the social structure of the Merovingian
kingdom
Originalbeitrag erschienen in:
Klavs Randsborg (Hrsg.): The birth of Europe : archaeology and social development in the first
millennium A.D.
Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1989, S. [100] - 122
Archaeology and History:
Proposals on the Social Structure of the
Merovingian Kingdom
by HEIKO STEUER
1. Preliminary remarks
In recent years, research into the structure of Germanic
society during its prehistoric to early
modern periods has gained new momentum
through the rapidly expanding archaeological data
base. So great is the scale of increase that it even
demands a reassessment of the written sources of
information. This paper, accordingly, is addressed
to a confrontation of archaeological data with the
written sources. I have been occupied with such
problems for many years, and it goes without saying
that my conception of Germanic social organization
has changed in the course of time (Steuer
1980, 1982, 1984, 1986-87, 1988). The central elements
of the structure of society in the Merovingian
kingdom can be summarized as follows: in
the period between prehistory and the medieval
state the Merovingians formed a ranked society
with differences of rank between and within families;
powerful individuals were supported by
groups of followers. In the following sections I shall
present, in an admittedly somewhat provisional
and disparate form, a series of observations on
both the historical and archaeological sides of the
picture.
2. Historic foundations
The Frankish kingdom of the Merovingians and
the later Carolingian Empire were both founded
on the concept of Personenverbandstaaten - states of
united people. This is an intrinsically Germanic
tradition, and not one stemming from classical antiquity.
The Personenverbandstaat is neither one of
territorial area nor of fixed borders. It reflects shifting
personal relations. And the concept, as used
here, can be construed as the opposite of the later
institutionalized state. An empire (Reich), or a state
of united people, existed wherever the king resided
with his band of warriors and his royal wealth.
Tribes from many Germanic groups, such as the
Goths and the Vandals, migrated through Europe,
even reaching as far as the north African littoral:
the community of king and his followers, or Personenverbandstaat,
is thus to be conceived not in
terms of territory, but in terms of individuals, their
settlements, and ultimately their burials. Furthermore,
within the Frankish kingdom, family relations,
bonds which reached beyond any narrow affiliation
to a war band, the assumption of offices
and titular posts — such as that of count — and
the granting of property as rewards, were all factors
which provided the individual, high-ranking
members of the leading groups with widely dispersed
properties (Streubesitz). This was a process
directly opposed to concepts of enclosed properties
or sharply demarcated areas of domination and
ownership.
Moreover, the different types of office (Amt) also
exercised dispersed authority: hence the concept
of Streugrafschaft. An individual holding a position
in the Alamannic area might thus have exercised
his authority in various parts of the kingdom. In
fact, the concepts of districts, provinces (Page) and
counties do not occur till very late in the Carolingian
period (Borgolte 1984, 248 pp.). The state
structures under Chlodwig, founder of the
Frankish kingdom, arose with the installation of
officials, dukes and counts, who were assigned
land. But it must be stressed that this property was
not open to inheritance.
The central significance of the war bands in the
construction of the Frankish kingdom has long
Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 101
been evident to historians. "The French Kings'
war band... (did not merely)... form the core of
the army... (but this)... archaic retinue became an
important element in the royal gentry and in the
formation of the state" (Schulze 1985, 47). Schulze
continues his summary: "The right to hold a body
of followers was obviously restricted to the royal
family in the Merovingian period" (ibid. 1985,
49). Donat similarly writes: "The nobility, named
in the reporting sources, did in fact belong more
or less closely to the royal family, or were highranking
officials" (1988, 12).
The present state of the debate on social structures
in the 7th century is perhaps most clearly expressed
by W. Stromer (1988, 224): "The last
great tribe to emerge, the Bavarians, seems to have
been a voluntary group of free peasants, joining
arms together under a leading duchy. Fundamentally,
the whole tribe was organized as a body of
followers, a structure which we see as a foundation
for early states". "The rule of the Bavarian
duke in the earliest era is the form of control by
retainers" (ibid. 1988, 225). Several groups of retainers
must, in this case, have been united, since
only five genealogiae were recorded in the Lex Baiuvariorum.
Free retainer warriors ruled the country
with the duke, creating large courts; and huge contributions
of land for outstanding services gradually
formed the basis for some rather loose form
of property rights (ibid.). It was not until 770 that
the Lex Baiuvariorum records the first known incidence
of inheritance rights over a fief, and thus
marks the beginning of continuous property rights.
At the beginning of the 7th century, Dominus
Chlotharius rex, Chlotar II (584-629), issued the oldest
edition of the Lex Alamannorum to a congregation
which included 33 bishops, 34 dukes and 72
counts (Schmidt-Wiegan 1988, 64). This congregation
consisted mainly of the king's retainers,
whose individual centres of power were spread
over the whole territory like a net. These officials
came from very different ethnic groups; they were
of variably ranking descent; and they were highly
mobile. The offices of the royal retainers were temporary,
and they were extremely well-paid. When
an official died, his property reverted to the king,
so that the build-up of a dynasty, or the concentration
of power on a territorial basis, could not,
as indeed-it should not in this political system, occur.
(In the western Gothic Reich of Spain, under
King Eurich, there are, however, instances of land
inheritance in special cases (Wolfram 1983, 15).
The presence of these retinues as accumulated
power only, is also reflected in all so-called tribal
rights in so far as these applied not to a district,
but to a people. The Lex Alamannorum thus applied
to the Alamans, whether they lived in Alamannia,
in the Frankish settlements or in Italy (Kottje
1987).
In Italy we find a late demonstration of widely
dispersed retainers safeguarding the conquered
areas. After 774, the Carolingians began to secure
the newly conquered province of Lombardy. This
was undertaken through a determined policy of
building up a loyal nobility, and filling all important
posts with nobles from north of the Alps.
These included 360 Franks, 160 Alamanni, 15
Bavarians and 2 Burgundians; in total over threequarters
of the counts and margraves came from
the north. In their previous settlements all of them
had possessed additional dispersed land and each
brought a big vassal company (Hlawitzka 1960).
The social order of this train of followers itself led
to an extension of the base of the hierarchy.
There is no doubt about the importance of the
retinue or train of followers in the Merovingian
period. Indeed, this concept also applies to areas
outside the Frankish kingdom to the north, and
probably also to the east. The most eloquent written
evidence for these areas remains the epic poem
Beowulf in which we find all aspects of the structures
of personal relations characteristic of a Personenverbandstaat.
Power (in Beowulf) depends on the
trains of warriors and the king's wealth, but also
on property, which could be given away (temporarily)
in payment. The leading groups of the
Goths (Gautar), the Swedes (Sviar) and the Danes
are all related to each other. High-ranking warriors
— like Beowulf himself — are portrayed as
leaving home at an early age to stay at the courts
of foreign kings; often adopted as sons, they might
thus return later with their own bands of warriors
to give military assistance. The king presents
Beowulf with property, and also with weapons and
gold. It is thus not sufficient merely to consider
the salient archaeological artefacts of the Migration
Period in Scandinavia — the boarhelmets, the
magnificent inherited swords, the burial mounds
or the ringgold —, one must also look at the picture
of political power structures in early state-
102 Heiko Steuer
hood; and these structures do not stop at frontiers,
but stretch far beyond them owing to wellestablished
personal relationships. The poem can
be dated by the following circumstances: King
Hygelac (Beowulf's uncle) fights the Frisians in the
Frankish kingdom, a conflict which is referred to
by Gregory of Tours as occurring in 516-522 (Hist.
