Notwithstanding its considerable potential from a socio-economic and environmental perspective, the current state of knowledge on Early Medieval rural settlement in northern Francia lags behind compared to other regions of north-western Europe. In particular, the growth of development-led archaeology has led to an increase in data and important new insights in many European countries. Although the modern region of Flanders, which makes up most of northern Francia, has seen a similar increase of archaeological fieldwork, and thus of information on Early Medieval rural settlement, research has not yet kept pace. This paper reviews the current state of affairs on Merovingian and Carolingian rural settlement archaeology from a historiographical point of view and presents a new and rich dataset based upon recent developments in archaeological practice. To illustrate the potential of this dataset, rural settlement patterns in two microregions will be discussed, highlighting regional diversity in aspects such as settlement location, stability, and chronology within northern Francia.