"All women, because of their innate weakness, should be under the control of guardians" writes Cicero, curtly summarizing the status of women in Ancient Rome. Yet Roman women had more control than many believe. Stories of female artists, teachers, doctors, and even gladiators are scattered through the history of Imperial Rome; a Roman woman did not change her name when she married, her husband could not control her property or dowry, and she was free to divorce.
Royal women in particular - the wives, daughters, sisters and mothers of emperors - have made a profound impression on Roman history, long overlooked. This lively and attractive book vividly characterizes eleven such women, spanning the period from the death of Julius Caesar in 44BC to the third century AD and with an epilogue surveying empresses of later eras. The author's compelling biographies reveal their remarkable contributions towards the legacy of Imperial Rome, often tinged with tragedy, courage, and injustice.
- a pregnant Roman princess saves a Roman army through an act of personal heroism
- three 3rd century empresses rule the most powerful state on Earth, presiding over unprecedented social and political reform
- though revered by her husband, an empress is immortalized in history for infidelity and corruption by students of her greatest enemy.
Drawing from a broad range of documentation, Jasper Burns has painted portraits of these exceptional women that are colorful, sympathetic, and above all profoundly human. The women and their worlds are brought visually to life through photographs of over 300 ancient coins and through the author's own illustrations.
This book will be highly valuable tonumismatists, students and scholars of Roman history or women's studies, and enjoyable to any reader.

Sam Turner's important new interpretation of early medieval patterns of landscape development traces landscape change in the South West from the introduction of Christianity to the Norman Conquest (AD c. 450-1070). 16 pages of colour illustrations. The book stresses the significance of political and religious ideology in both the 'Celtic' west (especially Cornwall) and the 'Anglo-Saxon' east (especially the Wessex counties of Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset). Using innovative new research methods, and making use of archaeology, place-name evidence, historical sources and land-use patterns, it challenges previous work on the subject by suggesting that the two regions have much in common. Using modern mapping techniques to explore land-use trends, Turner advances a new model for the evolution of ecclesiastical institutions in south-west England. He shows that the early development of Christianity had an impact on the countryside that remains visible in the landscape we see today. Accessibly written with a glossary of terms and a comprehensive bibliography, the book will appeal to both veterans and newcomers to landscape archaeology.

Attic Black Figured-Lekythoi by C.H.E. Haspels was a groundbreaking work on Greek black-figure workshop vases, and is held by most archaeological libraries. Haspels Addenda is a valuable reference source, providing new information on and recording references to new illustrations of the more than 1,500 Greek black-figured vases catalogued by Haspels. The references are taken from books and periodicals received by the Sackler Library, formerly the Ashmolean Library, Oxford. Changes in the whereabouts of vases are included, together with references to vases added by Sir John Beazley to Haspels' lists. The format of this volume follows that that of Beazley Addenda. Similarly, Haspels Addenda is based on the Beazley Archive's database of Athenian black- and red-figure vases, which was inaugurated by the Beazley Archivist, Professor Donna Kurtz, and the Lincoln Professor of Art and Archaeology, Sir John Boardman, in 1979.

This book shows the reader how much archaeologists can learn from recent developments in cultural history. Cultural historians deal with many of the same issues as postprocessual archaeologists, but have developed much more sophisticated methods for thinking about change through time and the textuality of all forms of evidence. The author uses the particular case of Iron Age Greece (c. 1100-300 BC), to argue that text-aided archaeology, far from being merely a testing ground for prehistorians' models, is in fact in the best position to develop sophisticated models of the interpretation of material culture.

The book begins by examining the history of the institutions within which archaeologists of Greece work, of the beliefs which guide them, and of their expectations about audiences. The second part of the book traces the history of equality in Iron Age Greece and its relationship to democracy, focusing on changing ideas about class, gender, ethnicity, and cosmology, as they were worked out through concerns with relationships to the past and the Near East. Ian Morris provides a new interpretation of the controversial site of Lefkandi, linking it to Greek mythology, and traces the emergence of radically new ideas of the free male citizen which made the Greek form of democracy a possibility.

