Project

PramCV is a research project in archaeology which aims to study the early medieval peasant communities that lived in the territory of Castelo de Vide, a Portuguese village in the northern Alentejo region.

In order to establish a timeframe for our research, we determined the period of time between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the Kingdom of Portugal - 5th to 12th centuries - to which we refer when using the expression “early medieval period”.  These are more than simple symbolic milestones in the Iberian Peninsula’s history; in fact, this period is marked by a succession of political, administrative, economic and ideological transformations which had serious consequences in the evolution of the rural landscape and its communities. 

Since early medieval peasant societies would hardly produce any written documents, their story reaches us in the form of material remains hidden in todays modern landscape and archaeology plays a major role in reconstructing this rustic past.

Even though this project is being developed in a specific area, our goals must be understood at a wider scale. By sharing our results with those of similar research projects, we will actively take part in the international dialog aiming to understand early medieval rural societies in Western Europe.