Towards an Archaeology of State Formation in North-Western Iberia

Escalona, Julio

doi:10.1484/m.hama-eb.5.118444

Cited by 2 publications

References 10 publications

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The Early Medieval State: A Strategic‐Relational Approach

Castro

García

2022

J Historical Sociology

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The state is a contested concept in the historiography on early medieval societies. Debates have frequently revolved around its heuristic validity, but few scholars have addressed its broader theoretical implications. Those who have tend to reduce the state to its institutional features and privilege the role of the dominant groups in the analysis of state-building processes and the workings of the state. This paper contends that a richer conceptualisation of the state can overcome the limits of the debate as it has been framed so far and provide a deeper insight into how social relations shaped and were shaped by the development of early medieval polities. After reviewing the most significant historiographical contributions to the debate, the paper introduces the Strategic-Relational Approach to the state, as formulated by B. Jessop, as one that can provide a more nuanced understanding of early medieval polities. Particular emphasis is made on the analysis of class relationships and the articulation of hegemonic projects as two particularly fruitful lines of inquiry. Finally, the paper focuses on one particular instance of early medieval political practice, the politics of the land, as a means to illustrate the potential of the approach.

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The Early Medieval State: A Strategic‐Relational Approach

Castro

García

2022

J Historical Sociology

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Sepulcros, iglesias y construcción de paisajes políticos en la Galicia de los siglos IX-XI

Sánchez Pardo,

Blanco Torrejón,

Fernández Ferreiro

2024

Reti Medievali E-Book

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Through the combination of two vast databases on archaeological and textual evidence on early medieval funerary and ecclesiastical sites in Galicia, this paper aims to explore the socio-political landscape dynamics around local powers conformed by small proprietary churches or monasteries with privileged anthropomorphic burials and, related with them, the first parish cemeteries. This new approach shed light on a huge group of local elites that from the 9th to the 11th centuries AD founded and controlled churches in which they would be buried in. This important amount of sarcophagus and rock-cut burials are often the only remain that we have from these social groups, while most of the early medieval written sources refer to the wider regional aristocracies that absorbed the former. The use of both databases allows us to understand the ways, pacific or problematic, of integration of these centres of local power into the aristocratic circle that supported the political structure of the Astur-Leonese kingdom, and ultimately, the creation of a series of relationships that define the early medieval political landscapes in the north-western part of the Iberian Peninsula.

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Towards an Archaeology of State Formation in North-Western Iberia

Cited by 2 publications

References 10 publications

The Early Medieval State: A Strategic‐Relational Approach

The Early Medieval State: A Strategic‐Relational Approach

Sepulcros, iglesias y construcción de paisajes políticos en la Galicia de los siglos IX-XI

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