Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2015 - bob2015mime

Dorestad was an important harbour town in the middle of the present-day Netherlands, that had its hey-day in the Carolingian period, but was already an important settlement in the centuries before, with a famous 7th-century Frankish mint. In July 2014, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden hosted the second Dorestad congress, exactly five years after the first. This congress was attached to the exhibition ‘Golden Middle Ages: The Netherlands in the Merovingian World, 400-700 ad’ and brought together historians, archaeologists and linguists to discuss these ‘Dark Ages’, their burials and settlements, rituals and identities, and the position of the Low Countries in the world-wide networks of early-medieval Europe. Contributions in these congress proceedings are devoted to key themes like early-medieval identity and agency, so-called royal burials in Europe, significant find categories like garnets, coins and Merovingian glass, important new sites and finds from the Low Countries and recent work in the Carolingian ‘vicus famosus’ of Dorestad.

Dr. Annemarieke Willemsen is curator of the Medieval Department of the National Museum of Antiquities (Leiden), where she organized the 2009 exhibition & congress on Carolingian Dorestad and the 200 exhibition & congress on the early-medieval Netherlands.

Hanneke Kik m.a. is project manager at the same museum, and was secretary of the Dorestad Congress in 2009 and 2014.