The Archaeology of Greece from Middle Roman Imperial Times to Late Antiquity: Demography, Settlement Patterns, and Everyday Life

(p. 351a) Compared to the collapsing Western Provinces the Eastern are entering a boom time

The Eastern provinces, as noted in previous chapters, had always retained a strong Hellenic identity and Greek was the common tongue, used in inscriptions alongside Latin. As the West steadily declined from the third century AD and the East rose in importance, there are signs of the fading away of Latin, such as errors on the coinage in Eastern issues. In final late Roman times the Eastern court was favoring Greek and marking the transformation into an essentially Greek Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire after the seventh century AD.

(p. 351b) Co-emperors and their junior "caesars" were displaced away from Rome

From the third century onward Rome only hosted emperors for short visits (Chrysos 1997).

(p. 351c) The Eastern provinces witness an extraordinary flourishing during this period, with almost unparalleled levels of activity in towns, matched by a staggering outburst of construction in monuments to the new official state religion of Christianity - churches and monasteries

It is generally acknowledged that at least in constructional activities, the fifth century AD opened a new era of urban florescence in the Eastern Empire, although both the dominant monuments - ecclesiastical complexes - and their location (often in new areas of towns, leading to neglect of traditional agoras) raise central problems relating to the nature of urban life (Oikonomou-Laniado 2003: 78). A staggering explosion of churches marked the official status of Christianity after its prefourth-century AD confinement to house-churches (mansions of wealthy members) and secret assembly places like the catacombs on Melos. On Rhodes some 100 LR basilicas are recorded, with 30 on nearby Kos, for example.

(p. 352a) Key changes by mid-sixth century: the rise of the "holy man," the development of monastic life, the growth in the power of bishops and their significant role in the management and sustenance of communities

In Late Roman times the bishops and their subordinates (presbyters, deacons) were part-time, combining other secular activities with their ecclesiastical duties, although, significantly, bishop's salaries were paid by the state rather than out of the declining incomes of cities. Often bishops emerged from the ranks of the former civic elite or curial class and their networks of patronage merely continued those of the traditional ruling-class of Roman towns. In this respect the prominent role of bishops in organizing the infrastructure of cities, sometimes ordering new urban fortifications, represents a form of continuity. Yet in the subsequent Dark Age of the seventh to tenth centuries AD most cities in the Balkans were to disappear, and a new society would be born within the small remainder, in which the Christian hierarchy appeared to re-emerge stronger than before. Magdalino comments interestingly on this apparent paradox: "No one doubts that in the transition from antiquity to the middle ages, the main winner was the church and the main loser was the civilization of the ancient polis _ Yet between the victory of the one and the defeat of the other, there is no simple correlation. On the one hand, Christian bishops and holy men actively campaigned against the institutions and values of civic life; on the other hand, churches and monasteries took over important civic functions or provided passable substitutes _ For in the final analysis, church and state needed the towns as much as they needed each other and the towns needed them: their marriage of convenience was urban based, and the powerful command economy which they administered between them eventually saved many a city from extinction" (1990: 165).

(p. 352b) Most cities construct a small internal fortification wall during the third to sixth centuries AD well inside older, more extensive urban defenses. Some have argued that many lesser Greco-Roman cities became villages associated with a fort

The rewalling of cities and the novel fortification of existing villages, as well as, in some cases, the movement of population to new, more secure refuge kastra, according to Dunn (1998), even if officially encouraged by the emperors, was probably often led by the higher clergy in each district. Barbarian tribal invasions from the north, Arab seaborne raids from the south, and incursions from the east via Anatolia by Islamic armies were all largely met till the 720s by passive imperial defense, relying on networks of forts and defended towns (Haldon 2000).

(p. 352c) The refortifying of neglected ancient city walls, but also the reconstruction of older landscape defenses within the provinces

New kinds of defensive constructions also became common: earthworks forming a first obstacle before the main wall was encountered (a proteichisma), and a denser line of towers along fortification lines. Such towers could also form elaborate saw-tooth or pentagonal shapes to enhance the effectiveness of their mounted catapult machines (Dunn 1998, Poulter 2007).

