IMC 2026: Sessions

Session 147: Peasants, Producers, and Consumers, I: Assessing Peasant Engagement in Exchange in Medieval Economies before 1200

Monday 6 July 2026, 11:15-12:45

Sponsor:	'Patterns of Circulation and Exchange in the Early Medieval Economies of Northwestern Iberia' (PadEx - PID2023-146374NA-I00), Universidad de Salamanca
Organiser:	Álvaro Carvajal Castro, Departamento de Historia Medieval, Moderna y Contemporánea, Universidad de Salamanca
Moderator/Chair:	Robert Portass, Faculty of History / Robinson College, University of Cambridge
Paper 147-a	Land Sales and the Circulation of Goods in Early Medieval Societies: The Case of Northwestern Iberia (Language: English) Álvaro Carvajal Castro, Departamento de Historia Medieval, Moderna y Contemporánea, Universidad de Salamanca Index terms: Economics - Rural, Social History
Paper 147-b	Female Economic Agency within Local Societies: Women in Records of Land Sales in Early Medieval Northwestern Iberia (Language: English) Pilar Ledesma Aldana, Departamento de Historia Medieval, Moderna y Contemporánea, Universidad de Salamanca / Dipartimento di Antichità, Filosofia e Storia (Dafist), Università di Genova Index terms: Economics - Rural, Social History, Women's Studies
Paper 147-c	Take the Money and Run Away?: Forced Sales and Purchases in Early Medieval Northern Iberia, 10th-11th Centuries (Language: English) Abel de Lorenzo Rodríguez, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela / University of Edinburgh Index terms: Economics - Rural, Social History
Abstract	Studies on the participation of medieval peasants in exchange have tended to focus on their engagement in the market. Peasant access to the circulation of goods, however, was not restricted to commercial exchange. They could dispose of their surplus and obtain the things they needed – and wanted – through other means, at the local level and beyond. Having a broader picture of which those means were and how peasants related to them can help us gain a better understanding of the role of peasant demand as an economic force. In regions where money was not in use, as was the case of the NW of the Iberian Peninsula before the late eleventh century, land sales were one such means, as prices were paid in kind. Papers in this session will assess how the analysis of records of land sales may contribute to further our appreciation of peasant engagement in the circulation of goods.