In this third volume deriving from the excavations of the Viking town of Kaupang of 2000-2003, a range of artefacts is presented along with a discussion of the town's inhabitants: their origins, activities and trading connexions. The main categories of artefact are metal jewellery and ornaments, gemstones, vessel glass, pottery, finds of soapstone, whetstones and textile-production equipment. The artefacts are described and dated, and their areas of origin discussed. The volume is lavishly illustrated. An exceptional wealth and diversity of artefacts distinguishes sites such as Kaupang from all other types of site in the Viking World. Above all, they reflect the fact that a large population of some 400-600 people lived closely together in the town, engaged in a comprehensive range of production and trade. The stratigraphically distinct layers from the first half of the 9th century allow us to put precise dates to the finds, and to the buildings and evidence of activities associated with them.

This final report describes the study of an exceptionally well-preserved Iron Age building discovered in northern Burkina Faso, West Africa. The site of Oursi hu-beero, meaning "the big house of Oursi" in the locally spoken Songhay language, was excavated in 2000 and 2001 by a scientific team from the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Ouagadougou. It is situated in the middle of a group of settlement mounds, nearby the modern village of Oursi. In the year 2000, deep erosion gullies were threatening the architectural remains on the surface, which were provisionally dated to the 10th century AD. Scholars from both universities saw the importance of this site and undertook immediate action. But even they were not prepared for what they uncovered under only one metre of destruction debris. The rich diversity of incredible finds in the 25 different rooms rendered their exposure of enormous importance for the archaeology and history of Burkina Faso. Complete storage jars, metal equipment, wooden furniture, rope and textile fragments, grinding stones and charred botanical remains are only a fraction of the total assemblage of finds. Although we are dealing with the results of a single occupation phase and from one building only, the density of finds, the preservation of the architecture and the absence of later disturbances add considerably to our understanding of daily life in this part of West Africa. Up to now the limited contextual information about life in villages and towns prior to the historical periods has promoted divergent and weakly argued interpretations. This volume breaks open new grounds of investigation and calls for further study. Additionally, the editors hope that this report will stimulate and encourage the discussion between historians and archaeologists of the fascinating West African past. The current volume presents an introduction to the expedition, an analysis of the site formation processes, the presentation of the architectural features, in-depth studies of the findings and a lively account of the heritage management project that resulted in an on-site museum. Nine authors contributed to this rich and multifaceted final report. The account of the construction, intensive use, violent destruction and subsequent rediscovery of the building is the enthralling subject of this volume, which is richly illustrated with numerous coloured drawings, photographs, maps and reconstruction drawings. It melds archaeological, historical and environmental data into a thrilling story. A story that reads like a new Crime Scene Investigation episode but happens to have been a real-life tragedy in the African Sahel almost 1,000 years ago.

Excavations in 2006-8 by MOLA on the site of St Giles Court, on the north side of St Giles High Street, Camden, illustrate the development of this London suburb from the medieval period to the early 20th century. Located opposite the parish church of the former medieval leper hospital of St Giles-in-the-Fields, the site was open ground and gardens until the mid-16th century when residential houses were built along the High Street. St Giles was at the heart of London suburban expansion by the mid-17th century. At this time it was a relatively prosperous district, with houses lining the main streets and businesses developing behind, including the Eagle and Child and Hampshire Hog inns. The numerous objects recovered indicate a varied standard of living among the inhabitants. By the late 18th century the reputation of the St Giles area and its housing had declined and the site lay within the southern core of the area known as the "Rookery" - a notorious late 18th- and 19th-century slum. However, this study reveals that the area's image may not be entirely matched by reality: it found evidence of contrasting lifestyles, households and businesses in this period, including a prosperous family brewery, before the area eventually lost its residential character and became almost purely commercial.

Southampton was one of England's leading medieval ports, with its trade in commodities such as wine, wool and cloth making it among the most prosperous and cosmopolitan towns in the country during the 13th and 15th centuries. From the late Saxon period, the heart of the city lay between two streets, English Street and French Street, an area known as the 'French Quarter'. A major new investigation of this area revealed an impressive series of medieval buildings with vaulted cellars, containing rare and exotic finds. The most significant building, Polymond's Hall, was home to notable residents such as the Venetian Consul in the 15th century and poet and the hymn writer Isaac Watts in the 18th century. This book uses new evidence from the extensive excavations, along with in-depth analysis of the documentary records, to revisit many ongoing debates on the origins and development of Southampton. It shows how the medieval tenements evolved from late Saxon urban estates, and how the dynamics of international trade and diplomacy shaped the changing fortunes of the city.