(p. 352d) Greater reliance over time on local soldier-farmer militias (limitanei), who had a vested vital interest in defending their families and possessions from their homes in the continuous network of kastra

Procopius, in his history of the emperor Justinian's building program in the sixth century, De Aedificiis, describes an imperial program to stimulate or carry out all sorts of fortification, especially of nucleated population centers, for example: "And in all parts of Thrace he established countless fortresses, by which he has now made entirely free from devastation a land which formerly lay exposed to the inroads of the enemy" (4.11.20). Historians and archaeologists are now skeptical of this publication, which was designed to flatter the emperor, and although much construction of fortifications and churches can indeed be dated to Justinian's reign, much of it is now attributed to his predecessor and successor emperors.

(p. 353a) After ca. AD 540 the Eastern Roman Empire experienced continuing crises which almost exterminated it

One cannot but sympathize with Justinian's meteoric career, with such remarkable achievements in the early part of his reign, matched equally by the falling apart of the Eastern Empire in his final years due to invasions, epidemics, and other disasters, which appear to mark a critical shift in the collapse of the Roman state toward the subsequent Dark Ages (Cormack 1985).

Poulter (2007) discusses the recent debate concerning the end of the Roman world and its transformation into the Medieval states which followed. Some scholars see internal decline as fundamental, critically weakening the empire so that it failed to cope with Barbarian invasions. Others see the overwhelming pressure from outside of various opponents irrupting into the empire on all fronts, as essentially causing the collapse of the Western and the all but demise of the Eastern provinces. As for the transition to the Middle Ages (on which see also Bintliff and Hamerow 1995), a similar debate runs between those who posit a gradual change during Late Antiquity toward Medieval societies and others who insist on more discontinuity.

(p. 353b) The mid-seventh century AD ushers in the Dark Ages or Early Byzantine period

To remind the reader of an earlier point: confusingly, some authors call the Late Roman, fourth - to seventh-century AD period "Early Byzantine," since the dominant political center of the empire was effectively at the "New Rome" of Byzantium-Constantinople, but most archaeologists see this term as more appropriate to the seventh to ninth centuries AD. Cultural life, including archaeological material culture and institutions during the Eastern Late Roman era, were still largely in the traditions of Early Roman life, whereas the seventh to ninth centuries witnessed the formation of a new "Medieval" culture with different ceramics, monuments, and political organization.

(p. 353c) In the Aegean disasters include Bubonic Plague

The plague in the sixth century, which appears to have recurred till the eighth century, can certainly be adduced as a central element in weakening the Roman Empire's human resources in a dramatic way, especially if it was combined with a smallpox epidemic and severe economic conditions (Biraben 1989, Durliat 1989). It must be added, however, that the ancient literary sources are not as forthcoming on the Great Plague as historians would wish, although there are more recent parallels for the curious lack of detailed references to such epidemics. The identification of bubonic plague for the better-known fourteenth-century AD Black Death is under dispute, and doubts have also been raised concerning the exact epidemiological nature of its sixth-century predecessor (Naphy and Spicer 2001, Scott and Duncan 2003).

Much less likely are recent speculative theories such as that from climatologist Mike Baillie (2001), who suggests that a climatic disaster linked to disease was caused by a near-miss from a comet. The existence of climatic problems, specifically increasing aridity from the Roman to Late Roman eras, is still a possibility, according to recent scientific results, and may be reflected in the heavy investment in the Aegean in water-supply systems in Late Roman towns (Orland et al. 2009).

(p. 353d) A transformed, shrunken Eastern Empire, after the seventh century, in the guise of Byzantine civilization

Despite the carving out of several Barbarian kingdoms from the former Western Roman Empire, their rulers used fictitious legitimation from the surviving Eastern or Byzantine Empire, as if they were kings governing through delegation from the emperor (Chrysos 1997). Thus the terms "emperor" or "augustus" were never appropriated by them; rather they could choose to assume or to recognize the less Roman titles of "consuls" or "caesars." This did not signify real power from Byzantium, but gave a sense of tradition to these seemingly upstart conquerors. The crowning of Charlemagne the king of the Franks as emperor in Rome in AD 800 marked a decisive shift away from this accommodation.

(p. 354a) Increasing levels of dependency (as tenants, laborers) without excluding small-scale peasant subsistence farming

John Haldon presents a clear summary of the historical evidence, significantly concluding that "during the late Roman period agricultural slaves came to approximate more and more to various degrees of tied but free tenant, and the result was that the economic reality of slavery disappeared. Rent and tax, not the intensive, plantation-based exploitation of chattel-slaves, was the main form of surplus appropriation from the later third century and onward" (2000: 75). And again: "In the sixth century (and earlier) land was farmed for the most part by dependent peasants of one category or another _ part of the estates of the landowning elite"(102).

