Efforts to identify archaeological indicators of slave‐trading have highlighted four main criteria: shackles, fortified settlements, currency, and burials. However, little effort has been made to examine these indicators together for the early medieval period. By comparing finds, studies, and methodologies from the two major slave‐trading regions of Britain and Ireland and Slavic east central Europe, it becomes clear that these so‐called ‘indicators’ for slave‐trading are inconclusive, and textually attested slave‐trading can remain archaeologically invisible. To better understand slave‐trading in the seventh to eleventh centuries, historians and archaeologists should instead focus on its context within general trade.

Religious institutions in early medieval Europe were both recipients of former slaves and instigators of manumissions. By drawing on recent work concerning the admission of former slaves into churches and monasteries, the present paper identifies dominant strands in the historiography from Marc Bloch to the present, which are then re‐evaluated in light of a close examination of core sources. The paper argues that while the contention that such institutions were the primary beneficiaries of manumissions can indeed be sustained, there are also important moderating nuances to take into account. These include slaves of churches who were freed but continued to live on the churches' lands; alternatives to ‘formal' manumission; distinctions between churches and monasteries in regard to the admission of former slaves; convergences between Roman law and canon law; and, in the sixth century, the direct involvement of both the papacy and the imperial court in establishing a regulating template for admitting former slaves.

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Considering early medieval slave resistance proves difficult, given our limited knowledge of all people of low status, especially slaves. Without oral histories, slave narratives, or strong indications of agency, we cannot confidently move beyond discussion of what slave-owners feared into what slaves intended. In lieu of broad discussion of slave agency for early medieval England, we can speak instead of the anticipated problems of slave-ownership. Elites were most concerned by behaviours which could fall into three overlapping categories of ‘problems’: those of property ownership, labour and violence. Each issue focusses heavily on legal responsibility for actions by slaves within a communal compensation-based legal system. Examination of these fears indicates that lawmakers and slave-owning elites were consistently engaged in problematizing slave-ownership, either in reaction to known slave behaviour or in anticipation of it. What emerges, then, is a situation in which both real and imagined acts of resistance helped shape ideas of power and authority both at a personal and administrative level. The expectations of slave behaviour also illuminate some aspects of slavery’s role in society.

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