The Role of Cities in the Early Medieval Economy

ABSTRACT This contribution explores the economic roles of cities in the early medieval economy, through the presentation of a range of archaeological datasets that can all be linked to urban production and/or consumption. The individual classes of evidence each highlight aspects of economic exchange that, when combined, help to flesh out a general model of the systems of exchange at work in post-Roman Iberia. These systems revolved around cities whose individual experiences varied according to local circumstances and whose participation in the wider trade networks also depended heavily on local conditions. As a supplement to the written sources of this period, the archaeological materials surveyed here contribute to an emerging picture of elite and non-elite economic activity in the sixth and seventh centuries. This in turn shapes a more nuanced understanding of the role played by cities in the transition from late Roman to post-Roman economic and political circumstances.


Introduction
Even after the collapse of the economic and political systems that had underpinned Rome's highly integrated Empire, cities continued to serve as fundamental sites of economic activity in early medieval Iberia.The economic vitalityand even the stabilityof the post-Roman kingdoms depended to a great extent on the ability of individual rulers to integrate Iberia's archipelago of cities within a framework that allowed for effective management and efficient extraction in the form of service, taxes, and/or tribute.The survival of the cities themselves in turn depended on residents' ability to adopt or maintain economic strategies appropriate to their new, relatively more independent status, along with the dissolution of Rome's pervasive economic networks.
The term "city" is subject to various interpretations, but for present purposes it is loosely equivalent to the Latin civitas, which by the early medieval period could function as an informal shorthand for any sizeable settlement. 1 It is worth noting that any attempt to characterise "the cities" of Iberia in the post-Roman context will almost certainly be frustrated by a lack of homogeneity and the uneven availability of good, published data.In addition, Iberian cities varied significantly in terms of access to resources, economic strategies, aristocratic and ecclesiastical base, and connections to the wider world.These factors and others meant that cities that shared many characteristics, such as Barcelona and Tarragona, or Córdoba and Sevilla, or Lisboa and Vigo, nevertheless had widely divergent experiences both before and during their incorporation into post-Roman kingdoms (Figure 1).
All this variation notwithstanding, the cities of early medieval Iberia remained intellectually and economically interconnected, despite the disappearance of Rome's artificially-integrating systems.One sign of that ongoing connectivity is the robust elite literary culture that produced authors such as Martin of Braga, Isidore, Braulio of Zaragoza, King Sisebut, and Julian of Toledo.To some extent, the archaeological evidence explored in this chapter is also biased toward this same echelon of society, or those local aristocrats one or two rungs down the social ladder: church buildings, marble sculpture and grave markers, metal clothing fasteners, glass objects, and the substantial wealth represented by the Visigothic gold coinage.But the approach followed here also highlights how these and other economic indicators fundamentally depended on the contributions of a working class: among these are the sourcing of raw materials for glass and metal production, the extraction of marble for reuse, and the actual construction of structures funded by the aristocracy.

An Archipelago of Cities
As a general rule, the physical appearance of early medieval cities was dramatically different from that of the ideal "classical" city, whether of the High Empire or the late Roman period. 2 While each city's evolution was dictated by local circumstances, it is nevertheless possible to trace out a broadly consistent set of outcomes: public monuments gradually went out of use, to be despoiled and/or encroached upon by private structures; large urban houses and public buildings were subdivided into smaller independent dwellings, possibly pointing to increasing intramural population numbers (and a concomitant reduction in suburban populations); cemeteries continued to spread throughout the suburbs as suburban residences went out of use, and, in a few cases, early Christian martyrial shrines and basilicas arose nearby; some towns, but not all, received bolstered defences in the form of new or augmented city walls, often built using materials taken from disused Roman public buildings and any convenient funerary monuments.In many cases, the old Roman road network remained in use, though often diminished in width due to encroachments, and surfaced rather more haphazardly than in the High Imperial period.There was also a trend in our period, possibly starting in the fifth century in certain cities, toward an increasing orientation around ecclesiastical interests and Christian buildings.