(p. 354b) Let us consider case-study archaeological surface surveys on these important issues of population and the status of farmers

The most basic data they provide are simply that of human presence on a rural site in a particular period, based on finding dated ceramics there, but usually teams distinguish between numerous finds (seen as definite occupation), and rare finds and/or finds not securely dated for that period (seen as temporary activity or possible site use only).

(p. 354c) The Argolid Survey and the Methana Survey show vigorous rural recolonization after Early Roman-Middle Roman limited activity

Another landscape, further north, in coastal Thessaly, mirrors these Southern Greek developments: a clear expansion of rural sites after their rarity in Late Hellenistic-Early Roman times occurs for the Late Roman era, associated with vigorous coastal commerce (Marzolff 1999). Intensive survey in inland Macedonia (the Langadhas Project) also has a highpoint in rural activity for the Late Roman period (Kotsakis 1989, 1990).

(p. 355a) Most surveys estimate the maximum site extent, then use this for all periods in which the site sees activity

It is surely more than likely that rural sites did indeed alter their level of use over the centuries (see Figure 11.2 for the countryside of Thespiae to illustrate this phenomenon). When surveys add to simple numbers of sites and estimates of their size to improve our understanding of the likely population in the countryside, a fixed site size is justifiable only for single-period sites, or on multiperiod sites where clearly one of the phases represented is overwhelmingly dominant, just for that era.

(p. 355b) Both the Argolid and Methana surveys suffer from these spatial resolution problems. Other periods on multiperiod sites are almost certainly occupying different surface areas, and unless this is mapped by subsampling the site surface, population estimates based on maximum site area will be seriously unreliable

The Argolid Survey offers a breakdown of site sizes (below) which shows a shift after the Classical-Hellenistic era from smaller sites toward medium and larger rural sites in the Late Hellenistic-Middle Roman, and even more in the Late Roman, eras. However, many of these sites which were occupied in more than one phase lack any study of their relative size in each of the individual periods represented in their surface finds:

Percentage representation of small, medium, and large rural sites on the Argolid Survey

Classical-Hellenistic  small/medium/large 77%/19%/4%

Late Hellenistic-Middle Roman  small/medium/large 73%/18%/9%

Late Roman  small/medium/large 60%/23%/17%

This raises doubts as to the precision of these figures, as hidden within these statistics, many, perhaps most, sites are given a single size regardless of the period of occupation at that site. The rather suspicious general similarity of site sizes may be due to the high number of sites occupied in more than one of these three periods, where a single size, the maximum for the site, was used without estimating possible expansion or contraction between phases of site use.

(p. 357) Similar amphora-tile sites appear common in many areas of Late Roman Greece

For the Laconia Survey (Mee and Cavanagh 1998) a specific parallel occurs with site LRSP1, one of the largest sites discovered by the project: "The lack of domestic pottery and the high proportion of storage vessels suggest that this was not primarily a residential site but a complex of storehouses"(147-148). In Roman Southern Gaul, a long research tradition has associated villas with attached labor forces in nearby villages (vici) (Leveau et al. 1999).

(p. 358) Our reanalysis suggests that Early Roman-Middle Roman site use may be more significant than claimed, and Late Roman site occupation less significant

The Megalopolis Survey in the Central Peloponnese (Roy et al. 1989) perhaps sums up our position by describing a "modest economic recovery" for Late Antiquity as regards society as a whole (150).

(p. 359a) Large-scale enslavement of captured populations who did not make it to the nearest fortified town or village

In AD 539, for example, Huns raided the Peloponnese and are reported to have carried off 120,000 captives without suffering attack from imperial troops (Liebeschuetz 2007).

