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Examining peasant (social and physical) mobility implies paying attention to many factors, amongst which the (in)existence of a Carolingian labour market is central. In many regards, boon work prevented peasant mobility, as it tied peasants to their holdings, checking their movement, to preserve, in a hereditary manner, the future of the tenure. The master wanted to foresee the quantity of labour collected by boon services performed by dependent holdings, that is to say labour performed by peasants on the master’s demesne. Such work could consist in collective ploughing, meadow mowing, cart work, and an almost infinite variety of jobs whose burden bore upon the holders of dependent peasant tenures. There were, however, alternative options for cultivating the masters’ estates. One possibility was waged labour. Its existence is minimized by Chris Wickham and Alice Rio, who argue that the contraction of economic exchanges hindered large-scale recourse to waged labour in specialized rural operations, owing to the risk involved and to the lack of commercial demand for the resulting products.1 Slave labour was another possibility, its extent depending directly on the quantity of labour collected by masters through mandatory dutie
