 Thank you everybody, let's start and hopefully we'll cool down even though it's a packed room. Thanks for coming so early in the morning and welcome to session 559 into disciplinary approaches to early medieval transitions. On behalf of Emma, Erin and I, I'd like to thank all the speakers for coming and everybody else for coming to hear our session. It should be a very interesting day or half day of lots of different techniques, spanning archaeological science through the more traditional archaeological techniques to look at pretty much the whole of early medieval north-west Europe, and from roughly the end of the Roman period up to about 1100. So we're going to have some really interesting talks today. And I'll head over to Erin who's sharing the first part of the session. Good morning. So first up we have Miriam Kars, who is a researcher with the Portable Antiquity Scheme of the Netherlands. Thank you. Okay, well, this paper is about iron belt fittings of the 7th century, decorated with the so-called animal tooth style. And in this paper I want to argue that these objects, which are almost exclusively known from graves, can be seen as symbols of a period in transition and that this viewpoint may also apply to other objects of the Merovingian period. The transition I'm referring to is the ongoing Christianization of early medieval Europe, and I'm making my point about objects that play a part in this transition. I will first discuss how the study of the Merovingian burial evidence among which the 7th century belt fitting has contributed to the debate on the Christianization of Europe, after which I will introduce the concept of symbols of transition in relation to the 7th century belt fittings, which is further exemplified with a case study of three belt fittings from the Dutch province of Limburg. But before that, first some examples of these 7th century belt fittings. As you can see on this slide, the group consists of various iron belt mounts, ranging from back plates to belt buckles, which were originally attached to a ladder belt. Their decorative patterns are rather complex and often consist of interlacing bands in which animal elements can be found. The Merovingian burial record provides the most varied and extensive source of information for archaeologists of this period. It consists of a variety of objects next to the variety of grave cemetery features. The debate on this burial remains, however, is not yet fully connected to the historical debate on the rise of Christianity, which covers the same area and period. This has a number of reasons. The old interpretive models, very briefly, stated that the appearance of graves could indicate whether the individuals buried were pagan or Christian. It was thought that the empty graves or those with objects with straightforward Christian symbols and an east-west orientation were those of Christians and that the richly furnished graves of otherwise oriented graves were those of pagans. It has, however, become clear that graves cannot be read like this. Richly furnished graves can be found in obvious Christian environments and graves with so-called Christian characteristics can be found in cemeteries at some distance from Christian belief centers. But nonetheless, there are some seemingly obvious relations between the burial record and the expression of Christianity, such as objects with overt Christian signs, of which some examples are shown here. But interpretations other than the banal rejected direct assignment of Christian identities have not really been put forward yet. Well, to get a grip on the relation between the burial objects and Christianity, I chose to discuss the belt fittings with ornamental signs of which it is undeniable that they had a strong symbolic meaning. The animal symbolism on the 7th century belt fittings is not as directly part of the early Christian iconography as the cross is, but they did circulate in a world where Christianity found its way. On the basis of this group of objects, I want to argue that there may be other ways of connecting the Merevingian burial record to the rise of Christianity in Europe. Well, one way of making this connection is discussing these objects as signs of transition, for which a number of their specific characteristics are relevant to mention. First, this is about the 7th century belt fittings. First, their pre-burial circulation took place in a world in which Christianity, though in various degrees, was present. The animal style on these belts is dated to 58700 and occurs on numbers of other objects, not only on the belt fittings. The belt fittings with animal style, too, are considered to form a homogeneous group, spread in high numbers over large parts of Merevingian Europe. And they are also portable objects. These aspects enable a day-to-day interaction with the applied symbolic messages. In order to understand how the fittings and their symbolism worked in relation to the rise of Christianity, it is useful to focus on the processes of their production and widespread appropriation. For this purpose, I'm using these back plates of belts from the Dutch province of Limburg as a case study. Two of them were found in the cemetery underneath the Church of Saint Sifatius in Maastricht, and one was found 30 kilometers to the north of Maastricht, in a river close to the village of Heel. I chose these fittings, these three fittings, as a case study, because they seem to be identical at first sight. This is indeed true when looking at their general composition. All the plates consist of a central H-shaped figure, composed of a band-shaped body, which connects to heads of birds. The central ornaments are framed by two pairs of clothes at the edges of the fittings and by decorative friezes. But a closer inspection reveals some differences between them. There's not enough time to discuss this variability in detail, but some examples can be mentioned here shortly. With regard to the execution of the body parts, it is interesting to take a look at the clothes on the three back plates. They show a red circle around them. The clothes on the specimen from Heel are different from those on the two church specimens, and the clothes on the church plates are similar, but different in orientation as the positions of the upper toes show. With regard to the variation within the entire composition and the connections between the body parts, it can be noticed that the orientation of the composition on the church two back plate is only similar to the two other two when the plate is turned in a different position. Another interesting aspect relates to the curls behind the eyes, which are difficult to identify as a specific animal body part. It is especially this part of the composition which shows the highest degree of variability in the way it is connected to the other body parts in the three compositions. The plate from Heel shows that these curls end in long extensions, for example, which are not present on the two other back plates, and on the church two plate. There is more than one option to connect the curls to the rest of the body. With regard to the quality of the plates, it can be stated that the church one plate is of the highest quality. The lines are rather neat, the bodies show more detail, and the highest amount of silver was used on this plate. The quality of the ornamental schemes also relates to the connection between the body parts. More than one observed option for connections between body parts may indicate that the copyist of this image did not know what he was doing exactly on a very detailed level, which resulted in a product of lesser quality, or we may define it like that. Well, altogether, these examples show how a careful examination of the ornamental schemes can reveal a number of differences within a shared composition. How these noted differences can contribute to the understanding of the general production process of animal-style two belts will be discussed later on. But first, a few remarks on the special significance of the claws. Well, their significance can be illustrated with two sword-belt mounts with claws, one from Lent and one in the Netherlands, that's number four, and one from Sivedale in Italy, that's number five. The claws on these mounts are depicted as isolated animal body parts without any clear connection to a specific animal. It can be assumed that the people must have recognized these as claws and understood the symbolic references of them as isolated body parts on objects. Moreover, the portrayed claws are much alike the claws on the three belt fittings from Limburg, and these examples show that the range of individual body parts that were used in ornamental compositions were distributed over large areas, but that specific ornamental compositions may have had a regional signature. Well, on the basis of these observations, a few suggestions can be made with regard to the general organization of the production of the belt fittings and their widespread consumption in a world which saw the rise of Christianity. First, the context of their production. Since a high number of iron belt fittings with animal-style two ornaments were found in Maastricht, it seems plausible to assume that at least one workshop was active here. The oldest discovered remains of the Saint Sivatius Church in Maastricht date to the second half of the 6th century, and Maastricht was at least from that period on a center in which Christianity had a role. The workshop active in this center may therefore in one way or another have been associated with Christianity. But what about the rest of Gaul? The Christian landscape of early medieval Gaul will have mainly consisted of networked Christian cities and cloisters, and the city-based metal workshops may have functioned within this same network. The Silver Smith did not work in isolation, but was connected to a network of workshops and therefore knowledge about the proper design of animal ornaments. This network may have had a ranked constitution of well-connected city-based smiths in connection with Christianity, and less or maybe not connected smiths of the countryside. And this constitution of the network may have been reflected in the quality differences between the belt fitting as discussed earlier on. And what about the consumption side of the story? It can be stated that the fittings were widely appreciated since they are found in high numbers in graves on both rural and urban cemetery sites. The widespread adoption of the fittings is related to a number of their characteristics. First, there are portable objects, displaying signs that are more or less similar over large areas. It has become an almost universal symbolic language in 7th century gold, with which people interacted on a daily basis. They also have quite lavish appearances, for which in fact not that much material investment was required. The quantities of silver needed are limited. As are the quantities of copper alloy, which also has the advantage that it resembles gold. In this sense, the objects were accessible for many. But most important, the animal symbolism on the fittings had the capacity to refer to both old and new worldviews. Animal style 2 was not a completely new invention, since animal symbolism was already abundantly present in society for a long time as other sorts of styles. However, animal style 2 started to occur frequently on an extensive range of obvious Christian objects, such as shrines and architectural church elements. But animal style 2 also occurs on hybrid objects with both Christian and pre-Christian references. Examples of such objects are of course the famous tele from Niederdollendorf, as you can see here, but maybe also a strap end from the Alemanic region, which you can also see here, similar birds had as on the fittings from Limburg, but in combination with the text with an obvious Christian reference. It seems thus that animal style 2 became incorporated in Christian pictorial world in the late 6th and 7th century, but that it was also used in non-Christian context. This gave the belt fittings the capacity to be appropriated, experienced and used in the way one wished. They could be fully embraced as objects belonging to a Christian world, but a non-Christian or ambiguous attitude towards them was also an option, since it was possible to use the objects as an expression of a careful exploration of Christianity without dismissing all the worldviews. As such, the 7th century belt fittings from graves can be seen as symbols of transition. One was heading towards an all-over acceptance of Christianity, but the stages of this transition were experienced differently all over our early medieval goal. Objects as the belt fittings circulated in this changing world and were objects that matched with the different feelings one could have towards these changes. Well, it remains to be questioned whether other symbols of transition are also present in the burial record. The garnered disc broaches, for example, as mentioned earlier, can depict crosses or not. It may be the case that the garnered tradition was incorporated in the Christian pictorial world, which made it possible for these broaches without crosses, so those without crosses to refer to both old and new worldviews, which makes them also symbols of transition. Thank you.