From all this, it is clear that living conditions across the settlements of the Iberian Peninsula differed qualitatively from those of the later Roman Empire.Systems that had ensured the maintenance of public infrastructurerunning water and sanitation, roads and bridges, public amenities, etc.were no longer particularly effective, due to shifting elite priorities and quite possibly a reduction in overall access to resources in the wake of Rome's collapse. 3In more general terms, the collapse of Roman authority over Hispania in the fifth century had serious economic implications for residents across the peninsula.This was due less to the loss of Roman officials and imperial administrative structures than to the concomitant fracturing of the Roman economic network, which had artificially pulled much of the late Roman world into a vast interconnected economic zone. 4Cities functioned as the essential nodes of exchange within this late Roman system, not least because the Roman system of administration was built around the classical concept of the civitas as the essential head of the basic (territorial) units of tax-collection. 5ldershot: Scholar Press, 1996); The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed.Gian Pietro Brogiolo and Bryan Ward-Perkins (Leiden: Brill, 1999 Thanks to this extensive economic network, much of the Iberian Peninsulacoastal and inlandwas tightly incorporated into late Roman trade networks, such that imported goods found their way to nearly every single area of the peninsula, including both urban and rural locations.This is most obvious from the extensive distribution patterns of imported finewares from Africa (African Red Slip -ARS) and Gaul (Dérivées des sigillées paléochrétiennes -DSP), along with Spanish finewares (Terra Sigillata Hispánica Tardía -TSHT) and occasional imitations. 6Beyond this economic integration, the peninsula was also deeply integrated artistically and intellectually into the later Roman world: decorations in the houses of the elite across the cities and the countryside include mosaics, wall paintings, and sculptures of extremely high quality, oftentimes clearly derived from classical mythology and the aristocratic tastes of the late Roman elite. 7n a sense, following the breakdown of Roman political oversight, Iberia came to comprise an archipelago of loosely independent cities more or less integrated into the contemporary political and economic structures depending on local circumstances. 8Coastal centres, which had gained so much from participation in Rome's long-distance trade networks, were forced to seek new connections, whether inland or via overseas trade.Unlike in the Roman period, however, there was not necessarily a major redistribution of urban products beyond the immediate hinterlandperhaps because elite demand in the countryside no longer spurred a deeper regional integration. 9istinct economic patterns might also emerge between cities within a given region now that the integrating effects of Roman fiscal structures had worn off.An example of this is hinted at by the different ceramic production and consumption patterns evident in north-western Iberia in the fifth through seventh centuries.Here, important coastal cities that we might expect to be tightly interconnected, such as Vila Nova de Gaia/ Porto, Braga, and Vigo, turn out to present remarkably different archaeological records in the sixth and early seventh centuries. 10In addition to having its own highly localised pottery market, Vigo enjoyed unusually consistent ties to the eastern Mediterranean and the islands of Britain, whereas the broader Atlantic seaboard trend shows a marked decline in imports from the fifth century, with North Africa remaining the primary source. 11In general, imported pottery became much less common throughout Hispania after the fifth century, and maritime activity declined substantially after the fourth century. 12This also means that the bulk of any given city's foodstuffs were produced locally or at least within ready access at the regional level, just as cities became increasingly reliant on local and regional pottery production from the fifth century onward. 13ike Vigo, which profited from its unique position in a Mediterranean-Atlantic trade network, other cities also seem to have enjoyed a privileged economic position under Visigothic control.For example, Toledo operated somewhat differently from the other cities of the Visigothic Kingdom after its establishment as the royal capital, likely in the middle of the sixth century. 14The concentration of authority and, therefore, of wealth, from the reign of Leovigild (r.568-586) or even earlier contributed to consumption patterns that differed from those of other cities, especially elsewhere in inland Hispania. 15Imported goods and other high-status products might therefore be expected to appear in Toledo in relatively high volume by comparison with other cities and towns of the Visigothic Kingdom. 16oyal preference and the concomitant concentration of Visigothic (and other) aristocrats was only one factor influencing such economic trends, however.Along with Vigo, other key commercial centres, such as Tarragona, Cartagena, Sevilla, and Lisboa, appear to have made the most of their coastal situation to secure a firm economic footing in the early medieval period. 17While there are occasional examples of wider regional supply from such port cities, this seems to have been less of a priority in the early medieval period than under the Roman Empire. 18Again, this points to a lower degree of economic integration between (coastal) cities and their wider hinterland. 19Such a shift is in line with what we might expect with the dissolution of Roman administrative structures, which had imposed a close economic and political oversight of the countryside by the individual territorial capitals. 20ithout an external impetus to maintain a high degree of regional integration, each community was left to find its own way, resulting in a wide range of urban trajectories.

