Archaeology of Slavery in Early Medieval Northern Europe

Felix Biermann is an Associate Professor of early medieval archaeology at the University of Szczecin, Poland. His research interests include the archaeology and history of the Baltic Sea area, Middle and Eastern Europe from c. 500-1500, with special emphasis on social and economic structures, interregional contacts and the archaeology of fortified settlements.Marek Jankowiak is an Associate Professor of Byzantine history at the University of Oxford. In addition to his interests in Byzantine social and economic history, he works on the slave trade system that connected the Islamic world and northern Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. He was the co-investigator of the AHRC project “Dirhams for Slaves” and co-edited “Viking-Age Trade: Silver, Slaves and Gotland” (2020).

“In this thought-provoking volume, Felix Biermann and Marek Jankowiak bring together contributions from a number of scholars who are currently engaged in the study of early-medieval slaving practices. … the volume’s contributions represent a valuable resource … . The volume will surely be of key interest to a range of scholars, and essential reading for medievalists and other researchers seeking to explore slavery in both regional and global contexts.” (Ben Raffield, Medieval Archaeology, Vol. 66 (2), December, 2022)

• Introduction: An ‘invisible commodity’?; Marek Jankowiak and Felix Biermann.- Part One: Comparative perspectives.- Chapter 1. The arrogation of slavery: Prehistory, archaeology, and pre-theoretical commitments concerning people as property; Timothy Taylor.- Chapter 2. Recent approaches to the archaeological investigation of slavery in Africa; Paul Lane.- Part Two: The British Isles.- Chapter 3. To tread the paths, and traverse the moors: Investigating slavery in early medieval western Britain; Katie Hemer.- Chapter 4. The archaeology of slave trading in Viking Age Britain and Ireland: A methodological approach; Janel Fontaine.-  Part Three: Scandinavia.-  Chapter 5. The norm and the subaltern. Identifying slaves in an early medieval Scandinavian society; Anna Kjellström.- Chapter 6. Legacy of the disowned. Finding ambátts in high medieval Scania and Östergötland through ceramic production; Mats Roslund.- Chapter 7. Bonded people. Making thralls visible in Viking-Age and early medieval Sweden; Torun Zachrisson.- Part Four: Central Europe.- Chapter 8. The slave trade in Great Moravia: reality or fiction?; Jiří Macháček.- Chapter 9. Slavery and slave trade in early medieval Czech duchy: Archaeology of slavery or slavery of archaeology?; Ivo Štefan.- Chapter 10. Archaeological evidence for slavery among the early medieval north-western Slavs; Felix Biermann.- Chapter 11.Tracing the Saqaliba: slave trade and the archaeology of tenth-century northern Europe; Marek Jankowiak.- Index.