Worlds on a string: on beads and exchange in Merovingian Northern Gaul

Abstract

This dissertation studies the exchange networks the rural population of Merovingian northern Gaul participated in through beads. Beads with provenances as varied as India, Egypt, the Baltic and north-western Europe itself reached every corner of northern Gaul during the Merovingian period. How was the exchange of beads organised? Chemical analyses performed on the beads from Elst-‘t Woud, Wijchen-Centrum and Lent-Lentseveld suggest that during the sixth century beads were imported over long distances on several occasions, and once strung, beads tended to remain together as a distinct set. The beads were clearly not acquired or exchanged one at a time: possibly, complete strings of beads were exchanged. During the largest part of the sixth century, bead exchange from production sites to the person assembling a string of beads was organised in such a way that allowed beads from the same production or ‘bead-making event’ to stay together: a pan-European exchange network must have been in place. Above all else, this dissertation shows that early medieval networks of exchange can be studied through beads: it is a material category that should sit at the very heart of early medieval exchange studies instead of in its margins. Amongst many other things, the beads studied in this dissertation show that the early medieval rural population of northern Gaul were active in tightly-knit networks of exchange that covered huge distances.