New Directions in the Study of Visigothic Spain

Abstract

Since the fall of the Visigothic kingdom in 711, analysis of its history has been tied to contemporary Spanish politics. Political and economic developments in Spain since the 1970s have driven research into the late antique and early medieval period. Most notably, archaeological evidence has come to play a much more prominent role in analyses of the Visigothic period in Spain. This article synthesises archaeological and historical research from the past 20 years. It draws on recent developments in urban and rural archaeology in order to examine key avenues of research on the period: the negotiated nature of power, post-Roman identity politics, and law and literacy.In recent decades, there has been a burgeoning interest in the study of late antique and early medieval Spanish history. A number of factors have contributed to this development: the collapse of the Franco regime and its teleological and single-purpose historiographical discourse, a higher degree of collaboration between Spanish and non-Spanish scholars, which has broken the 'language barrier' that in the past hindered interactions between Spanish academia and other scholarly traditions 1 and the large amount of material obtained from the boom in commercial archaeology in the 1990s and early 2000s. The main objective of this article is to sketch brief ly some of the current themes in Visigothic studies, from historical and archaeological perspectives, citing many of the main scholars, publications and research projects of the past 20 years (since 1995). Although traditional scholarship has traced the origins of Spain to the Visigothic period, current approaches to the topic generally seek to move away from this monolithic view. Key trends in this movement away from this singular vision of the Visigothic period are the creation and interaction of central and local powers (and the methodologies by which these can be identified), the nature of power relationships and identity (or, more accurately, identities).The breakdown of the Roman system is the key starting point for understanding a Visigothic period (mid-fifth to early eighth century) characterised by the emergence of a series of new power structures and relationships. Historical studies of the Visigothic period in Spain have traditionally been framed in terms of binaries of power. The dominant paradigms were of underlying tension often exploding into open conf lict between royalty and aristocracy, between church and state, between Goths and Romans and between Nicene ('Catholic', 'orthodox') Christians and all kinds of 'deviant' groups ( Jews, 'Arians'). These oppositions used to dominate conceptualisations of the Spanish political, social and religious landscape after the end of the Western Roman Empire and, more recently, scholarship has begun to reveal, are the result of scholars' uncritical acceptance of royal and ecclesiastical sources written from a 'centre-ist' perspective.2 Churchmen such as Isidore of Seville, the seventh century bishops of Toledo and the Visigothic royal laws pres...

Aqueducts and Urbanism in Post-Roman Hispania

“…This is always complicated, as these need to be carefully registered and excavated, which sadly in Spain and Portugal has only been the case in the past thirty years. On the plus side, in those thirty years there has been an explosion in late antique archaeology, and with its increasing popularity, ceramic typologies (which are the essential key to date most archaeological contexts) have become more accurate and precise (Wood and Martínez Jiménez 2016). This does not only apply to imported materials, but also to local productions, especially thanks to the excavations of sites like Reccopolis, the theatre of Cartagena or El Tolmo de Minateda (Martínez Jiménez, Sastre de Diego and Tejerizo García 2018).…”

Drought as a possible contributor to the Visigothic Kingdom crisis and Islamic expansion in the Iberian Peninsula

“…This decline was marked by a civil war and the invasion of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate (Islamic dynasty) in 711 CE until the final conquest in 726 CE. Although the archeological sites studied during the last decades of the Visigothic period provide useful information about farming strategies, urbanisms, territorial control or social organization 10 , the rapid fall of the Visigothic Kingdom is still under debate, and the hypothesis of climate triggering the Islamic expansion from the northern Africa to the northern Iberia has not been investigated yet 11 , 12 .…”