This chapter offers a survey of the principal Merovingian narrative sources. It covers the key chronicles: Gregory, the Chronicles of Fredegar, and the Liber historiae Francorum, plus their relatives. It also offers a guide to the production of hagiography in the period. Throughout the emphasis is on how we might read the stories in these sources, drawing on the competing arguments that have been put forward by scholars about the nature of the texts. Only by understanding some of the strengths and weaknesses of the common approaches to the narrative sources can readers be armed to approach the complexities of Merovingian history.

This chapter provides a survey of ecclesiastical and monastic organisations and how lay people engaged with them. There was no singular ‘Frankish Church’. There was considerable variation in what people wanted, how the liturgy was arranged, access to church councils and books, and how communities connected to Roman, English, Irish, Spanish, or Byzantine religious worlds. Communities were united by relatively compact beliefs, not least the need for imminent moral reform and penance ahead of an inevitable appearance at Judgement Day – whether it was at hand or far in the future.

This chapter analyses the structures of society through the changing faces of estate management, agricultural production, and long-distance trade. It reframes Merovingian society as one radically altered by new landholding patterns, resource utilisation, and tastes in consumption, rather than one trapped passively in post-Roman economic decline. The period still had its challenges, including poverty, pandemic, and environmental change. Our interpretation of the fragmentary and inconsistent evidence very much depends on the areas we choose to prioritise.

When the authors contacted me about writing an afterword for this volume, I was immediately excited to use the opportunity to take another glimpse into the rock art world of Australia – an area I am only peripherally involved in nowadays. It has been a while since I spent time in Gunbalanya in western Arnhem Land. With Injalak Hill as a backdrop, and a billabong out the back door, my time there was pleasurable and full of wonderment at the abundance of rock art and the community that nurtured the art and that was, in turn, nurtured by the art. It’s been much too long since I was ‘on Country’ – June 2009 was my last visit ‘up top’ to see Kojan and other friends and mates. To my Jawoyn relatives in Barunga and Beswick I am bangardi.

Academic disciplines, and especially history and archaeology, presume that a particular kind and experience of time is normal and universal. Although deeply concerned with history, rock art confounds ‘settler-time’ and the temporalities assumed by academic disciplines. This chapter considers the ‘re-appearance’ of ever-present buffalos in west Arnhem art, as well as the ever-presence of seemingly ‘disappeared’ art to reveal how the knowledge on the rocks points to alternative ways of experiencing time.

This chapter investigates the many faces of cultural production in the Merovingian kingdoms. As this is supposed to be a period of decay, it is crucial to understand the full range of evidence, including the manuscript and associated palaeographical evidence, libraries, the evidence for lay literacy and bureaucratic culture, and the visual and artistic practices that facilitated communication and display. Through these, we can determine that the Merovingian world had its vibrancy and creativity but also that changes in tastes, resources, and organisation meant that much direct evidence has been demonstrably lost.