ABSTRACT
Although, as we have seen, large-scale military activity was fairly common, the fortification of settlements was relatively rare. Two methodological points need making at the outset. The first is that we must distinguish defended sites from defensible ones; as we shall see, although the former may be comparatively few, the latter are perhaps much more numerous than is immediately apparent. The second point, related to, and in some ways the converse of, the first, is that we should not automatically assume that the primary purpose of every walled, palisaded or bank-and-ditched line or enclosure was defensive. Some such apparent ‘fortifications’ might have been intended as markers, delineating different social or economic zones, within which different actions were possible. It has, for instance, been argued that the purpose of walls around Merovingian villae was social control, marking a point beyond which slaves would be considered runaways.1 Perhaps more plausibly, and certainly more commonly, these walls, fences or ditches could simply define the extent of a private curtis (courtyard), household or property, an area within which early medieval law generally penalised offences more seriously. Similarly, ditches, banks or walls around larger settlements may exist primarily to define the extent of such a settlement, where the settlement lay under special royal protection,2
or where certain activities where only permitted within such an enclosure.3
