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IMC 2021: Sessions

Session 318: Living in the Carolingian World, II: Peasants and the Limits of Social Organisation

Monday 5 July 2021, 16.30-18.00

Organisers:Noah Blan, Department of History, University of Michigan
Valerie Garver, Department of History, Northern Illinois University
Moderator/Chair:Thomas Kohl, Sonderforschungsbereich 923 'Bedrohte Ordnungen', Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen
Paper 318-aConserve and Cultivate: Peasants and a Carolingian Moral Ecology
(Language: English)
Noah Blan, Department of History, University of Michigan
Index terms: Biblical Studies, Daily Life, Mentalities, Political Thought
Paper 318-bLife in a Royal Landscape: Evidence from 9th-Century Carolingian Royal Charters
(Language: English)
Elina Screen, Trinity College, University of Oxford
Index terms: Administration, Charters and Diplomatics, Daily Life, Geography and Settlement Studies
Paper 318-cFinding the Fishermen: Hagiography and Medieval Traditional Ecological Knowledge
(Language: English)
Ellen Arnold, Department of History, Ohio Wesleyan University
Index terms: Daily Life, Hagiography
Abstract

The Carolingian World reflected the reach and ambitions of its rulers and thinkers who imagined their unique place in history and the world. The extent to which the majority of people living under Carolingian rule and influence felt the effects of elite efforts to exert power is less clear. Ideal visions of rural social organisation and the place of the least powerful in society did not always match up to traces of lived experience. These papers will explore how the non-elite experienced the Carolingian world as agrarian subjects, economic drivers, and dependents on estates.