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18 results in Medieval Archaeology

Merovingian Worlds
  • James T. Palmer
  • Published online:
    22 November 2024
    Print publication:
    05 December 2024
  • The Merovingian Kingdoms (c. 450–751) dominated much of what is now France, Belgium, and Germany, and were the most powerful and long-lived of the states that transformed the inheritance of Rome after the Crisis of the Fifth Century. Yet they often remain representative of an imagined 'Dark Age', in which civility was eroded by migration, violence, illiteracy, superstition, and a retreat from globality. Through a deep exploration of manuscripts, charters, and burials, Merovingian Worlds offers a fresh account of the period, outlining its complexities, diversity and creativity. This was a world built on dynamic political, socio-economic, cultural, and religious interactions, and shaped by its wide-ranging connections from Britain and Ireland to Byzantium and beyond. The book provides a critical introduction to the rich source material and the modern debates that shaped our perception of Western Europe after the Fall of Rome.

Towns and Commerce in Viking-Age Scandinavia
  • Sven Kalmring
  • Published online:
    04 January 2024
    Print publication:
    25 January 2024
  • The Viking Age, from c.750 to 1050 CE, was an era of major social change in Scandinavia. By the end of this period of sweeping transformation, Scandinavia, once a pagan periphery, had been firmly integrated into occidental Europe. Archaeological remains offer evidence of this process, which included and intertwined with Christianisation, state formation, and the dawn of urbanisation in Scandinavia. In this volume, Sven Kalmring offers an interdisciplinary and geographically wide-ranging approach to understanding the emergence of towns and commerce in Viking-age Scandinavia and their eventual demise by the end of the period. Using the towns of Hedeby, Birka, Kaupang, and Ribe as case studies, he also tracks the diverging characteristics of these urban communities against the background of traditional social structures in the Viking world. Instead of tracing the results of Viking Age urbanisation, or mapping that process by establishing economic networks, Kalmring focusses on the very reasons behind the emergence of towns, and their eventual decline.

Early Medieval Britain, c. 500–1000
  • Rory Naismith
  • Published online:
    04 August 2021
    Print publication:
    15 July 2021
  • Early medieval Britain saw the birth of England, Scotland and of the Welsh kingdoms. Naismith's introductory textbook explores the period between the end of Roman rule and the eve of the Norman Conquest, blending an engaging narrative with clear explanations of key themes and sources. Using extensive illustrations, maps and selections from primary sources, students will examine the island as a collective entity, comparing political histories and institutions as well as societies, beliefs and economies. Each chapter foregrounds questions of identity and the meaning of 'Britain' in this period, encouraging interrogation and contextualisation of sources within the framework of the latest debates and problems. Featuring online resources including timelines, a glossary, end-of-chapter questions and suggestions for further reading, students can drive their own understanding of how the polities and societies of early medieval Britain fitted together and into the wider world, and firmly grasp the formative stages of British history.

Cultivating the City in Early Medieval Italy
  • Caroline Goodson
  • Published online:
    08 March 2021
    Print publication:
    25 March 2021
  • Food-growing gardens first appeared in early medieval cities during a period of major social, economic, and political change in the Italian peninsula, and they quickly took on a critical role in city life. The popularity of urban gardens in the medieval city during this period has conventionally been understood as a sign of decline in the post-Roman world, signalling a move towards a subsistence economy. Caroline Goodson challenges this interpretation, demonstrating how urban gardens came to perform essential roles not only in the economy, but also in cultural, religious, and political developments in the emerging early medieval world. Observing changes in how people interacted with each other and their environments from the level of individual households to their neighbourhoods, and the wider countryside, Goodson draws on documentary, archival, and archaeological evidence to reveal how urban gardening reconfigured Roman ideas and economic structures into new, medieval values.

Early Medieval Britain
  • The Rebirth of Towns in the Post-Roman West
  • Pam J. Crabtree
  • Published online:
    29 June 2018
    Print publication:
    07 June 2018
  • The growth and development of towns and urbanism in the pre-modern world has been of interest to archaeologists since the nineteenth century. Much of the early archaeological research on urban origins focused on regions such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Mesoamerica. Intensive archaeological research that has been conducted since the 1960s, much of it as a result of urban redevelopment, has shed new light on the development of towns in Anglo-Saxon England. In this book, Pamela Crabtree uses up-to-date archaeological data to explore urban origins in early medieval Britain. She argues that many Roman towns remained important places on the landscape, despite losing most of their urban character by the fifth century. Beginning with the decline of towns in the fourth and fifth centuries, Crabtree then details the origins and development of towns in Britain from the 7th century through the Norman Conquest in the mid-eleventh century CE. She also sets the development of early medieval urbanism in Britain within a broader, comparative framework.

