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The Assembly Project (completed)

The Assembly Project (TAP) – Meeting-places in Northern Europe AD 400-1500 is an international collaborative project investigating the first systems of governance in Northern Europe.

Arkel's thing site, Uppland, Sweden.

About the project

The TAP team consists of a number of international scholars from Norway, Austria and the UK, who are carrying out a large scale study of the role of assemblies in the creation of collective identities and emergent kingdoms in Medieval Northern Europe (AD 400-1500).

The project was launched in June 2010 and finished 2013. 

Please contact the participants for access to further reading:

  • Final Report 2013
  • Annual Report 2012
  • Annual Report 2011
  • Project description 2010

Objectives

Main research question: What was the role of assemblies (things) in the creation, consolidation and maintenance of collective identities, emergent polities and kingdoms in early medieval Northern European populations and communities?

 

  • We have examined how authority was articulated in landscape terms in the medieval North by new and developing kings and kingdoms and how ideas of control and consensus were transferred and established.
  • We have created a cohesive account of the development of administrative systems within early and late medieval Britain and Europe, taking account of the impacts and effects of Norse colonisation in several regions.
  • We have assessed how assemblies were valorised in pan-European perceptions in the early modern era, and how certain viewpoints were promoted by Romanticism and then by nationalism in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Funding

The Assembly Project is funded by the HERA Joint Research Programme (www.heranet.info) which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, DASTI, ETF, FNR, FWF, HAZU, IRCHSS, MHEST, NWO, RANNIS, RCN, VR and The European Community FP7 2007-2013, under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities programme.

 
Published Oct. 25, 2012 9:53 PM - Last modified Mar. 5, 2021 8:25 AM

Participants

Detailed list of participants