Early medieval stone sculptures survive across Europe: at waysides, in architectural settings and in churches and graveyards, and provide an exceptional source for understanding the aesthetics and beliefs of early medieval communities. England is no exception to this. Thousands of intact and fragmentary stone monuments survive from the seventh to eleventh centuries CE, evidencing the emergence of a rich Anglo-Saxon sculptural tradition in stone. These often elaborately carved monuments that were generally painted – some with considerable sophistication – and could be inset with paste glass and metal, provide clear evidence of a rich and new form of visual material culture connected with the Church in the region. Some monuments acted as liturgical markers, others as markers of working relations between secular and ecclesiastical communities, while others still commemorated the dead, and some fragments demonstrate the ways in which stone buildings were decorated both inside and out. By the tenth century, stone crosses and monuments were frequently commissioned by the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian secular elites, demonstrating strong connections between sculptural commemoration, power, and identity. For decades, the celebrated project, the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, has provided information on these monuments, cataloguing each example in terms of date, geology, and decoration. This multi-authored volume draws on the expertise of many specialists connected with the Corpus to provide a first accessible national overview of the resource. Thematic chapters reflect on discoveries to date and archaeological and art historical approaches to researching and understanding sculpture. Key themes include quarrying and production, chronology, the intellectual and artistic context for sculpture, aesthetics and iconography, and the places and contexts of sculpture use. This extensively illustrated volume introduces Anglo-Saxon sculpture in its broader European context and offers a stepping-off point for all those wanting to learn more and research these often-enigmatic fragments.

The Vikings in the Hebrides provides an introduction to the Viking colonization and Norse occupation of the Outer Hebrides. Our knowledge of this period in the Hebrides has until recently been minimal as the historic evidence was negligible and the archaeology limited. However, two recent excavations at Bornais and Cille Pheadair have transformed our understanding of the period in the region. These two excavations will provide much of the information that is set out in this book but there is also a comprehensive review of other important discoveries such as the Lewis Chessmen, the burial at Cnip, Lewis and the silver hoards from Stornoway Castle and Dibidale in Lewis.The excavations at Bornais have transformed our understanding of the Norse settlement of the North Atlantic. It is possible to chart the evolution of domestic houses from the Viking longhouse to the post-medieval croft, to analyze the distribution of finds on the house floors and to critically assess gender relationships over this long period.The excavations have also produced large quantities of finds that demonstrate the links between the Western Isles and the wider world. These include important assemblages of bone combs and comb making debris, which enable a discussion of craft production and the fluctuating relationship of the Hebrides, the Irish Sea zone and Scandinavia. The presence of exotic green porphyry from Greece, amber, Ringerike art, pottery from the Bristol Channel, coins from Scandinavia, England and the Low Countries all provide opportunities to contextualise the settlements and the region in the wider medieval world.This book places the Outer Hebrides at the center of the Viking World and provides a unique contribution to our understanding of the islands’ importance at the critical period when Scotland was emerging as a major medieval kingdom.

The authors explore multifaceted aspects of the competing cultural landscapes that comprise the northeast of Scotland. This interdisciplinary collection uses a deep temporal perspective at a range of scales, from microlandscape studies to largescale geological and archaeological environments. It presents collaborative research carried out by a local conservation group, the Bailies of Bennachie, and the University of Aberdeen across a twelveyear period – the ‘Bennachie Landscapes Project’. Far from being a cultural backwater, the book shows how key physical and social processes have interacted in the landscape of northeast Scotland since prehistory. Authors present new understandings of glacial geology, Mesolithic settlements, Roman, Viking and medieval settlements and environments, and recent crofting landscapes. Today’s landscape is shown to be an extraordinarily rich resource for cultural and environmental history that is well worthy of continued protection and care. The research is itself used as a means of reaching into the wider community and engaging in a twoway process of education that connects the various participants.This book, therefore, explores ways of ‘doing’ environmental archaeology and cultural landscape studies that are not mainstream. All of the studies have a greater or lesser degree of community input. Some are communitydriven, others more academically oriented. But all add value to the others and help to create a better understanding of the cultural landscapes of northeast Scotland. The narrative flows from late glacial times, through prehistoric and historic periods forward, through the actions of the present engaging communities, seamlessly on and into the future.

