Accompanying a landmark exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, this book examines the remarkable drawings made by Dürer as a young man from 1490 to 1495, especially those made during his journeyman years, or Wanderjahre – considered the final part of a craftsman’s training – and a second shorter trip which immediately followed and seems to have brought the artist to Italy. These trips form the framework for the book, which focuses on the young artist’s figure studies and has at its heart the Courtauld Gallery’s double-sided drawing of a Wise Virgin and Two studies of the artist’s left leg. This superbly ambitious work serves as a springboard to explore in depth the role of drawing at this stage of Dürer’s career. It allows us to address a series of crucial questions: how Dürer formed ‘his hand’, how he responded to artistic challenges presented by contemporary and earlier art (both on a stylistic and an iconographic level), how his pursuit of professional success was linked with the quest for an individual artistic identity, and how the strategy of recording his own creative achievements in drawings dovetails with his claim for a new status for the artist in his city.The scholarly and beautifully illustrated catalogue is introduced with five essays by distinguished experts. Stephanie Buck examines the documentary evidence and attempts to reconstruct the motivations and activities of Dürer’s travels as a young man. David Freedberg discusses Dürer’s obsessive observation and recording of himself in portraits and in studies of his limbs. These represent the first critical steps in the artist’s developing understanding of the body, and of the ways in which its movements could not just show emotion, but rouse the equivalent sense of torsion, tension and pathos in the bodies and minds of his viewers. Stephanie Porras looks at Dürer’s copies of drawings or prints circulating in Nuremberg workshops or acquired during the Wanderjahre, which were used as a means of seeking inspiration, of challenging himself to draw more sophisticated figures and dynamic compositions. Michael Roth asks the question of how the three strands of the art of the line – drawing, engraving and woodcut – structurally correspond in Dürer’s work and, consequently, how drawing merges with certain manual aspects of printing. A final essay presents new technical research on Dürer’s early drawings undertakencollaboratively in a number of leading collections of the artist’s work, and aims to enrich our understanding of the young Dürer’s approach to the medium of drawing.

This thought-provoking volume presents the results of the archaeological investigation of a large site in Lundenwic. A fragmentary sequence nevertheless includes possible Early Saxon activity, 7th- and 8th-century settlement features including a cookshop, a workshop for non-ferrous metalworking and debris from a smithy, and the latest radiocarbon-dated inhumation in Lundenwic (cal AD 720–950). These excavations have made important contributions to our understanding of Lundenwic, which has been enhanced by the unprecedented level of organic preservation at the site. The resulting survival of Saxon footwear, timber objects and uncharred botanical remains adds unusual detail to this publication.

In late Antiquity, archaeology demonstrates lively and far-flung exchange along the river Dniester, through current Poland to the Baltic. By the 11th century the former Barbaricum had been transformed into a string of Christian kingdoms and principalities, whose parallel histories are as conspicuous as their differences. From the legendary (if possible real) migrations of the Goths in Antiquity to the Varangian guard at the imperial court of Byzantium in the late Viking Age, trans-cultural interaction complemented important historical development. This book is about aspects of the changing interactions from late Antiquity to the High Middle Ages, from Goths to Varangians, and from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The history and archaeology of these connections have been poorly exposed and investigated in modern times. The papers presented in this volume are a selection of those presented during a series of four meetings organised 2007-2009 by the "Varangian Network", an interdisciplinary network for archaeological and historical research on relations between the Baltic and the Black Sea from late Antiquity to the medieval period.

Bosworth stands alongside Naseby and Hastings as one of the three most iconic battles ever fought on English soil. The action on 22 August 1485 brought to an end the dynastic struggle known as the Wars of the Roses and heralded the dawn of the Tudor dynasty. However, Bosworth was also the most famous lost battlefield in England. Between 2005 and 2010, the techniques of battlefield archaeology were used in a major research programme to locate the site. Bosworth 1485: A Battlefield Rediscovered is the result. Using data from historical documents, landscape archaeology, metal detecting survey, ballistics and scientific analysis, the volume explores each aspect of the investigation – from the size of the armies, their weaponry, and the battlefield terrain to exciting new evidence of the early use of artillery – in order to identify where and how the fighting took place. Bosworth 1485 provides a fascinating and intricately researched new perspective on the event which, perhaps more than any other, marked the transition between medieval and early modern England.

