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.

For the last 150 years the historiography of the Crusades has been dominated by nationalist and colonialist discourses in Europe and the Levant. These modern histories have interpreted the Crusades in terms of dichotomous camps, Frankish and Muslim. In this revisionist study, Ronnie Ellenblum presents an interpretation of Crusader historiography that instead defines military and architectural relations between the Franks, local Christians, Muslims and Turks in terms of continuous dialogue and mutual influence. Through close analysis of siege tactics, defensive strategies and the structure and distribution of Crusader castles, Ellenblum relates patterns of crusader settlement to their environment and demonstrates the influence of opposing cultures on tactics and fortifications. He argues that fortifications were often built according to economic and geographic considerations rather than for strategic reasons or to protect illusory 'frontiers', and that Crusader castles are the most evident expression of a cultural dialogue between east and west.

Carved and decorated stone-work is a rare survival from the period before the Norman Conquest. In Nottinghamshire it survives as large crosses and as small fragments - to be found in churches, in public spaces and in museum collections. This is the first book to provide an authoritative listing, description and illustration of all examples of this type of decorated stone sculpture in Nottinghamshire. Each example is illustrated in a substantial catalogue containing high quality photographs, maps and interpretative drawings. In the introductory chapters the authors explore the geological and historical background of the sculptures and provide an overview of the types of style and ornament. The new information revealed by the systematic study of these major survivals of Anglo-Saxon art and archaeology demonstrates the major contribution that this category of material can make to an obscure and under-investigated period in Midlands history. Nottinghamshire emerges with a distinctive identity in the pre-conquest period, having strong connections both with the Mercian state to its south and with the Northumbrians to the north.

Urban Transformations is a theoretical and empirical account of the changing nature of urbanization in Germany. Where city planners and municipal administrations had emphasized free markets, the rule of law, and trade in 1871, by the 1930s they favoured a quite different integrative, corporate, and productivist vision. Urban Transformations explores the broad-based social transformation connected to these changes and the contemporaneous shifts in the cultural and social history of global capitalism. Dynamic features of modern capitalist life, such as rapid industrialization, working-class radicalism, dramatic population growth, poor quality housing, and regional administrative incoherence significantly influenced the Greater Berlin region. Examining materials on city planning, municipal administration, architecture, political economy, and jurisprudence, Urban Transformations recasts the history of German and European urbanization, as well as that of modernist architecture and city planning.

Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs is the first detailed consideration of the ways in which Anglo-Saxon society dealt with social outcasts. Beginning with the period following Roman rule and ending in the century following the Norman Conquest, it surveys a period of fundamental social change, which included the conversion to Christianity, the emergence of the late Saxon state, and the development of the landscape of the Domesday Book.
While an impressive body of written evidence for the period survives in the form of charters and law-codes, archaeology is uniquely placed to investigate the earliest period of post-Roman society, the fifth to seventh centuries, for which documents are lacking. For later centuries, archaeological evidence can provide us with an independent assessment of the realities of capital punishment and the status of outcasts.
Andrew Reynolds argues that outcast burials show a clear pattern of development in this period. In the pre-Christian centuries, 'deviant' burial remains are found only in community cemeteries, but the growth of kingship and the consolidation of territories during the seventh century witnessed the emergence of capital punishment and places of execution in the English landscape. Locally determined rites, such as crossroads burial, now existed alongside more formal execution cemeteries. Gallows were located on major boundaries, often next to highways, always in highly visible places.
The findings of this pioneering national study thus have important consequences on our understanding of Anglo-Saxon society. Overall, Reynolds concludes, organized judicial behavior was a feature of the earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, rather than just the two centuries prior to the Norman Conquest.

