ABSTRACT
NO aspect of early medieval civilization has received so little attention from social and economic historians as town life. This is chiefly due to the prevailing theory that the Roman cities had entirely perished at the time of the migrations, and that even after the migrations the Germans hesitated to settle in towns. 1 On the basis of recent archæological investigations, I have, earlier in this book, demonstrated in detail the fallacies of this theory. We saw that at an early date the Germans settled in the old Roman cities themselves. Proof of this is found in particular in the cemeteries of the early German period, and in the continuity evinced by inscriptions on tombstones, e.g. in Mainz, 2 Worms, 3 and elsewhere.
