ABSTRACT
Until the 1972 publication of the excavations at Brebières (Pas-de-Calais) by Pierre Demolon, practically nothing was known about the form and character of rural settlement in Merovingian Gaul, hence the interest with which this discovery was greeted (Demolon, 1972). About 30 huts were found, dispersed along a strip of land covering c. 500 x 50 m (Fig. 9.1). Of rectangular plan, the huts measured 3-6 m long and 2-3.5 m wide and seem to have comprised wattle walls covered in daub. Their pitched roofs had been supported by two, four or six timber posts. Their bottoms, cut below the level of the external ground surface (from 0.1-1.0 m) – hence the name ‘fonds de cabanes’ or Sunken-Featured Buildings (SFBs) (Chapelot, 1980) – could have been surmounted by a boarded floor, closing off an empty cellar space. Relatively insubstantial and usually without any trace of internal floors, these huts were nonetheless identified as genuine dwellings. If some scholars raised questions about the curious contrast between these scanty constructions and the relative richness of the grave-goods found in neighbouring rural cemeteries, others, notably historians, accepted this type of settlement, seeing it as a logical consequence of the economic recession which followed the barbarian invasions (see, for example, comments by E. Will in Demolon, 1972: 7-8).