Religious belief was central to the lives - and deaths - of all medieval Londoners. Religion was fully integrated into the social and political order, providing the population with an understanding of their place in the world and inspiring artists, architects and craftspeople. Belief motivated progressive acts such as early forms of social provision and medical care but was also used to justify wars of conquest and the brutal repression of diversity. Archaeology sheds light on many aspects of belief: from organised religion, both Christianity and Judaism, to superstition or witchcraft; places of worship from the smallest parish churches to the great Cathedral of St Paul; tiny objects of personal devotion to entire monastic landscapes. Monasteries include communities cut off from the world, hospitals providing for London's poor or the headquarters of military religious orders behind the Crusades. Cemetery excavations reveal how Londoners responded to mortality both individually and together in the face of catastrophes such as the Black Death, while the events of the Reformation dramatically transformed both institutions and beliefs. This fully illustrated book provides an introduction to the evidence of belief from the Museum of London's archaeological excavations in the capital, with a particular focus on the programme of work, supported by English Heritage, on the sites of many of London's monasteries.

This volume is dedicated to the British Museum’s collection of early Anglo-Saxon gold coinage as well as the Anglo-Saxon and Continental silver coinage of the North Sea area, dating from the early seventh to the mid-eighth centuries. This was the coinage which circulated during the age of Bede, the Lindisfarne Gospels and Sutton Hoo, and which is widely celebrated for its historical significance and artistic accomplishment. Both these features are well illustrated in this volume by more than 850 coins, which together form one of the largest, oldest and most representative collections of this complex coinage. The last catalogue of this part of the British Museum’s collection was published in 1887 and since then the collection has more than tripled in size. This new catalogue includes comprehensive coverage of all new acquisitions, among them material from several significant hoards, as well as full details on the provenance and identification of individual coins. A major introduction sets the coins in context and reassesses their classification. New metallurgical analyses of the gold coinage and authoritative interpretation of the results, as well as a survey of the history of the collection, constitute further valuable supplements to the catalogue.

The development of Cabot Circus shopping centre presented a rare opportunity for the archaeological investigation of a large part of the Broadmead suburb of Bristol. The former presence of a Dominican Friary and later Friends’ Meeting House were already well known, and surviving buildings from both remain within a large open piazza in the west of the new development. Further elements of the friary complex, including remains of the church and two cloisters, were revealed in various archaeological interventions within the area of the former precinct, enabling a reconstruction of the precinct and its environs to be made. The project has also shed light on other aspects of the suburb’s past that were previously less well known. Borehole investigations have allowed the prehistoric environment of the River Frome valley to be characterised, with episodes of small-scale tree clearance from the surrounding slopes during the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age, and the floodplain remaining as mud flats until the development of the Broadmead suburb in the 12th century and the arrival of the Dominicans in the 13th century. River access and the presence of flowing water were important assets for the industrial medieval and later suburb, which was home to tanning, leatherworking, ironworking and cloth industries. The Dissolution saw the demolition of parts of the friary, and by the later 17th century the surviving claustral buildings were occupied by trade guilds and the Quakers had built their first Meeting House. The 18th and 19th centuries were times of enormous expansion for Bristol, when large-scale development occurred, expanding the suburb to the north and east of the former friary. These new developments included industrial premises, saw mills, cabinet works and malthouses, alongside terraces and courts of domestic dwellings. The recovery of a significant assemblage of tobacco pipe bowls and kiln wasters has enabled the development of new typology for Bristol, which should prove invaluable in dating future assemblages recovered from the city.

Excavations on the south side of Cheapside found evidence for Roman timber buildings and pits dating to the later 1st and 2nd centuries AD, and a masonry building constructed after c AD 125. The main west–east road through Londinium lay immediately north of the site. Evidence for later Roman occupation was limited by modern truncation. No medieval ground surfaces survive, but the site was reoccupied from the 10th century with at least one substantial building existing by the 13th century. Pit and well groups include late 13th- or early 14th-century vessels associated with the wine trade and early 14th-century kitchenware.

Excavations at Plantation Place provided evidence for medieval and early post-medieval occupation of an entire block in the eastern part of the City of London near the Thames waterfront. Contemporary ground surfaces and buildings did not survive, but associated pits and wells have been related by documentary and cartographic research to identified tenements in this thriving area of shops, warehouses and merchants’ residences. Important assemblages from pits and wells include vessels used in refining gold, crucibles and moulds from bronze casting, and the largest assemblage of late medieval Islamic-style glass yet found in Britain, alongside Middle Eastern ceramics.

Excavations carried out by Oxford Archaeology in advance of the building of the Oracle shopping centre revealed a long sequence of development of the Kennet floodplain at Reading. This volume reports on the substantial evidence recovered for medieval and post-medieval water management, milling at the Minster Mill and St Giles Mill, the tanning, leather working and dyeing industries, and an unusual building interpreted as the 12th- to 13th-century cookhouse of Reading Abbey. The stories of two well-known Reading sites, the Oracle Workhouse and the Yield Hall, are followed from the medieval period up to the 19th century. Substantial specialist reports include pottery, glass, leatherworking, dendrochronology and clay pipes.

