Social Transactions, Gift Exchange, and Power in the Archaeology of the Fifth to Seventh Centuries

Abstract

This article explores some structures and dynamics which may have contributed to the development of social and political hierarchies in England in the fifth to seventh centuries, and some of the problems associated with this field of research. In particular, it investigates how some social dynamics and institutions, and the relationships between economic and social dynamics, may be seen to have promoted structures of power in ways that conditioned the development of dynasties wielding local, regional, and eventually supra-regional power by the beginning of the seventh century. Assemblages from furnished burials constitute the main archaeological source for considerations of gift exchange. Burial was an arena of social and political competition. Inheritance, as a mode of exchange between generations, is in many ways the antithesis of gifting items to the dead through furnished burial.

Halls of Mirrors: Reflections on the Social Meanings of Early Medieval Rulers’ Residences

“…(e.g. Bassett 1989, Scull 1993, 2011, Arnold 1997. Overall, we would argue that the archaeological evidence points towards the late sixth and the early eighth centuries as key thresholds of change in the articulation of rulership.…”

The ‘Northwest Essex Anglo-Saxon Ring’, Falconry and Pagan–Christian Discursive Space

“…Gift giving was a crucial means by which loyalty could be obtained and maintained (see e.g. Curta 2006;Hardt 2013;Nicolay 2014;Scull 2011), just as the fluctuating, unequal relationships of obligation and reciprocity forged by 'the gift' are an important technology of social reproduction in many other societies (Mauss [1925] 2016). In the epic poem Beowulf '[t]he followers fought loyally for their lord, but the loyalty had been purchased beforehand by the upkeep the king provided for his warriors and by the giving of gifts' (Yorke 1990, 17).…”

Gold Coinage and Its Use in the Post-Roman West

“…181 This and other developments in late-sixth-and early-seventh-century England have been associated with the establishment of a more stratified society, best represented by the grandees buried at Sutton Hoo, Snape, and other "princely" inhumations 182 -a society in which exchange and government were more complex and for which coinage as an abstract means of payment and storage of wealth offered practical as well as symbolic advantages. 183 Conditions for the production of the first English gold coins were not, of course, identical to those in the Merovingian kingdom. Imitative coinages do not always mirror their model's organizational background, but the broader context of Anglo-Saxon adoption of Merovingian cultural conventions and adherence-where visible-to Frankish traditions of monetary organization hint that early Anglo-Saxon gold coinage went deeper than superficial imitation in following Frankish custom.…”