This book explores social cohesion in rural settlements in western Europe from 700-1050, asking to what extent settlements, or districts, constituted units of social organisation. It focuses on the interactions, interconnections and networks of people who lived side by side - neighbours. Drawing evidence from most of the current western European countries, the book plots and interrogates the very different practices of this wide range of regions in a systematically comparative framework. Neighbours and strangers considers the variety of local responses to the supra-local agents of landlords and rulers and the impact, such as it was, of those agents on the small-scale residential group. It also assesses the impact on local societies of the values, instructions and demands of the wider literate world of Christianity, as delivered by local priests.

About the Author
Bernhard Zeller is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria; Charles West is Reader in Medieval History in the Department of History at the University of Sheffield, UK; Francesca Tinti is Ikerbasque Research Professor in the Department of Medieval, Modern and American History at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain; Marco Stoffella is Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor in Medieval History at the University of Verona, Italy; Nicolas Schroeder is Assistant Professor in Medieval History at the Universite libre de Bruxelles, Belgium; Carine van Rhijn is Lecturer in the Department of History and Art History at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands; Steffen Patzold is Professor of Medieval History in the Department of History at the University of Tubingen, Germany; Thomas Kohl is Acting Professor in the Department of History at the University of Tubingen, Germany; Wendy Davies is Professor Emerita of History at University College London and Associate Member in the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford, UK; Miriam Czock is Senior lecturer in the History Department at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

Reviews

'[...] a valuable "handbook," enabling young medievalists to shape their research according to an innovative methodology which has succeeded in escaping the confines of the master narratives that long characterized
European medieval studies.'
Speculum

'This original and stimulating book explores evidence for social collaboration and collective identity in western and central Europe from 700 to 1000.'
Early Medieval Europe

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Book Information
ISBN 9781526163899
Author Bernhard Zeller
Format Paperback
Page Count 308
Imprint Manchester University Press
Publisher Manchester University Press
Weight(grams) 358g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 16mm