Description: This book combines many sources, archaeological and historical, to offer a fresh and vividly detailed picture of Lombard society. It examines its people, settlements, material and spiritual culture, and its evolution from martial barbarian tribe to complex urbanized state.

The Lombards (or Longobards) were a Germanic tribe whose origins were fabled to have been in the barbarian realm of Scandinavia. After centuries of obscurity during the long period of Roman domination in Europe, the Lombards began a concerted migration southeastwards to conquer new lands in southern Europe. By the sixth century the Lombards had emerged as new and powerful protagonists in the former heartland of the Empire. Pushing across the Danube to occupy Hungary (Pannonia) in the 520s, the Lombards subsequently invaded Italy in 568-569. Here they established a strongly militarized kingdom based on the fertile north Italian plains, but also extending into central and southern Italy. The northern kingdom endured for more than two centuries, before its conquest by Charlemagne; and even after this defeat, a Lombard state continued to exist in southern Italy until the eleventh century.

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