Michael Lebsak | Metal of Power: The Political Economy of Iron in the Central European Younger Early Middle Ages

Institute of Classical Archaeology at CU FA invites you to a lecture by Michael Lebsak (Brno, Czech Republic) as part of the “Current Issues in Archaeology” lecture series.

In the younger Early Middle Ages (700–1000 AD), essential resources such as iron were a pivotal element within political-economic relations, shaping resource access, consumption, and distribution in a top-down perspective. This period witnessed the consolidation of political structures such as the ‘Carolingian’ or ‘Great Moravian’ realm. In such policies, the demand for iron became emblematic of both technological prosperity and social hierarchy. 
Iron, primarily extracted from local ore deposits, played a crucial role in the production of weaponry, agricultural tools, and infrastructural elements, directly affecting the socio-economic dynamics between elite and non-elite actors. 
Tackling resource-specific questions about past societies needs a multi-proxy approach. This intertwines archaeological, metallurgical, and palaeo-environmental data sets, such as obtained from anthracological, palynological and geoarchaeological studies. While the study of the technical chaîne opératoire and human-landscape interactions is nothing new in Medieval iron mining archaeology, its inclusion in a holistic political economy has been rarely tried so far. 
This talk therefore examines selected case studies from mining regions in Northern Bavaria (D) and Southern Moravia (CZ) to outline a model of iron economy and its embeddedness in political power relations during the transformative period of the younger Early Middle Ages beyond a mere technocratic fixation.