Contrary to received scholarly wisdom, this article argues that the Frankish conquest of Saxony under Charlemagne in the late eighth and early ninth centuries was driven in no small part by the pursuit of material wealth. Specifically, most scholars have viewed pre‐conquest Saxony as too materially impoverished for economic incentives to have played a significant role in Frankish expansion into the lands between the Rhine and the Elbe. However, a thorough review of the written and archaeological evidence suggests that Saxony had much to offer its Carolingian conquerors in the form of plunder and tribute, land and mineral resources, revenue from royal and ecclesiastical renders and taxation, and access to and control of trade routes.

Archaeology in Medieval Studies 104 encyclopedias, even scholarly and specialistic, usually failed in giving voice to their "object of inquiry" and resulted in rather monophonic approaches. Today every student has the possibility to have a glance at a plethora of resources directly written and published in the net (often in a great variety of languages) by religious foundations, charities, research institutes and the like. This kind of resources (such as the good Twelver Shi^a-run www.al-islam.org, providing an impressive number of primary sources, links, scholarly and non-scholarly articles and e-books) offers a stimulating challenge for traditional academic approaches to Shi#ism, overcoming the risk of one-way academic interpretations. Select BibliographyMohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, La guide divin dans le shi^isme originel: au sources de l'ésotérisme en Islam (Paris: Veridier, 1992); Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi and Christian Jambet, Qu#est-ce que le shi#isme? (Paris: Fayard, 2004); Henry Corbin, En islam iranien: Aspects spirituels et philosophiques, 4 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1971-1972); Michael M. J.

The Frankish conquest of Saxony represents one of the most intensively studied topics of Carolingian history. Yet the underlying motives that drove Frankish expansion into the lands between the Rhine and the Elbe remain poorly understood. In general, these motives have been discussed in terms of defensive strategy on the one hand and ideology (and specifically Christianization) on the other. In fact, however, there are good reasons for considering the conquest as part of a larger economic/military approach on the part of the Franks, focussed on securing Saxony's wide array of material resources, not least of which was the military potential of the Saxons themselves. 1 | INTRODUCTION Between 772 and 804, the Franks, led by Charlemagne, waged a series of near-annual military campaigns against their pagan Saxon neighbours to the northeast. These campaigns, which saw mass executions, forcible baptisms, and the deportation and resettlement of thousands of Saxon men, women, and children, seem to have exceeded the normal bounds of warfare of the period in both scale and violence (on the campaigns generally, see Lampen, 1999;