Agricultural History Review, Volume 54 Part 1 (2006), pp. 1–23

The article contributes to the continuing debate about 'the Carolingian economy'. The first part introduces the reader to documents written in some of the hugely landed Carolingian abbeys in different parts of the Carolingian Empire: the second examines the meaning of the word scara as it appears in land surveys written in the second half of the ninth century at three monastic houses, the abbeys of Werden, Weissenburg and Prüm in the Rhineland. In Werden documents the word refers to division or share of land. In Weissenburg documents it refers to assartment of newly-acquired land. In a Prüm document written later in the century, the word means both assartment and division of land, and share or cut of the raw materials and commodities that came from the land. The word identifies the period of expansion initiated by abbeys which led to significant economic growth on monastic lands with access to the Rhine network of rivers. The Appendix offers a philological study of the word. 

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