A comprehensive study of domestic buildings in London from about 1200 to the Great Fire in 1666. John Schofield describes houses and such related buildings as almshouses, taverns, inns, shops and livery company halls, drawing on evidence from surviving buildings, archaeological excavations, documents, panoramas, drawn surveys and plans, contemporary descriptions, and later engravings and photographs. Schofield presents an overview of the topography of the medieval city, reconstructing its streets, defences, many religious houses and fine civic buildings. He then provides details about the mediaeval and Tudor London house: its plan, individual rooms and spaces and their functions, the roofs, floors and windows, the materials of construction and decoration, and the internal fittings and furniture. Throughout the text he discusses what this evidence tells us about the special restrictions or pleasures of living in the capital; how certain innovations of plan and construction first occurred in London before spreading to other towns; and how notions of privacy developed. The text is illustrated and accompanied by a selective gazetteer of 201 sites in the City of London and its immediate

For the last 150 years the historiography of the Crusades has been dominated by nationalist and colonialist discourses in Europe and the Levant. These modern histories have interpreted the Crusades in terms of dichotomous camps, Frankish and Muslim. In this revisionist study, Ronnie Ellenblum presents an interpretation of Crusader historiography that instead defines military and architectural relations between the Franks, local Christians, Muslims and Turks in terms of continuous dialogue and mutual influence. Through close analysis of siege tactics, defensive strategies and the structure and distribution of Crusader castles, Ellenblum relates patterns of crusader settlement to their environment and demonstrates the influence of opposing cultures on tactics and fortifications. He argues that fortifications were often built according to economic and geographic considerations rather than for strategic reasons or to protect illusory 'frontiers', and that Crusader castles are the most evident expression of a cultural dialogue between east and west.

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.

A unique study of medieval monastic life that for the first time integrates the results of modern archaeological investigation with conventional historical and architectural research. Norton Priory itself has been the subject of the largest campaign of excavation of any monastic house in Europe, and Dr. Greene's results and analysis are therefore of the widest interest.

The Viking Age is marked out as a watershed for profound cultural and social changes in northern societies: from the spread of Christianity to urbanization and political centralization. Interaction across boundaries or within communities constitutes the substance of the events of this dynamic period, and is prominently reflected in the legacy of the period. The investigation of social networks and cultural encounters has formed an active focus of Viking Studies in recent years, from the mapping of geographical interaction attested by the archaeological and scientific evidence to the analysis of social relations in written records and literature. Meanwhile, the memory and heritage of the Viking Age has been a matter of profound fascination for later generations, from medieval historians and saga writers to contemporary novelists, artists and popular media. The legacy of the Viking Age maintains a strong impact in the present as a matter of pride, but also prejudice. These themes are explored and linked in this major volume, which presents the proceedings from the 18th Viking Congress, held in Denmark in 2017. Since 1946 the Viking Congress has been a common forum for current research and theories within Viking-Age studies, bringing together leading scholars in the fields of Archaeology, History, Philology, Place-name studies, Numismatics, Runology and other disciplines, including the natural sciences, relevant to the study of the Viking Age.

This source book offers a comprehensive treatment of solitary religious lives in England in the late Middle Ages. It covers both enclosed recluses (anchorites) and free-wandering hermits, and explores the relationship between them. Although there has been a recent surge of interest in the solitary vocations, especially anchorites, this has focused almost exclusively on a small number of examples. The field is in need of reinvigoration, and this book provides it. Featuring translated extracts from a wide range of Latin, Middle English and Old French sources, as well as a scholarly introduction and commentary from one of the foremost experts in the field, Hermits and anchorites in England is an invaluable resource for students and lecturers alike. -- .

SHORTLISTED for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain's Hitchcock Medallion. A ground-breaking interdisciplinary approach to the medieval manor pre- and post-Conquest. SHORTLISTED for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain's Hitchcock Medallion. Medieval manors have long been the subject of academic study, though the ways in which these houses reflected and shaped - and were shaped by - their occupants to express social authority have not yet been fully explored. This book undertakes a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination of them, aiming to provide a fuller account of how concepts of space and domestic place were understood, represented, and used by their occupants in England and Normandy from c. 900 to c. 1200, and how this illuminates aspects of gender and authority in the period. Blending approaches from archaeology and history, it uses evidence from Anglo-Saxon wills, standing and excavated manorial sites in England and Normandy, and a variety of written texts from vitae to history to poetry, in order to delve into, deconstruct and reconstruct gendered notions of authority in the period. This book ultimately challenges ideas of gendered objects and places through the medieval construction of authoritative personae, and the use and representation of medieval manors, focusing on the household as a place and space of performance in the age of the Norman Conquest.