A joint Icelandic–US archaeological project in North Iceland examined the development of the farmstead settlement pattern from the initial Norse settlement of Iceland in c. AD 870–1300. The results were compared with the distribution of early Christian household cemeteries following the conversion in AD 1000 and the later institutionalization of the Catholic church in the 12th century. Colonization and Christianity details the methods and results from an innovative systemic regional archaeological survey that integrated extensive soil coring and shallow geophysical surveying with targeted excavation, tephra and AMS dating and documentary research to produce a near complete inventory of Viking Age and medieval occupation in and around the Hegranes region in lowland Skagafjörður, North Iceland. The survey revealed 32 Viking Age and medieval farmstead sites and seven early Christian household cemeteries at 20 modern farm properties. Results included the first complete regional settlement pattern in Iceland based on systematic subsurface reconnaissance with control over negative evidence; identification and mapping of a household cemetery and Viking Age longhouse and ancillary structures; and barley has been identified for the first time in the middens of a broad swath of Viking Age farmsteads.The results of the project confirm that the Viking Age settlement, which started in about AD 870, was rapid and the landscape itself was filled in by immigrants from Northern Europe within 60 years, as the Icelandic Family Sagas suggest. However, the process of creating the medieval agropastoral landscape took much longer.

Strøby Toftegård: Halls, Hierarchies and Social Dynamics in Late Iron Age and Viking Age Denmark presents and considers the archaeological material from the site of Strøby Toftegård in the eastern part of Zealand, Denmark, where comprehensive excavations took place between 1994 and 2013. The book seeks to qualify the interpretation of Farm 1 as the residence of a magnate from c. AD 650 to c. AD 1000 and of the whole settlement consisting of at least nine farm units as a magnate settlement. This is done by means of a detailed survey and analysis of buildings and features, structures, various groups of objects, and a discussion of the landscape, the social context and the creation of social hierarchies that the site fitted into while it was in use.Detailed analyses of pits, wells, a latrine, bone material, macrofossils, pollen, the sherds of glass vessels, sherds of windowpanes, beads, jewelry, tools and pottery all substantiate that Farm 1 was something extraordinary. Its inhabitants appear to have had better access to resources, been in charge of certain activities, had access to knowledge that was not available to everyone and, finally, to have been part of larger social and political networks. It is likewise argued that the rest of the settlement was home to the magnate’s retinue in the form of, inter alia, mounted warriors. Strøby Toftegård’s placement within the hierarchy of power in relation to the other known magnate localities is also discussed. The argument here is that there were close connections between Strøby Toftegård and the royal seat in Lejre, although the material simultaneously indicates that Strøby Toftegård was not quite on the same political level as Lejre.The interpretation of Strøby Toftegård is considered in relation to the surrounding landscape, place names and other archaeological evidence from excavations and metal-detector surveys. The last chapter is a concluding discussion of those elements within the archaeological material that justify interpreting the settlement at Strøby Toftegård as a magnate settlement, what such an interpretation entails and what questions it raises for future treatment of the archaeological material.

Cremation in the Early Middle Ages draws together the latest research and thinking on early medieval cremation practices. The book takes you on a journey through 19 chapters exploring cremation practices from the fifth to the eleventh centuries CE in Fennoscandia, the UK and Ireland, Frisia, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and France. In this way, the book aims to be a central resource for anyone interested in early medieval cremations, or indeed funerary practices more generally. Notably, the structure and style of this book represent a departure from the norm. As well as a co-authored introduction, chapters constitute a conversation between the editors and key researchers captured via structured interviews, supported by a series of fact boxes highlighting key ideas, methods and techniques, sites, graves and discoveries.Cremation was no single disposal tradition in the Early Middle Ages: it constituted but one dimension of local, regional and supra-regional deathways operating across different locales and with varying degrees of expenditure, meanings and materials, as well as involved a complex range of resources, environments, practices and performances both before, during and after the burning of the bodies. Where cremation is not the dominant burial rite, our authors reflect on the potential under-representation of cremation in our models. Ethnic and cultural labelling of the early medieval cremated dead are countered and critiqued by various authors.Important themes that are touched upon are the long-term collectivity and longue durée of cremation depositions, variability within cremation practices, the pre-burial life of cinerary containers, ideas of personhood, the immersion of cremains in watery locations, the socio-political and economic context of burial rites, monumentalisation, the interpretation of mixed-rite (bi-ritual) cemeteries, the importance of human-animal entanglements viewed through the lens of cremated deposition, the potential for greater experimental and osteoarcheological, experimental, isotopic, radiocarbon, and genomic research, and the effect and usefulness of written texts as a window onto early medieval cremation practices, in particular regarding the relationship between cremation and Christianisation.