Franc. III, 3). The grave at Sutton Hoo has established
a factual background to the poem (BruceMitford
1975, 1978, 1983). It should also be noted
that Beowulf was written not in Denmark or
southern Scandinavia, where the eponymous hero
lived and acted, but in England and in Old English
between the 7th and 9th centuries.
The archaeological connections between England,
Scandinavia and the Frankish kingdom have
been repeatedly demonstrated in the archaeological
literature. I shall here refer only to the custom
of using the ringsword as a retainer symbol, and
the custom of wearing a magnificent helmet as a
sign of belonging to a particular group-ideology
(Steuer 1987). In the Frankish kingdom such
swords were used to give proof of the relations subsisting
between retainers. This was also true in
Scandinavia (Arrhenius 1985), where the
"Frankish" model was repeatedly copied as highranking
warriors, who had themselves been serving
as retainers at foreign courts, returned to their
homelands bringing with them experiences from
other political structures. Traditional chiefs with
their limited numbers of subjects and limited economic
resources could not compete in this system
which favoured wide support and high mobility.
A king of the Frankish type, the leader of a body
of retainers from throughout his extensive realm,
had countless connections and was able to draw
on support, and exercise power, wherever he happened
to be. He was thus also in a position to take
power away from the traditional chiefs.
A number of interesting problems are posed in
attempting to use archaeological methods to trace
territorial leaders who were participating in a power
system based on mobility and personal relations.
Regional chiefdom territories, as suggested for
southern Norway in the immediately post-Roman
period (Myhre 1987) and also for the Danish islands
in the late Roman period (Hedeager 1980),
are — in my opinion — not so obvious. Social
structures based on dispersed retinues were certainly
introduced into Gaul under the Frankish
king Chlodwig, since they are documented in the
written records; but among the Germanic tribes
they are probably older. Already in the early imperial
period of Ariovist we may note that the core
of Germanic political units was formed by retainers.
It is probably here that we should look for the
roots of the later Personenverbandstaat, since Ariovist'
s warriors and a large group called the Suebs
constituted a rather similar organization.
It is notable that the traditional, early Roman
period German tribal communities and their chiefs
disappear, as do their tribal names, from the written
Late Roman sources. The Franks and the Alamans
of the latter period are representatives, in
short, of a new kind of group formation.
Such a development is repeated in the early history
of all the Germanic peoples of the Migration
Period, and is also reflected in the archaeological
record. Groups of retainers from the time of Ariovist
and the Suebs have been detected in contemporary
weapon graves (Peschel 1977, 1978a,
1978b). A retinue can also be traced in the socalled
princely graves of Lubsow type (c. lst-2nd
century A.D.), in the princely graves of the
Hassleben-Leuna-Himlingje type (c. 300 A.D.),
in the stately graves from the Attila and Childeric
era, and in the magnificent burial sites from the
Reihengriiber civilization (6th-7th centuries) (Steuer
1982).
Such bodies of leaders accompanied by their
retinues were both the cause and the mainstay of
the migrations. Their catalysts were the Roman
Empire and its army, in which Germanic troops
were often incorporated as complete fighting units.
Returning groups of retainers and followers were
thus destined to change the social structure in their
native lands. This poses the question of whether
the graves containing rich imported Roman articles
indicate repatriated barbarian mercenaries or
perhaps even Roman citizens (Rausing 1987). I
would assert, indeed, that the princely graves of
the Hassleben-Leuna-Himlingje horizon reflect
such retainer structures in society, in much the
same way as the later princely graves containing
goldhandles, spathae, ring-swords or helmets
(Steuer 1987).
To conclude, the Frankish kingdom was a Personenverbandstaat.
As such, it exerted an influence
on the North, and caused similar political structures
to emerge in the Scandinavian area from the
Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 103
beginning of the 6th century. To the East, too,
there was a similar development, though it was
somewhat delayed (Vignatiova 1987, Charvat
1987): there has been some discussion about the
evidence for bodies of retainers and private
property at the time of the empire of Magna
Moravia.
At the end of the Migration Period Chlodwig
founded the Merovingian Frankish kingdom in
western and central Europe. This kingdom soon
united the scattered Germanic tribal societies of
the Franks, the Burgundians, the Alamanni, the
Thuringians and, periodically, the Bavarians too.
Initially this Germanic acquisition of land took
place partly with and partly without the consent
of the Roman population. Consent is manifested
in the system of accommodation, the so-called
hospitalitas (Goffart 1980, Wolfram 1983, Behrends
1986). The subsequent acquisition of land during
the period of the kingdom's expansion also took
place partly with and partly without the consent
of an already established Germanic population; by
which is meant simply that the Frankish aristocracy
acquired the areas inhabited by the Alamanni
and Thuringians. The conquering groups were —
according to the written sources — war bands that
had separated from the old tribal societies. The
leader in question paid the war bands in land, i.e.
property rights passed into their hands, but with
an in-built form of dependency on the king, and
with the proviso that the right to hold land was
for a lifetime only: it was not inheritable.
Based on the above observations and concepts,
the remainder of this paper will also consider the
ongoing discussions between Western and Marxist
scholars concerning the time when property rights
were established as so-called feudal property, and
when the change occurred from tribal or genteel
nobility (artistocracy) to feudal nobility (Donat
1987; 1988). I would like to propose that the emergence
of temporary manorial property rights, in
dependency on a king, coincides with the formation
of the Frankish kingdom. In the Frankish
kingdom of the 5th/6th century allotments existed
no longer as freehold private property, but as
feudal property. During the period between the
5th and 8th centuries feudal conditions of production
and the basic feudal classes were thus formed
(Donat 1988, 10). By pushing back the date of the
emergence of feudal conditions of production I
presuppose at the same time that the rural population
buried in the Reihengrfiber sites is wholly to
be interpreted as one of manorial households (Donat
1988, 21; and Bohner 1958, 336 ff.).
3. Archaeological foundations
Investigations concerning Merovingian social organization
based on archaeological source material
are aimed at elucidating, or identifying, questions
of rank, the emergence of the nobility, and its legal
and political significance. These questions are
often based on models of society which presuppose
a class division according to the fixed steps of the
Wergeld of the Leges barbarorum, for instance in connection
with the legal classification "serf/unfree,
freeborn, noble" . It therefore seemed appropriate
to compute the quantity and evaluate the
wealth of the grave goods included in Merovingian
burials — weapons, jewelry, tools — and also
to take into account the overall splendour of the
burial practices themselves. The first analyses of
grave goods from the Merovingian period only
considered the graves of men and evaluated the
weapons included in them. According to the way
in which these burials were equipped, researchers
thought themselves able to gauge the legal status
of the deceased as respectively noble, freeborn or
unfree. Such studies, however, do not lead to convincing
results. Christlein's study (1973) took into
account all goods included in the graves of both
men and women. These goods were counted and
evaluated, and a classification of the Reihengriiber
produced from the results: they range from quality
group A (poor or without any grave goods included)
to D (almost royal) — a classification in
which group C would describe Adelsgraber (nobles'
graves). Various summaries of these quality
groups are given in the tables (Figs. 1-2). The
groups were equated with social ranks; thus graves
with swords or pairs of fibulae, for example, are
ascribed by Christlein to group B — rich freeborns
with authority at the local level; graves with bronze
containers, riding tackle, gold jewelry and
weapons decorated with precious metals, to group
C — exceptionally rich freeborns or optimates with
more than merely local control; and graves with
extraordinary objects, mainly imported, to group
D — the rank of reguli or duces.