This volume contains the results of four archaeological projects undertaken within the historic suburbs of Bristol. Excavations at nos 26–28 and at nos 55–60 St Thomas Street were both within the 12th-century planned suburb of Redcliffe, just to the southeast of the medieval city. Investigations at Harbourside and at Cabot House, Deanery Road, were undertaken in the medieval district of Billeswick, to the southwest of the city centre and in the vicinity of Bristol Cathedral, formerly the church of the 12th-century St Augustine’s Abbey. However, it is the general lack of evidence for significant development at these sites throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods and up to the beginning of the 18th century that provides a common theme.The scarcity of evidence for medieval and post-medieval development at the Billeswick sites, Cabot House and Harbourside, is unsurprising as both were in the ownership of the abbey or cathedral throughout this period, and were clearly of value as undeveloped land, either as parkland (as at Cabot House) or meadow (i.e. Canon’s Marsh at Harbourside). The dearth of evidence from the St Thomas Street sites in Redcliffe was more unexpected, though this appears to corroborate documentary evidence suggesting that this part of the suburb remained something of a backwater into late post-medieval times. At nos 55–60, there was little evidence for anything more substantial than simple boundaries and timber structures, perhaps used for drying cloth, until the beginning of the 18th century. At nos 26–28 there was no evidence for tenements until late into the post-medieval period and the site may well have been part of a medieval grange. The development of the first substantial buildings at both St Thomas Street sites, of new streets and terraces at Cabot House, and of the ropewalks and later industrial development of Canon’s Marsh at Harbourside, all reflect the rapid expansion and building boom Bristol enjoyed in the 18th century, largely a result of the city’s involvement in the Atlantic trade.

Southwark’s famous Bankside was long known as an entertainment area up to the 17th century. This volume provides evidence for the Barge, one of the medieval stewhouses (tavern/brothel) and the later Hope, a dual purpose building hosting animal baiting as well as play performances. The next phase in Bankside’s history was industrial and its glass and pottery products of the 17th and 18th centuries were much sought after. Evidence for their production was found on the sites. The remains of 19th-century brick buildings relate to a known iron foundry in the area.

Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas (the first book in the Viking Language Series) is a new introduction to Old Norse and Icelandic. The beginner has everything in one book: Graded lessons, reading passages, vocabulary, grammar exercises, and pronunciation. A full complement of maps, runic inscriptions and culture sections explore the civilization, legends, and myths of the Vikings. The lessons follow an innovative word frequency strategy, a method that speeds learning. Because the grammar of Modern Icelandic has changed so little from Old Norse, the learner is well on the way to mastering Modern Icelandic.

Throughout the history of Christianity, men and women have wrestled with the challenge of how to interpret, and how to follow, the Gospels. Intrinsic to this process is the concept of "reform", a recognition that changes is necessary in order to return to a more authentic Christian life. The approximately thirty-five manuscripts presented here trace this process from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries through the texts that inspired reform movements and communicated their ideas to others.

Our recent understanding of British history has been slowly unravelling thanks to new techniques such as DNA analysis, new archaeological data and reassessment of the literary evidence. There are considerable problems in understanding the early history of Britain; sources for the centuries from the first Roman invasion to 1000 AD are few and contradictory, the archaeological record complex and there is little collaboration or agreement between archaeologists, Roman and Anglo-Saxon historians. A common assumption concerning the development of the English language and, therefore British history, is that there was an invasion from northern Europe in the 5th century, the so-called Anglo-Saxon migration; a model based on the writings of Bede. However the Bedan model has become increasingly unsustainable and is on the verge of collapse. Myth and History offers a comprehensive re-assessment of the present scientific, historical, archaeological and language evidence, debunking the model of British history based on Bede, and showing how Roman texts can be used in conjunction with the other evidence to build an alternative picture. Stephen Yeates demonstrates that the evidence that has been used to construct the story of an Anglo-Saxon migration, with an incoming population replacing most, if not all, of the British population has been found wanting, that initial attempts to interpret literally the DNA evidence based on historical sources are problematic, and that the best DNA analysis of the British Isles fits the evidence into a broader European view which attempts to plot the movement of people across the Continent and which sees the major migration periods in Europe as occurring in the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. This DNA analysis is constant with the latest assessments based on language development, contemporary historical reports from the Roman period, and the analysis of archaeological data from the Iron Age and Roman period. He also argues that the Roman texts can be used to identify where the Late Roman provinces of Britain actually lay and this leads to important conclusions about the ethnicity and origins of the early British peoples. This book is a timely attempt to unravel myth from history, present a cogent platform for Anglo-Saxon studies and understand who the British people really are.