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The First Millennium A. D. in Europe and the Mediterranean by Klavs Randsborg
Review by: Mark Hall
American Journal of Archaeology,
Vol. 98, No. 2 (Apr., 1994), p. 382
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/506666 .
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382 BOOK REVIEWS [AJA 98
nated mass effort scarcely less than that of the original
builders of the aqueduct. In presentation
the work is first-
rate. There are 18 color plates
and a profusion
of 246 black-
and-white photographs and line drawings, of the highest
quality,
ensuring full and adequate illustration.
Nowadays
many books economize by printing their photographs in
with the text, on ordinary
paper instead
of as glossy
plates,
a result
that,
despite publishers'
assurances,
is seldom
wholly
satisfactory.
But here there is no problem. All pages are
glossy, even text, and reproduction is outstanding. Each
chapter has its own bibliography,
and there is an annotated
general one (112 entries)
at the end of the book;
regrettably
Norman
Smith's
challenging
article
in the Transactions
of the
Newcomen
Society
62 (1990-1991) 53-80 evidently
came out
too late for inclusion.
There follows a series
of 17 large-scale
full-color
topographical
maps (one foldout).
Finally,
at the very end, comes the greatest
surprise
of all.
There is no index. And the lack of one, in a book of this
sort, which will be used for reference, not continuous
read-
ing, is a deficiency
as serious as it is infuriating.
Otherwise
the book is first-rate
for the material
that it covers, within
the limits
that
it sets
itself,
and is recommended
to all libraries
and scholarly specialists.
A. TREVOR
HODGE
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS
CARLETON UNIVERSITY
OTTAWA, ONTARIO
KIS 5B6 CANADA
THE FIRST MILLENNIUM A.D. IN EUROPE AND THE
MEDITERRANEAN, by Klavs Randsborg. Pp. xviii
+ 230, figs. 83, pls. 9, with 4 appendices. Cam-
bridge University Press, Cambridge 1991. $54.95
(cloth) and $18.95 (paper). ISBN 0-521-38401-
X (cloth) and ISBN 0-521-38787-6 (paper).
In recent years the writings
of the earlier
generations
of
the Annales School have been discovered and utilized by
archaeologists.
Annalist
authors such as Bloch, Braudel,
Le
Roy Ladurie,
and Wallerstein,
with their stress on regional
studies, the "longue
dur&e,"
and the "common
man,"
have
provided useful intellectual
models for archaeologists.
The latest book
by Klavs
Randsborg
incorporates
many
of
the approaches
and ideas from the Annales School. As the
title proclaims,
this book is a review and synthesis of the
archaeology
of Western Europe and the Eastern Mediter-
ranean in the first millennium
A.D. Randsborg's
ambitious
purpose is to provide the reader with an account of the
socioeconomic
development
of these two regions.
This book has its flaws (see below), but I do recommend
it for several reasons.
First,
for anyone working
in either the
archaeology
or history of the first millennium
A.D., it is a
veritable
gold mine of information.
The bibliography
is 32
pages long. It contains
summaries on climatic
trends, coin-
age, population estimates, settlement patterns, subsistence
trends, and trade for a variety of sites in the region of study.
The data are drawn from a wide range of site reports pub-
lished in Danish,
English,
French,
or German.
Second, this book provides a sobering and thought-pro-
voking perspective
on European
and Near Eastern
cultural
development in the first millennium. Randsborg
demon-
strates that while the historical record is full of conquests,
invasions,
and migrations
in the fifth century A.D., the ar-
chaeological record shows that change is fairly gradual
throughout the first millennium. Rural settlement
patterns
are complex, but most areas of the Mediterranean
and the
Near East were densely settled until the Early Byzantine
period (600-900). The villa
system
was in decline
in Western
Europe from A.D. 200 onward,
except in southern Britain.
A similar pattern is noted for towns and urban centers.
Towns continued to flourish
in the East
through
the seventh
century A.D., but in the West they contracted in size or
ceased to be inhabited
in the third through fifth centuries.
With the rise of states
and an increase
in long-distance
trade
in the last quarter
of the first millennium,
towns once again
began to flourish in the West.
Trade and exchange
are seen by Randsborg
as also
under-
going gradual
change. He asserts that commerce,
exchange,
and production
were not well developed in the early Roman
period; the main goal was to keep the army supplied with
food and weapons and the elites supplied with prestige
goods. The political
collapse
of the Western Roman
Empire
is seen as affecting trade and exchange only minimally;
instead,
Randsborg argues that the initial Muslim
conquests
of North Africa and the Levant
had a far more devastating
impact
on trade. The decline of the Western Roman
Empire
in late antiquity
is seen as coinciding with the rise of pro-
duction
centers,
emporia,
and strong
chiefdoms
in Germanic
Europe.
While some of these ideas are not new, Randsborg's
ap-
proach to them is. His arguments
and viewpoints
are based
primarily
on archaeological
evidence and not the written
record.
This book does have its faults. One of them is the heavy
emphasis on the archaeology
of Scandinavia.
In part this
reflects
Randsborg's
field of specialization,
but one has to be
aware that the Vikings
did not become a major
force in the
history of Europe and the Mediterranean
until the ninth
century
A.D. More attention should have been spent on the
archaeology
of the Byzantine
Empire,
the Carolingians,
and
the Merovingians.
An introduction
in which
Randsborg
sets out his research
questions
and hypotheses
is also missing
from this
book. The
brief introduction
only describes the nature of the archaeo-
logical record and problems
with it. Fortunately,
the final
chapter
does contain
a useful summary
and synthesis
of the
information
in the preceding chapters.
MARK HALL
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH FACILITY
KROEBER HALL
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 94720
INTERNET HALL@QAL.BERKELEY.EDU
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