Overview

Dorestad was the largest town of the Low Countries in the Carolingian era. As a riverine emporium on the northern edge of the Frankish Empire, it functioned as a European junction, connecting the Viking world with the Continent. In 2019, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden hosted its quinquennial international congress based around Dorestad, located at present-day Wijk bij Duurstede. This third edition, ‘Dorestad and its Networks’, coincided with the fiftieth birthday of finding the famous Dorestad brooch in July 1969, and with what would have been the hundredth birthday of prof.dr. Ina Isings, to whom a special session on early-medieval glass was dedicated. The Third Dorestad Congress brought together scholars from the North Sea area to debate Dorestad and its counterparts in Scandinavia, the British Isles and the Rhineland, as well as the material culture, urbanisation and infrastructure of the Early Middle Ages. The contributions in these proceedings are devoted to new research into the Vikings at Dorestad, assemblages of jewellery, playing pieces and weaponry from the town, recent excavations at other Carolingian sites in the Low Countries, and the use and trade of glassware and broadswords in this era. They show the political, economic and cultural networks of Dorestad, the only town to be called ‘vicus famosus’ in contemporary sources.

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Dr. Annemarieke Willemsen is curator of the Medieval collections at the National Museum of Antiquities (Leiden) and director of the Dorestad Congress. In Leiden, she organized the 2009 exhibition & congress on Carolingian Dorestad and the 2014 exhibition & congress on the early-medieval Netherlands. Next to books about Dorestad and the Vikings in the Netherlands, she published extensively on Roman and medieval children, toys, education, fashion & accessories. Hanneke Kik M.A. is project manager at the National Museum of Antiquities (Leiden) and secretary of the Dorestad Congress.

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