The Mycenaean World belonged to the legendary heroes who conquered Troy and stand at the heart of Greek identity. This new book brings their culture and society to life with wit and elegance. Since the discovery of the remains of the civilization of Mycenae in the 1870s, knowledge of these Bronze Age Greeks has increased dramatically. This text is a major new contribution to our understanding of this crucial period.. Stepping into the place of the collapsed civilization of Minoan Crete and the Peloponnese (the subject of Castleden's earlier bestselling study, Minoans), the Mycenaeans dominated mainland Greece and the Greek islands from about 1600-1250 BC. Their exploits became the subject of the legends that were immortalized by Homer. In lively prose informed by the latest research, this vivid study delivers the fundamentals of Mycenaean civilization, its hierarchy, economy, religion and arts. Controversially, Castleden interprets the well-known palaces of Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos and elsewhere as temples. Their sea empire and their relations with other peoples of the Bronze Age world, including the Hittites, the Egyptians and the Trojans, receive full attention. book is an indispensable starting point for the study of the Greek Bronze Age. Full bibliography and copious illustrations support this comprehensive interpretation of a civilization whose legend still lives on.

The Mycenaean World belonged to the legendary heroes who conquered Troy and stand at the heart of Greek identity. This new book brings their culture and society to life with wit and elegance. Since the discovery of the remains of the civilization of Mycenae in the 1870s, knowledge of these Bronze Age Greeks has increased dramatically. This text is a major new contribution to our understanding of this crucial period.. Stepping into the place of the collapsed civilization of Minoan Crete and the Peloponnese (the subject of Castleden's earlier bestselling study, Minoans), the Mycenaeans dominated mainland Greece and the Greek islands from about 1600-1250 BC. Their exploits became the subject of the legends that were immortalized by Homer. In lively prose informed by the latest research, this vivid study delivers the fundamentals of Mycenaean civilization, its hierarchy, economy, religion and arts. Controversially, Castleden interprets the well-known palaces of Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos and elsewhere as temples. Their sea empire and their relations with other peoples of the Bronze Age world, including the Hittites, the Egyptians and the Trojans, receive full attention. book is an indispensable starting point for the study of the Greek Bronze Age. Full bibliography and copious illustrations support this comprehensive interpretation of a civilization whose legend still lives on.

Cave and Worship in Ancient Greece brings together a series of stimulating chapters contributing to the archaeology and our modern understanding of the character and importance of cave sanctuaries in the fi rst millennium BCE Mediterranean. Written by emerging and established archaeologists and researchers, the book employs a fascinating and wide range of approaches and methodologies to investigate, and interpret material assemblages from cave shrines, many of which are introduced here for the fi rst time. An introductory section explores the emergence and growth of caves as centres of cult and religion. The chapters then probe some of the meanings attached to cave spaces and votive materials such as terracotta fi gurines, and ceramics, and those who created and used them. The authors use sensory and gender approaches, discuss the identity of the worshippers, and the contribution of statistical analysis to the role of votive materials. At the heart of the volume is the examination of cave materials excavated on the Cycladic islands and Crete, in Attika and Aitoloakarnania, on the Ionian islands and in southern Italy. This is a welcome volume for students of prehistoric and classical archaeology,enthusiasts of the history of caves, religion, ancient history, and anthropology.

This volume investigates how urban growth and prosperity transformed the cities of the Roman Mediterranean in the last centuries BCE and the fi rst centuries CE, integrating debates about Roman urban space with discourse on Roman urban history. The contributions explore how these cities developed landscapes full of civic memory and ritual, saw commercial priorities transforming the urban environment, and began to expand signifi cantly beyond their wall circuits. These interrelated developments not only changed how cities looked and could be experienced, but they also affected the functioning of the urban community and together contributed to keeping increasingly complex urban communities socially cohesive. By focusing on the transformation of urban landscapes in the Late Republican and Imperial periods, the volume adds a new, explicitly historical angle to current debates about urban space in Roman studies. Confronting archaeological and historical approaches, the volume presents developments in Italy, Africa, Greece, and Asia Minor, thus significantly broadening the geographical scope of the discussion and offering novel theoretical perspectives alongside well- documented, thematic case studies. Urban Space and Urban History in the Roman World will be of interest to anyone working on Roman urbanism or Roman history in the Late Republic and early Empire.