Criticism of this particular approach was mainly
voiced because it assumes uniform burial practices
General
Significance
Markedly
poor/poor
Male Graves
No grave goods
/" sax" ; down and arrows;
undecorated belt buckles
No grave goods / glass beads; A
knife
Female Graves
	
Quality
Group
104 Heiko Steuer
Fibulae; hair pin (bronze); ear- B
rings (bronze/silver); head
necklace; pendants; belt attachments;
leg bindings; shoe
buckles; silver finger ring; glass
vessel (6th century)
Averagely Sword; "sax"; lance; shield;
wealthy/ decorated belt buckles; glass
wealthy vessel (6th century)
Complete fibula jewellery; hair C
pin (bronze or silver); earrings
(silver, gold); bead necklace;
pendants; belt chain attachments;
leg bindings; shoe
buckles; gold finger ring;
bronzc vessel; bronze fitted
wooden chest; glass vessel
(7th century)
Above Sword; "sax"; "ango", axe;
averagely lance; shield; decorated belt
wealthy buckles; snaffle and horse harness;
gold finger ring; bronze
vessel; bronze fitted wooden
bucket; glass vessel
(7th century)
Unusually Like C, in addition specially manufactured D
wealthy objects
Fig. 1. Ranking criteria and their respective order at the top of the social scale, Roman imperial territory in south-western
Germany and Alemannia in the same region ca. 300-400 and ca. 500-650 A.D. (after Christlein 1978).
over a time-span from 500 to 750 AD, and from
an extensive geographic area stretching from
northern France to northern Italy, a distance of
over 1000 km. It also assumes consistent behavioural
patterns through time and space of a society
made up of very different tribal groups
(Steuer 1982). Comparisons of this type are therefore
valid only where they involve contemporary
graves within one burial site, or when they deal
with neighbouring burial sites.
Samson (1987) is one of the most recent scholars
to voice reservations about Christlein's
method. These go beyond my own collected
"counter-examples" , which he refers to as anecdotal,
and are more fundamental in character. He
stresses the point that we can only penetrate into
the former social reality if we take into account not
merely the buried individual and the objects
deposited in his/her grave, but also the motives of
the group which arranged the burial and decided
on the objects included in it. New research has also
been conducted on English data. Harke (1987) has
presented a dissertation in which he analyses the
Anglo-Saxon weapon graves of the 5th to 7th centuries.
His analysis provides further confirmation
that the supposed equation between the weapons
in the grave, weaponry and social structure does
not correspond to reality. It also suggests that the
probabilities of being able to identify social legalities,
or social roles, through the archaeological
record are slim. His thesis reads as follows: (1) As
also on the Continent, one fifth of all graves, i.e.
half of the men's graves, contain weapons. (2) An
increase in the quantity of weapons in the graves,
reaching a maximum around the middle of the 6th
century, can invariably be registered. (3) The
weapons in the graves are always a selection of the
actual weaponry, that is to say that the status, and
not the function, of the warrior, is represented in
death. Besides, it is definitely the lifestyle, rather
than the function, of the deceased that is reflected
in the equipment in the grave, as shown by the
Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 105
Roman Imperial
	
Alemannia
	
Archaeological
	
Quality
territory	 ca. 300-400
	
Characteristics
	
Group
Tribunus, Vir Duke, Regulus D
spectabilis,
later bishop (?)
High ranking officer
(Praefectus cohortis), rich
landowner, high government
official, rich
merchant
Optimates with territorial Gold jewellery; silvered
authority belt and weapon fittings;
silver, bronze and glass
vessels
Mid-ranking officer (Centurio),
average and
smaller landowners,
tenant farmers, merchants
Rich freemen with local
authority (rich farmers
etc.)
Silver jewellery; bronze
belt fittings; bronze
vessels
(C)-B
Alemannia ca. 500-600 Archaeological Characteristics	 Quality Group
Duke Specially manufactured objects
(not for sale)
Freemen with above Bronze fittings; horse fittings, gold
average wealth finder rings; gold handled swords
People with average wealth Pairs of fibulae; swords etc.
Fig. 2. Ranking criteria and their respective order as based on the "Reihengrdber" from Alemannia in the sixth to early seventh
centuries A.D. (after Christlein 1978).
inclusion of drinking goblets. (4) The weaponry
included is attached to particular families, and only
represents an act of symbolism. Solberg (1985) has
incidentally attempted a similar approach for the
burials of the Merovingian and Viking periods
found in Norway. But in his study he has, in my
view, jumped to conclusions about the relationship
between weaponry found in graves and social
status.
New analyses of the tribal laws of the 7th and
8th centuries have likewise shown that the legal
position of the freeborn has nothing in common
with, nor is it equivalent to, their social or economic
situation. Thus there is no necessary relation
between tribal rights or statements of Wergeld
and the contents of graves; the latter belong to a
completely different area, namely that of lifestyle.
Furthermore, the differentiation between nobili and
liberi, between nobles and freeborn, appears very
late. Originally the Frankish law made no mention
of nobles, only freeborn, the only "nobles"
being of the Merovingian dynastic line. It was only
after 770, in a supplement to the lex Baiuvariorum,
that nobles appeared in their own right, alongside
the freeborn. Hitherto only the family of the duke
Agilofinger — related to the king of Lombardy —
was mentioned in the texts, along with five other
families (genealogiae).
There is yet another way of summarising the
present state of research: in general, the central
European archaeologist prefes an inductive approach;
and this also holds good for the sociohistorical
analyses of the Reihengriiber and the objects
included in them. This has led inter alia to
a quantifying description as exemplified by Christlein's
approach. Since it is convenient to sort the
• Aristocratic graves about 600 A.D
Qravefields.
distribution area.
7th century
106 Heiko Steuer
archaeological material into prearranged slots, this
procedure enjoys great popularity. The artificially
determined "cut-off ' points on a continuum between
few and many grave goods are used to define
quality groups A to D, while the choice of only
certain objects (e.g. bronze containers or riding
tackle) as the main characteristics of these groups
tends to obscure the continuum and to define, or
reinforce, cut-off points where none exists in reality.
I grant that this kind of quantifying analysis
does have its merits, in that it may ease communication
between archaeologists, but its claims to
bridge the gap between the archaeological findings
and their social and historical interpretation are
merely illusory.
I would also like to express serious misgivings
as to whether the statistical-topographical analyses
of the range of finds within (for example) "core"
and "periphery" areas will enable us to describe
early statehood. We can only achieve this by means
of archaeology if we presuppose undisturbed
tribal developments during the emergence of a
genteel nobility and a chiefdomship which entailed
the formation of territorial entities (cf. Hedeager
1980 and Myhre 1987, with the above comments).
The written sources from the Merovingian period,
however, suggest in the main groups of people
independent of any set territorialism.
A different approach opts for a deductive methodology.
In the following I will attempt to use archaeological
material to analyse, or corroborate,
relevant information extracted from the documentary
sources, in particular the formation of a state
based on a system of retainers and their property
rights. This will be undertaken in the form of ten
propositions; these I will propound, but will not be
able to demonstrate fully here. The propositions
are aimed at deducing the social behaviour of a
population that buries its dead in the so-called Reihengriiber
practice, and the concomitant establishment
of a state organization that is not a simple
kingdom, but an empire of united people, in fact
a Personenverband.