The early medieval period witnessed one of the deepest and most significant transformations of European societies and cultures with the process of Christianisation. The emergence and establishment of Christianity created a new dimension of power in society with an appeal to supernatural forces combined with an access to a broader transnational authority. Carved stones did not merely reflect these changes, but enabled them within northern societies with traditions of sculpture and epigraphic representations. This book looks at three datasets of monuments from Ireland, Scotland and Sweden using an innovative comparative framework to offer new insights on these monuments and the societies that erected them.Analysed through the three major themes of place, movement, and memory, the case studies are presented from a holistic perspective comprising the monument, their landscape settings and historical and archaeological contexts (when available). The results of this research demonstrate that by means of comparisons across national boundaries, new interpretations emerge on the use and functions of early medieval carved stones. The thematic approach adopted emphasises similarities and contrasts in a more efficient manner than a geographical approach, freed from historiographical biases within scholarly traditions of ‘Celtic’ or ‘Scandinavian’ archaeologies. Furthermore, a multi-scale analysis places the monuments within their local contexts but also within a broader narrative of Christianisation.

The late 12th and 13th centuries witnessed complete national recoinages in 1180, 1247 and 1279, with the entire national stock of money reminted. After 1279 this did not happen again, with changes to coinage standards from 1351 onwards creating an environment that instead removed older coin more gradually. The collapse of the Angevin empire, Magna Carta and its ramifications, the creation of Parliament and the commencement of major Anglo-Scottish wars all impacted on how currency functioned across this period. The aim of this publication is to publish English coin hoards in the context of each of the successive currency periods between 1180 − around the time England arguably became a fully monetised land, with the silver penny under its recently emerged name of sterling − to 1351, when the penny-dominated currency was replaced by a multi-denominational one in both gold and silver.While the hoards discussed in this publication are seen in their national context, they are also placed firmly in their very local context, identifying relevant local economic and social forces and activities. This approach illuminates the place of money in the lives of the majority of England’s inhabitants, especially as this was the period in which medieval taxation reached its definitive form. With only a handful of exceptions, most of the hoards discussed represent money held by the lower levels of society, above all agricultural workers, whether of free or villein status: this is money in the world of the manor, the village and the parish, not the city, court or government.

Monarchs, no less than their subjects, want to impress their guests. This book is about gardens as one aspect of creating favourable impressions – soft power – in particular through the royal gardens of England in Tudor and Stuart times. It addresses the backdrop of palaces, parks and gardens that were unspoken statements of authority and cultural achievement that gave status and credibility to the country’s representatives. Garden history from this perspective has been neglected hitherto; neither have the royal gardens been assessed as a collection in which monarchs favoured chosen sites for indulging their stylistic passions. Research on their forms and designs have in the past been accumulated piecemeal, without any sense of overview.This book contains a new analysis enabled by gathering information from numerous archaeological investigations, historic texts and the available visual material, together with extensive original research in the National Archives and elsewhere. Reconstruction drawings flesh out the narrative in the early years when maps, drawings and prints were so very scarce and are reproduced alongside the available material and the more abundant prints and paintings as the Stuart era draws to a close.Radical new understandings of the medieval garden in England serve as the starting point for a fresh narrative of the history of internationally significant English gardens in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It will be of interest to architectural, garden design, social and political historians of the period and to a wide readership of those fascinated by how statecraft, foreign influences, and native innovation interwove for two centuries in our royal gardens and parks.

