Chapter Frontiers as zones of public overinvestment: fortresses, ditches, and walls in the northern frontier of the Carolingian Empire

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the infrastructural investments made by the Franks to pacify Saxony, and to secure the control of the Elbe River territories. I will mostly use the written sources of the Carolingian era that described, in various forms, the construction of new infrastructures and the conquest of the enemies’. I will also utilize the archaeological data, so as to be able to confirm the accounts of the written sources. Through this analysis I will highlight the central authority’s constant effort to control, protect and rule the newly conquered territories of Saxony and the Elbe.