4. The propositions
The Migration Period came to an end on the Continent
with the creation of the Merovingian kingdom
under Clovis and his sons. Incorporated into
this empire were the Franks, the Burgundians, the
Thuringians, the Alamannic and other Germanic
Fig. 3. Distribution of "Reihengrdber" cemeteries of the
seventh century A.D. in the north-western part of the European
continent, and selected aristocratic graves from about 600
A.D. (after Muller-Wille 1983 (etc.)).
tribal groups. This was one of the most decisive
changes in the history of the Germanic peoples.
A specific way of life led by the leading groups within
the Merovingian kingdom was reflected in
their burial practices.
4.1 My first proposition refers to the social order
of the Germanic population generally in the
period between 480 and 750 AD. It states that the
so-called Reihengraer burial custom (fig. 3), with
its extensive use of grave goods, is the expression
of an important facet of the way of life in the
Merovingian period: a way of life compunded of
retinue, warfare, banquets and heroic ballads.
This particular burial custom had its origins in the
widely branching network of the Merovingian royal
family. The burial of Childeric, the Frankish
Merovingian king — and Roman general — was
undertaken by his son Clovis. The burial had foreign
features, both Eastern and Roman in character,
and was to set a standard, or create a fashion,
for all high-ranking individuals and their kin in
the emerging Merovingian Empire. Depending on
their wealth and possessions, families now undertook
the burial of their deceased kinsfolk with particular
significance being attached to the individual's
renown. People displayed a particular behaviour
in mortuary ritual in order to impress their
neighbours and thus demonstrate their social rank.
In this context family (familia) refers to the larger
extended family which goes beyond kith and kin
and includes servants. What was at issue in the
burial process was not the preparation of the deceased
for the after-life, as this was unnecessary
or inappropriate in a largely Christian society.
Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 107
More important was the manifestation of the family's
own rank through a suitably striking burial
of one of its members. (The Frankish nobles
were practically all Christians since the baptism
of Clovis and his army: (fig. 4)). It should be noted
that the Christian faith served to legitimize the
rule of the Merovingians when they established
their state — a situation to be repeated some 500
years later by the Danish king Harald who had
Christ put on his famous runestone.
Periods of innovation, Griinderzeiten (Kossack
1974), repeatedly lead to strikingly "representative"
burial practices. A visit to the cemeteries of
the latter half of the 19th century would readily
confirm this.
4.2 My second proposition therefore states that
the social organization of the Merovingian kingdom,
based on the structures of retinues, was that
of an open, ranked society, and that the funerary
evidence for this period mirrors differences in rank
not only within families in the broadest sense
(familia), but between families. The material value
of the goods included in graves and the splendour
of the burial thus display "rank", but not social
strata or fixed classes or even group membership,
which would have run across the whole of society
as do modern classes. Burial variation within highranking
families, usually called "nobles" in the
scientific literature, covers anything from small
landowners to high-ranking officians in the
Merovingian case.
Starting from the centres of the Merovingian
kingdom, the practice of the Reihengriiber spread
across the entire realm, also influencing neighbouring
regions such as England and southern
Scandinavia. But over distances of several hundred
kilometres and over several generations in time,
this burial practice could not, in the nature of
things, remain consistent or subject to the same
immutable norm. The community of a particular
village would conform its behaviour to that of its
neighbours as regards burial practice through
mutual observation and comparison. Yet the
greater the distance involved, the less people would
know of each other's behaviour, thus giving rise
to divergencies in practice. There are, for instance,
differences between Frankish and Alamannic or
Bavarian (or ratheir between western and southern
and eastern) burial sites which cannot be interpreted
in terms of social or even ethnic disparities.
Thus, archaeological groupings determined according
to the quantity or value of grave goods included
in burials may lead not to a social stratum
or class definition of the population groups of the
Merovingian period, but merely to a description
of local (and contingent) factors. Stated in this way
my second proposition is in particular a counterproposal
to previous approaches aimed at quantifying
grave goods with statistical procedures, right
down to cluster analysis and dendrogrammes,
which shed no light on past social reality. The open,
ranked society of the Merovingians followed no
standardized behavioural patterns, in burial practice.
The advent of social standardization in fact
marked the end of the development from an open,
ranked society to a true state society, which has
classes into which individuals are born. Such a
state, in this case the beginning of the Carolingian
era, cannot be ascertained through studies of grave
goods simply because these were no longer in use.
Families in open, ranked societies require both
for the presentation of their respective rank, and
for the expression of their behavioural patterns of
life, a burial practice which varies in splendour according
to the "means" and status of the deceased
and his family. The crucial factor is the burial
process. The objective of the activities surrounding
the burial was to demonstrate the rank not
merely of the deceased, but also of the group to
which he/she belonged, especially its head. I propose,
therefore, that the splendour of the burial
and the opulence of the grave goods were intended
to reflect rank within and between families, and
to impress individuals from outside the group. A
note of caution, however, should be voiced about
the objects buried with the dead: a belligerent
lifestyle leads to a basic attire, weapons, banqueting
materials, etc., which are likely to be associated
with all individuals of high rank, not just a few.
4.3 My third proposition claims that the existence
of war bands can be proved archaeologically.
In the first half of the 6th century swords were
laid in the graves of certain men; these swords displayed
an intertwined pair of rings on the pommel
— the so-called ringswords. Moreover, it can
be observed that the rings, made out of precious
materials, including gold, were mounted on the
weapons at different times; some examples even
108 Heiko Steuer
Fig. 4. Crosses on helmets of the Merovingian period (after Steuer 1987).
show that rings had been removed (Not until the
7th century were swords produced with a device
for mounting rings or with rings pre-cast into
place). Swords of this type are found not only in
the Frankish Empire, but also beyond it, in England,
Scandinavia and Italy. Recently, I have
even come across an example, shorn of rings, from
Hungary. Not all the swords have gold-plated
pommels; there are also normal weapons among
the group of ringswords. How should we interpret
this interesting phenomenon?
In a paper written in 1987 I tried to show how
we can gain an understanding of a society through
this long-debated custom of applying so-called
"oath-rings" to sword pommels (for a discussion
of the rings see in particular Evison 1967 & 1975).
I conceived the owners of these swords as members
of a group of followers who were awarded this
token or sign by their lord — a lord who might
have been king or one of his high-ranking officials
who could "bind" and "pay" other warriors.
Here we are once again dealing with groups of followers
of varying rank, but merely in the form of
individuals whose graves were discovered by
chance. The warriors buried in the "Fiirstengrab
(royal grave) of Krefeld-Gellep, or from the grave
at Beckum (Doppelfeld, Pirling 1966; MullerWille
1983) were without doubt members of a
body of followers. The individual warrior buried
at Schretzheim (Klingenberg, Koch 1974) could,
in terms of wealth, be a low-ranking member of
a body of followers. The decisive factor for our
purpose is that warriors similar in terms of their
social function received burials of varying
"wealth" from their relatives. The amount of
goods included in their graves reflected the fortune
of their family, the ringswords their social rank and
proximity to the king. The gold-handled spathae
of the early 6th century presumably had a similar
function a generation earlier (Ament 1970; Steuer
1987). Werner (1980) declares the golden openended
bracelets (Kolbenarmringe) in the graves of
high-ranking individuals of Childeric's time —
another generation earlier — to be a sign of membership
of a stirps regia, an explanation which certainly
goes too far. But through their gold value
Baggergraben
PP
Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 109
these rings may in fact indicate rank and membership
of a royal body of followers. This assumption
finds confirmation in a comparison with the
graves of the Danish Islands and finds from
Sweden which contain gold snake-head and openend
bracelets (Kyhlberg 1986). The open-end
bracelet in Childeric's own tomb does not contradict
this interpretation; as we have seen, the
sons of kings grew up as followers at other kings'
courts. The ringswords in England and Sweden
have to be seen in a similar light. Warriors from
these countries were in the royal band of followers
of the Frankish kingdom, and later returned
to their homelands, an observation which is also
indicated by the special almandine decoration of
their swords (Arrhenius 1985). In settlements near
burial places containing ringswords — at KrefeldGellep
for example — land may have been given
to the deceased owners of such weapons as rewards
of property for service to a lord.
