Carolingian Normandies: Shatter Zones, Small Polities, and Continuity in Maritime Neustria (c. 800–1050) Unavailable

The “continuity” of the eleventh-century duchy of Normandy with the ninth-century Frankish world is examined through the concept of a “shatter zone,” as developed in Southeast Asian anthropology and Indigenous American history and archaeology. Northern France in the ninth and tenth centuries constituted a shatter zone, an area where political and cultural fragmentation caused by violence was significant. The process associated with the shatter zone played a crucial role in the formation of the emerging Normandy, as Norman rulers forged the micropolities—fragments of the shatter zone—into a distinct political entity.