the developing structures of feudalism created a different set of social and economic dynamics and a very different range of archaeological evidence. In all areas, the early and later traditions of medieval archaeology have been treated separately, and in many regions the early medieval phase has been more closely linked with later prehistory. There are three main reasons for this division, which are worth exploring. All three play a part in all regions and countries, but in different situations their relative importance has varied. In many countries there has been discussion of these issues, and debates about the value or impediment that such a set of attitudes and structures creates, and it is in the context of these debates that the subject area of medieval archaeology was formed.

The first reason for the division between early and late medieval derives from the remote past and relates to broad cultural influences across the European continent. There was not the same Roman period break in cultural chronologies north of the Rhine and the Danube that occurred to the south, where the Roman Empire held greater sway. Where there was no significant Roman horizon (that is, artifacts that denote behavioral and cultural changes), apart from imported prestige goods, cultural groups whose burials often contained grave goods and settlements consisting of defended hilltops and lowland settlements with only timber structures (which leave little obvious surface remains) continued right up to the arrival of Christianity and developed feudalism in the second millennium a.d. Even where there was Roman political and cultural control, this control broke down and was replaced with a far less complex socioeconomic system, which left evidence far more similar in its characteristics to that of the late Iron Age cultures that were spread across Europe before the Roman Empire.

Indeed, the dating and identification of the post-Roman phases became clear to antiquarians across Europe only in the mid-nineteenth century. This period can be linked with movements of populations across Europe, the collapse of the complex Roman Empire, and in the succeeding centuries the development of smaller and then ever-larger kingdoms, which were the genesis of the modern European states. The early medieval evidence is much more similar in the types of settlement, cemetery, and artifactual evidence to that from late prehistory than to the evidence from the Roman or later Middle Ages.

The second reason for the division of the subject into early and late medieval units relates to nineteenth-century attitudes toward the past. This reason is directly linked to the remains, particularly the difference between the pagan, unsophisticated early medieval remains and the cultured, Christian remains of the later Middle Ages. Interestingly, in areas such as Ireland where Roman influence was irrelevant, the early medieval period was essentially Christian and the archaeology is linked to the later medieval rather than to the prehistoric. This division between pagan/barbarian and Christian/ civilized Europe has implications that have been, and continue to be, played out through history in legislation, state administrative structures, museum responsibilities, and academic teaching and research.

The third reason relates to documentation and attitudes of both nonmedieval archaeologists and scholars from other disciplines such as history. Archaeology of any note has often been seen as being credible only within a prehistoric or proto-historic period. When documents become more numerous, it has often been thought that archaeology no longer had a role, except, perhaps, to provide illustrative material or to fill in a few gaps in the written documentation. This attitude pervades much of European scholarship to this day and until recently was even more widespread. Medieval archaeologists have had to fight this definition of archaeology, and this fight has occurred mainly in the context of later medieval archaeology. Still, postmedieval and historical archaeologists have also had this mission.

Given the paucity of texts for the early medieval period, archaeology has often been recognized as having a role there, although in relatively well-documented areas such as Ireland some historians completely ignore or denigrate the contribution that any study of material culture can make. Documentary sources are more plentiful for the later Middle Ages (though very