This book explores social cohesion in rural settlements in western Europe from 700–1050, asking to what extent settlements, or districts, constituted units of social organisation. It focuses on the interactions, interconnections and networks of people who lived side by side – neighbours. Drawing evidence from most of the current western European countries, the book plots and interrogates the very different practices of this wide range of regions in a systematically comparative framework. It considers the variety of local responses to the supra-local agents of landlords and rulers and the impact, such as it was, of those agents on the small-scale residential group. It also assesses the impact on local societies of the values, instructions and demands of the wider literate world of Christianity, as delivered by local priests.
Table of Content
1 Questions to pursue
2 Setting the scene
3 The fabric of local societies: people, land and settlement
4 Making groups: collective action in rural settlements
5 Shepherds, uncles, owners, scribes: priests as neighbours in early medieval local societies
6 Interventions in local societies: lower office holders
7 Interventions and interactions
8 Neighbours, visitors and strangers: searching for the local
Index
About the author
Rachel Stone is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at King’s College, London
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