Ok. This is brief, to get me started ... and indeed it is my first ever 'Blog'. I have been awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship to work on a project with, funnily enough, the same title as this blog - an exploration into the major changes that took place across western Europe between, say, the last half/third of the sixth century and the end of the first quarter/half of the seventh. As that makes clear, the exact date range is a bit vague, but 'around 600' remains a useful shorthand. Geographical coverage is the West, from Scandinavia down to Andalusia (I'm currently not thinking of including North Africa but I might change my mind about that) and from Ireland to the Elbe. That means roughly the same area as covered in my Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-567 (Cambridge, 2007), to which in many ways, this project is the successor. Coverage might be more even though as the 'Celtic' fringe is far better served with evidence (written and archaeological) in this period than earlier. Written sources begin to cover a wider area, too, and in more diverse forms. Indeed, that change in evidential survival is all part of the 'transformation'.
Anyway, be all that as it may, I have been finding it a bit difficult to get down to all this, so this Blog is created to try and help me get - and remain - focussed. I hope too that it might bring about some useful and helpful discussions and sharing of ideas and information. I'll cut and paste the original 'proposal' into another post later.
