"The excavation of settlements has in recent years tranformed our understanding of north-west Europe in the early Middle Ages. We can for the first time begin to answer fundamental questions such as: what did houses look like and how were they furnished? How did villages and individual farmsteads develop? How intensive was agricultural production and how did intensification affect village communities? What role did craft production and trade play in the rural community?". "In a period for which written sources are scarce, archaeology is of central importance in understanding the 'small worlds' of early medieval communities. Helena Hamerow's extensively illustrated and accessible study offers the first overview and synthesis of the large and rapidly growing body of evidence for early medieval settlements in north-west Europe, as well as a consideration of the implications of this evidence for Anglo-Saxon England."--BOOK JACKET.