Dark Age Economics

In<i> Dark Age Economics: a new audit</i> Richard Hodges reviews and enlarges upon the debate that continues since his ground-breaking <i>Dark Age Economics: the origins of towns and trade</i> was first published. This book pays special attention is given to new archaeological evidence for managing agrarian economies and how this shaped the evolution of the earliest medieval urban communities.<br/><br/>Ranging across western Europe with an emphasis upon the role of the Church as an agent of change the author advances a new thesis about the shift from the consumption economies of Antiquity to the emphasis on production in the Middle Ages.