In Dark Age Economics: a new audit, Richard Hodges reviews and enlarges upon the debate that continues since his ground-breaking Dark Age Economics: the origins of towns and trade was first published. This book pays special attention is given to new archaeological evidence for managing agrarian economies and how this shaped the evolution of the earliest medieval urban communities.

Ranging across western Europe, with an emphasis upon the role of the Church as an agent of change, the author advances a new thesis about the shift from the consumption economies of Antiquity to the emphasis on production in the Middle Ages.

Richard Hodges, OBE, is Professor and Director of the Institute of World Archaeology, University of East Anglia, UK, and Director of the Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, USA. He is the editor of this series; his publications include Dark Age Economics, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement, Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne, Goodbye to the Vikings and (as co-author) Villa to Village, all published by Bloomsbury.