Throughout history, rivers have been a hub for human settlement and have been a key part of local livelihoods, history, and culture, as well as still playing a present-day role in providing services and leisure to people who live around them. It is no coincidence that all four of the earliest human civilisations were formed on great rivers: the Nile, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow rivers all saw great human aggregation along them. The most ancient and vital architectural structures linked to the use of rivers are bridges. There are a wide variety of medieval bridge structures, ranging from some very simple in their construction to amazing triumphs of design and engineering comparable with the great churches of the period. They stand today as proof of the great importance of transport networks in the Middle Ages and of the size and sophistication of the medieval economy. These bridges were built in some of the most difficult places, across broad flood plains, deep tidal waters, and steep upland valleys, and they withstood all but the most catastrophic floods. Yet their beauty, from simplistic to ornate, remains for us to appreciate.Medieval Bridges of Middle England has been organised geographically into tours and covers the governmental regions of East of England, East Midlands, and West Midlands. There are 63 bridges featured and beautiful full colour photographs of each bridge are included. A brief history is incorporated with each bridge. Additionally, information about the construction, materials used, and unique features are related, as well as historically relevant documents and images. Directions to each bridge and local attractions are also given.There are literally hundreds of bridges in England that meet the criteria for inclusion in this roll of honour for senior bridges. They vary vastly in size, style, and materials. Most are stone and a very few are brick. We have lost many of our older bridges to the ravages of time and the modern practice of culvertisation and urban development. A few of our older bridges remain though, and their beauty and pivotal role in our history is starting to be recognised.

This monograph is based on the study of 1,341 antler and bone objects and 2,400 fragments of antler and bone waste from excavations in Ipswich between 1974 and 1994. Most of the material comes from contexts of the 7th to the 12th century, although there are small quantities of medieval objects and waste. The monograph is focused on the local craft activity in Ipswich in the Anglo-Saxon and medieval periods. It also includes objects that indicate links to the Continent, particularly northern France, Frisia and southern Scandinavia. Several Roman bone and antler assemblages have been published in recent years, but very few of post-Roman date have appeared. It is therefore an appropriate time to publish the Ipswich material, which is undoubtedly one of the finest and largest collections in the country. The significance of discoveries from Ipswich has long been understood and is now presented as a printed and digital resource. The monograph draws on the international significance of Ipswich as a place of regional craft production over a long period. It examines trade and exchange (including the possible exchange of raw materials), cultural affinities, comparative technologies and broader questions of itinerancy and the concept of the collective workshop.

A volume presents a detailed study of the memory of ancient mosques in Djerba, with a well-illustrated corpus of 48 buildings to build the history of the Ibadites and their struggle for the preservation of their identity. The main source is Rasā’il d’al-Ḥīlātī (m. 1099/1688-1689), which demonstrates the importance of piety and study to these people. The very strong presence of religion is felt in the multiplicity of places of prayer and in the sacred meshwork of the island which al-Ḥīlātī demonstrates. At any time, in any place, whether it be by the tomb of a prestigious scholar, a small prayer square or a mosque, religion and respect for the ancestors are remembered by the faithful. An analysis of the buildings shows their particular infrastructure, with a defensive nature (buttresses, thick walls, defensive parapets, loopholds and machicolations) – demonstrating the presence of both internal struggles (between Wahbite Ibadies and Nukkārites) and external threats from Tunis or European powers. They defended their particularism in a Maghreb that is more and more Malikite and more and more Arabized.

Beneath the housing estates of Gaywood within the urban reach of modern King’s Lynn lies a former saltmarsh — Gaywood’s North Marsh — which once played an important role in the economic and physical development of this dynamic coastal and estuarine landscape. Focused on the eastern side of the Wash and to the north of an ancient inlet known as the Lyn, this marshland was rich in salt or ‘white gold’, gathered from the brine-saturated muds and processed using the post-Roman technique of sand-washing or sleeching. Often the only traces left behind of this once important coastal industry are the denuded hillocks or mounds representing the accumulated waste deposits associated with salt-winning, dozens of which have been mapped in this area. An opportunity to investigate several of these saltern mounds was prompted by the Lynnsport and Greenpark Avenue Primary School developments, leading to a three-year scheme of topographical survey, evaluation trenching and targeted excavation. Building on previous work by OA East at Marsh Lane, this volume provides a synthetic overview of the salt-making evidence utilising a suite of scientific techniques underpinned by historical research and Bayesian modelling to reconstruct the saltmarsh environment and how this changed over time. One of the key results has been firmly to establish that the sand-washing method was in use on the east coast of England as early as the Middle Saxon period (8th to 9th century), continuing into the medieval period and beyond in some places. A possible association with the Middle Saxon ‘productive’ site at Bawsey is explored, as is the more definite connection with the East Anglian bishops and bishops of Norwich, who once owned this land. Linked to this are the provision of labour, methods of transport and access to fuel. The contribution of salt-working to the economy, notably trade, is assessed as is the impact that this industrial scale of salt production had on the physical environment which ultimately led to piecemeal reclamation and the development of valuable tracts of grazing land. By the 12th century, salt-winning on Gaywood’s North Marsh was already in decline and by the 13th century its death knell was no doubt sounded by the diversion of the River Great Ouse into the Lyn: the fossilised salt-making landscape being recorded by the Gaywood Dragge survey of 1487. This narrative is further enhanced by comparison with similar records for sand-washing on the near continent, and a reconsideration of the evidence from the Lincolnshire side of the Wash.

