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.

This chapter examines the period in which the Merovingian kings were allegedly ‘do-nothing kings’. On the whole there was less internecine fighting, but the relative stability was poorly appreciated due to a lack of ‘great’ kings, underwhelming chronicles, and (with hindsight) the rise of the family that would replace the Merovingians as kings in 751. More successful reigns such as those of Dagobert I, Theuderic III, and Childebert III do show attention to law, administration, and aristocratic interests. The fall of the Merovingians may not have seemed inevitable or even desirable until late in the wars of conquest by the Austrasian mayor Charles Martel in the 730s.

This chapter provides a broad overview of the richness and diversity of rock art in western Arnhem Land. Emphasising the cultural connectivity between rock art, history, culture, Ancestral Beings, language, and land, we introduce the cultural context for rock art creation as well as the paradox whereby an apparently conservative artistic tradition might also shed light on historical particularity and change.

Until recently, academics deemed that the pasts of Australian Indigenous people did not really count as history. But First Nations people have quite obviously left records of their experiences and have long insisted that they have history. For example, Aboriginal people have variously referred to rock art as ‘archives’. In order to comprehend Indigenous archives, this chapter makes the case for broader approaches to knowledges and conceptions of the past.

This chapter charts the nature of political power from the earliest Merovingian kings to the unification of the kingdoms under Chlothar II in 613. The period witnessed conquest and civil war, as competition for power between kings, queens, and their families transformed late Roman political structures into more fluid and responsive modes of government. It covers the key reigns of Childeric I and Clovis for establishing the power of the Merovingian dynasty through a mixture of war, legend-building, and performance. It also examines how competition between kings in subsequent generations affected how the family was defined, especially under the influence of queens Brunhild and Fredegund.

This chapter reveals how rock art sheds important light on individual lives as well as speaking more broadly to Indigenous experiences. We argue that rock art is created in social, historical contexts – and these contexts are evidenced in the art. Rock art is a fully situated historical source. Focusing on the story of artist Quilp, we demonstrate how rock art is a ‘counter-archive’ that can reveal important new understandings about Aboriginal experience, about which the colonial archive is silent.