GALLUCCI LAURA

Gender, Transformation, and Social Competition in the Merovingian Kingdom of Austrasia (5th–8th Century AD): A Reinterpretation through Archaeo-Anthropological Analysis of Funerary Contexts and Practices

PhD candidate: Laura Gallucci

Supervision: Elisabetta Interdonato (Université de Lorraine), Sonia Antonelli (Università di Chieti-Pescara), Sylvie Joye (Université Paris 1 - Panthéon-Sorbonne)

This PhD project analyses the social structure of Merovingian society, particularly in the territory of Metz, capital of the Kingdom of Austrasia, through the lens of gender, using archaeological and anthropological data from funerary contexts. It explores the codified, repeated practices and gestures through which funerary performance expresses the deceased’s gender identity, and how this relates to biological sex, age, and health status (with the contribution, where possible, of DNA and isotopic analyses). The research further examines how gender identity coexists, in funerary contexts, with the expression of ethnic, cultural, and social identities by the families and groups to which the deceased belonged. Material and written sources are analysed synergistically, alongside a historiographical investigation of normative, hagiographic, epistolary, historical, and literary production of the period and immediately after. The project ultimately proposes a reinterpretation — through funerary archaeology and gender — of early medieval experience, relationships, power, and social conflict.