An Open Access edition is available on the LUP and OAPEN websites. Across Europe, the early medieval period saw the advent of new ways of cereal farming which fed the growth of towns, markets and populations, but also fuelled wealth disparities and the rise of lordship. These developments have sometimes been referred to as marking an 'agricultural revolution', yet the nature and timing of these critical changes remain subject to intense debate, despite more than a century of research. The papers in this volume demonstrate how the combined application of cutting-edge scientific analyses, along with new theoretical models and challenges to conventional understandings, can reveal trajectories of agricultural development which, while complementary overall, do not indicate a single period of change involving the extension of arable, the introduction of the mouldboard plough, and regular crop rotation. Rather, these phenomena become evident at different times and in different places across England throughout the period, and rarely in an unambiguously 'progressive' fashion. Presenting innovative bioarchaeological research from the ground-breaking Feeding Anglo-Saxon England project, along with fresh insights into ploughing technology, brewing, the nature of agricultural revolutions, and farming practices in Roman Britain and Carolingian Europe, this volume is a critical new contribution to environmental archaeology and medieval studies in England and beyond. Contributors: Amy Bogaard; Hannah Caroe; Neil Faulkner; Emily Forster; Helena Hamerow; Matilda Holmes; Claus Kropp; Lisa Lodwick; Mark McKerracher; Nicolas Schroeder; Elizabeth Stroud; Tom Williamson.

This book presents a fresh overview of the Vikings from both conceptual and material perspectives. The prevailing image of a Viking is frequently that of a fierce male, associated with military expansion and a distinctive material culture. In an engaging survey, Saebjorg Walaker Nordeide and Kevin J. Edwards analyse Viking religion, economic life and material culture in and beyond the Scandic homelands. Although there is a conventional Viking Age timeframe of ca. AD 800 to 1050 (the Scandinavians are usually associated with hit-and-run attacks beginning with the raid on the Abbey of Lindisfarne in 797), their military expeditions actually started earlier and were directed eastwards. Scandinavians moved beyond the Baltic coast to Constantinople. To the south and west, France, Iberia, and the islands of Great Britain and Ireland witnessed, variously, trade, invasion, and settlement. The essentially unpopulated islands of the North Atlantic Ocean were subjected to a Norse-led diaspora with the Scandinavian settlers perhaps over-reaching themselves in Newfoundland and ultimately abandoning their Greenlandic colonies. The Vikings have maintained a resonance in the popular imagination to the present day.

The small town of Buckley, in Flintshire, was the focus for a regional pottery industry for at least 600 years, from the medieval period to the mid-20th century. However, despite Buckley's impressive industrial past, a visit to the town today reveals little evidence to suggest the extent and importance of what was once a major industry supplying traditional earthenware. This book is based on the results of recent research and excavation which has enhanced our understanding of the Buckley potteries, identifying over 30 individual production sites from documentary and cartographic sources. It considers the factors which influenced the siting and development of the industry, how it changed through time and the reasons for its eventual demise. Few of the potteries have been the subject of archaeological excavation, and of those none have previously been published in detail. The book presents the results from excavations on the sites of four potteries, and includes a review of the evidence for others, including a gazetteer detailing the evidence for all of the potteries currently known. This volume contains contributions from Peter Davey, Leigh Dodd, Richard Hankinson, Bob Silvester and Sophie Watson.