From February 2003 to March 2005, Oxford Archaeology (OA) carried out a programme of archaeological work in King's Lynn comprising evaluation, strip and map, excavation and watching brief integrated with the redevelopment of the Vancouver Centre and the construction of the Clough Lane multi-storey car park. The work was carried out on behalf of Alfred McAlpine Capital Projects. Despite extensive modern construction, archaeological features, structures and deposits of medieval date (12th-15th centuries) were recorded along the existing frontages of Broad Street and New Conduit Street. Archaeological deposits, building foundations and yard surfaces of late medieval/post-medieval date (15th and 16th-18th centuries) were recorded in localised areas in the car parks to the rear of Sainsburys, the rear of Broad Street and to the south west of New Conduit Street. Piezometers were installed in order to carry out a two-year monitoring programme on the physical and chemical effects of the development's piled construction on the underlying, and otherwise unexposed, reclaimed marine and estuarine sediments. Evaluation of the Clough Lane car park site revealed an intact marine sediment sequence underlying all of the development area as well as localised medieval structures and features.

St Peter's, Barton-upon-Humber, is a redundant medieval church in the care of English Heritage. As a result of a major programme of research carried out between 1978 and 2007, it is now the most intensively studied parish church in the UK. Excavations between 1978 and 1984 investigated most of the interior of the building, as well as a swathe of churchyard around its exterior. At the same time, a stone-by-stone record and detailed archaeological study of the fabric and furnishings of the church was undertaken, continuing down to 2007. The twin aims of the project were to understand the architectural history and setting of this complex, multi-period building (Volume 1, Parts 1 and 2) and to recover a substantial sample of the population for palaeopathological study (Volume 2). An extensive programme of historical and topographical research also took place in order to set the archaeological evidence firmly in context. The nearby substantial church of St Mary, which was once a chapel dependent on St Peter's, has also been studied, as have the furnishings, fittings and funerary monuments in both buildings. The topography of the small market town and port of Barton has been researched and its Saxon and Norman defensive earthworks have been traced. All aspects of settlement, from the Roman period onwards, have been studied and the vicissitudes of the Christian community in this typical English country town reconstructed through the history, archaeology and architecture of its two magnificent churches.

The inscription from Mesas do Castelinho, south Portugal, was discovered in September 2008. With 82 readable signs it is now the longest of the corpus of 95 Tartessian inscriptions. These texts survive from the Early Iron Age in the south-western Iberian Peninsula, the earliest writing from Atlantic Europe. By recombining word roots, prefixes and endings previously attested, the new inscription permits a major breakthrough with the language, confirming word divisions and contributing to the critical mass of evidence. It is now possible to take the case for Tartessian as an Indo-European and specifically Celtic language a step further, to ask what sort of Celtic language Tartessian was and how its syntax and sound system compares with those of Celtiberian, Gaulish, Old Irish and Welsh.

The abbey of St Mary Graces in East Smithfield, London, was excavated in 1983-8 as part of the Royal Mint site. Founded in 1350 by Edward III and suppressed in 1539, it was the only new Cistercian house in the 14th century and the last founded in England before the Dissolution. It was also the only Cistercian abbey established in an urban setting and was built in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death of 1348-50 on the site of one of two emergency burial grounds created in London to cope with that epidemic. The excavations recorded approximately three-quarters of the abbey ground plan. Elements of the church were uncovered, including much of the presbytery, part of the nave and several chapels, together with 131 burials of both laity and ecclesiastics. Also recorded were parts of the chapter house, cloisters, refectory, infirmary and kitchen, as well as two external cemeteries. While the ground plan included elements that are paralleled in earlier Cistercian houses, overall, the abbey's layout was far closer to that of contemporary 14th-century houses, particularly those of the friars. The work reported here represents the large-scale excavation and post-excavation analysis of a singular, relatively short-lived, later medieval Cistercian house and is of considerable importance to medieval archaeology and specifically to Cistercian studies.

This volume examines conceptions, ideas and habits connected with children in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, focusing on the "dark sides of childhood" in the pre-modern world. The authors investigate the long-term attitudes of people, as well as ruptures in habits and customs. The book is divided into three parts. "Unwanted" deals with parents who were unable to bring up their baby and handed it over to other people or the cruel whims of destiny. "Disabled" addresses what we would label as children's illnesses since disability was a concept largely unknown to ancient people. "Nearly Lost" examines demons, viewed as destructive forces with the ability to destroy children or young people, sometimes by literally sucking their lives away. The articles are written by an international team of specialists from Belgium, Finland, Italy and the United States and were presented at conferences organised by the research project "Religion and Childhood. Socialisation from the Roman Empire to Christian World", funded by the Academy of Finland (2009-2012, directed by Dr. Katariina Mustakallio), at the University of Tampere, Finland.

