Effros, Bonnie

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Guy Halsall, Settlement andSocial Organization: The Merovingian Region ofMetz(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).xx + 307 pp., 100 illustrations.Early medieval burial remains in Gaul have received scholarly attention since atleast the seventeenth century owing to the precious nature of the artifacts whichwere interred with the dead. By the nineteenth century, skeletal traces in thesegraves also attracted notice due in part to the dubious contributions ofphrenology to academic debates on national origins. In his first book, GuyHalsall has therefore rightly noted the problematic nature of the Merovingianarchaeological evidence excavated during the past 150 years in the region ofMetz. By collecting this often poorly published data and organizing it morescientifically, he has better ascertained what material may be reliably salvagedfor a the study of distant communities which have left scholars few other clues.Halsall's underlying assumption in looking both at written and archaeologicalevidence from the region of Metz is his confidence that "cultural practices aredeliberate, meaningfully constituted and historically contingent." (3) He hasemployed for this reason anthropological models which lend more weight toburial as a ritual process than studies which have oversimplified the custom as apassive marker of religious belief or ethnic identity. Instead, Merovingiangraveyards constituted "an arena for competitive discourse, with burials asstatements." (247) During the uncertain sixth century, they reflected the statusand ambitions of the families who laid their dead to rest publicly before thelarger community. In his highly original study, Halsall also succeeds indemonstrating that at this time, age and sex often influenced the composition ofan individual grave more than family wealth. He suggests that in the seventhcentury, in contrast, as the number of cemeteries increased in proportion to thecommunities they served, the potential audiences for funerals grew smaller.These changes, in conjunction with greater economic and political stability, ledto the decreased importance of the fleeting display of grave goods, andcontributed to interest in more permanent, above-ground markers ultimatelyused in late-seventh century aristocratic funerary churches in the region of Metz.By concentrating on Metz, Halsall provides a holistic analysis of Merovingiansocial interaction reflective of its geographical context that will influence themanner in which historians and archaeologists view this subject. Hismethodology, which incorporates a sharp critical assessment of many well-known written and material sources, seeks to avoid the generalities of"gradualism" that have plagued more imprecise studies of early medievalmmentalities. (279-280) He addresses multiple factors which contributed to socialinteraction, including ethnic identity, legal status and privilege, production andtrade, marital custom, inheritance, gender construction, life-cycle ceremoniesand settlement size, function, regularity and composition. By adopting a limitedgeographical scope for greater accuracy in assessing a rite of great localvariability, Halsall has not narrowed but rather broadened and raised the levelof the historical discourse. Through original analysis of individual cemeteries, hehas revealed the enormous potential and complexity of Merovingian socialstructure including previously neglected factors of gender and age.The majority of Halsall's text focuses on extant and written archaeologicalevidence giving meaning to sixth- and seventh-century cemeteries andsettlement. Establishing more exact definitions for various categories of socialhierarchy and habitation used in legal sources, charters, and hagiographical andhistorical accounts, he has demonstrated the value for historians andarchaeologists of terminological precision gleaned from a close assessment ofcontemporary sources rather than reliance upon the interpolation of more recentsources. Although this intensive analysis does not make for light reading, thepreponderance of maps, graphs and charts supports the text and contributes tothe careful documentation of dynamic change identified by Halsall. Thesechapters represent meticulous building blocks to support the heart of Halsall'sargument regarding the nature of Merovingian social change following thebreakdown of the civitas in the late fourth century, and in response to theincreased stability of this landscape during the seventh and eighth centuries. Heis able to penetrate beyond the sparse number of documented events of thisperiod to glimpse certain values upheld by the immediate kin at the funerals ofthe deceased, although admittedly his portrayal of the institution of slavery israther optimistic. (55-59) Halsall's assumption that poorly furnished children'sgraves indicate that they did not inherit social status from their parents islikewise uncharacteristically inconsistent, (254) since he admits that the status ofelderly women might be expressed otherwise than through grave goods. (257)Of great importance are Halsall's ground-breaking observations regardinggender construction in Merovingian mortuary rites. By dividing goods into male,female, and "neutral" categories on the basis of their distribution in graves sexedsolely by means of physical anthropology (which one indeed hopes was the casein some of his less reliable archaeological samples), he demonstrates that burialrites reflected social mores in the particular communities where they werepracticed. He argues convincingly that the construction of gender did not reflecta simple polarity, nor was it expressed similarly among members of differentlevels of the social hierarchy. (61) Images of masculinity and femininity,moreover, were constantly refined. Most interesting among the conclusions ofthe monograph is his suggestion based on the number of gender-specific artifact-mtypes buried with the deceased, that sixth-century women appear to have beenacknowledged as adults at puberty whereas their male counterparts rarelyreceived weaponry as adult members of their community before the age oftwenty. These observations contrast with contemporary legal codes in Frankishlands, which proclaimed that male and female children came of age at the sametime, events marked by women being betrothed and men receiving their firsthaircut. (72)Instead, burial customs appear to have reflected the value placed onsuch individuals, just as the Salic and Ribuarian legal codes awarded some of thehighest compensation (wergild) to free families who lost women of childbearingage. This prestige was nonetheless fleeting. After the age of approximately forty,women tended to be buried with more neutral objects and few gender-specificgoods, indicating that their role in the community had again changed. Halsallobserves that this practice is rather different from that for men, since even malesover sixty years of age were occasionally buried with gender-specific objects.This discussion contributes to a recognition that especially in the sixth century,the rite of grave good deposition was an active one in which gender interactedwith ethnicity, rank, age, legal, status, and a variety of other dimensions of socialorganization to form the multi-faceted and mutable identity of each individual asexpressed by her or his kin group.Readers will gain a great deal from Halsall's critique and assessment ofarchaeological reports of Merovingian Metz; with his grasp of historical as wellas archaeological evidence, he is able in some cases to render comprehensible thesignificance of these sites far better than the archaeologists excavating these sites.He conveys a clear interpretive model for the expression of social status and thedistribution of settlement in early medieval Metz in as much as such is possiblewithin the constraints of the surviving evidence. Although Halsall agrees withhis mentor Edward James regarding the impossibility of establishing "an overalltheory" for the study of cemeteries, (149) he has nonetheless set a very highstandard for the interpretation of this complex and often contradictory wealth ofarchaeological evidence. The "social theatre" of early medieval cemeteries willhopefully not again be viewed as merely fashionable but a locus for thecompetitive expression of dynamic and diverse human relationships.Bonnie EfJrosDepartment ofHistorical StudiesSouthern Illinois University at EdwardsvillemOJIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Guy Halsall, Settlement and Social Organization: The Merovingian Region of Metz. Cambridge University Press, 1995

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Guy Halsall, Settlement and Social Organization: The Merovingian Region of Metz. Cambridge University Press, 1995

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