Graves with gold-handles spathae, such as Flonheim,
or graves with ringswords, like KrefledGellep,
often belong to the earliest burials in the
cemeteries in question (Pirling 1986).
4.4 My fourth proposition states that the earliest
burials in a particular burial place are to be
recognised as those of the relatives of landed
proprietors; an indication of the fact that this
property was not yet hereditary. For my next example
I wish to look at the so-called "ThuringianFrankish
burial places of nobles and followers of
the 6/7th century near Zeuzleben" close to Wiirzburg
(Wamser 1984). The oldest and "richest"
grave, number 25, is of a woman; it is placed at
the centre and formed the origin of the burial site
in question. It consists of a huge wooden chamber
measuring c. 3 by 5 metres, and embedded
almost 4.5 metres deep; the reconstruction (fig. 5)
shows a three-storey building. Here, in the first
half of the 6th century, a woman was interred with
a four-wheeled wagon and the harnesses for a team
of horses which were buried in a nearby grave.
Wamser, who excavated the entire burial site, interprets
his findings as follows: those buried in it
were members of a noble lordship with warriors
and servants — a high-ranking body of followers.
The grave-house over burial 25, and similar structures
in the cemetery, are seen as memoria for the
dead, and do not, in spite of the grave goods they
Fig. 5. Reconstruction of the grave with several levels at Zeuzleben
(grave 25) (after Wamser 1984).
contain, contradict the Christian (Arian) faith. It
is important to keep the following circumstances
in mind: the "wealthiest" grave was also the earliest
in the cemetery, a so-called founder's grave;
but the person buried in this particular example
5m
MOEN Spatha III Pfellspitzen
—"iv— Sax die Helm
40— Lanze P-9 Lamellenharnlsch
AL. Schlldbuckel P Pferd
Schlldfessel H Hund
Fig. 6. Plan of the cemetery at Niederstotzingen (after Paulsen
1967).
1 10 Heiko Steuer
was a woman. We know from written tradition
that she could never have been the head of a family
nor the landlord, but she might have been
his wife. To assess the rank of the first burial we
should look not at the individual buried in it, but
rather at those who did the burying.
The aspects important to the following arguments
have already been rehearsed: the body of
followers, manorial lordship, nobility and Christianity.
The first person buried in the cemetery had
been given — from whence and by whom? —
manorial disposition over this land. The individual's
fortune allowed, indeed required, the representative
burial of his deceased wife to demonstrate
his, the highest, rank in the settlement. The burial
place then became a burial site for all other
members of the familia, their blood relatives and
their followers, though not all were buried with the
same splendour, of course. If the husband had died
first, he would have received a striking burial from
his family, his wife or his sons, as can be proved
from many other examples of the so-called founders'
graves. These thus indicate the rank of the
land-receiving family, the new landlords. The following
examples may be cited: the burial place at
Hufingen, the "normal" Alamannic village burial
site in the Gewann "Auf Hohen" (Gewann is
a plot of land in a village), and the nobles'
cemetery "An der Giersalde" with the founder's
grave in a burial chamber which has been dated
(dendrochronologically) to 606 AD. Among the
goods included in this grave is a precious harness
with two silver phalerae of Christian content: a
new lord gaining important influence in the previously
settled mark and expressing this influence
through representative burial practices, although
he was Christian. A further example of a highranking
Christian grave is the burial of Eschwege
in Hessen with silver phalerae showing pictorial
representations of both Christian and pagan content
(Fingerlin 1985; Sippel 1987). It should be
stressed once more that the social positions of the
Merovingian period were not hereditary, but tem-
porary.
Whether, as described above, the Carolingians
militarily secured their Lombard lands through the
settlement of high-ranking Franks, Alamans and
Bavarians, or whether the Thuringian empire, or
that of the Alamans, in the 6th century, was politically
connected with the Frankish realm, the
process was the same: holders of important positions
were settled in crucial localities. The richly
furnished graves on the old military roads have in
fact always been associated with the holders of such
positions. For example, Schmidt (1976) interprets
Thuringian graves equipped with Frankish goods
as being those of officials, as does Paulsen (1967)
for Alamannic graves at Niederstotzingen in Wurttemberg
(fig. 6). It was not always high-ranking
Frankish nobles who gained important positions,
however; individuals from other tribes were also
able to become officials, but in such cases they remained
dependent on the king and formed part
of his retinue. Archaeologists have also suggested
the existence of these officials on the basis of the
so-called magnificent graves, the Adelsgráber, the
graves of Christlein's categories C and D (1973).
It is noticeable that such rich graves are particularly
to be found on the eastern edge of the
Frankish kingdom, where it extends towards the
Alamans and Saxons (Bohem 1985; Muller-Wille
1983) (figs. 3 and 7). Officials with temporary positions
of power clearly wished to display their rank
in death and therefore received magnificent graves
(Kossack 1974). The widely dispersed Merovingian
royal family did not need to do so, and was
for a long period interred in specially constructed
or selected churches (Kruger 1971). Moreover we
do not find any magnificent graves for several
generations in the life-span of many of the Reihengriiberfelder,,
because no "nobility" was attached to
their specific locality. Thus, in the case of the
Rubenach-Reihengriiberfeld, it could be shown that
the series of particularly rich graves in the
cemetery, supposed by Ament (1973) to be those
of a family attached to a certain area, were in fact
rich graves belonging to different families that had
come to the locality at various times (Wierczorek
1988).
4.5 As my fifth proposition, I conclude that the
granting of land can be demonstrated archaeologically
even in later generations in an old community.
This can be achieved, I suggest, through the
so-called separate cemeteries. These existed for
Fig. 7. Top: separate graves in the sixth century A.D. (square
with frame = in or at church; small frame = grave under barrow).
Bottom: separate small cemeteries in the sixth and seventh
centuries A.D. (after Warne 1985).
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Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 111
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Fig. 8. Plan of the "Reihengraber” cemetery at Kirchheim am Ries (after Christlein 1978).
some time during the filling of a cemetery; they
often contain a founder's grave and other rich trappings.
As an example I may point to the burial
places of Fridingen and Kirchhiem (fig. 8). There
have been attempts to interpret the development
of these separate cemeteries as a visual expression
of a single family's separation from the community
and thus a reflection of an emerging nobility.
In a critique of this interpretation (1982) I pointed
out that such separate cemeteries often exhibit
not only differing wealth, but also diverging burial
practices; these include burial inside large tumuli,
within circular trenches and under mortuary
houses. I interpreted this phenomenon as evidence
of the arrival of a family from outside, which joined
the existing community. High rank is not precluded.
