Abstract
How do ordered political societies come about – and what can archaeology offer to the debate? New research by a team at the UCL Institute of Archaeology is investigating the origins of English governance by exploring the impact on landscape of legal structures, law and order, and places of political assembly. Far from being shadowy and elusive, we argue that there is much that land-scape archaeology can provide to understand the ways in which pre-modern societies were governed.
Highlights
How do ordered political societies come about – and what can archaeology offer to the debate? New research by a team at the UCL Institute of Archaeology is investigating the origins of English governance by exploring the impact on landscape of legal structures, law and order, and places of political assembly
As for other times and places, Fukuyama’s thesis has far-reaching implications for assessing the development of states in medieval Europe. This remains one of the most commonly cited examples wherein tribal groups – the Germanic barbarians who occupied the area of the former Roman empire during the 4th and 5th centuries AD – gradually assumed Fukuyama’s three levels of modern political order
Amongst the various polities that emerged after Rome, political historians – including Fukuyama – have zeroed in on England as a special case
Summary
In early medieval England, Fig. 1: Map of England showing the arrangement of Domesday hundreds and wapentakes and the location of their meeting-places, as recorded in 1086. Amongst the many roles of these assemblies was to act as a court of appeal to decisions made at local courts, to legislate (by promulgating new law codes) and to deliberate ecclesiastical questions.[5] These assemblies are documented in narrative sources and charters,[6] and can be mapped against the locations of hundredal meeting-places (Fig. 4).
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