1 - Frisians of the Early Middle Ages: An Archaeoethnological Perspective

Summary

IT IS A GREAT PLEASURE to be able to add a volume dedicated to Frisians of the Early Middle Ages to the Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology series. All of the previous titles in this series derived from symposia organized by and presided over by the late Professor Giorgio Ausenda. From the early 1990s, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Social Stress (CIROSS) affiliated to the Universita di San Marino ran a series of symposia examining, individually, major ethno-cultural groups which both formed in and were responsible for the re-shaping of Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire. This is the tenth volume in that series, and the first representing a revival of the format and objectives defined by Giorgio Ausenda following the founder’s death in 2007. Hosted by the Fries Museum, a symposium on ‘The Frisians’ was organized and held in Leeuwarden in the province of Fryslân/Friesland, the Netherlands, from 11 to 14 September 2018, designed to coincide with the status of Leeuwarden as European City of Culture in that year.

The concept of historical archaeoethnology is, as described by Ausenda, to ‘recover knowledge of several aspects of the life style and sociocultural conditions of past populations’ (Ausenda ed. 1995, 3, 295–304). With its focus on the major ethno-cultural groups whose rise defines the emergence of an Early Middle Ages/Medieval Period after the end of the Roman Period, it may surprise us that Frisians have not been the subject of this series up to now. Their Continental and North Sea neighbours have been addressed: the Continental Saxons, the Franks and Alemanni, the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians. But perhaps where those Early-medieval groups have been or can be more clearly defined and therefore demarcated, the Frisian group, although well known, has been rather elusive and more challenging to capture.

This is not least the case because historically ‘Frisian’ has been an identity that has stretched through the territory of various modern states, notably Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, all of which have different research traditions, with the outputs of research published in different languages – including Frisian. Recent years have seen an increase in research on various aspects of the Early-medieval Frisian identity and culture in an international and interdisciplinary perspective, based primarily in historical, archaeological and linguistic sources.