Land, ownership, and power in post-Roman Britain and Gaul

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When the Western Roman empire collapsed, 'barbarian' peoples moved into its former territories and established successor states. These polities tended to exhibit marked similarities, but Britain was noticeably different. This thesis will consider the role of Roman ideas of property in the tenurial changes which produced a shift from collective 'tribal' land to individual aristocratic ownership in post-Roman Britain and Gaul. It will examine whether writing, in the form of charters, was instrumental in this change, and, if so, whether kings, clerics, and aristocrats consciously used this to increase their authority. Furthermore, the project will contextualise the use of charters with an innovative comparative analysis of Anglo-Saxon and Frankish settlement archaeology in order to determine how a shared Roman inheritance and 'barbarian' origins combined in different ways to create new cultural identities and political systems underpinning the developments of medieval European history.