Human remains and burial customs are often considered separately in studies of ancient Greek populations. In this seminal work, Carrie Sulosky Weaver synthesizes skeletal, material, and ritual data to reconstruct the cultural practices of Kamarina, a city-state in Sicily. Using evidence from 258 recovered graves from the Passo Marinaro necropolis (circa the fifth to the third century BCE), Sulosky Weaver suggests that Kamarineans were closely linked to their counterparts in neighboring Greek cities. Evidence of violence, like head trauma and a high young adult mortality rate, indicate exposure to a series of catastrophic events. Other evidence at burial sites allude to Kamarina's mixed ancestry, ethnicity, and social hierarchy. Despite the tumultuous nature of the times, the resulting portrait reveals that Kamarina was a place where individuals of diverse ethnicities and ancestries were united in life and death by shared culture and funerary practices.

Classicists have long wondered what everyday life was like in ancient Greece and Rome. How, for example, did the slaves, visitors, inhabitants or owners experience the same home differently? And how did owners manipulate the spaces of their homes to demonstrate control or social hierarchy? To answer these questions, Hannah Platts draws on a diverse range of evidence and an innovative amalgamation of methodological approaches to explore multisensory experience - auditory, olfactory, tactile, gustatory and visual - in domestic environments in Rome, Pompeii and Herculaneum for the first time, from the first century BCE to the second century CE. Moving between social registers and locations, from non-elite urban dwellings to lavish country villas, each chapter takes the reader through a different type of room and offers insights into the reasons, emotions and cultural factors behind perception, recording and control of bodily senses in the home, as well as their sociological implications. Multisensory Living in Ancient Rome will appeal to all students and researchers interested in Roman daily life and domestic architecture.

In this wide-ranging and often controversial book, Robert Drews examines the question of the origins of man's relations with the horse. He questions the belief that on the Eurasian steppe men were riding in battle as early as 4000 BC, and suggests that it was not until around 900 BC that men anywhere - whether in the Near East and the Aegean or on the steppes of Asia - were proficient enough to handle a bow, sword or spear while on horseback. After establishing when, where, and most importantly why good riding began, Drews goes on to show how riding raiders terrorized the civilized world in the seventh century BC, and how central cavalry was to the success of the Median and Persian empires.
Drawing on archaeological, iconographic and textual evidence, this is the first book devoted to the question of when horseback riders became important in combat. Comprehensively illustrated, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of civilization in Eurasia, and the development of man's military relationship with the horse.

It has long been recognised that the Church played a major role in the development of towns and cities from the earliest times, a fact attested to by the prominence and number of ecclesiastical buildings that still dominate many urban areas. Yet despite this physical evidence, and the work of archaeologists and historians, many important aspects of the early stages of urbanization in England are still poorly understood. Not least, there are many unanswered questions concerning the processes by which the larger towns emerged as planned settlements during the pre-Conquest centuries. Whilst the commitment of the Wessex kings is recognized, questions remain concerning the participation of the Church in this process. Likewise, our understanding of the Church's influence in the later development of towns is not yet fully developed. Many intriguing questions remain concerning such issues as the founding of parish churches and their boundaries, and the extent to which the Church, as a major landowner, helped shape the evolving identity of towns and their suburbs. It is questions such as these that this volume sets out to answer. Employing a wealth of historical and archaeological evidence, two key towns - Gloucester and Worcester - are closely examined in order to build up a picture of their respective developments throughout the medieval period. Through this multi-disciplinary and comparative approach, a picture begins to emerge the Church's role in helping to shape not only the spiritual, but also the social, economic and cultural development of the urban environment.

Rituals, Collapse, and Radical Transformation in Archaic States explores the role of ritual in a variety of archaic states and generates discussion on how the decline in a state's ability to continue in its current form affected the practices of ritual and how ritual as a culture-forming dynamic affected decline, collapse, and regeneration of the state. Chapters examine ritual in collapsing and regenerating archaic states from diverse locations, time periods, and societies including Crete, Mycenean and Byzantine Greece, Mesopotamia, India, Africa, Mexico, and Peru. Underscoring similarities in a variety of archaic states in the role of ritual during periods of threat, collapse, and transformation, the volume shows how ritual can be used as a stabilizing or divisive force or a connecting medium between the present to the past in an empowering way. It also highlights the diversity of ritual roles and location in similar situations and illustrates how states in close proximity and sharing many cultural similarities can respond differently through ritual to stress and contrast the different response in rural and urban settings. Through detailed, cultural specific studies, the book provides a nuanced understanding of the diverse roles of ritual in the decline, collapse, and regeneration of societies and will be important for all archaeologists involved in the important notions of state "collapse" and "regeneration".