Regional Responses
Alongside the influence of local characteristics and experiences, the increasing regionalism that emerged in the fifth and sixth centuries also played an important role in the varied economic participation of cities in the early medieval period.This diversity can make it especially challenging to identify broad stroke changes in the historical and literary recordsignificant changes might be experienced in one area without having a direct or indirect impact on others.The account of Hydatius, for example, should be seen as an illustration of conditions in the region under direct Suevic influence in the peninsular north-west, even if the broader social context it assumes may be relevant elsewhere in Hispania and certain areas of Gaul (and possibly North Africa). 21ithin this diversity, several regions exhibit a fair degree of internal consistency, including the north-central portion of the peninsula, with an orientation toward the Atlantic coast, the Mediterranean coastal bands of Tarraconensis and Carthaginensis, and the tightly-integrated old Roman province of Baetica, with its two major urban centres at Sevilla and Córdoba, along with a range of coastal and riparian centres.More generally, southern and coastal cities of much of Iberia retained essentially Roman urban characteristics under emiral and caliphal rule, even as northern and inland areas underwent more dramatic changes. 22For example, the northern Meseta and the inland, mountainous north-west saw the emergence of new "post-Roman" models of authority and organisation as early as the fifth century. 23This is particularly evident in the reoccupation of Iron Age fortified hilltop settlements and in the new settlement hierarchies that grew up in the vacuum of authority left by Rome's withdrawal. 24

Aspects of the Rural Economy
The loss of the centralising impetus of Roman state structures was accompanied by an increasing regionalism, but it does not necessarily follow that cities lost their essential economic role.In written accounts of the fifth century, e.g., Hydatius on Iberia or Sidonius Apollinaris on Gaul,25 cities played a central role in the construction of the post-Roman world; indeed, Hydatius'account nearly gives the impression that nobody lived anywhere except in the cities and the fortified hilltop settlements.Such sources are naturally biased toward elite urban life, so it is dangerous to read too much into their constant focus on urban events; the vast majority of post-Roman society probably lived outside the cities and towns that populate the literary sources.However, in times of stresse.g., during the extensive military movements and the construction of new authority structures in the fifth centurysome people would naturally seek refuge in the more easily-defended cities and hilltop sites. 26he opulent estates of rural Iberia's wealthy aristocrats offered a ready target for raiding parties of the Sueves and later the Visigoths, as such properties often lay some distance from the nearest sizeable settlement. 27There are occasional indications that extremely wealthy landlords might muster sufficient manpower to pose a threat to raiding parties, but such references are relatively rare; it must have been far more common for the elites of the countryside to retreat to their urban houses when the threat of an attack appeared. 28The flip side of this retreat to the cities was that cities were prime targets for groups intent on accumulating plunder.An irregular concentration of wealthy people from around the region might swell the ranks of urban defenders, but it also increased the size of the prize, given that moveable wealth was a key motivation for many raiding parties.
With the collapse of Roman fiscal structures in the fifth century, the massive rural production estates that had been responsible for the generation of most of the wealth of the later Roman period probably experienced a catastrophic decline, exacerbated by the occasional threat of localised raids and by the emergence of competitive, new, extraurban authority structures. 29Undoubtedly linked to this decline, the luxurious rural residences that epitomise late Roman Hispania generally ceased to function as opulent elite dwellings; where they survived at all, these complexes were repurposed as production and processing centres, often with signs of relatively modest domestic activity. 30In some cases, the best evidence for the ongoing occupation of these rural sites comes in the form of cemeteries imposed into formerly-residential spaces. 31Somewhat contradictorily, this rural evidence points to the continuation of agricultural production into the post-Roman period, if on a much smaller scale than in late Roman times. 32The peninsula's complex production systems designed around exportable cash-crops largely unravelled in the fifth century, but the cities remained dependent on a productive agricultural hinterlandperhaps more so due to constrained trade networksand significant agricultural production geared for the local markets must have continued across our period.

