The Multiple Estate Model Reconsidered: Power and Territory in Early Medieval Wales

Land, People and Power in Early Medieval Wales: The cantref of Cemais in comparative perspective

“…These problems extend to, and are linked with, the region's (early medieval) historical research, which has been criticised for its lack of integration of archaeological and environmental data and for its failure to engage with the major themes of European historiography, among them issues of social structure, change, popular involvement with processes of power in their various forms, and Annaliste interpretations (W. Davies 2004, 206, 210-1, 219-20). The region's best-known contribution to early medieval scholarship, the multiple estate model, a conceptual structure of economic and territorial relationships that has been highly influential in Anglo-Saxon and Scottish work, is commonly censured as static, prescriptive and anachronistic (W. Davies 1982, 44-7;2004, 207;Gregson 1985;Hadley 1996, 8, 11-12;Seaman 2012). The development of alternative accounts is constrained by limited written sources and by the lack of conventional archaeological data, summed up in a recent review of early medieval Wales which notes that 'our understanding of the archaeology of pre-Norman settlement … is virtually non-existent: not a single site has conclusively been identified' (Edwards 2007, 8).…”