Introduction
Early medieval art in the post-Roman West often falls between two stools, that of archaeology and history, taken for neither fish nor fowl by respective fields study. This is particularly true material culture deriving from archaeological contexts, most importantly furnished burials mid-fifth to early eighth centuries. While archaeologists historians coming more ‘classical’ tradition focus on legacies Mediterranean Christian late Antiquity Byzantium, tend engage with ‘renaissance’ classical traditions Carolingian period onwards. On other hand, (in German also called frühgeschichtliche Archäologie) mostly neglects historical, visual, or aesthetic perspectives record, attending political elites, identity, economy, environment, landscape. Only few visual world Middle Ages, if so, a formalist iconographic point view. there has been recent interest images, ornamentation, human figure ‘Anglo-Saxon’ England Scandinavia,1 Merovingian Europe largely untouched debate. book tries bridge these gaps, shifting an world.
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