An Extra-Urban Response
The disappearance of the Roman economic network and a parallel shift in elite investment venues meant that access to imports became much more constrained, even in coastal cities.The effects will have been more pronounced still in inland cities and in the countryside, where prices must have increased precipitously after the fourth century.Even earlier, the high cost of imports to the inland regions of Hispania may well have been one of the reasons behind the emergence of Terra Sigillata Hispánica Tardía (TSHT), a fineware whose forms mimic those of production centres in Gaul and North Africa. 33TSHT is characteristic of the north-central portion of Spain, which, as has already been mentioned, is also where there was a shift toward fortified hilltop settlements (or hill forts) from the fifth century onward. 34Some of the more important such hilltop sites to (re-)emerge in the early medieval period include Navasangil, Bernardos, Castro Ventosa, and Viladonga (Figure 2). 35hese settlements were deliberately sited in remote locations, and, in many cases, conditions were hostile to traditional Roman-style agriculture: high altitude, poor or inadequate soils, insufficient sunlight, excessive rainfall, etc. 36 The shift from agriculturally-productive low-lying areas to less hospitable sites was probably spurred by other factors, such as emerging local authority structures, an increased need for defence, changing climate conditions, 37 and a newly-invigorated class of non-aristocratic, independent landowners. 38ecent work on local pottery production and consumption patterns in this region points to the formation of new local and regional economic networks, somewhat like the situation briefly outlined in coastal Gallaecia. 39These networks were already beginning to coalesce in the later Roman period: the post-Roman ceramic repertoires derive from TSHT forms.However, by the later fifth and sixth centuries, this ceramic tradition had become increasingly insular or isolated, with characteristics evident from one cluster of settlements to the next (see Figure 2, above).This regional case is perhaps unusual, in that, elsewhere in the peninsula, people came to rely almost exclusively on locally-manufactured coarsewares, with a much smaller volume of finewares appearing in the Figure 2. Map showing: 1.Several regional production zones in the north-central Meseta (dashed rectangles); 2.An urban/extra-urban production zone northeast of Toledo (rectangle); 3. A possible itinerant marble workshop system in the south-east (oval) (north-central production zones after Tejerizo-García, "'Estampas del pasado'"; Tejerizo-García, "Cerámicas altomedievales en contextos rurales"; urban/extra-urban production zone after Vigil-Escalera Guirado, "La producción y el consumo de cerâmica"; itinerant marble workshop region after Villa del Castillo, Talleres de escultura cristiana, 83-92). 39 archaeological record after the fifth century. 40In the southern peninsula, there was significant regional distribution of the so-called Terra Sigillata Hispánica Tardía Meridional (TSHTM) produced in Baetica, likely continuing through much of the sixth century, but there is very little evidence for peninsular fineware production elsewhere after the fifth century. 41Another regional production and consumption pattern has also been proposed, albeit tentatively, further south in the Meseta in the sixth century, extending from Toledo north-east to Complutum (Alcalá de Henares), and including several sites now on the outskirts of Madrid. 42In this case, the sixth-century evidence shows a marked contrast between pottery manufacturing techniques in the city (higher frequency of wheel-made vessels) when compared with the countryside (largely handmade).Alfonso Vigil-Escalera Guirado has suggested specialist potters travelled to rural areas from Toledo to produce certain vessel types on a seasonal or itinerant basis.
Such regional production and exchange systems illustrate an economic model built around regional and local exchange.In the northern example, the clustering of small settlements within a regional framework may have allowed communities to benefit from some of the characteristics of the city-and-hinterland system without relying on the presence of an established urban elite and its concomitant urban/state authority structures.This should not be taken to imply that other types of authority were not constructed and enforced in this less nucleated system, but rather that the scale and perhaps the nature of authority was substantially different from earlier periods and possibly from contemporaneous urbanised areas. 43

Urban Production and Consumption
Along with the ceramics, other bodies of evidence help to flesh out the extent and nature of economic activity in the early medieval period.Several of these share an apparent urban production model and a close tie to the emergence of new forms of elite selfexpression.For example, the most famous class of Visigothic metalwork, garment fasteners (buckles/brooches), seems to have been produced in Sevilla and Toledo; however, the final products are found mainly in rural deposition contexts, i.e. rural cemeteries not directly associated with substantial settlements.Closely related to these bronze-and-glass dress items are two further classes of evidence: post-Roman glass and coins. 44Newly-manufactured glass vessels, even from recycled raw materials, represent substantial wealth, and a handful of urban production centres have been identified, including the Plaza de la Encarnación site in Sevilla. 45Even in isolation, the massive scale of the operation documented in Sevilla implies the site fed demand beyond the local level.
