Dynamic Communities in Early Medieval Aquitaine: A GIS Analysis of Roman and Medieval Landscapes in the Vézère Valley, France

Summary

The transition from Roman to post-Roman Europe represents one of the sharpest breaks in the archaeological sequence of Europe. Over the past two decades, European archaeologists have increasingly argued for the necessity of a regional perspective to this transition. They argue against an interpretation that views the Roman-Medieval transition as a pan-European event, and instead, reframe the break as a series of localized events with independent chronologies and histories.

Although traditionally overlooked, the Vézère Valley in southwestern France occupies a unique environmental and social landscape in which to study this transition. While the topographic variability makes it a key place to test questions concerning the location and placement of communities, it also lies within a space of multiple, contested, and political influences providing a unique insight into the agency of communities in the formation and transformation of states. This paper presents the results of a dissertation project that analyzed the spatial relationships of traditional and non-traditionally sourced site data with a number of environmental factors. The results provide crucial insights into the changing nature of community organization in the landscape and how this informs our understanding of community response to large-scale socio-political change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage