Crafting Monasticism: an archaeohistory of monastic labor and identity in western Europe ca. 400-800

Abstract

Across Western Europe in the period from 400 to 800 AD, new religious settlements spread across the crumbling Roman landscape of cities, villas, and farms. By the end of this period, these new Christian monasteries and parish churches extended beyond the borders of the former Roman Empire into Ireland to the west and north across the Rhine River. These religious settlements sought to isolate themselves from the outside world through their rules, dress codes, and even forms of property ownership. Yet, maintaining this strict separation meant monks and nuns participating in many of the same necessary activities as secular laborers to support their communities. How did contemporary religious authorities justify the role of physical labor in their spiritual enterprise? Did monks and nuns readily accept and participate in manual labor and craft production? A major finding of this dissertation is that monasteries developed as production centers in the early medieval West.

This dissertation elucidates the overlooked role monastic physical labor played in shaping the economy, landscape, and religious structures before the Carolingian reforms. It does so through the incorporation of close textual analysis, archaeological investigations, and spatial analysis. Through inventorying of known, excavated monastic sites, this dissertation also identifies a new approach to leveraging bioarcheological analysis of skeletal remains to understand both the types of repetitive labor practiced at monasteries as well as the shifting identities of secular and religious individuals in the early Middle Ages.