As appears to have been the case with metal and glass objects, extravagant marble architectural decorations were also produced in a few key citiesmost prominent among them Mérida, likely owing to the ready availability of Roman marble blocks for reuseand disseminated widely across the cities and rural churches of the peninsula.The impetus for such exchange came from the burgeoning economic power of the Christian community and wealthy local aristocratic groups. 46

Christian Churches and the Marble Trade
The Christian Church served as a major economic generator in the sixth and seventh centuries, and in certain cities the vibrancy of the Christian community is on full display through the archaeological record.For example, Mértola, a small riparian settlement in the Roman period, seems to have enjoyed a newfound commercial significance during the early medieval period.This was almost certainly due to the city's role as a commercial intermediary between the Mediterranean and the extremely wealthy inland cities of southern Lusitania, among them Beja (Pax Iulia), Évora (Ebora), and Mérida. 47Alongside these commercial connections, Mértola's Christian community came to exhibit a degree of wealth that suggests the city became an independent endpoint in regional and long-distance trade.The city's archaeological record offers both an abundance of Christian architecture and an unusually large array of funerary epigraphy from this period, demonstrating extensive commercial and intellectual/religious/artistic connections with the Mediterranean world, and with North Africa in particular. 48or the early medieval period, a useful indicator of the close relationship between church communities in Hispania and North Africa is the decorative style of marble architectural elements such as capitals, rood screens, altars, pilasters, and other objects used to embellish churches and associated buildings. 49Evidence from across the Iberian Peninsula points to a flourishing industry centred on the production of bespoke marble decorations, often reworked from Roman marble architectural pieces, for incorporation into (mainly, but not exclusively) Christian buildings (Figure 3). 50On the one hand, this highlights the ongoing intellectual connections between Iberian Christians and Byzantium. 51But the interconnectedness of artistic styles in use at different churches throughout early medieval Iberia also serves as an important reminder of the extent of physical and intellectual exchange between cities within Hispania.
There was a thriving trade in marble (and other stone) spolia in Rome and other important urban centres in Late Antiquity. 53As economic conditions came under  52 . 50María Cruz Villalón, Mérida visigoda: La escultura arquitectónica y litúrgica (Badajoz: Diputación Provincial de Badajoz,  1985); Alejandro Villa del Castillo, Talleres de escultura cristiana en la Península Ibérica (siglos VI-X), volumes I-II.(Oxford: BAR, 2021). 51For some early pieces see, e.g., the niche in Figure 3 strain and public monuments were no longer used or valued in the same ways as in earlier periods, one practical solution was to reuse components of the expansive and well-built Roman period structures, many of which stood at or near the centre of their respective cities.Even in the later Roman period, reused materials frequently made their way into the cemeteries, where smooth stone slabs could be repurposed as epigraphic tombstones.More robust building materialsgranite or tufa blocks from the entertainment facilities, for examplewere targeted for use in Late Antique city walls.The latter reuse might be envisioned as a publicly-financed or at least sanctioned activity, for the greater good of the community. 54However, it is less clear how reuse of materials from old public buildings in the cemeteries might have fallen under official oversight, and in many cases spoliation was undertaken as a commercial enterprise, as is clearly attested in Rome, for example. 55epurposed materials continued to feature in cemeteries and in private construction, but the most prominent reuse contexts were city walls and the church setting, including basilicas, monasteries, and other meeting facilities. 56In all these cases, stones were typically reworked before employment in their new setting.The more elaborate decorative marble pieces point to the existence of specialists working in dedicated workshops.Some of the most striking examples come from Mérida, whose extensive Roman public monuments had been decorated comprehensively with marble quarried only a short distance away at Estremoz and Borba (Portugal). 57n the later Roman period, Mérida's marble workshop(s) had supplied decorated pieces to other parts of the Iberian Peninsula. 58The large number of locally-produced pieces and their distribution across the territory around Mérida illustrate amply the importance of such sculptural work to the Christian community, despite (or perhaps alongside) the enormous expense and high levels of specialisation required to remove the stones from their original location, carve them for their new context, and then set them in place. 59Materials, influences, and possibly even artists/artisans made their way from Mérida to other peninsular cities, including Toledo, Sevilla, and Córdoba. 60Recent research highlights the emergence in the seventh century of smaller local workshops, which still exhibit connections within the Peninsula and with the wider Mediterranean world.A decentralised or itinerant production model has been proposed for a group of sites in the south-eastern peninsula, due to the close affinities between pieces across the region. 61This model may have developed due to a temporary demand for new Christian architecture across a group of communities that lacked the resources to justify a permanent local workshop.This region fell under more direct Byzantine influence than most of Hispania for a time, but there are still clear stylistic connections to contemporary peninsular sculptural workshops, so the impetus behind the regional workshop model cannot have been purely external.