Eretria, on the island of Euboia, was an early and significant coloniser in both the Levant and in the West. During the period of the Persian advance towards the Aegean, the city was the moving spirit in the Greek resistance to Persian domination. Her democratic government pre-dates that of Athens and given the presence in Eretria of political exiles from Peisistratid Athens, it may have provided the basic model of Kleishthenes' reforms in Attica. This comprehensive and well-argued book is the first detailed history in any language of the city, one of the most prosperous and important of the pre-classical period. This study offers an alternative to the orthodox Athenocentric perception of the history of late sixth-and early fifth-century Greece. Keith Walker's stimulating and thoughtful work seamlessly synthesises evidence from archaeology, philology, textual research, epigraphy and numismatics. The study begins by examining the period from the later Neolithic to the early Iron Age. The following chapters cover the city's rise to prominence in the Archaic era. Throughout there is skilful reconstruction of the complex alliances and enmities of the Greek cities, crucial to understand

This book transforms archaeological knowledge of Nazareth by publishing over 80 years of archaeological work at the Sisters of Nazareth convent, including a detailed re-investigation in the early twenty-first century under the author's direction. Although one of the world's most famous places and of key importance to understanding early Christianity, Nazareth has attracted little archaeological attention. Following a chance discovery in the 1880s, the site was initially explored by the nuns of the convent themselves - one of the earliest examples of a major programme of excavations initiated and directed by women - and then for decades by Henri Senes, whose excavations (like those of the nuns) have remained almost entirely unpublished. Their work revealed a complex sequence, elucidated and dated by twenty-first century study, beginning with a partly rock-cut Early Roman-period domestic building, followed by Roman-period quarrying and burial, a well-preserved cave-church, and major surface-level Byzantine and Crusader churches. The interpretation and broader implications of each phase of activity are discussed in the context of recent studies of Roman-period, Byzantine, and later archaeology and contemporary archaeological theory, and their relationship to written accounts of Nazareth is also assessed. The Sisters of Nazareth Convent provides a crucial archaeological study for those wishing to understand the archaeology of Nazareth and its place in early Christianity and beyond.

The village of Faxton in Northamptonshire was only finally deserted in the second half of the 20th century. Shortly afterwards, between 1966 and 1968, its medieval crofts were investigated under the direction of archaeologist Lawrence Butler. At the time this was one of the most ambitious excavations of a deserted medieval settlement to have been conducted and, although the results were only published as interim reports and summaries, Butler's observations at Faxton were to have significant influence on the growing academic and popular literature about village origins and desertion and the nature of medieval peasant crofts and buildings. In contrast to regions with abundant building stone, Faxton revealed archaeological evidence of a long tradition of earthen architecture in which so-called 'mud-walling' was successfully combined with other structural materials. The 'rescue' excavations at Faxton were originally promoted by the Deserted Medieval Village Research Group and funded by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works after the extensive earthworks at the site came under threat from agriculture. Three areas were excavated covering seven crofts. In 1966 Croft 29 at the south-east corner of the village green revealed a single croft in detail with its barns, yards and corn driers; in 1967 four crofts were examined together in the north-west corner of the village in an area badly damaged by recent ploughing and, finally, an area immediately east of the church was opened up in 1968. In all, some 4000m2 were investigated in 140 days over three seasons. The post-excavation process for Faxton was beset by delay. Of the 12 chapters presented in this monograph, only two were substantially complete at the time of the director's death in 2014. The others have had to be pieced together from interim summaries, partial manuscripts, sound recordings, handwritten notes and on-site records. Building on this evidence, a new team of scholars have re-considered the findings in order to set the excavations at Faxton into the wider context of modern research. Their texts reflect on the settlement's disputed pre-Conquest origins, probable later re-planning and expansion, the reasons behind the decline and abandonment of the village, the extraordinary story behind the destruction of its church, the development of the open fields and the enclosure process, as well as new evidence about Faxton's buildings and the finds discovered there. Once lauded, then forgotten, the excavations at Faxton now make a new contribution to our knowledge of medieval life and landscape in the East Midlands.

