Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages

This volume offers a comparative study of the ways in which the new communities that developed in the course of the 'transformation of the Roman world' (4th-8th centuries) were pulled together. In understanding the political, social, religious and ethnic formations in the early medieval West as "e;communities under construction"e;, the various contributions attempt an exemplary discussion of the various forms in which significance and cohesion could be achieved. Case studies include the terminology of ethnicity; population movements (evacuees and refugees); treasures in their material and symbolic aspects; early kingship, cities and ethnic survivals of the Visigoths; Merovingian identities and hairstyles; Christian communities and historiography in the Frankish kingdoms.