The papers published here are developed from presentations made at a Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies Conference entitled 'The Anglo-Saxons in their World' held in 2010. An eclectic collection of studies drawing on Latin, Old English and Old Norse texts, artefacts and archaeology, papers are groups into five themed sections: 'Chosen people in their place'; 'Life in Anglo-Saxon England'; 'Beyond the shore'; 'The Mediterranean and beyond'; and 'The North, The Universe', though other connections may be found. Two papers focus largely on early archaeology (Battaglia, Trzaska-Nartowski and Riddler) and King's study is also of an archaeological find. A majority of papers relate to the intellectual climate of the early Christian period in England (Larpi, Higham, Grocock, King, Cesario, Barker and to some extent Sebo). Several take evidence from later Anglo-Saxon manuscripts (Scragg, Hill, Frederick, Sebo). Fafinski attempts a chronological sweep beginning in the Roman period, and Banham from the seventh century to the eleventh.

Although we often think of friendship today as an indisputable value of human social life, for thinkers and writers across late medieval Christian society friendship raised a number of social and ethical dilemmas that needed to be carefully negotiated. On Amista analyses these dilemmas and looks at how Dante's strategic articulations of friendship evolved across the phases of his literary career as he maneuvered between different social groups and settings. Elizabeth Coggeshall reveals that friendship was not an unequivocal moral good for the writers of late medieval Italy. Instead, it was an ambiguous term to be deployed strategically, describing a wide range of social relationships such as allies, collaborators, servants, patrons, rivals, and enemies. Drawing on the use of the language of friendship in the letters, correspondence poems, dedications, narratives, and treatises composed by Dante and his interlocutors, Coggeshall examines the way they skillfully negotiated around the dilemmas that friendship raised in the spheres of medieval Italian literary society. The book addresses instances of inclusivity and exclusivity, collaboration and self-interest, hierarchy and equality, and alterity and identity. Employing literary, historical, and sociological analysis, On Amista presents a genealogy for the innovative and tactical use of the terms of friendship among the works of late medieval Italian authors.

This volume presents nine articles (of which five are based on papers presented in the session Utilization of Brick in the Medieval Period Production, Construction, Destruction held at the EAA meeting in Helsinki in 2012) with topics ranging from applying natural scientific research methods such as OSL, AM and hXRF analyses, to the study of early brickmaking processes, to recent excavation discoveries and archaeological investigations of brick use in northern parts of continental Europe including the British Isles, Finland and Sweden."

This study explores the status of children in the late medieval period (AD 1066-1539) based on two concepts of the child; biological and cultural. The biological evidence is explored by an osteoarchaeological analysis of sub-adult skeletal remains concentrating on markers related to status, such as, age, rates of growth, the presence of stress indicators, and rates of dental wear. The cultural aspect involves an analysis of the funerary context, such as, location of burial, position of the body, and grave inclusions, as well as reference to historical sources depicting the role of children.

This volume describes the results of the first ten years of the joint Anglo-Georgian excavations at Nokalakevi, West Georgia. The site, known to the Byzantines as Archaeopolis, was a major fortress in the fourth to sixth centuries A.D. often described as the capital of Lazika-Egrisi. Known to medieval Georgian chroniclers as Tsikhegoji, the site is also thought to be the capital of Colchis at the time of the first unification of Georgia in Hellenistic times. Extensively excavated since 1973, and by AGEN since 2001, this is the first significant publication of results to be produced in English.

This monograph provides a comprehensive synthesis and discussion of the archaeology of early medieval settlement in Ireland. Drawing on both published and unpublished material, it sets out an interpretive, analytical text and a gazetteer of some 241 key early medieval settlements revealed through archaeological excavations. Analysis focuses on four major areas: early medieval houses and other buildings; settlement enclosures; agriculture as part of the wider settlement landscape; and crafts and industrial activities on early medieval settlements.

This book describes, collates and analyses the archaeological, zooarchaeological and palaeobotanical evidence for agriculture, livestock and cereal production in early medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100, particularly as revealed through archaeological excavations in Ireland since 1930. It is based on the research of the Heritage Council-funded Early Medieval Archaeology Project (EMAP), a collaborative research project between University College Dublin and Queens University Belfast, supported by the Irish government Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Providing a range of insights into farmsteads and field enclosures, livestock management (particularly of cattle) and crop cultivation, along with a series of datasets presented in tables and gazetteer descriptions, it is arguably amongst the most detailed, focused and comprehensive analyses of early agricultural practice in its social and economic contexts in Europe, and the wider world.