Given the extensive use of marble in ecclesiastical settings, we may reasonably question the strictly "economic" significance of this sort of production.It is unlikely to have been run as a private, for-profit, commercial enterprise involving producers and consumers.On the other hand, even in an essentially closed-loop exchange system, economic considerations will still have been crucial to the production and deployment of these decorative pieces.Here we should remember that "The Church" as a vague, impersonal entity, did not have any real wealth that could be leveraged in this way.Rather, individual (local) churches and their membersclergy, laypeople, etc.will have had to front up the costs of what was certainly an expensive and highly specialised process. 62hat little firm evidence we have on the source of funding for new buildings and renovations comes from inscriptions, which highlight a reliance on donations from individuals, often church officials ostensibly acting in a private capacity. 63This sort of ingroup patronage blurred the line between church leaders, among them bishops, abbots, and abbesses, acting in an official capacity, and their private benefactions.It seems likely that, just as in the Roman period, such community leaders were keen to highlight their supervisory role in new construction or renovation while downplaying or completely ignoring the specific source of funding, which was likely public or institutional in many cases. 64here is little enough information on the precise source of funds for ecclesiastical building, but there is still less evidence for how the builders involved in the process acquired their materials.If we may imagine early medieval marble workshops working along the lines of the late Roman model, then access to the raw materialslargely disused Roman monumental structuresmay have been leased or sold to an individual or an entity by the owner. 65Materials were then handed over to the workshops for preparation for their new application.It is plausible that at least some such workshops had come under local ecclesiastical oversight by the later sixth century, not least because the local church, under the bishop's management, was the largest single consumer of the final product.3 Utrero Agudo and Moreno Martín, "Evergetism". 64Ibid., 99. 65 The city would theoretically have been the owner, but it is also possible that, by the later fifth or sixth century, some form of private ownership was imposed, especially given the dwindling evidence for a formal, functional urban administration.
materials.While the model posited here assumes a primary ecclesiastical role in nearly every aspect of this production process, the early medieval marble repurposing system came to benefit the wider community and not just the local church, as can be seen from the proliferation of marble grave markers for Christians and non-Christians alike. 66his must point to at least some degree of commercialisation of the output of marble workshops.The entire marble workshop system proposed here could be operated under the umbrella of local episcopal control.This would make sense given the employment of marble mainly in Christian contexts, and also given that many local church communities came to be very wealthy in the sixth century.The fact that there is very little new marble sculpture from the early medieval domestic setting seems to align with this interpretation, though other explanations are also possible.For example, the lack of marble in the domestic setting could be due to extremely high costs, gaps in the archaeological record, or restrictions on the use of certain types of building material.If, as has sometimes been posited, aspects of the urban administration survived into the sixth century to manage the rather orderly conversion of public monuments and materials for private use, then it is possible that the church worked with local officials to ensure that the best materials were reserved for use in the cities' new Christian architecture.67

Cities and Administration
Alongside the Christian Church, the other great power of early medieval Hispania was the Visigothic Kingdom, which, like the Church, adopted aspects of the old Roman administration as it sought to impose its authority in the sixth century. 68ne aspect that the Visigoths sought to exploit was the Roman use of cities as administrative heads of their territory, appointing counts (comites) and other royal officials in order to look after the interests of the king, including perhaps the collection of taxes/tribute.69Indeed, cities were such a fundamental aspect of royal administration and state propaganda that the kings created several new ones in the sixth and seventh centuries, the most famous of which is Recopolis. 70xcavations on the site identified as Recopolis have revealed a large acropolis over a sprawling walled city, and included among the structures on the acropolis are an ecclesiastical complex and a massive building (c.140 × 13 m) sometimes referred to as a "palatine structure" (Figure 4). 71While none of the other royal foundations attested in the sources offers relevant archaeological remains, two roughly contemporaneous new cities with similar "palatine" features, including an episcopal complex and possible storage facilities or garrisons (both of which can be linked to state administration), have been uncovered: El Tolmo de Minateda 72 in the southeast and Falperra, on the outskirts of Braga. 73gure 4. Warehouse/garrison structure in the palatine complex at Recopolis (adapted from Lauro Olmo-Enciso, "Recópolis: una ciudad en una época de transformaciones", in Recópolis y la ciudad en la época visigoda [Zona Arqueológica, IX] (Alcalá de Henares: Museo Arqueológico Regional, 2008), pp.40-62, figure 3).
The acropolis features in a city like Recopolis illustrate the king's priorities in the late sixth century, affirming the integration of church and state resources in a way that is also reflected at other cities. 74 This agrees with other evidence, such as coins and law codes, that the Visigoths relied on cities as a key site of fiscal interaction with their subjects, mediated by appointed royal officials and, at least through the sixth century, in collaboration with members of the local elite class. 75While the exact mechanisms of Visigothic taxation are still debated, it is clear that the massive fiscal apparatus of the later Roman period was not maintained.This may point to a higher degree of involvement by members of the local elite, reducing the need for fiscal officials, but it was also much cheaper to run the Visigothic kingdom than the late Roman Empire, or even just the Spanish Diocese. 76The largest single expense of the Roman system had been the army, and after that the provision of food to the capitalsneither of these enormous burdens was carried over into the post-Roman setting.The Visigoths did have a substantial military body, but this does not seem to have translated directly over to a professional standing army beyond the palatine guard.The state's primary expenses, then, would have centred on the palace and its immediate needs.