(p. 359b) The Slav invasions of the late sixth through seventh centuries

Although the Slav invaders and later colonizers of the Balkans, including Greece, had no single ruler, they were organized in very large armed groups under warleaders. The sheer populousness of Slav tribes can be measured both in their ability to besiege the second city of the empire, Thessaloniki, on more than one occasion in the early seventh century, and the successful creation of Slav-speaking communities from Central Europe through Eastern Europe and into Russia, where they are still resident today (Liebeschuetz 2007, Whitby 2007). There is disagreement as to when Slav groups achieved large-scale settlement of Mainland Greece and separated the bulk of the country from the imperial government in Constantinople: while some see this as already significant by the late sixth century, others believe it took place essentially in the seventh century. The contemporary sources seem to support both chronologies and may indicate a progressive colonization which increased markedly in the seventh century, to a point where military control of the Greek Mainland by the empire was very confined (Liebeschuetz 2007).

(p. 359c) But throughout the Balkans populations increasingly sought refuge in the fortified towns or clustered inside a new class of fortified village or castle (kastron)

Parallels for such foci for rural populations in the chaotic times of Late Antiquity are not only widespread in contemporary Italy (Francovich and Hodges 2003) but further afield. In Roman Britain the official withdrawal of the legions in the last part of the fourth and early part of the fifth centuries AD may have seen former forts with a residue of their garrisons and the former vicus community continuing to live inside and around the protective ramparts. These could have evolved into semiautonomous units that retained control over their immediate districts (Ferris 2011).

(p. 360a) A widespread decline in the traditional ostentatious erection of urban inscriptions and inscribed public monuments by local grandees, together with statues honoring them

In apparent contrast, it has long been argued that the great cities of Western Anatolia entered a Golden Age in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, destroyed only by the Persian invasions of the seventh century. This rosy picture rests on a late burst of honorific statues and public buildings, together with the usual proliferation of basilican churches. Problems arose when it became clear that the era saw curious non-traditional developments in such towns, such as the phenomenon of "encroachment," whereby private houses or industrial installations intrude into the formerly broad streets or public spaces and structures (Potter 1995). Poulter cautions: "Statuary, public architecture and even inscriptions do not provide an adequate basis for sweeping assertions about prosperity or continuity" in Late Roman cities (2007: 25).

(p. 360b) Former urban elites have turned to serving in the imperial service as officials in the same regions

These local elites, reappearing in new guises, were thus able to avoid personal tax and responsibility for tax shortfalls from their cities, and yet were in a position to retain significant influence on urban or regional affairs at some distance though still in the same province.

(p. 361a) Corinth boasts in its port at Lechaion one of the largest basilican churches in the Roman world

This basilica was erected west of the harbor and by the shore ca. AD 500, one of the largest in the Roman world at that time. There was also a separate baptistery. When visitors arrived at Lechaion by boat this immense structure marked their entry into the territory and ultimately the town of Corinth (Rothaus 1995). There is some divergence of opinion on the church's dimensions. Rothaus would make it the largest in the Roman world, 223 m from atrium to apse, in comparison to the first St. Peter's in Rome (only 186 m) and Aghia Sophia in Constantinople (109 m). Other authorities, however, offer smaller dimensions, around 180 m, still surpassed only by its Roman rival.

(p. 361b) Yet Corinth nonetheless shows a decline in its urban fabric progressively over the fifth to sixth centuries AD

As discussed in Chapter 13, Early Roman Corinth was probably some 140 ha in size (Romano 2003), but in Late Antiquity it contracted to a mere 40 ha (Slane and Sanders 2005). The abandonment of the agora as the civic center is a sixth-century phenomenon (Slane and Sanders 2005). For the baths see Biers 2003. Comparisons with the contemporary urban decay at Argos are made by Oikonomou-Laniado (2003).

(p. 361c) Decaying civic centers may be left to house and industry encroachment while a church complex can form a new urban focus elsewhere, such as at Cretan Gortyn

On Crete (Harrison 1998) archaeological signs of busy human activity take off in Roman times and increase steadily till the Late Roman era, but towns show, as elsewhere during Late Antiquity, that much of the public and private surplus resources were being channeled into huge basilicas, leaving other public buildings to be renovated but often into smaller-scale edifices. There is evidence that apart from the Church, which was very busy erecting basilican churches, everywhere in the Aegean in the fifth to early sixth century, notably in towns in the former civic centers, lower-class individuals were taking over other public areas for industrial use, for example monumental public porticoes were divided up for shops and workshops (Bowden 2010). It seems that the elite, who had formerly concerned themselves with the ostentatious repair or new construction of urban infrastructure, either left all but the major towns or were incorporated into church construction projects. The breaking up of elite town houses into smaller apartments is widely observed, even if at the same time many such remained in active use for a smaller community of wealthy individuals. As Bowden points out, the art-historical emphasis in Classical archaeology has overemphasized the decline of traditional monuments in towns and we know far too little from basic economic studies of the alterations in everyday life as towns transformed themselves rather than merely died.

