What is it about?
This article explores how craftspeople lived and worked in the Carolingian world (8th–10th centuries) and how they interacted with the elite. It shows that artisans were not just dependent servants of the powerfull. Many of those that were based in cities and major centers retain some sort of independance, producing everyday goods and prestigious objects. Their obligations to elites were often light or symbolic, while paid commissions played a major role, giving craftsmen real agency and social importance.
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Why is it important?
What makes this study distinctive is that it redirect our focus on craftsmen, not as a passive group of producer, but as meaningful economic agents. Today, historians try to bring to light the margins of medieval societies to include all social bodies, this research helps to give a real space to early medieval artisans in the economic narrative. By combining overlooked texts with archaeology, it challenges long-standing assumptions and offers a more human and nuanced picture of the relation between artisanal work and power in the early Middle Ages.
Perspectives
With this article I aimed to give a new perspective on craftsmen, one that didn't reduced them to be passive economic agents, which they were not. In fact since writing this article I have pursued my research on early medieval artisans and found that many of them acted as aristocrats themselves, owning land, participating in assemblies and public interactions. This strengthen my idea that early medieval craftsmen interacted with social elite from a position of relative strength, sharing probably more with the elite than with their own subalterns.
Alexandre Beaudet
Universite Laval
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: From Craftsmen to the Elite: Relations of Exchange in Carolingian Central Places, December 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004749887_016.
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