The Material Culture of the Built Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World
  • Edited by Maren Clegg Hyer, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Maren Clegg Hyer
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    17 June 2017
    Print publication:
    31 December 2015
  • The Material Culture of the Built Environment in the Anglo-Saxon World, second volume of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, continues to introduce students of Anglo-Saxon culture to aspects of the realities of the built environment that surrounded Anglo-Saxon peoples through reference to archaeological and textual sources. It considers what structures intruded on the natural landscape the Anglo-Saxons inhabited – roads and tracks, ancient barrows and Roman buildings, the villages and towns, churches, beacons, boundary ditches and walls, grave-markers and standing sculptures – and explores the interrelationships between them and their part in Anglo-Saxon life.

The Anarchy
  • War and Status in 12th-Century Landscapes of Conflict
  • Oliver H. Creighton, Duncan W. Wright
  • Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    06 June 2017
    Print publication:
    05 January 2017
  • The turbulent reign of Stephen, King of England (1135–54), has been styled since the late 19th century as 'the Anarchy’, although the extent of political breakdown during the period has since been vigorously debated. Rebellion and bitter civil war characterised Stephen’s protracted struggle with rival claimant Empress Matilda and her Angevin supporters over ‘nineteen long winters’ when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘Christ and his Saints slept’. Drawing on new research and fieldwork, this innovative volume offers the first ever overview and synthesis of the archaeological and material record for this controversial period. It presents and interrogates many different types of evidence at a variety of scales, ranging from nationwide mapping of historical events through to conflict landscapes of battlefields and sieges. The volume considers archaeological sites such as castles and other fortifications, churches, monasteries, bishops’ palaces and urban and rural settlements, alongside material culture including coins, pottery, seals and arms and armour. This approach not only augments but also challenges historical narratives, questioning the ‘real’ impact of Stephen’s troubled reign on society, settlement, church and the landscape, and opens up new perspectives on the conduct of Anglo-Norman warfare.

The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England
  • Toby F. Martin
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    16 April 2015
  • Cruciform brooches were large and decorative items of jewellery, frequently used to pin together women's garments in pre-Christian northwest Europe. Characterised by the strange bestial visages that project from the feet of these dress and cloak fasteners, cruciform brooches were especially common in eastern England during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. For this reason, archaeologists have long associated them with those shadowy tribal originators of the English: the Angles of the Migration period. This book provides a multifaceted, holistic and contextual analysis of more than 2,000 Anglo-Saxon cruciform brooches. It offers a critical examination of identity in Early Medieval society, suggesting that the idea of being Anglian in post-Roman Britain was not a primordial, tribal identity transplanted from northern Germany, but was at least partly forged through the repeated, prevalent use of dress and material culture. Additionally, the particular women that were buried with cruciform brooches, and indeed their very funerals, played an important role in the process. These ideas are explored through a new typology and an updated chronology for cruciform brooches, alongside considerations of their production, exchange and use. The author also examines their geographical distribution through time and their most common archaeological contexts: the inhumation and cremation cemeteries of early Anglo-Saxon England. Dr Toby Martin is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University.

Ancient Cambridgeshire
  • Or, an Attempt to Trace Roman and Other Ancient Roads that Passed through the County of Cambridge
  • Charles Cardale Babington
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    17 July 2014
    First published in:
    1853
  • This work, first published in 1853, grew from a paper describing the crossing of two Roman roads at Cambridge, and the small Roman fort at Grantchester. However, other Roman sites were added to the investigation, and the book came to encompass all the Roman and other ancient roads of Cambridgeshire, as well as the locations where Roman coins and other remains had been found. The author, Charles Cardale Babington (1808–95), is best remembered as the pupil and assistant of John Stevens Henslow and as his successor in the chair of botany at Cambridge. However, Babington was also keenly interested in archaeology, and this fascinating work of local history is the first substantial account of Roman Cambridgeshire, describing not only the courses of the various roads but also finds such as the Roman villa at Comberton, the Roman cemetery at Trumpington, and large numbers of individual coins and other artefacts.