This study uses place-names to suggest the major routes in use in early medieval England. Many Roman roads existing by the fifth century are known. Some fourteenth century routes in existence can be deduced from the Gough map of c.1360, and seventeenth century routes from Ogilby's road atlas of 1675. Between the fifth and fourteenth centuries there is little information about routes except in scattered charter boundary references. Here it is suggested that this gap can be partially filled using place-name evidence. Certain names such as Stratton, Drayton and Compton occur consistently by Roman roads and a few other old routes but rarely elsewhere. A string of such names along a route suggests that it was in use. Hythe and Eaton indicate waterways in use. The needs of travellers, possible destinations and how such a naming system may have arisen is considered.

This work follows the study of the ecclesiastical geology of almost all Anglo-Saxon religious sites throughout England. There, it proved possible to both understand and distinguish clearly obvious patterns in the use of stonework, to determine the use and value of specific rock types, and to illustrate diagnostic features which could be used to identify building of that period. Subsequent studies of ecclesiastical sites, in Scotland and the Scottish Islands, the Isle of Man and Ireland expanded the value of the English studies by revealing closely analogous examples of the same indicative features. Beyond the domain of the Anglo-Saxons but of the same age, they were shown to follow a fashion; to this fashion the name 'Patterned' was applied.

This illustrated book introduces serious students of Anglo-Saxon culture to selected aspects of the realities of Anglo-Saxon life through reference to artefacts and textual sources. Everyday practices and processes are investigated, such as the exploitation of animals for clothing, meat, cheese and parchment; ships for travel, trade and transport; manufacturing processes of metalwork; textiles for dress and furnishing and the practicalities of living with illness or disability. Articles collected in this volume illuminate how an understanding of the material culture of the daily Anglo-Saxon world can inform reading and scholarship in Anglo-Saxon studies. Scholarly and practical material presented inform one another, making the book accessible to any reader seriously interested in England in the early Middle Ages.

This study takes as its subject matter the use of social space in early medieval Irish houses (c. AD 600-1200), with the evidence from the province of Ulster interrogated in more detail. During this period there is a shift from curvilinear to rectilinear house forms. Excavation reports, published and unpublished, have been widely consulted and are the main focus for this research. The Old Irish legal tract Crith Gablach, composed during the earlier part of the early medieval period, is analysed in particular detail with reference to its information about houses and social status. The earlier chapters include a review of earlier research in Ireland and elsewhere including a range of archaeological and anthropological house-related research.

One of the most tenacious and long-running controversies regarding the origin and development of the late Anglo-Saxon town has been the nature and function of 'heterogeneous tenure', one of the defining characteristics of the Domesday borough. This refers to the basic division of the larger boroughs as described in Domesday Book into the customary burgesses or tenements which owed dues and obligations to the king alone, and the non-customary burgesses or tenements which were appurtenant to the various manors of tenants-in-chief of the shire (and sometimes neighbouring shires) to whom they paid rent and owed other dues and services. This present study outlines a preliminary model for the development of these rural-urban connections, based primarily on a reassessment of the evidence in Domesday Book and in earlier charters, where available, and the spatial relationships of the manors enumerated in it to their central boroughs, their neighbours, and to shire and other early boundaries, as well as to other features of the physical and historic landscape. This model is developed and tested by the analysis of evidence from several adjoining areas in central England - 1) Wiltshire (chapters 2 and 3); 2) Hampshire (chapter 4); 3) Warwickshire and south Staffordshire (chapter 5); 4) Gloucestershire (including the former Winchcombeshire) (chapter 6); 5) Worcestershire (chapter 7); and 6) Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire (chapters 10-12).

To date there has been little systematic study of the appropriation of, or attitudes to, prehistoric monuments in settlements of the period. The objectives of the research presented here are twofold. Firstly, it assesses how widespread the reuse of prehistoric monuments was in early to middle Anglo-Saxon settlements. In so doing, it examines the types of settlements in which the activity occurred and the types of prehistoric features that were reused. This is achieved through a review of the Anglo-Saxon settlement evidence in a regional study area. The settlements discussed in this study date to the period c.AD 450-850, with a regional focus based on central England, defined here to the north by the Humber and to the south by the Thames. In addition to well-known and published sites, this review makes use of data that is less frequently discussed in archaeological discourse, such as partially excavated or unpublished settlements that have not previously attracted a great deal of attention from scholars. The second aim is to assess how, and particularly why, monuments were appropriated in settlements. In order to answer these questions an in-depth, site-by-site approach is taken, in which the layout and use of space in a number of case studies are analysed. These case studies allow greater understanding of the ways in which older monuments could be referenced in settlements, how reuse changed over time, and why monuments may have been significant. Four Gazetteers provide locational and reference data to the selected sites.

