This book uses 50 years of modern archaeology to re-examine Henri Pirenne’s canonical thesis, Mohammed, Charlemagne (1937/39). It advances a new paradigm using material evidence to reinterpret the established narrative of the post-Roman creation of Europe, which is based upon written sources produced by ecclesiastical authors.

The book begins by setting out the historiographical argument and the archaeological and anthropological methods used to make sense of the material evidence. It then shows how a so-called temple society emerged in Late Antiquity and, through overweening concerns with the afterlife, set in motion not just the collapse of the Roman world but also the creation of new political forces, first in Ireland and then in emergent Anglo-Saxon England. Pivoting on events in the later 7th century in England and Frisia, it traces the subsequent evolution of the temple society in Francia and its fundamental importance to Charlemagne’s cultural and economic revolution that, through many innovations, shaped Medieval Europe. Finally, the narrative examines the immediate aftermath of the end of the temple society in the 10th and 11th centuries. Emphasis is then placed on the role of external forces, the Vikings in north-west Europe and the Arabs in the Mediterranean, as instigators of economic changes that became embedded in European town and country life after the turn of the millennium.

Ending with a compelling call for a revision of our contemporary European concerns in an increasingly nationalist era, this book is an essential read for students and scholars of medieval European history and medieval archaeology.

Richard Hodges OBE is Emeritus President of The American University of Rome. His publications include Dark Age Economics (1982/2012), The Anglo-Saxon Achievement (1989), (as co-author) Villa to Village (2003), Goodbye to the Vikings (2006), Placemaking in Mediterranean Archaeology (2016), Butrint. At the Crossroads of the Mediterranean (2025), and The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Towns (2025) He has directed excavations in England, Albania, and Italy. He has been Scientific Director of the Butrint Foundation, Director of the British School at Rome, and Williams Director of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, USA.