"Viking Language 1 - Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas" provides everything necessary to learn Old Norse, runes, and tackle Icelandic sagas. Graded lessons, saga readings, runic inscriptions, grammar exercises, pronunciation, maps, cultural sections, student guide, and vocabulary teach Old Norse and about Vikings, Iceland, old Scandinavia, myths and legends. ----- Download FREE ANSWER KEY on www.vikinglanguage.com ----- Now available, two audio MP3 download OLD NORSE PRONUNCIATION ALBUMS "VIKING LANGUAGE 1: AUDIO LESSONS 1-8: (Pronounce Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas)" and "Viking Language 1: Audio Lessons 9-15." To find search "Viking Language audio lessons" under "all departments" and "MP3 music." Also CDbaby and Itunes. ----- VISIT www.vikinglanguage.com for information about the "Viking Language Series" and for samples of the audio readings ---- Forthcoming soon "Viking Language 2 The Old Norse Reader" including, prose selections, complete sagas, poems of the Scandinavian gods and heroes, Old Norse runes, reference grammar, and vocabulary.

While historians know that history is about interpreting primary sources, students tend to think of history as a set of facts. In The Saint and the Count, Leah Shopkow opens up the interpretive world of the historian using the biography of St. Vitalis of Savigny (d. 1122) as a case study. This biography was written around 1174 by Stephen of Fougeres and provides a rich stage to demonstrate the kinds of questions historians ask about primary sources and the interpretive and conceptual frameworks they use. What is the nature of medieval sources and what are the interpretive problems they present? How does the positionality of Stephen of Fougeres shape his biography of St. Vitalis? How did medieval people respond to stories of miracles? And finally, how does this biography illuminate the problem of violence in medieval society? A translation of the biography is included, so that readers can explore the text on their own.

Archaeological investigation ahead of residential development was undertaken on land adjacent to Upthorpe Road, Stanton between November 2013 and March 2014 by MOLA. The scope of these works was set out in a brief prepared by Suffolk County Council (Tipper 2011) and a WSI (NA 2011) and was undertaken in accordance with the National Planning Policy Framework (DCLG 2012, now MHCLG 2019). Prior evaluation of the development area had uncovered evidence for a Bronze Age ditch and a small number of undated burials (Brown and Yates 2011). Subsequent excavation revealed a significant archaeological site far in excess of what was expected. Over the course of the five-month long excavation, the remains of a prehistoric round barrow and a cemetery containing the remains of 67 inhumations with associated grave goods were carefully investigated. Subsequent post-excavation analysis has sought to place the discovery in its regional context and to expand what we know about the prehistoric remains for the area as well as the early origins of Stanton. This book documents the discovery of the site and the results of the detailed analysis of the archaeological features, skeletal assemblage and other artefacts. Includes contributions by Sander Aerts, Lyn Blackmore, Paul Blinkhorn, Esther Cameron, Andy Chapman, Steve Critchley, Val Fryer, Sue Harrington, Tora Hylton, Samantha Leggett, Estelle Praet, Adam Reid, Ina Vanden Berghe, and Yvonne Wolframm-Murray. Illustrations by Olly Dindol, Joanne Clawley and Izabela Jurkiewicz.

Following the collapse of Roman Britain, early medieval England shows little evidence for complex hierarchy or supra-regional socio-political units for nearly two hundred years, until the turn of the 7th century, when the documented emergence of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms is seemingly confirmed by the sudden appearance of the first high-status settlements - the so-called great hall complexes. This book explores the role of great hall complexes in kingdom formation through an expansive and ambitious study, incorporating new fieldwork, new quantitative methodologies and new theoretical models for the emergence of high-status settlements and the formation and consolidation of supra-regional socio-political units. This study begins with a comparative analysis of all known great hall complexes, through which evidence is presented for a broad chronological development, paralleling and contributing to the development of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The wider context of great hall complexes is then explored through a regional case study, charting the development of socio-economic power in the burials and settlements of the Upper Thames Valley, before situating the great hall complexes within this development. Ultimately, an overarching theoretical explanation is proposed for the emergence, development and abandonment of the great hall complexes, linking these sites with the development of a new elite ideology, the integration of new supra-regional communities and the consolidation of the newly formed Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

