Dorestad and Its Networks

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Dorestad and Its Networks Willemsen & Kik (eds) Kik Willemsen & DORESTAD AND ITS NETWORKS Dorestad was the largest town of the Low Countries in the Carolingian era. As a riverine emporium on the northern edge of the Frankish Empire, it functioned as a European junction, connecting the Viking world with the Continent. In 2019, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden hosted its NETWORKS AND ITS DORESTAD quinquennial international congress based around Dorestad, located at present-day Wijk bij Duurstede. This third edition, ‘Dorestad and its Networks’, coincided with the fiftieth birthday of finding the famous Dorestad brooch in July 1969, and with what would have been the hundredth birthday of prof.dr. Ina Isings, to whom a special session on early-medieval glass was dedicated. The Third Dorestad Congress brought together scholars from the North Sea area to debate Dorestad and its counterparts in Scandinavia, the British Isles and the Rhineland, as well as the material culture, urbanisation and infrastructure of the Early Middle Ages. The contributions in these proceedings are devoted to new research into the Vikings at Dorestad, assemblages of DORESTAD AND ITS jewellery, playing pieces and weaponry from the town, recent excavations at other Carolingian sites in the Low Countries, and the use and trade of glassware and broadswords in this NETWORKS era. They show the political, economic and cultural networks Communities, Contact and Conflict in Early Medieval of Dorestad, the only town to be called ‘vicus famosus’ in contemporary sources. Europe edited by Annemarieke Willemsen & Hanneke Kik 25 ISBN 978-94-6426-003-8 ISBN: 978-94-6426-003-8 PAPERS ON ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE PALMA 25 LEIDEN MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES 9 789464 260038 This is a free offprint – as with all our publications the entire book is freely accessible on our website, and is available in print or as PDF e-book. www.sidestone.com DORESTAD AND ITS NETWORKS Communities, Contact and Conflict in Early Medieval Europe edited by Annemarieke Willemsen & Hanneke Kik Proceedings of the Third ‘Dorestad Congress’ held at the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden, the Netherlands, 12-15 June, 2019 This is a free offprint – as with all our publications the entire book is freely accessible on our website, and is available in print or as PDF e-book. PALMA 25 PAPERS ON ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE www.sidestone.com LEIDEN MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES © 2021 Rijksmuseum van Oudheden; the individual authors PALMA: Papers on Archaeology of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities (volume 25) Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden www.sidestone.com Layout & cover design: Sidestone Press Photographs cover: Front: Broadsword from Dorestad, 800-825 AD. RMO Leiden inv.no. f 1936/11.1. Photo: RMO/ Peter Jan Bomhof. Back: Beads from Dorestad. RMO Leiden various WD-nos. Photo: RMO. Volume editors: Annemarieke Willemsen & Hanneke Kik ISBN 978-94-6426-003-8 (softcover) ISBN 978-94-6426-004-5 (hardcover) ISBN 978-94-6426-005-2 (PDF e-book) ISSN 2034-550X Contents Dorestad and its networks. An introduction 9 Annemarieke Willemsen, congress director VIKINGS AND LUXURY AT DORESTAD 17 Viking Dorestad. A haven for hydrarchy? 19 Christian Cooijmans Vikings beyond Dorestad. Rethinking some metal finds in, 29 around and after the emporium Nelleke IJssennagger-van der Pluijm Trading games? Playing with/without the Vikings in Dorestad 35 Mark A. Hall A new gold ring from Dorestad? 49 Channa Cohen Stuart and Annemarieke Willemsen Beads from Dorestad 55 Mette B. Langbroek Mixed Emotions. The swords of Dorestad 101 Annemarieke Willemsen THE EARLY MEDIEVAL NETHERLANDS 117 A Carolingian coin hoard from Wirdum (Friesland, 119 the Netherlands) and the Dorestad mint Simon Coupland, with contributions by Nelleke IJssennagger-van der Pluijm and Christina Peek Timber! Opening up the landscape of Carolingian Leiderdorp 135 Menno Dijkstra Charlemagne’s palace at Nijmegen. Some thoughts on the 149 economic implications of itinerant kingship Arjan den Braven Beyond the planned/unplanned dichotomy. The development 159 of the town plan of Utrecht until c. 1560 Marcel IJsselstijn COMMERCE AND CONFLICT 177 Production of early medieval Glass in Cologne and its export 179 via Dorestad Michael Dodt, Andreas Kronz and Klaus Simon Glass vessels from the early medieval emporium at Ipswich 193 Rose Broadley Non-funerary sword depositions in Carolingian Europe 199 Dušan Maczek Form follows function. Reconstructing the use of 207 Viking Age swords Ingo Petri Viking Dorestad A haven for hydrarchy? Christian Cooijmans For over a century and a half, the assorted activities of viking1 hosts in and around the site of Dorestad have been subject to careful