Among the few surviving archaeological sites from the medieval Christian kingdom of Nubia-located in present day Sudan-Qasr Ibrim is unique in a number of ways. It is the only site in Lower Nubia that remained above water after the completion of the Aswan high dam. In addition, thanks to the aridity of the climate in the area the site is marked by extraordinary preservation of organic material, especially textual material written on papyrus, leather, and paper. Particularly rich is the textual material from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE, written in Old Nubian, the region's indigenous language. As a result, Qasr Ibrim is probably the best documented ancient and medieval site in Africa outside of Egypt and North Africa. Medieval Nubia will be the first book to make available this remarkable material, much of which is still unpublished. The evidence discovered reveals a more complicated picture of this community than originally thought. Previously, scholars had thought medieval Nubia had existed in relative isolation from the rest of the world and had a primitive economy. Legal documents, accounts, and letters, however, reveal a complex, monetized economy with exchange rates connected to those of the wider world. Furthermore, they reveal public festive practices, in which lavish feasting and food gifts reinforced the social prestige of the participants. These documents show medieval Nubia to have been a society combining legal elements inherited from the Greco-Roman world with indigenous African social practices. In reconstructing the social and economic life of medieval Nubia based on the Old Nubian sources from the site, as well as other previously examined materials, Giovanni R. Ruffini will correct previous assumptions and produce a new picture of Nubia, one that connects it to the wider Mediterranean economy and society of its time.

The current focus on the theme of authorship in Medieval and Early Modern studies reopens questions of poetic agency and intent. Bringing into conversation several kinds of scholarship on medieval authorship, the essays in Author, Reader, Book examine interrelated questions raised by the relationship between an author and a reader, the relationships between authors and their antecedents, and the ways in which authorship interacts with the physical presentation of texts in books.The broad chronological range within this volume reveals the persistence of literary concerns that remain consistent through different periods, languages, and cultural contexts. Theoretical reflections, case studies from a wide variety of languages, examinations of devotional literature from figures such as Bishop Reginald Pecock, and analyses of works that are more secular in focus, including some by Chaucer and Christine de Pizan, come together in this volume to transcend linguistic and disciplinary boundaries.

This re-publication of Cheddar has been prompted by the unavailability of the original, published over a quarter of a century ago. Unlike much historical scholarship, the archaeological report on a site is primary data and therefore needs itself to be read before turning to re-interpretations. It is also appropriate in the context of the recent re-evaluation of the British and Saxon palace of Yeavering, after a similar interval since publication. In the intervening years since publication, Cheddar has frequently been cited and reviewed, not least as the most extensively-excavated of the royal complexes of the pre-Conquest period.

Medieval castles were, alongside the great cathedrals, the most recognisable buildings of the medieval world. Closely associated with concepts of justice, lordship and authority as well as military might, castles came to encapsulate the period's very essence. Looking at above and below-ground evidence and examining a wide variety of sites - from towering donjons to earth and timber castles - in different parts of western Europe, this book explores the relationship between early castle building and the emergence of a new aristocracy and investigates the impact of authority on the organisation of the landscape.

ilitary monuments in Lincolnshire (eastern England) have hitherto received little attention, with only four being the subject of published studies. No attempt has previously been made to produce a corpus of surviving examples. There are 62 military effigies in Lincolnshire, including some of national importance as well as many others of great interest. In the former category are the effigies at Careby, Halton-Holegate, Holbeach, Kirkstead Abbey, Stoke Rochford and Surfleet. The main object of the critical catalogue in this volume is to provide an accurate analytical description of these figures as they appear today; a project that has been long overdue, for what is some of England's finest extant medieval monumental sculpture. The catalogue is arranged chronologically, with the monuments being divided into four main groups. Every effigy is illustrated and the accompanying catalogue entry gives a description of the effigy and the armour shown and an account as to the person thought to be commemorated by the figure.