(p. 361d) For Thessaloniki, the agora and its public buildings appear to go out of use from the fourth century onward

Oikonomou-Laniado quotes Sodini commenting on the transformation of the Thessaloniki agora:

"we pass from an ensemble with a clear identity with a monumental appearance, to a space with no more meaning and which thus has no need any more for surrounding buildings" (2003: 78). The Odeion in the agora went out of use in the second quarter of the fourth century when a program of expansion was apparently abandoned.

(p. 361e) The contemporary creation of churches in new areas and wealthy mansions indicate drastic urban reorganization

Gregory (2006) points out, importantly, that for many if not most Aegean Late Roman towns, in the place of the old agora, or more commonly in another part of the Late Roman city, there arose from the fifth century huge ecclesiastical complexes, not merely basilican churches but bishops' palaces, baptisteries, and martyria, and clusters of buildings for storing the wealth of the Church and for administering welfare services to the people (hospitals, soup kitchens, schools, etc.). The height of these new structures and their ornamentation with decorated entrance ways, the squares or atria in front of them for public gatherings, and the addition of fountains, sculptures, and colonnades outside, and wall-paintings, mosaics, and more sculptures inside, made them the outstanding urban landmarks of their time.

(p. 362a) Thespiae: the restricted Kastro served as the residence of a militia, the bishop and his entourage, and the imperial officials

The Thespiae Kastro's fragments of Late Antique church architecture plausibly mark the cathedral.

(p. 362b) The Thespiae Kastro: this former civic center of the Classical town was also now a significant area for industrial production

The Kastro had clearly undergone a dramatic change of role in its new military and industrial aspect, as it encloses the former agora, or civic center, of the Classical to Early Roman city. With the administration of the town, both secular and religious, still focused within it, we see the town center of old redefined in a new form of centrality.

(p. 362c) The town of Sparta appears to have had a similar kastro plus extramural domestic zone

The city of Sparta of Classical times had long relied proudly on its feared army to defend itself and had no city wall, but military and demographic weakness led it to create a full urban enceinte during the Hellenistic period. In the Late Roman era new walls were built for a much more confined sector of the city focused on the acropolis district, but rescue excavations have shown continued domestic life in the extramural lower town, suggesting that the new kastro enclosed the civic and religious administration. On the acropolis a basilica formerly believed to be Byzantine is now argued to be the Late Roman cathedral. Signs typical of urban transformation and the decline of traditional public life are the abandonment of the theater (subsequently to be filled with houses) and of a large bath complex (converted into a cemetery by the fifth century) (Zavvou et al. 2006).

We have noted that some Late Roman kastra are so small that extramural domestic settlements lie outside them, suggesting either that the fort was for temporary refuge, or that it protected the military and the civil-religious elite only. Hence additional churches beyond the kastro are not uncommon for this era. But even outside the kastro and such attached settlements, we have evidence at shrunken towns of outlying basilicas which appear to be in a rural or semi-rural situation, even if at times they were constructed within the ruins of older, more extensive residential zones. Some seem to be associated with local martyrs, marking the supposed location - often extramural cemeteries - of their execution. Similarly placed churches may also be for the mortuary cult of contemporary Christian burial areas. It is also possible that the abandoned urban zones may have seen small-scale semi-rural village occupation (Haldon 2000: 99). Corinth is a well-attested example, where there are basilican churches within the still occupied if diminished settlement; then beyond it the largely abandoned parts of the older, more extensive town; then finally the semi - and fully rural basilicas surrounding both areas (Slane and Sanders 2005).

(p. 363a) Kardulias (2005) suggests that the fort is a microcosm _ small defended communities oriented around defensive militarism and the Christian Church

In another paper Kardulias (1995) calculates that the energy investment required to construct the Hexamilion fortress was comparable to Early Roman investment in the preceding pagan festival center of Isthmia in whose ruins it was constructed. The military base, with its rural villa sustenance network and international trade links, was a military replacement for the previous Isthmian religious complex as regional focus for Northeast Corinthia.