On the contrary, in the above context, the
receipt of land can, I believe, be inferred: a new
family, in other words, has gained or received land
property rights in the vicinity of an existing settlement.
Once again we have reason to assume a
gift or donation from the king himself or from
another high-ranking official. In the Alamannic
area this procdure can be demonstrated during the
Frankish integration of the area into the Merovingian
kingdom. The burial site of Niederstotzingen
with its rich warriors' graves has similarly been
interpreted as a Frankish-founded posting-station
on an important land-route (fig. 6). The reorganization
of the settlement system through the abandonment
of settlements and burial sites of the
Hemmingen type (Muller 1976) in the period
around 500 AD also represents 'Frankish interference
— a point I will return to later. I stress that
we are thus able, from the archaeological record,
to recognise land donations and, concurrently, the
development of manorial lordship in its earliest
form. (Manorial lordship later turns into "local
nobility", and in addition we see lordship with
scattered land property in many places).
The spread of this practice of creating separate
cemeteries actually moves from east to west, from
the Frankish to Alamannic areas, in the 6th and
7th centuries. This is exemplified in a recent map
Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 113
(fig. 7) compiled by Bohme (1985). After the consolidation
of the Merovingian kingdom there was
no more unclaimed land. Instead the land was organized,
granted and thoroughly structured by the
king and his highest-ranking officials. From its
very beginning the Merovingian kingdom was
"free" — in fact, an open society with ranks,
although there were also dependencies on the royal
or ducal lord. This is the inference that can be
drawn from the archaeological record. The
weapons in the grave, an expression of the rank
of the free warrior (Bodmer 1957), were granted
by the king or lord in question together with land
as an economic basis. I believe we can actually
demonstrate several stages in the granting of land
after the emergence of the Reihengraber civilization;
we can do so, I suggest, by means of certain kinds
of grave goods like gold-handled spathae or ringswords,
or even more clearly by means of the temporal
sequence of founder's grave, separate
cemetery and church founder's grave.
We should constantly bear in mind the written
sources concerning the role of followers in the formation
of the Frankish kingdom. The royal body
of followers, the trustis dominica, was rewarded with
land and did not always stay at the court of the
king; its members belonged to the highest — ranking
leading groups of the empire, the optimates. Archaeology
can furnish evidence for some of these
optimates, and at the same time for the growth and
spread of the Frankish Empire. An early group,
identifiable through the presence of gold-handled
spathae, was granted land and settled in the central
Frankish and bordering Alamannic region; the
next group, associated with ringswords, already
included the entire new Frankish sphere of influence,
and at the same time reflected the intensive
character of the Frankish model of social structure
for the neighbouring areas in England, northern
Italy and Scandinavia, whence members of the
royal followers had presumably come and whither
they had carried the idea of empire formation back
north again (Arrhenius 1985).
As early as the time of the Roman Empire, German
mercenaries had carried the Roman way of
life into the Germanic regions, such as central Germany
and the Danish islands (Rausing 1987).
Something comparable happened during the
Migration Period; the burial place at Hogom in
northern Sweden may serve as one example
Fig. 9. Early medieval church with rich contemporary graves,
on the ruins of a Roman bath, at Regensburg (after RieckhoffPauli
1987).
(Ramqvist & Muller-Wille 1988). But this is not
the place to expand on the relationship between
the later graves of Sutton Hoo, the Swedish Vendel
and the Alamannic burials, deduced from the
inclusion in each of decorated pressed metal sheets
and their pictorial content.
4.6 My sixth proposition puts the so-called
church founders' graves into line with founders'
graves and separate cemeteries. The church founders'
graves situated in their own churches characterise
the later phase of the Reihengraer practice,
i.e. the 7th and 8th centuries. We are dealing here
with burials that are located in a central site in a
church, but that may also contain precious goods.
The church was in effect built as a cemetery for
the land holder's family. At the same time it became
the centre of a parish, and later attracted the
burials of other dependent families (Kruger 1971;
Christlein 1974; Fehring 1987). The confirmation
of this process lies in the very history of the funerary
churches of the royal Frankish dynasty, beginnig
with Clovis who was buried in the church of
St. Genevieve in Paris, which he himself had built
in the year 511. Other great Franks chose their
burial places in and around churches too; i.e. they
would erect churches for their burial if they were
I Benweiler 14 Marktoberdorf 27 Griiningen A Augst
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114 Heiko Steuer
"sufficiently Christian" . Subsequently other
members of the family may also have built
churches over their graves. The findings at Flonheim
(Ament 1970) and Morken (Bohner 1959)
may be cited as examples. The foundation of a
church as a burial place was an important means
of perpetuating the memory of one's forefathers
(Schulze 1986, 41; Donat 1988, 20). There were
several ways of doing this: a church might, for instance,
be erected near an existing burial place —
as at Morken, Flonheim or Staubing in Bavaria.
In Staubing the rich burials were situated in front
of the church. Near Regensburg a church was built
over the ruins of a Roman bath; around it were
several rich graves (Rieckhoff-Pauli 1987) (fig. 9).
Or, alternatively, a church might be built in the
vicinity of a village and attract a number of graves,
while the other families in the settlement continued
to bury their dead on the old burial site (eg.
Bulach, Wittislingen). Churches were also being
built without being used for the burial of their
founder or owner or members of his family.
Without being able to challenge Christlein's
previously mentioned discussion here, we can say
that as a consequence of land gifts and the evidence
of landlords, the newly built churches with graves
were the latest link in the following chain: founders'
graves, separate cemeteries, church founders'
graves. Moreover, once again we can observe the
development spreading from west to east (figs. 7
& 10). Thus the structuring of manorial lordship,
and the consolidation of the system of owned
churches and the parish churches of organized
Christianity, ran parallel to each other without any
necessary interdependence (see Dannheimer
1987); Roth 1981; Muller & Knaut 1987). Incidentally
the spread of the consolidation of noble
proprietorship from west to east is in particular
shown by the richest graves of quality levels C-D
(about 300 of which are known), by the separate
Fig. 10. Church-buildings in south-western Germany before A.D. ca. 700 (after Roth 1981).
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Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 115
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Fig. 11. Plan of the early medieval settlement with grave-groups (graves marked with dashed o's) at Kirchheim bei Munchen
(Munich) (after Christlein 1981).
cemeteries (50 of which could certainly be named),
and by the graves within churches (of which 50
could be counted in 1970, as against 70-80 today).
The emergence of the Reihengriiber practice and
the end of this burial custom, or rather the abandonment_of
the burial places associated with it, define
a period which covers the consolidation of the
Frankish kingdom and the power of the Merovingian
kings. We cannot therefore posit any continuity
between the graves with burial goods in the
Frankish cemeteries of north-east Gallia of the
4th/5th centuries, or the early Alamannic burial
places of south-west Germany, and the burial
places of Merovingian times, as Werner assumed
116 Heiko Steuer
in his famous article "Zur Entstehung der Reihengraberzivilisation"
(1950). The power and dependency
relationships that developed in the
4th/5th centuries created a pattern of settlement
that was later changed because the Merovingians,
on gaining the upper hand, created a new
proprietorship situation. The old burial places
were abandoned because the old families had lost
importance. At the same time, old burial practices
disappeared, such as the north-south alignment of
graves. Weapons and precious materials characterized
the way of life both before and after the
change, but there is certainly no continuity. Such
changes in burial practices can also be registered
in the Alamannic area around the year 500 and
shortly after as the Franks expanded their power
and integrated this region into their empire (i.e.
the abandonment of the Hemmingen-type burial
places).