Supplementary Exercises for Old Norse - Old Icelandic is a new volume in the Viking Language Old Norse Icelandic Series. A workbook of 17 lessons designed for those who want to learn or sharpen their skills in Old Norse with innovative exercises, word games, and map questions. With a full vocabulary and a free Answer Key at oldnorse. org. It also contains Old Norse readings drawn from the Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok (recounting Ragnar’s attack on England and his death in the snake pit) and mythic passages from The Prose Edda describing a journey of the Norse gods, the great dragon´s treasure, and the magical ring of the dwarves. Supplementary Exercises master Old Norse.

This book shows how analysis of Scandinavian-influenced place-names in their landscape contexts can provide crucial new evidence of differing processes of Viking migration and settlement in East Anglia between the late ninth and eleventh centuries.The place-names of East Anglia have until now received little attention in the academic study of Viking settlement. Similarly, the question of a possible migration of settlers from Scandinavia during the Viking period was for many years dismissed by historians and archaeologists – until the recent discovery by metal-detectorists of abundant Scandinavian metalwork and jewellery in many parts of East Anglia. David Boulton has synthesised these two previously neglected elements to offer new insights into the processes of Viking settlement.This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of Scandinavian-influenced place-names in East Anglia. It examines their different categories linguistically and explores the landscape and archaeological contexts of the settlements associated with them, with the aid of GIS-generated maps. Dr Boulton shows how the process of Viking settlement was influenced by changes in rural society and agriculture which were then already occurring in East Anglia, such as the late Anglo-Saxon expansion of arable farming and the associated recolonisation of the inland clay plateau. These developments resulted in patterns of place-name formation which differ significantly from some of the previously accepted, orthodox interpretations of how Scandinavian-influenced place-names (especially those containing the bý and thorp elements, and the ‘Grimston-hybrids’) came into being in the Danelaw.In view of these discrepancies, David Boulton proposes an innovative, hypothetical model for the formation of the Scandinavian-influenced place-names in East Anglia, which explores differing patterns and phases of Viking settlement in the region and the possible pathways of migration that preceded them.

Although household goods are a well-establish topic in Medieval and Early Modern archaeology, more recent research is overcoming simple typological and technological aspects and pointing to broader approaches, which relates to the understanding of goods’ production, consumption strategies, other economic activities and structures of social organization. Thus, the understanding of past societies and cultures relies heavily in the study of their household goods to understand people, groups and societies. In this context, the aim of the Ruralia XIV Conference was to emphasize the significance of household archaeology to the study of the European countryside in Medieval and Modern times under a cross-cultural approach. Detailed analysis of single contexts, small parts of sites, faunal, botanical and soil studies enables us to reconstruct common peoples’ activities and interactions within their homes. House functions can be detected by means of specific installations but also by inventories and location of goods, evidence for particular activities inside, such as cooking and eating, storage, weaving, refuse disposal, resting, etc. or by a comprehensive overview of outdoor surroundings. All this is evidence of functional purposes but it can also tell us about the rank and wealth of their owners, their daily lives, household compositions, family concepts and even gender statuses. Moreover, structural analysis can give evidence about spheres of interaction and patterned behaviours within a house. In different sections (archaeology and household; temporary households; living conditions; spatial structure; household objects and social and economic status) case studies across Europe are presented.