The excavation of settlements has transformed our understanding of life in north-west Europe during the early Middle Ages, a period for which written sources are scarce. In this title, Helena Hamerow places the archaeological findings in their historical context and examines their significance for Anglo-Saxon England.

The excavation of settlements has in recent years transformed our understanding of north-west Europe in the early Middle Ages. We can for the first time begin to answer fundamental questions such as: what did houses look like and how were they furnished? how did villages and individual farmsteads develop? how and when did agrarian production become intensified and how did this affect village communities? what role did craft production and trade play in the rural economy? In a period for which written sources are scarce, archaeology is of central importance in understanding the 'small worlds' of early medieval communities. Helena Hamerow's extensively illustrated and accessible study offers the first overview and synthesis of the large and rapidly growing body of evidence for early medieval settlements in north-west Europe, as well as a consideration of the implications of this evidence for Anglo-Saxon England.

It is much to be welcomed that a publishing house of the weight of the Oxford University Press is willing to launch a series of monographs in Medieval History and Archaeology, and the series is off to a fine start with this volume.