The Bayeux Tapestry, perhaps the most famous, yet enigmatic, of medieval artworks, was the subject of an international conference at the British Museum in July 2008. This volume publishes 19 of 26 papers delivered at that conference. The physical nature of the tapestry is examined, including an outline of the artefact's current display and the latest conservation and research work done on it, as well as a review of the many repairs and alterations that have been made to the Tapestry over its long history. Also examined is the social history of the tapestry, including Shirley Ann Brown's paper on the Nazis' interest in it as a record of northern European superiority and Pierre Bouet and François Neveux's suggestion that it is a source for understanding the succession crisis of 1066. Among those papers focusing on the detail of the Tapestry, Gale Owen-Crocker examines the Tapestry's faces, Carol Neuman de Vegvar investigates the Tapestry's drinking vessels and explores differences in its feast scenes and Michael Lewis compares objects depicted in the Tapestry and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11. The book also includes a résumé of four papers given at the conference published elsewhere and a full black and white facsimile of the Tapestry, with its figures numbered for ease of referencing.

The Sturlunga Saga is a collection of secular contemporary literature of historical events in the 11th and 12th century. The Sturlunga Saga has mainly been used as a source in historical research. This book, however, emphasises the expression of secular contemporary stories as a whole as interactions regarding the events they portray without questioning the truthfulness of the storytelling. The common opinion is that it is necessary to validate the narrative study of the Sturlunga Saga before it is used as a source. Its validity as a source is not merely based on what it portrays, but is based also on its narrative. Icelandic text,

This book examines Fraserburgh's historic development from the late medieval period, when it was laid out to a continental-style grid, to its heyday as a fishing port in the early twentieth century. The town has received very little archaeological investigation so the authors consider where the areas of archaeological potential lie, in order to inform future management.

Well known for the Early Anglo-Saxon settlement previously excavated on Rookery Hill and its impressive pre-Conquest church, Bishopstone has entered archaeological orthodoxy as a classic example of a 'Middle Saxon Shift'. This volume reports on the excavations from 2002 to 2005 designed to investigate this transition, with the focus on the origins of Bishopstone village. Excavations adjacent to St Andrews churchyard revealed a dense swathe of later Anglo-Saxon (8th- to late 10th-/early 11th-century) habitation, including a planned complex of timber halls, and a unique cellared tower. The occupation encroached upon a pre-Conquest cemetery of 43 inhumations.

Bermondsey Priory was founded in the 1080s on the south bank of the Thames, located opposite the White Tower on an island which was also the site of an Anglo-Saxon minster. Bermondsey became a centre of pilgrimage and in 1399 the priory became an abbey, before its transformation in the 16th century into a courtier's mansion. The results of modern excavation of the eastern parts of the church and cloister and inner court are complemented by documentary research and a detailed, 19th-century survey of the abbey. The early chapel and timber latrine and the free-standing lavabo in the main cloister and possible bathhouse are particularly important features of this Cluniac house. The 12th-century building programme and the subsequent remodelling of the priory church and cloister, including the east range and chapter house, and of the second infirmary cloister are examined. The development of the monastic cemetery is described and 193 individuals buried at Bermondsey are analysed. Contraction and disuse of part of the eastern area in the abbey's final years was followed by the discarding of a wealth of artefacts and other material from the conventual buildings and by systematic stripping at the Dissolution. The private Tudor mansion constructed by Thomas Pope around the former main cloister reused parts of the monastic buildings

One of the largest excavations in the City of London at 1 Poultry recovered a remarkable archaeological sequence from the 1st to the 20th century AD. This volume presents the evidence for Late Saxon, medieval and post-medieval development of this part of the city. Poultry occupied a prominent position at the eastern end of Cheapside, the city's principal medieval market street; integrating documentary evidence with the archaeological record has provided an outstandingly detailed account of this area. Re-occupation of the site in the later 10th century began with the construction of scattered sunken-floored buildings; a more regular pattern of settlement, characterised by narrow-fronted timber buildings along the roadsides, developed by the early 11th century. Occupation became progressively denser up to the 13th century when large stone-built houses began to be built in previously open areas behind the street frontages. Metalworking evidence from the excavated buildings provides evidence of early economic activity, corresponding with later documentary evidence for smiths, ironmongers and other metalworkers in the area.