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As in 'Britain B.C.' and 'Britain A.D.' (also accompanied by Channel 4 series), eminent archaeologist Francis Pryor challenges familiar historical views of the Middle Ages by examining fresh evidence from the ground. The term 'Middle Ages' suggests a time between two other ages: a period when nothing much happened. In his radical reassessment, Francis Pryor shows that this is very far from the truth, and that the Middle Ages (approximately 800-1550) were actually the time when the modern world was born. This was when Britain moved from Late Antiquity into a world we can recognize as more or less familiar: roads and parishes became fixed; familiar institutions, such as the church and local government, came into being; industry became truly industrial; and international trade was now a routine process. Archaeology shows that the Middle Ages were far from static. Based on everyday, often humdrum evidence, it demonstrates that the later agricultural and industrial revolutions were not that unexpected, given what we now know of the later medieval period. Similarly, the explosion of British maritime power in the late 1700s had roots in the 15th century. The book stresses continuous development at the expense of 'revolution', though the Black Death (1348), which killed a third of the population, did have a profound effect in loosening the grip of the feudal system. Labour became scarce and workers gained power; land became more available and the move to modern farming began. The Middle Ages can now be seen in a fresh light as an era of great inventiveness, as the author examines such topics as 'upward mobility'; the power of the Church; the role of the Guilds as precursors of trade unions; the transport infrastructure of roads, bridges and shipbuilders; and the increase in iron production.… (more)
User reviews
Therefore, unless you are already familiar with medieval English history, the book would seem disorganized and a difficult read – there’s no conventional historical chronology with kings and battles and such. Instead, there’s selections from the archaeological evidence that throw light on history. In the examples I mentioned, Pryor notes it’s been assumed that Roman era towns were set out with regular street grids, while in Dark Ages towns the streets were haphazard. However, the Anglo-Saxons weren’t stupid, and when it was advantageous to lay out a rectilinear street plan, they did so – leading to misdating to the Roman period.
England’s taken an amazingly reasonable attitude to metal detectors – as long as metal detectionists take their finds to a local archaeological officer and report the find location, they get to keep them (with a State option to buy at the appraised value). This has lead to a plethora of sites with Dark Ages coins – from all over Europe – turning up without much evidence of anything else. The assumption is that these were open air trading sites, sometimes corroborated by nearby town names ending in “wic”, the Old English word for “market”.
The tally sticks provided one of those “Aha” moments. Traders would use a notched stick to indicate possession of so many bales of wool or bundles of hides or whatever they wear dealing in, to be delivered at a later date. The two parties would split the stick, each retaining one half as security – it being pretty hard to forge a broken stick. The larger part of the stick was called the “stock”, and the smaller part the “foil”. If you got tired of waiting for you hides or wool or whatever to show up, you could sell your half to somebody else – leading to a “stock exchange”.
The book’s major flaw is Pryor’s incessant name dropping. Every few pages some “famous” or “outstanding” archaeologist gets named; couldn’t this have been done in the Acknowledgements? I suppose because Pryor’s own specialty is prehistoric archaeology, he had to have a lot of help putting the book together and is rightly grateful, but it gets tedious after a while.
The archaeological history theme made me give some though to our own times. Suppose, somehow, all documentary history of the 20th century was lost; could an archaeologist 1000 years hence figure out that there had been (for example) a Second World War? Probably in Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific, but would you be able to deduce that the United States was involved? Or that there even was such an entity as the United States? Time will, I suppose, tell.