Conserving and Managing Ancient Monuments
  • Heritage, Democracy, and Inclusion
  • Keith Emerick
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 August 2014
    Print publication:
    19 June 2014
  • The origins and use of conservation principles and practice from the nineteenth century to the present day are charted in this volume. Written from the perspective of a practitioner, it examines the manner in which a single, dominant mode of conservation, which held sway for many decades, is now coming under pressure from a different and more democratic heritage management practice, favouring diversity, inclusion and difference.The author blends case studies from Ireland, Cyprus and England with examples from current practice, community heritage initiatives and political policy, highlighting the development and use of international charters and conventions. Central to the main argument of the book is that the sacred cows of conservation - antiquity, fabric and authenticity - have outlived their usefulness and need to be rethought. Dr Keith Emerick is an English Heritage Inspector of Ancient Monuments in York and North Yorkshire; he is also a Research Associate at the University of York.

Northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c.AD 600–1150
  • A Comparative Archaeology
  • Christopher Loveluck
  • Published online:
    05 November 2013
    Print publication:
    24 October 2013
  • Christopher Loveluck's study explores the transformation of Northwest Europe (primarily Britain, France and Belgium) from the era of the first post-Roman 'European Union' under the Carolingian Frankish kings to the so-called 'feudal' age, between c.AD 600 and 1150. During these centuries radical changes occurred in the organisation of the rural world. Towns and complex communities of artisans and merchant-traders emerged and networks of contact between northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle and Far East were redefined, with long-lasting consequences into the present day. Loveluck provides the most comprehensive comparative analysis of the rural and urban archaeological remains in this area for twenty-five years. Supported by evidence from architecture, relics, manuscript illuminations and texts, this book explains how the power and intentions of elites were confronted by the aspirations and actions of the diverse rural peasantry, artisans and merchants, producing both intended and unforeseen social changes.

Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages
  • Edited by Larissa Tracy
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 July 2013
    Print publication:
    18 July 2013
  • Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture, from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding harems to the seventeenth and eighteenth-century castrati singers. Metaphoric castration pervades a number of medieval literary genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its implications are often overlooked. This collection explores this often taboo subject and its implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe, seeking to demystify and demythologize castration. Its subjects include archaeological studies of eunuchs; historical accounts of castration in trials of combat; the mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment; castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux; the prohibition against genital mutilation in hagiography; and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan stage. The introduction reflects on these topics in the context of arguably the most well-known victim of castration in the middle ages, Abelard. Larissa Tracy is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at Longwood University. Contributors: Larissa Tracy, Kathryn Reusch, Shaun Tougher, Jack Collins, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Jay Paul Gates, Charlene M. Eska, Mary A. Valante, Anthony Adams, Mary E. Leech, Jed Chandler, Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, Robert L.A. Clark, Karin Sellberg, Lena Wånggren

Medieval Life
  • Archaeology and the Life Course
  • Roberta Gilchrist
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    19 July 2012
  • An important and timely volume... an elegant summary of complex theory, and synthesis of an impressive body of material. It will be eagerly read by current and future generations of archaeologists, and will demonstrate the significance of historical archaeology to a much wider scholarly audience.' Dr Kate Giles, University of York. The aim of this book is to explore how medieval life was actually lived - how people were born and grew old, how they dressed, how they inhabited their homes, the rituals that gave meaning to their lives and how they prepared for death and the afterlife. Its fresh and original approach uses archaeological evidence to reconstruct the material practices of medieval life, death and the afterlife. Previous historical studies of the medieval 'lifecycle' begin with birth and end with death. Here, in contrast, the concept of life course theory is developed for the first time in a detailed archaeological case study. The author argues that medieval Christian understanding of the 'life course' commenced with conception and extended through the entirety of life, to include death and the afterlife. Five thematic case studies present the archaeology of medieval England (c.1050-1540 CE) in terms of the body, the household, the parish church and cemetery, and the relationship between the lives of people and objects. A wide range of sources is critically employed: osteology, costume, material culture, iconography and evidence excavated from houses, churches and cemeteries in the medieval English town and countryside. Medieval Life reveals the intimate and everyday relations between age groups, between the living and the dead, and between people and things. Roberta Gilchrist is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading

Medieval Clothing and Textiles 8
  • Edited by Robin Netherton, Gale R. Owen-Crocker
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    19 July 2012
  • This volume continues the series' tradition of bringing together work on clothing and textiles from across Europe. It has a strong focus on gold: subjects include sixth-century German burials containing sumptuous jewellery and bands brocaded with gold; the textual evidence for recycling such gold borders and bands in the later Anglo-Saxon period; and a semantic classification of words relating to gold in multi-lingual medieval Britain. It also rescues significant archaeological textiles from obscurity: there is a discussion of early medieval headdresses from The Netherlands, and an examination of a fifteenth-century Italian cushion, an early example of piecework. Finally, uses of dress and textiles in literature are explored in a survey of the Welsh ‘Mabinogion’ and Jean Renart's ‘Roman de la Rose’. Robin Netherton is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress; Gale R. Owen-Crocker is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Brigitte Haas-Gebhard, Britt Nowak-Böck, Maren Clegg Hyer, Louise Sylvester, Chrystel Brandenburgh, Lisa Evans, Patricia Williams, Katherine Talarico.

The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Girton College, Cambridge
  • A Report Based on the MS. Notes of the Excavations Made by the Late F. J. H. Jenkinson, M.A.
  • E. J. Hollingworth, M. M. O'Reilly
  • Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    02 February 2012
    First published in:
    1925
  • The Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Girton College, Cambridge, was discovered in 1881, while ground was prepared for the construction of tennis courts. More of the cemetery was unearthed in 1886, when the foundations for the Tower Wing were being laid. The area was excavated under the supervision of Francis Jenkinson (1853–1923), and the urns and other material found on the site date it to roughly the fifth and sixth centuries CE. The graves contained domestic utensils - tweezers, needles, pots for food and cooking - and personal items, such as ivory combs and bronze brooches. Written by Girton alumnae Edith Hollingworth and Maureen O'Reilly, this detailed report of the excavations is based on notes left by Jenkinson, and was first published by Cambridge University Press in 1925. According to a contemporary reviewer, the work of Hollingworth and O'Reilly provides a 'duty to their College and a real service to archaeology'.

Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain
  • Howard Williams
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    31 August 2006
  • How were the dead remembered in early medieval Britain? Originally published in 2006, this innovative study demonstrates how perceptions of the past and the dead, and hence social identities, were constructed through mortuary practices and commemoration between c. 400–1100 AD. Drawing on archaeological evidence from across Britain, including archaeological discoveries, Howard Williams presents a fresh interpretation of the significance of portable artefacts, the body, structures, monuments and landscapes in early medieval mortuary practices. He argues that materials and spaces were used in ritual performances that served as 'technologies of remembrance', practices that created shared 'social' memories intended to link past, present and future. Through the deployment of material culture, early medieval societies were therefore selectively remembering and forgetting their ancestors and their history. Throwing light on an important aspect of medieval society, this book is essential reading for archaeologists and historians with an interest in the early medieval period.

Early Christian Ireland
  • T. M. Charles-Edwards
  • Published online:
    11 September 2009
    Print publication:
    30 November 2000
  • This book provides a fully documented history of Ireland and the Irish between the fourth and ninth centuries AD, from St Patrick to the Vikings - the earliest period for which historical records are available. It opens with the Irish raids and settlements in Britain, and the conversion of Ireland to Christianity. It ends as Viking attacks on Ireland accelerated in the second quarter of the ninth century. The book takes account of the Irish both at home and abroad, including the Irish in northern Britain, in England and on the continent. Two principal thematic strands are the connection between the early Irish Church and its neighbours, and the rise of Uí Néill and the kingship of Tara.

The Making of the Slavs
  • History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c.500–700
  • Florin Curta
  • Published online:
    08 July 2009
    Print publication:
    12 July 2001
  • This book offers an alternative approach to the problem of Slavic ethnicity in south-eastern Europe between c. 500 and c. 700, from the perspective of current anthropological theories. The conceptual emphasis here is on the relation between material culture and ethnicity. The author demonstrates that the history of the Sclavenes and the Antes begins only at around 500 AD. He also points to the significance of the archaeological evidence, which suggests that specific artefacts may have been used as identity markers. This evidence also indicates the role of local leaders in building group boundaries and in leading successful raids across the Danube. Because of these military and political developments, Byzantine authors began employing names such as Sclavines and Antes in order to make sense of the process of group identification that was taking place north of the Danube frontier. Slavic ethnicity is therefore shown to be a Byzantine invention.