deliberation and debate, increasingly illuminating the early Scandinavian influence on this regional riverine landscape.2 Yet despite this overall progress, the material evidence for a ninth-century viking presence inside the settlement itself remains restricted, a shortfall which continues to tempt scholars to speculation when broaching the broader concept of a “viking Dorestad”. Likewise, even though a notable corpus of documentary evidence affirms the local attendance and influence of Scandinavian agents in Dorestad, it is still largely unclear what this presence would have entailed in practice. To what degree, for example, was institutional and infrastructural continuity upheld during the decades of viking rule? Did Scandinavian elites reside locally, or did they coordinate their affairs from elsewhere? And what politico-economic repercussions did their presence have for the emporium and its environment? To answer these and similar questions, novel comparative methodologies are called for, furnishing fresh perspectives on Dorestad’s role within this far-reaching waterborne movement of people, property, and perceptions. Accordingly, as well as reiterating the documented and otherwise attested viking endeavour in Dorestad and its immediate catchment area, this chapter will examine these developments against a wider conceptual canvas of Franco-Scandinavian interaction, wherein viking fleets operated as adaptable, ambulant polities – or “hydrarchies”. In doing so, it will allow these events to be more easily juxtaposed and judged against analogous processes of external encroachment across the European mainland, whilst providing greater insight into the strategies and motivations that governed them. Viking hydrarchy Throughout the ninth and early tenth centuries, various authors throughout the Frankish realm documented and decried the activities of regionally operative viking hosts. To many of them, it was readily apparent that their kingdoms were not being persecuted by a 1 Although predominantly associated with Scandinavian endeavour, the term ‘viking’ is here used as an occupational rather than ethnic label (as ‘mariner’ and ‘pirate’ are, for instance). As such, it is rendered as a common noun, with a lowercase initial, as opposed to its capitalisation elsewhere in this volume (which follows the preferred spelling of names, ed.). 2 Willemsen 2010, 7-16. COOIJMANS 19 single, unified force, but by various autonomous groups of model of Franco-Scandinavian interaction – an abstract assailants, some of which were noted to actively obstruct paradigm of archetypal activity which has been validated each other’s interests.3 Present-day academic consensus and calibrated using a series of distinct regional case continues to favour the notion that most viking hosts studies, comprising the Loire, Seine, and lower Rhine- would have been self-contained units, harbouring their Meuse-Scheldt river basins, respectively. All in all, own appetites and aspirations, whilst being unbeholden this model (Figure 1) identifies four distinct phases of to any overarching authority – Scandinavian or otherwise. hydrarchic conduct and consequence, which, at their core, A more recent approach to conceptualising these affirm that most viking campaigns across the Frankish companies has been to consider them as so-called realm would have represented carefully calculated, hydrarchies. Although first conceived by seventeenth- orchestrated, and risk-assessed operations – underpinned century author Richard Braithwaite apropos the social by the sustained exchange of intelligence and ongoing organisation of the contemporary maritime state, the desire for socioeconomic enrichment.10 term would gradually come to signify much more The inaugural, pre-viking phase of this conceptual specific and subversive shipboard processes, including model accentuates various amicable interactions across mutiny and piracy.4 This “hydrarchy from below”, as and beyond the North Sea littorals, including commerce characterised by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, and diplomacy, which would have gradually familiarised was made manifest by various groups of mariners Scandinavian parties with the physical and politico- across the Revolutionary Atlantic, whose self-governing economic layout of the Frankish realm. The subsequent, shipborne societies contravened the traditional power second phase encompasses the earliest viking endeavours structures of contemporary navies and merchant shipping along the Frankish frontier, covering the late eighth to industries.5 In recent years, Neil Price has proposed to early ninth century. During these decades, emergent superimpose this hydrarchic framework onto the viking hydrarchies – attuned to the local availability of moveable phenomenon, thereby positing individual viking ships wealth – fell upon vulnerable, liminal communities in and fleets as adaptive
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