The end of the Reihengriiber practice was thus
brought about on the one hand by the consolidation
of the ecclesiastical organisation, on the other
by the manorial lords.
4.7 Soon dependent farmsteaders had to bury
their dead near the churches which belonged to
their lords. As already proposed by Last and myself
(Last & Steuer 1969) in a review of Stein (1967)
concerning 8th century nobles' graves, only the
last of the freeborns could avoid doing so. My
seventh proposition therefore claims that it was not
the nobles who were buried in the weapon graves
of the 8th century, but the last freeborn, or independent
farmsteaders, who still remained independent
of the great manorial lordships and
their churches. While the latter no longer had to
demonstrate their consolidated rank through inclusion
of grave goods, it remained a necessary
practice for the last of the freeborns to do so. They
now buried their dead right next to their own farmstead,
at the edge of the farm's fence. One of the
best examples is arguably the settlement of Kirchheim
near Munich (Christlein 1981; Geisler 1988;
Steuer 1987 & 1988; Osterhaus 1987) (fig. 11). It
was not until recently, once settlements started to
be analyzed, that this aspect of the burial practices
of Merovingian times has come to be recognised.
Graves with weapons and spurs of the final Reihengreiber
period, earlier interpreted as nobles'
graves, can now be assigned to farmsteads in a village.
Forming groups of 10-30 burials, they
represent, it may be presumed, the small cemetery
of the inhabitants (familia) of a farmstead.
4.8 My eighth proposition interprets the robbing
of graves (Roth 1977 & 1978), the systematic
plundering of Merovingian period cemeteries,
as a sign of a social situation characterized by the
predominance of fewer and more powerful lords
who held the majority of the rural population in
subjection. The abandonment of the Reihengrfiber
cemeteries and the shift of burial place for certain
families to the church or to the farmstead are interconnected
events stretched out over a longer
period of time. Up to 75 % of the burials may have
been robbed (fig. 12). There is hardly any period
in prehistory or early history in which the earlier
cemeteries of the same population were robbed to
such an extent. Various explanations of this
phenomenon have been offered: it was allegedly
caused by a scarcity of precious metals; or by an
economic decline that turned the iron in the graves
into a precious commodity; or by the influence of
Christianity that diminished the importance of ancestors.
But each of these explanations can be
refuted. The plundering of the cemeteries of one's
own people, and with it the obvious disregard for
the peace and inviolability of one's dead ancestors,
also reflects a break with the past. Irthe Migration
Period brought about what appears to have
been a revolutionary change of the older social
structures, which led to the development of the Reihengriiber
practice — parallel to the emergence of
the Frankish kingdom — then the changes leading
to the abandonment of the Reihengraber sites
and to the increase in grave robberies must have
been even stronger. It seems as if families had lost
the desire or the right, or even the possibility, of
protecting the peace of their ancestors and of
respecting the dead and their graves. Kinship relationships
and family ties must have become unimportant,
lineage irrelevant, and so been cut off
(Steuer 1980).
As an interpretation of the phenomenon, I propose
that manorial lordship was consolidated at
this time and became totally accepted. Nobles and
freeborn families, whose judicial status was
guaranteed by law and birth no longer needed to
demonstrate their social role through luxurious
grave goods and burial practices. Dependent fa-
nicht kartierter Raum mit Vorkommen des Grabraubes
nicht naher bestimmbare Intensitat des Grabfrevels
}
Angaben turn Grabraub
in Prozenten fur
,0 % 100 % einzelne Griberfelder
Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 117
Fig. 12. Frequency of grave-robbing in Central Europe during late Merovingian times (after Roth 1978).
milies who no longer had free command over their
belongings, and who could be relocated, given
away, resettled or separated at the whim of their
lord, were no longer able to keep up the cemetery
reserved for their family over generations or provide
their dead with precious goods. It is striking
that very often it is the richly furnished founders'
graves, i.e. the graves of the lords, that were not
robbed. Indeed, we can go further and claim that
it is precisely among the latter that those who organized
and carried out the tomb robberies should
be sought.
4.9 At this stage in our argument it becomes
necessary to move away from the burial practices
and look instead at the settlement pattern. My
ninth proposition asserts that the constant socioeconomic
factor of settlement since the beginning
of the Merovingian kingdom was not the village
but the village mark. Excavations in Jutland, in
northern Germany and in the Netherlands have
shown that the settlements of the early Merovingian
period were usually villages — single farmsteads
not having been established in any area at
this time — and that these villages were not permanent
at the local level. Each generation moved
from its previously fixed settlement site, but at the
same time remained within the borders of its mark.
Waterbolk (1982), for instance, has convincingly
shown that in the Drenthe region in the Netherlands,
as is also evident in other areas, it was not
the village but the mark which had constituted the
constant settlement factor ever since La Tene times
or the Roman period. In those regions of the
Merovingian kingdom that had formerly been Roman,
such as south-west Germany, the size of the
mark may have stemmed from Roman subdivisions.
(I refer to the Roman system of accommodation,
the hospitalitas). In any case a single settlement.area
or mark was a possession which the king,
118 Heiko Steuer
for example, would initially transfer to his followers
as a whole. Later several lords may have owned
property in a mark and severally wielded authority
over land and people.
The archaeological picture that emerges with
regard to the Reihengraber civilisation now shows
— with variants of course — not only that the settlement
shifted within the mark, but also that there
is usually evidence for several cemeteries in the
same mark which may vary in size, wealth and the
length of time they were in use. Previously it was
assumed that the various burial places — mainly
consisting of only a few graves — belonged to isolated
farmsteads or hamlets which grew into a single
village at a later date. Yet the results of recent
excavations have shown that during the history of
a mark and settlement within it, a number of
separate localities for burial sites, reflecting the
shifting settlement pattern within its territory,
presumably existed. In other words, we have to
reckon with a complex system of settlement and
burial which is far from having been satisfactorily
discovered or understood. In general terms we can
sketch the process as follows: after receiving a mark,
the recipient follower founded a settlement for himself
and his people, and when either he or one of
the leading members of his family died a burial
place was established (founder's grave). This burial
place continued to be filled even if its respective
village were subsequently transferred. If new
families joined the village in the course of time,
either because another family replaced the lord or
because it had gained property rights in the mark
and built a farmstead in the village, then this family
could either bury its dead in the original
cemetery, by now far away, or establish a new burial
place (separate cemetery). This process could
thus lead to the creation of several new burial sites
in the same mark. When the village became permanently
settled on one site — a development usually
coinciding with the erection of a church — it is
possible to capture the end of this process; it probably
made no sense to let the village move away
from the church. However, we should avoid
monocausal explanations, as changes in house construction
show. For not long afterwards the posthole
technique of building houses was replaced by
a construction which involved a solid stone foundation.
This effectively put an end to the movement
of villages. Those farmsteads which had been built
in the traditional post-hole manner, and became
fixed in space in the 8th century, now had to be
renewed more frequently on the same site. This can
also be proved archaeologically (Steuer 1988).
The transfer of a village could only occur if the
entire population were to decide on such a measure,
and the same is true for the establishment of
a new burial site. Yet once a single lord, and later
a number of different lords, came to have rights
and property in a village, relocations of the old
type were no longer practicable, or even desirable,
especially since these lords owned scattered
property and did not live in the village themselves.