The village of Faxton in Northamptonshire was only finally deserted in the second half of the 20th century. Shortly afterwards, between 1966 and 1968, its medieval crofts were investigated under the direction of archaeologist Lawrence Butler. At the time this was one of the most ambitious excavations of a deserted medieval settlement to have been conducted and, although the results were only published as interim reports and summaries, Butler's observations at Faxton were to have significant influence on the growing academic and popular literature about village origins and desertion and the nature of medieval peasant crofts and buildings. In contrast to regions with abundant building stone, Faxton revealed archaeological evidence of a long tradition of earthen architecture in which so-called 'mud-walling' was successfully combined with other structural materials. The 'rescue' excavations at Faxton were originally promoted by the Deserted Medieval Village Research Group and funded by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works after the extensive earthworks at the site came under threat from agriculture. Three areas were excavated covering seven crofts. In 1966 Croft 29 at the south-east corner of the village green revealed a single croft in detail with its barns, yards and corn driers; in 1967 four crofts were examined together in the north-west corner of the village in an area badly damaged by recent ploughing and, finally, an area immediately east of the church was opened up in 1968. In all, some 4000m2 were investigated in 140 days over three seasons. The post-excavation process for Faxton was beset by delay. Of the 12 chapters presented in this monograph, only two were substantially complete at the time of the director's death in 2014. The others have had to be pieced together from interim summaries, partial manuscripts, sound recordings, handwritten notes and on-site records. Building on this evidence, a new team of scholars have re-considered the findings in order to set the excavations at Faxton into the wider context of modern research. Their texts reflect on the settlement's disputed pre-Conquest origins, probable later re-planning and expansion, the reasons behind the decline and abandonment of the village, the extraordinary story behind the destruction of its church, the development of the open fields and the enclosure process, as well as new evidence about Faxton's buildings and the finds discovered there. Once lauded, then forgotten, the excavations at Faxton now make a new contribution to our knowledge of medieval life and landscape in the East Midlands.

The motte and bailey castle at Hen Domen, Montgomery was occupied from the late eleventh century until c.1300. Excavations here lasted from 1960 to 1992 and remain the most detailed examination of this type of site to date. This volume marks the final stage in the publication of excavations and fieldwork carried out at the site, containing a summary of an earlier work published in 1982 by the Royal Archaeological Institute and a full account of the project's findings since 1980. Its principal contents are the buildings whose foundations were recovered in the bailey and on the motte, the artefactual and environmental evidence and the castle's medieval landscape context. The book is profusely illustrated with drawings and photographs, including artist's reconstructions of the evolution of the site.

Geometric Greece has long been the standard work on this absorbing period, which saw the evolution of the Greek city-states, the composition of the Homeric poems, the rise of the great Panhellenic sanctuaries and the first exodus of Greek colonists to southern Italy and Sicily. Professor Coldstream has now fully updated his comprehensive survey with a substantial new chapter on the abundant discoveries and developments made since the book's first publication. The text is presented in three main sections: the passing of the dark ages, c. 900-770 BC; the Greek renaissance, c. 770-700 BC, covered region by region, and the final part on life in eighth century Greece. Its geographical coverage in the Mediterranean ranges from Syria to Sicily, and the detailed archaeological evidence is amplified by reference to literary sources. Heavily illustrated, including images of several finds never previously published, this is the essential handbook for anyone studying early Greek antiquity.

Geometric Greece has long been the standard work on this absorbing period, which saw the evolution of the Greek city-states, the composition of the Honeric poems, the rist of the great Panhellenic sanctuaries and the first exodus of Greek colonists to southern Italy and Sicily.
Professor Coldstream has now fully updated his comprehensive survey with a substantial new chapter on the abundant discoveries and developments made since the book's first publication.
The text is presented in three main sections: the passing of the dark ages, c.900-770 BC; the Greek renaissance, c.770-700 BC, covered region by region, and the final part on life in eighth century Greece. Its geographical coverage in the Mediterranean ranges from Syria to Sicily, and the detailed archaeological evidence is amplified by reference to literary sources.
Highly illustrated, including images of several finds never previously published, this is the essential handbook for anyone studying early Greek antiquity.

