Unearthing Peasant Societies : Historiography and Recent Contributions in the Archaeology of the Rural World during Visigothic Times :

Abstract

Until very recently, the analysis of Visigothic peasant societies has remained a pending task. This was mainly due to the lack of historical sources for tackling the issue, which generated an extremely dark perspective on peasantry, based on the idea of isolated and miserable societies. In recent decades, however, the excavation of hundreds of peasant archaeological contexts all over the Iberian Peninsula has enabled the reformulation of the role of these communities in the configuration of post-Roman economics and politics. In this chapter, I critically consider the most significant contributions of archaeology to the analysis of post-Roman peasantry in the light of the latest studies. Furthermore, the chapter proposes an academic agenda for advancing this topic in coming years.