Bonnie Effros

Walking in the Footsteps of the Romans: French Colonial Archaeology in Algeria, 1830-1900 (current research project).

This project will examine France's archaeological exploration of Algeria and Tunisia from the period of the conquest. Focusing on French interest in ancient Roman remains, the analysis will examine the consequences for scientific research of violent abuses by the French occupying army, the governor general's ability to appropriate indigenous landholdings (which would have been unimaginable in France itself), and the ineffectiveness of centralized (and local) conservation efforts, in the context of broader developments in French archaeology of the period. By grounding my analysis in my previous work on contemporary archaeological methodology and practice in metropolitan France, I will provide historical and comparative context for the objectives, practicalities, and consequences of French colonial archaeology in North Africa.

Uncovering the Germanic Past: Merovingian Archaeology in France 1830-1914, History of Archaeology Series, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

This monograph charts the establishment of national archaeology, and more specifically Merovingian archaeology, as a discipline in nineteenth-century France. This work explores various aspects of these developments, including the relationship between antiquarianism and professionalized archaeology, the impact of the burgeoning antiquities trade on the excavation of field sites, tension between center and periphery in French learned societies, the role of museums in building regional and national identity, and the effect of discoveries of alleged Germanic graves across France on the writing of French history and artistic depiction of the past in the late nineteenth century. This interdisciplinary exploration of French medievalism is crucial to an understanding and academic use of the early medieval artifacts that now populate art and archaeological museums in Europe as well as the United States.

Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 35 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
Chapter 3: "Grave Goods and the Ritual Expression of Identity," reprinted in Thomas F. X. Noble, ed. From Roman Provinces to Medieval Kingdoms (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 189-232.

This work identifies the ways in which for the past two centuries, scholars' interpretations of early medieval archaeological evidence from Gaul have typically reflected the biases and ideologies of their own time. Following a long introduction suggesting the direction of some of the trends that affected studies from the seventeenth century onward, the heart of the book applies this critique to modern studies of early medieval artifacts and the significance of the archaeological evidence for changing funerary expressions of social status and religious belief in late seventh-century Gaul. The monograph draws attention to the regular misuse of the material evidence in modern assessments of sex, gender, and ethnicity in discussion of Merovingian-period cemeteries.

Creating Community with Food and Drink in Merovingian Gaul, "The New Middle Ages" (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

Focusing on the theme of the ritual uses of nourishment in the early Middle Ages, the five essays that make up this book use written and archaeological evidence for food and drink customs in Merovingian Gaul to challenge a number of standard assumptions about the period. In addition to a discussion of ascetic nuns’ sponsorship of convivia or feasts as a form of patronage (which upends the assertion that women absent from the political hierarchy were unable to exert power and authority ove rtheir contemporaries), the monograph also sheds light on bishops' and monks' expression of masculinity through the exchange of food and drink, feasting and its role in mortuary ritual, purity and danger in early medieval food vessels, and the significance of a rare early medieval treatise advocating the health benefits of a restricted diet.

Caring for Body and Soul: Burial and the Afterlife in the Merovingian World (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002); paperback edition, 2009.

This book assesses the broad range of extant early medieval written sources to critique the understanding that the end of the custom of deposing goods such as jewelry and weaponry in graves in the late seventh century resulted from a process of the "spiritualization" of Christianity or assimilation to a more Roman tradition of burial. Instead, it suggests that changes in mortuary ritual in the seventh and eighth centuries stemmed from the early medieval clergy’s steady appropriation and thus transformation of the once familial responsibility of the burial of the deceased. The fictive representation of the dead through mortuary ritual came to rely more heavily on the recitation of Masses than the display of grave goods.