(p. 363b) The traditional Greco-Roman cities and their associated cult complexes, with their civic or ritual architecture and infrastructure, are widely replaced by such kastra: small defended communities orientated around defensive militarism and the Christian Church

Liebeschuetz (2007) comments that for the Northern Balkans, when a town is rebuilt in the Late Roman era, or more rarely, when a new town is constructed (such as Justinianina Prima in modern Serbia), it seems that it was not designed as a traditional Greco-Roman city with a forum, civic buildings, and a large population but focused on ecclesiastical complexes, a military force, and storehouses. In modern Albania, another example is that of the hilltop site of Byllis, which during Late Roman times was a 10 ha fortified administrative and ecclesiastical center and not clearly a "town" at all in a traditional sense (Blagg 1991). A comparative presentation of urban developments in and after Late Antiquity for the Western provinces and Italy (Sami and Speed 2010) shows a comparable pattern of the survival of many Roman towns as fortified regional centers but with a transformed and less typically "Roman" plan.

(p. 363c) The so-called "Slav Ware"

A useful general discussion is given by Oikonomou-Laniado (2003) where she compares the Slav Ware found at Argos with other occurrences in Greece. Historians are more ready to follow contemporary or near-contemporary accounts than archaeologists at present in supporting an earlier date for Slavic conquest of the Greek Mainland; thus Haldon presents a map of the empire ca. AD 602 (2000: 27, map 2), in which almost all the Balkans and the non-coastal areas of Mainland Greece are indicated as "partially occupied by Slavs". For Albania, Sodini (2008) adopts the archaeological view and follows the norm in suggesting a seventh-century mass colonization by Slavs, leaving only the Adriatic coast and islands within imperial control.

(p. 363d) Late Roman cemeteries

For detailed discussion of Late Roman urban cemeteries the studies of Argos (Oikonomou-Laniado 2003) and Thessaloniki (Kourkoutidou-Nicolaidou 1997) are very informative.

(p. 364a) Figure 15.3: Marble sarcophagus from Thessaloniki

The figure, from Giuliano and Palma 1978 (plate 146), shows a masterpiece by the workshop termed the Dionysos Master, from third-century AD Thessaloniki.

(p. 364b) The long-range flows of tablewares are largely riding on the back of bulk exports of such staple (amphora-borne) foods

Gill (1988) quotes Parker as stating that, compared to the transport amphorae, other ceramics on Mediterranean shipwrecks (mostly Roman in date) rarely make up more than 20 percent of the cargo.

(p. 364c) The great expansion of Aegean amphorae in Late Roman fits a central focus of the Aegean economy on commercial crops, their target markets being interregional, especially north to Constantinople and the Balkan provinces

Significantly, an imperial official jointly administered the Balkan provinces, Cyprus, the Cyclades, and Caria (Southwestern Anatolia), linking food surpluses from the south to the needs of the Northern frontiers where Barbarian raids and invasions had driven the farmers out from the countryside (Liebeschuetz 2007).

(p. 364d) We have cast doubt on the benefits of this expansive, commercial Late Roman economy for both population levels and personal prosperity for all social classes

As Poulter comments: "However it would be wrong to assume that this wealth inevitably cascaded down to the lower orders of society. Profits were to be made by the mercantile class upon which the curiales [city council elite class] relied for the import of luxury goods and the export of local commodities _ [but] The economic position of lower social orders at least in an urban context, is almost invisible" (2007: 16). Unsurprisingly, when Eastern Mediterranean and North African tableware and amphorae were imported in the Late Roman period into post-Roman "Dark Age" Britain, it was the highest strata of society who received and traded with Mediterranean shippers (Rahtz 1995).

(p. 366) The scale of Eastern Empire Late Roman trade can be measured by its products reaching through the Barbarian states of Western Europe and into the chieftain societies of Dark Age Britain

Hints are there in our historic sources, such as that of an early seventh-century merchant ship loaded with Egyptian grain sailing to Britain and returning with tin and gold, but the excavation record is even more eloquent, arguing for targeted trade from the Eastern Mediterranean bringing exotic goods, oil, wine, and artifacts such as silver table or altar services for the Dark Age elites of the Atlantic and North Sea coastlands (Fulford 1989, Lebecq 1997).