The Vikings are well-known for their violent raids and pillage, but they also had a well-organised system for political decision-making, legal cases and conflict resolution.These activities took place at outdoor assembly sites, such as Thingvellir in Iceland, which were carefully selected for their characteristics and then maintained and rebuilt over time. Whilst not neglecting or denying the violent elements of the Norse people, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of their well-ordered culture of law and assembly. It is demonstrated that these two elements formed an integral part of Norse life and identity, to the extent that the assembly institution was brought to all Norse settlements.

Since its invention by Renaissance humanists, the myth of the "Middle Ages" has held a uniquely important place in the Western historical imagination. Whether envisioned as an era of lost simplicity or a barbaric nightmare, the medieval past has always served as a mirror for modernity. This book gives an eye-opening account of the ways various political and intellectual projects-from nationalism to the discipline of anthropology-have appropriated the Middle Ages for their own ends. Deploying an interdisciplinary toolkit, author K. Patrick Fazioli grounds his analysis in contemporary struggles over power and identity in the Eastern Alps, while also considering the broader implications for scholarly research and public memory.

This study of post-medieval ceramic production and consumption in the Lower Rhineland is prefaced by a survey of previous work and approaches in the field. With the initiation of large-scale urban excavations in the Lower Rhineland during the 1980s, particularly in the town of Duisburg, an extensive sequence of pottery has been recovered dating from c .1400 to 1800, enabling archaeologists for the first time to re-examine traditional chronologies, attributions and socio-economic interpretations. This survey comprises 95 individual assemblages of pottery from sites excavated in Duisburg and from towns and rural sites in the region. (Studies in Contemporary and Historical Archaeology is a new series of edited and single-authored volumes intended to make available current work on the archaeology of the recent and contemporary past. The series brings together contributions from academic historical archaeologists, professional archaeologists and practitioners from cognate disciplines who are engaged with archaeological material and practices.)

Gaelic literati were an elite and influential group in the social hierarchy of Irish lordships between c. 1300 and 1600. From their estates, they served Gaelic and Old English ruling families in the arts of history, law, medicine, and poetry. They farmed, kept guest-houses, conducted schools, and maintained networks of learning. In other capacities, they were involved in political assemblies. This book presents a framework for identifying and interpreting the settings and built heritages of their estates in lordship borderscapes. It shows that a more textured definition of what this learned class represented can be achieved through the material record of the buildings and monuments they used, and where their lands were positioned in the political map. Where literati lived and worked are conceived as expressions of their intellectual and political cultures. Mediated by case studies of the landscapes of their estates, dwellings, and schools, the methodology is predominantly field based, using archaeological investigation and topographic and spatial analyses, and drawing on historical and literary texts, place-names and lore in referencing named people to places. More widely, the study contributes a landscape perspective to the growing body of work on autochthonous intellectual culture and the exercise of power by ruling families in late medieval and early modern Celtic societies.

In the eighteenth century sport as we know it emerged as a definable social activity. Hunting and other country sports became the source of significant innovations in visual art; racing and boxing generated important subcultures; and sport's impact on good health permeated medical, historical, and philosophical writings. Sporting Cultures, 1650-1850 is a collection of essays that charts important developments in the study of sport in the eighteenth century. Editors Daniel O'Quinn and Alexis Tadie have gathered together an array of European and North American scholars to critically examine the educational, political, and medical contexts that separated sports from other physical activities. The volume reveals how the mediation of sporting activities, through match reports, pictures, and players, transcended the field of aristocratic patronage and gave rise to the social and economic forces we now associate with sports. In Sporting Cultures, 1650-1850 , O'Quinn and Tadie successfully lay the groundwork for future research on the complex intersection of power, pleasure, and representation in sports culture.