In the first century or so of Visigothic expansion, palace expenses were perhaps recouped through raiding parties and the regular exaction of tribute from key cities.But as more consistent hegemony was imposed late in the sixth century, more regular streams of income were needed both to feed the palace and also for royal giftswhether to individuals or to church communities, as appears to have been the case on occasion.The emergence of an official royal gold coinage in the name (and image) of the king dates to this phase of consolidation, both to streamline fiscal processes and as a propagandistic response to the Byzantine imperial presence in the southeast. 77Leovigild's campaigns in the 570s and early 580s brought most of the peninsula under Visigothic control, leaving only a small portion of the Byzantine province of Spania outside the kingdom, 78 and it is not a coincidence that the overtly-independent Visigothic gold coinage appeared during his reign. 79ities of the Visigothic kingdom were a fundamental point of fiscal interaction, where agricultural surpluses could be collected and converted into (gold) currency by the king or others acting under his authority.It has become increasingly clear in recent years that the cities were also key sites for lower-level commercial activity across all sectors of 73 Falperra: Mário Jorge Barroca, Andreia Arezes, and Rui Morais, "A basílica paleocristã e o edifício palatino de Sta.Marta das Cortiças: As escavações de F. Russell Cortez e de J. J. Rigaud de Sousa", Arqueologia Medieval 14 (2018): 129-48. 74Javier Arce, "The Late Antique City in Spania: Toledo and Recópolis", in Power of Cities, ed.Panzram, pp.84-104, esp.94-101. 75Arce Martínez, "Late Antique City", 100; Eisenberg and Tedesco, "Seeing the Churches"; Osland, "Tribute and Coinage". 76The dioecesis Hispaniarum had included the entire Iberian Peninsula along with a strip of North Africa that frequently housed a significant military garrison.society.Contemporary excavation techniques have confirmed that late Roman copperalloy coins circulated in large numbers alongside Visigothic and Byzantine gold and silver currency. 80Early medieval issues in copper-alloy and in silver are also increasingly recognised in excavations, though still relatively scarce and also not particularly well published. 81As a general trend, the numismatic evidence highlights that the volume of production, and probably also of exchange, underwent a dramatic reduction after the fourth century; even so, the ongoing use of Roman copper-alloy coins and the introduction of punctual new low-denomination coinages also confirms ongoing small-scale economic transactions in the cities of early medieval Iberia.

Luxury Goods and Urban Production
After the disintegration of Roman economic networks, many of the objects of daily life could still be produced relatively easily anywhere that raw materials were available (wooden and pottery objects are two obvious examples).However, certain items, such as coins and other metal objects, required a much higher degree of technical and technological specialisation alongside raw materials whose supply was much more constrained.The production of a new gold coinage, for example, depended on a supply of gold from existing gold coins that could be melted down and re-struck and/or newly-mined gold. 82imilarly, metal clothing fasteners -fibulas (brooches) and buckleswere also highly prized among a wealthy subset of early medieval Iberians (Figure 5).These are such characteristic funerary deposits in certain cemeteries of the northern Meseta and, later, other areas of Hispania, that their presence has sometimes been used to support claims of Visigothic ethnic identity or, more recently, the construction of new modes of elite self-expression. 83Whatever their intended significance within their original context, it is clear that these objects have definite predecessors in the late Roman (military) context and that certain classes of clasps have unambiguous connections to similar objects of personal adornment from the Byzantine world. 84Their existence in substantial numbers, even if not in a majority of the graves within a given cemetery, points to a set of highly skilled artisans with access to the requisite raw materials (iron, copper, tin/zinc, and glass, in many cases) along with the specialised tools and equipment needed for their production. 85This in turn points to the existence of a complex infrastructure of production, even if on a relatively small scale compared with things like arms and armour, which would have been needed in considerably larger volumes and also required a high degree of specialisation.