This illustrated book introduces serious students of Anglo-Saxon culture to selected aspects of the realities of Anglo-Saxon life through reference to artefacts and textual sources. Everyday practices and processes are investigated, such as the exploitation of animals for clothing, meat, cheese and parchment; ships for travel, trade and transport; manufacturing processes of metalwork; textiles for dress and furnishing and the practicalities of living with illness or disability. Articles collected in this volume illuminate how an understanding of the material culture of the daily Anglo-Saxon world can inform reading and scholarship in Anglo-Saxon studies. Scholarly and practical material presented inform one another, making the book accessible to any reader seriously interested in England in the early Middle Ages.

This study focuses on the diversity with which early medieval society formed not only among macro European zones but also within individual areas, and thus on the need to look beyond the models elaborated during a phase in which archaeological sources were still fragmentary and inadequate. Through a combination of historical and documented-based investigation and the most recent extensive archaeological data, the author makes a comparative analysis of the different results of the movements of Germanic groups, especially in the particularly representative area of northern Italy and the Alpine system, during various periods: in the 5th century as auxiliary troops under the control of the same Roman Empire (Burgundians), then as the new military elites and finally as the new ruling class (Ostrogoths and Langobards), revealing how the cultural evolution of the new sites appears to be strictly correlated to different situations and often common to the new Germanic element and to the local Romanised components. Interesting and stimulating concepts that underscore the formation of a shared culture are presented in this contribution along with a refreshing new perspective of certain aspects, such as the evolution of clothing and funerary rituals, already considered expressions of simple ethnic preservation.

This volume contains transcriptions (but not translations) of the principal documents which relate to the Domesday inquest in Kent, accompanied by detailed commentaries. The three surviving texts are the Archbishop's response to the inquest, extracts preserved by the monks of St Augustine's Abbey, and the final report as it appeared in Domesday. The commentary aims to identify places as they appear, both named and unnamed. Other documents included are an early epitome of Kent Domesday, other documents in monastic cartularies related to landholding, early lists of parish churches in Kent, and documents setting out patterns of landholding in the thirteenth century.

Papers in Honour of Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjolbye-Biddle. Contents: Preface (Martin Henig and Nigel Ramsay); Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjolbye-Biddle: An Appreciation (Martin Henig, Thomas Beaumont James, Anthony King and Nigel Ramsay); List of Publications of Martin Biddle and of Birthe Kjolbye-Biddle (Compiled by Anthony King); Commendation by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark; 1) A Roman Silver Jug with Biblical Scenes from the Treasure found at Traprain Law (Kenneth Painter); 2) Hand-washing and Foot-washing, Sacred and Secular, in Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period (Anthea Harris and Martin Henig); 3) Christian Origins at Gloucester: A Topographical Inquiry (Carolyn Heighway); 4) New Evidence for the Transition from the Late Roman to the Saxon Period at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London (Alison Telfer); 5) Ethnic Identity and the Origins, Purpose and Occurrence of Pattern-Welded Swords in Sixth-Century Kent: The Case of the Saltwood Cemetery (Brian Gilmour);"

The Scandinavian Late Iron Age, popularly known as the Viking Age, is often represented as deeply and inherently male, with male aggressiveness as the ideal presented to the public, leaving little room for alternative gender roles in the popular imagination. This study presents a more complex picture, analysing gender as a factor in mortuary practices and the siting of burials in the Vestfold of Norway, focusing in particular on the sites of Kaupang and Oseberg.

This volume publishes updated versions of papers originally given at a conference in Corfu in 1998. It contains 24 contributions on the archaeology of post-Roman Greece, with a particular focus on landscape. Many papers provide updates on ongoing regional survey projects or excavations at specific sites, notably at Mytiline, while others are more theoretical in nature. Further sections explore vernacular architecture, ceramics, heritage, and ethnoarchaeological approaches.

Egglestone marble was quarried at four sites around Barnard Castle on the banks of the Tees in the later Middle Ages, reaching a peak in usage in the fifteenth century. This comprehensive work looks at its quarrying, usage and distribution across the north-east. Whilst there is no evidence of the stone's use in building work, it was used in a range of other monuments such as cross ledger and incised slabs, tomb chests, fonts, and most importantly as the setting for memorial brasses. Patterns of patronage are noted and the appendices contain a complete list of Egglestone marble pieces with evidence for dating and patronage.