Twenty-three contributions by leading archaeologists from across Europe explore the varied forms, functions and significances of fortified settlements in the 8th to 10th centuries AD. These could be sites of strongly martial nature, upland retreats, monastic enclosures, rural seats, island bases, or urban nuclei. But they were all expressions of control - of states, frontiers, lands, materials, communities - and ones defined by walls, ramparts or enclosing banks. Papers run from Irish cashels to Welsh and Pictish strongholds, Saxon burhs, Viking fortresses, Byzantine castra, Carolingian creations, Venetian barricades, Slavic strongholds, and Bulgarian central places, and coverage extends fully from north-west Europe, to central Europe, the northern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Strongly informed by recent fieldwork and excavations, but drawing also where available on the documentary record, this important collection provides fully up-to-date reviews and analyses of the archaeologies of the distinctive settlement forms that characterised Europe in the Early Middle Ages.

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction. Defining and Understanding Defended Settlements in Early Medieval Europe: Structures, Roles, Landscapes and Communities
• PART I: NORTH-WESTERN EUROPE
  • 1. The Irish Cashel: Enclosed Settlement, Fortified Settlement or Settled Fortification? With Evidence from Ongoing Excavations at Caherconnell, Co. Clare, Western Ireland
  • 2. Early Medieval Defended Settlement Enclosures in Ireland in the 9th and 10th Centuries AD
  • 3. Fortified Settlement and the Emergence of Kingdoms in Northern Scotland in the First Millennium AD
  • 4. Defended Settlement in Early Medieval Wales: Problems of Presence, Absence and Interpretation
  • 5. Creating Defended Communities in Later Saxon Wessex
  • 6. Monumental Expression and Fortification in Denmark in the Time of King Harald Bluetooth
• PART II: CENTRAL EUROPE
  • 7. North-Western Slavic Strongholds of the 8th–10th Centuries AD
  • 8. Early Medieval Strongholds in Polish Lands
  • 9. The Natural Environment, Anthropogenic Influences and Supra-Regional Contacts at 9th- to 10th-Century Fortified Elite Settlements in Central Europe
  • 10. The Beginnings of Medieval Fortifications in the Late Carolingian Period from a Swiss Perspective
• PART III: WESTERN EUROPE
  • 11. Anxious Abbots? Questions of Monastic Security and Insecurity in Early Medieval Europe
  • 12. Controlling and Contesting Urban Spaces: Rulers and Urban Communities in Southern England and Northern France from the Later 9th to 11th Century
  • 13. Circular, D-Shaped and Other Fortifications in 9th- and 10th-Century Flanders and Zeeland as Markers of the Territorialisation of Power(s)
  • 14. Early and High Medieval ‘Incastellamento’ in Northern Iberia: Fortified Settlements in the Basque Country and Upper Ebro Valley (9th–12th Centuries)
  • 15. The Southern Carolingian Frontier in Marca Hispanica along the River Ter: Roda Civitas and the Archaeological Site of L’Esquerda (Catalonia)
• PART IV: MEDITERRANEAN AND ADRIATIC EUROPE
  • 16. The Western Black Sea Coast in the 8th–10th Centuries: How and How Much was it Defended?
  • 17. A Window on an Uncertain World: Butrint and the Fortified Sites of Epirus in the 7th–9th Centuries AD
  • 18. Fortified Settlements in Carolingian Istria
  • 19. Castles on the Water? Defences in Venice and Comacchio during the Early Middle Ages
  • 20. Walled Towns of the 8th–11th Centuries in Central Italy
  • 21. Fortified Settlements of the 8th to 10th Centuries. Italy and the Case of Tuscany
  • 22. Timber and Earth in the Architecture of Italian Early Medieval Fortified Sites (8th–10th Centuries AD)
  • 23. Fortified and Unfortified Settlements in Byzantine and Islamic Sicily: 6th to 11th Centuries