The inclusion of glass in many of the more elaborate buckles (often referred to as cloisonné-style decoration) also attests to an extensive trade network and highly specialised craftspeople, most of whom were probably based in the coastal cities of the peninsula. 86lass production required either the recycling of large volumes of discarded glass items or the procurement of raw materials that were not readily accessible within the Iberian Peninsula.Only a small number of glass production sites have been identified in the Visigothic kingdom, 87 but nearly all are located in towns and cities, where the raw and recycled materials for production were more readily accessible and where the bulk of the consumer market was probably located. 88Most of the glass vessels made in the  sixth and seventh centuries were produced from (apparently) recycled glass, giving them a characteristic hue, often greenish or amber/brown. 89By contrast, the decorative metal and glass buckles frequently incorporate coloured glass that may have been custom-made or reshaped from earlier glass objects set apart for this specific purpose.In either case, this mode of decoration makes it clear that coloured glass was more highly prized than the glass resulting from the recycling process, whether purely because of its colour range or because of its (perceived) higher value.These last two sectionslooking at glass and metal objectsillustrate how the early medieval economy relied heavily on the interconnectedness of a network of cities involved in both production and consumption.The acquisition of luxury goods and raw materials from abroad seems to have been focused at a few key cities, many of them coastal or at least linked directly to coastal exchange networks. 90Imports were then redistributed at the local or regional level or converted into final products for wider distribution.The resulting objects were deployed by elites across much of the peninsula, and the frequent appearance of both decorative buckles and the occasional glass vessel in rural contexts emphasises the integration of (certain) rural areas within a wider network that was still, apparently, dominated by the cities, even as it had been in the later Roman period. 91

Conclusion
The collapse of Roman authority in the course of the fifth century saw the concomitant disruption of large-scale economic exchange that had long been underpinned by state-subsidised trade.For the Iberian Peninsula, this meant a rapid decline in the volume of imports, illustrated most obviously through a dramatic reduction in imported red-slip pottery at both coastal and inland sites.It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the final decades of the fifth century and the opening of the sixth saw a major economic depression.This dire state of affairs makes it all the more surprising that the archaeological evidence shows a significant upswing in economic conditions in the sixth and seventh centuries.This rebound is especially pronounced in the cities, and it may be that the countryside of early medieval Iberia bore the brunt of the collapse of Roman economic structures.
Much of the evidence surveyed in this contribution points to the ongoing success of urban aristocratic classes, who were able to adapt their existing advantages to fit the new political and economic realities.Whether they recognised it or not, their position as intermediaries between the king's representatives and the local community depended both on their legitimacy in the eyes of locals and on the economic stability of local production.One key means of bolstering their legitimacy was through patronage of the local church, e.g., buildings, renovations, and bequests.Through such actions, the wealthy class, who now represented the post-Roman supralocal authority, could show that they still cared for the local community and represented their interests, facilitating the less pleasant expressions of the new power structures, such as tribute, taxes, and military support.
These archaeological case studies show that the cities retained a key role as the essential point of confluence of the three great authorities of the timekings, aristocrats, and church.Aristocrats mediated kings' interactions with urban and rural locals, and the church mediated aristocrats' interactions with the wider populace.All of these interactions could be accompanied by an array of power dynamics and, as has been shown through a range of archaeological datasets, economic import.It is true that the economic web of early medieval Iberia was much less complex than under the Roman Empire.But even in emblematic cases, such as the consumption of imported finewares, local circumstances had a crucial role to play.Some coastal cities continued to import such objects right down through the end of production, whereas others shifted their attention elsewhere.And all of the cities, or nearly all of them, continued to be integrated into a peninsula-wide network that saw the exchange of raw materials, luxury goods, and ideas, resulting in a shared cultural koine that stretched across wide swathes of early medieval Iberia.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Map of Iberia including sites mentioned in the text (Daniel Osland).
Maintenance/operations was one of three or four legitimate destinations of church income, and local churches certainly came to manage extensive property portfolios.See Ian Wood, The Christian Economy of the Early Medieval West: Towards a Temple Society (Binghamton, NY: Punctum Books, 2022), pp.53-58; María de los Ángeles Utrero Agudo and Francisco José Moreno Martín, "Evergetism among the Bishops of Hispania between the Sixth and Seventh Centuries: A Dialogue between Archaeological and Documentary Sources", Journal of Early Christian Studies 23/1 (2015): 97-131.The question of property and agency is explored in Pablo de la Cruz Díaz Martínez, "Iglesia propia y gran propiedad en la autobio- grafía de Valerio del Bierzo", in Actas I Congreso Astorga Romana, volume I (Astorga: Ayuntamiento de Astorga, 1986), pp.297-303.