The village thus remained in the same place as the
church and its cemetery, and this situation has lasted
from the eighth century down to the present
day.
Two examples of this phenomenon in the
Merovingian Empire can be cited (Steuer 1988).
First, the excavated settlement site of SpeyerVogelgesang.
This is one example of a shifting village
(Bernhard 1982): the farmsteads were moved
several times from the 5th/6th century down to the
Middle Ages, before the settlement eventually dissolved
in the municipal borough of the town of
Speyer. An area extending over a kilometre in
length is covered with traces of settlement. The second
example is the Mark of Wittislingen (Bohner
1986) in southern Germany (fig. 13). Surface exploration
has revealed several as yet unexcavated
settlement sites and a number of cemeteries. The
findings suggest the presence of several farmsteads
in the Mark, and the following overall picture of
its settlement pattern emerges: namely, that the
site of the same village was repeatedly moved, and
subsequently new burial places were opened, possibly
by manorial lords who had amassed more and
more property in the Mark. This is suggested by
the rich burials accidentally discovered.
Schmid (1957) long since pointed out the low
level of stability within the noble families in the
early Middle Ages, and spoke of "fluctuating families"
which led to a high mobility of property.
Similarly Donat (1983, 23) writes: "Because the
nobles' graves were often used only for a short
period and rarely exhibit family groups, they furnish
evidence for a high mobility among the nobles,
which can only be explained by scattered
property in more than one place" (quoted by
Christlein 1987). A parallel development from the
Reilergrab
iiKirche +4./
St.Martin.++
Grab der Adeligen
0-r++oppidum 973
+
reiches Kriegergrab
E t+
Reitergrab
0
reiches Kriegergrab
mit Goldblattkreuz
Archaeology and History: Proposals on the Social Structure of the Merovingian Kingdom 119
0 500 m
Fig. 13. The early medieval topography of Wittislingen (shaded
areas = Alemannic settlements; crosses = cemeteries;
circles = rich graves; F = early Alemannic settlement in Roman
ruin) (after Biihner 1986).
end of Merovingian times is the abandonment of
the Reihengraer, their plundering and the emergence
of cemeteries near churches as well as within
villages. There is a remarkable dynamism in
the changes in the settlement area, the Mark, which
reflects one and the same social process: the consolidation
of a manorial structure. It may thus be
suggested, though not demonstrated, that at the
time when the village was not yet hereditory
property, the land-lord, who was given the village
by the king, could rebuild it on a new site. The
constantly changing property relations thus led to
changes in the village's structure. The dependence
of "free" warriors and their families on the king
or the highest-raking optimates who paid them with
land, gradually turned into the dependence of the
rural population on a number of local nobles. In
turn this number diminished in proportion as the
great manorial lords accumulated property and
gained scattered property in many villages.
4.10 My tenth proposition links the statements
based on, or the inferences drawn from, historical
and archaeological sources with a further source,
that of place names. Hitherto it has been assumed
in the relevant literature that the villages founded
soon after the conquest usually remained fixed in
the same locality, underlying today's villages, and
that the names of the latter could consequently be
projected back in time. In fact, variability in the
settlement pattern and a fixed name only allow the
conclusion that it was not the shifting settlement,
but the Mark, that carried this name.
The observation that settlements west of the
Rhine in Alsace bear names ending in -heim while
settlements east of the Rhine have names ending
in -ingen has always been interpreted as reflecting
different settlement and proprietorship movements
(Fingerlin 1974, Janichen 1972); for the Alamannic
people lived on both sides of the Rhine after
the conquest. A novel political influence of
Frankish organizational practice west of the Rhine
is thought to have brought in a new settlement pattern,
which is reflected in the place names associated
with it: the Frankish practice of naming settlements
with the suffix -heim in fact presupposes locally
stable villages, not least because of the frequent
combinations with names denoting the
direction of the sun, such as Norheim, Sudheim,
Westheim and Ostheim. (With shifting settlements
the direction of the sun could not always remain
the same). Only the Mark themselves remained
constant in their relative position. Whether the
-ingennames reflect a personal, older, genteel settlement
organization, while the -heim names evince
a more progressive manorial orientation, cannot
be resolved with certainty yet (Schubert 1983). But
attention should be drawn to the fact that throughout
the Alamannic area, far into its easternmost
region, we know -heim settlements for which Reihengriiber
burial sites have been excavated (Kirchheim,
Sontheim) (Christlein 1978, catalogue). The
naming of the settlements in question undoubtedly
represents a procedure relevant for social history;
and if it is analysed in relation to the archaeological
findings it will probably indicate the spread of
a certain type of manorial structure, or rather successive
waves of land donation. The -heim names
occurring far into the east probably reflect the expansion
of the Frankish Merovingians, and the gift
of land to their followers.
5. Conclusions
If we try to discover the social structures and developments
of the Merovingian kingdom, then the
evidence of the written sources can certainly help
us to understand the archaeological findings. The
common quantification of grave goods, however,
presupposes a society which cannot be extracted
from the written sources. Schulze (1985), in his
"Grundstrukturen der Verfassung im Mit-
120 Heiko Steuer
telalter", asserts that the foundation of the
Frankish kingdom was one of the most consequential
results of the Germanic Migration Period,
with the Frankish manorial system as an element
of Germanic origin fulfilling a most decisive
role.
The Reihengráber are an expression of the open,
ranked society of the Merovingian kingdom, in
which the farmer-warriors were dependent on the
king and a few magnates such as the dukes, members
of the Merovingian family, in the broadest
sense of the term, or on high officials. Landownership
characterized the situation right from the beginning
of the conquest. Around 500 AD there was
as yet no feudal property, as Keller (1984) writes:
"(the) optimates cultivated their land themselves or
with the help of serfs, like other estate owners" .
He continues: "It was not until the land gifts in
connection with the expansion of the Frankish organization
of the kingdom that the nobles were
able to enforce a position beyond the community
of the settlement, as it is reflected by the growing
number of nobles' graves or of graves in churches
from the 7th century onwards" (quoted by Donat
1988, 26).
At the end of the Merovingian period, and its
transition to the Carolingian epoch, the open,
ranked society was replaced by an hierarchically
structured, closed society in which a noble class
with birthrights had emerged. This class society
no longer needed a luxurious burial cult for its own
self-presentation. It was characterized instead by
stable property, settlement in fixed places, and
solidly built churches. Many archaeological facets
of the Reihengráber reflect this wider transition of
the Merovingian kingdom from a state of followers
to the Carolingian Empire, a true feudal state.
It would indeed be a fascinating task to follow up
the very similar but chronologically different
process for the Norse empires or the society of Magna
Moravia, again on the basis of archaeological
sources.
To conclude, the formation and spread of the
magnificent burials during and after the Migration
Period reflect the creation and spread of a state
organization based on bodies of warriors.
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THE BIRTH OF EUROPE:
ARCHAEOLOGY AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
IN THE FIRST MILLENNIUM A.D.
EDITED BY KLAVS RANDSBORG
ROMA 1989
L'ERMA DI BRETSCHNEIDER
ANALECTA ROMANA INSTITUTI DANICI
Edited by Accademia di Danimarca, 18 Via Omero, 00197 Roma
Editor: Tage Nielsen
Sub-editor: Karen Ascani, M.A.
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© «L'Erma. di Bretschneider, Roma
ISBN 88-7062-662-8