Travellers in Time re-evaluates the extent to which the earliest Mediterranean civilizations were affected by population movement. It critiques both traditional culture-history-grounded notions of movement in the region as straightforwardly transformative, and the processual, systemic models that have more recently replaced this view, arguing that newer scholarship too often pays limited attention to the specific encounters, experiences and agents involved in travel. By assessing a broad range of recent archaeological and ancient textual data from the Aegean and central and east Mediterranean via five comprehensive studies, this book makes a compelling case for rethinking issues such as identity, agency, materiality and experience through an understanding of movement as transformative. This innovative and timely study will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of Aegean/Mediterranean prehistory and Classical archaeology, as well as anyone interested in ancient Aegean and Mediterranean culture.

Chromatius of Aquileia and the Making of a Christian City examines how the increasing authority of institutionalized churches changed late antique urban environments. Aquileia, the third largest city in Italy during late antiquity, presents a case study in the transformation of elite Roman practices in relation to the urban environment. Through the archaeological remains, the sermons of the city's bishop, Chromatius, and the artwork and epigraphic evidence in the sacred buildings, the city and its inhabitants leave insights into a reshaping of the urban environment and its institutions which occurred at the beginning of the 5th century. The words of the bishop attacking heretics and Jews presaged a shift in patronage by rich donors from the city as a whole to only the Christian church. The city, both as an ideal and a physical reality, changed with the growing dominance of the Church, creating a Christian city.

This book provides a thorough, area by area companion to the region's wealth of monuments, excavations and artefacts, from Paris and Boulogne-sur-Mer to Strasbourg and Lyon. Over ninety sites are treated in detail, including major attractions such as the parc archéologique in Lyon and the amphitheatre at Autun, numerous local museums and secluded rural excavations.
The guidebook combines a scholarly assessment of the area's Roman heritage, examining and interpreting the surviving remains, with practical visitor information such as directions to sites and opening hours. Comprehensively illustrated with photographs, maps and plans, it is a unique resource both for academic study and for visitors interested in the region's archaeological and historical background.

"As might be expected from the caliber of the contributors, this is a first-rate collection of essays.... Like I, Claudia, this book will appeal to many others besides classicists. The two volumes will be a must for anyone interested in social history or women's history; the treatment, style, and illustrations make this volume accessible to general readers." -- Karl Galinsky, Floyd A. Cailloux Centennial Professor of Classics, University of Texas at Austin

I, Claudia: Women in Ancient Rome-- an exhibition and catalog produced by the Yale University Art Gallery-- provided the first comprehensive study of the lives of Roman women as revealed in Roman art. Responding to the popular success of the exhibit and catalog, Diana E. E. Kleiner and Susan B. Matheson here gather ten additional essays by specialists in art history, history, and papyrology to offer further reflections on women in Roman society based on the material evidence provided by art, archaeology, and ancient literary sources.

In addition to the editors, the contributors are Cornelius C. Vermeule, Rolf Winkes, Mary T. Boatwright, Susan Wood, Eve D'Ambra, Andrew Oliver, Diana Delia, and Ann Ellis Hanson. Their essays, illustrated with black-and-white photos of the art under discussion, treat such themes as mothers and sons, marriage and widowhood, aging, adornment, imperial portraiture, and patronage.

This book brings together the cumulative results of a three-year project focused on the assemblies and administrative systems of Scandinavia, Britain, and the North Atlantic islands in the 1st and 2nd millennia AD. In this volume we integrate a wide range of historical, cartographic, archaeological, field-based, and onomastic data pertaining to early medieval and medieval administrative practices, geographies, and places of assembly in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Scotland, and eastern England. This transnational perspective has enabled a new understanding of the development of power structures in early medieval northern Europe and the maturation of these systems in later centuries under royal control. In a series of richly illustrated chapters, we explore the emergence and development of mechanisms for consensus. We begin with a historiographical exploration of assembly research that sets the intellectual agenda for the chapters that follow. We then examine the emergence and development of the thing in Scandinavia and its export to the lands colonised by the Norse. We consider more broadly how assembly practices may have developed at a local level, yet played a significant role in the consolidation, and at times regulation, of elite power structures. Presenting a fresh perspective on the agency and power of the thing and cognate types of local and regional assembly, this interdisciplinary volume provides an invaluable, in-depth insight into the people, places, laws, and consensual structures that shaped the early medieval and medieval kingdoms of northern Europe.