Essays into numerous aspects of the Domesday Book, shedding fresh light on its mysteries. Compiled from the records of a survey of the kingdom of England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085, Domesday Book is a key source for the history of England. However, there has never been a critical edition of the textand so, despite over 200 years of intense academic study, its evidence has rarely been exploited to the full. The essays in this volume seek to realize the potential of Domesday Book by focussing on the manuscript itself. There are analyses of abbreviations, letter forms, and language; re-assessments of key sources, the role of tenants-in-chief in producing them, and the nature of the Norman settlement that their forms illuminate; a re-evaluation of the data and its referents; and finally, fresh examinations of the afterlife of the Domesday text and how it was subsequently perceived. In identifying new categories of evidence and revisiting old ones, these studies point to a better understanding of the text. There are surprising insights into its sources and developing programme and, intriguingly, a system of encoding hitherto unsuspected. In its turn the import of its data becomes clearer, thereby shedding new light on Anglo-Norman society and governance. It is in these terms that this volume offers a departure in Domesday studies and looks forward to the resolution of long-standing problems that have hitherto bedevilled the interpretation of an iconic text. David Roffe and K.S.B. Keats-Rohan are leading Domesday scholars who have published widely on Domesday Book and related matters. Contributors: Howard B. Clarke, Sally Harvey, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Andrew Lowerre, John Palmer, David Roffe, Ian Taylor, Pamela Taylor, Frank Thorn, Ann Williams.

The dynamics of medieval societies in England and beyond form the focus of these essays on the Anglo-Norman world. Over the last fifty years Ann Williams has transformed our understanding of Anglo-Saxon and Norman society in her studies of personalities and elites. In this collection, leading scholars in the field revisit themes that have beencentral to her work, and open up new insights into the workings of the multi-cultural communities of the realm of England in the early Middle Ages. There are detailed discussions of local and regional elites and the interplay between them that fashioned the distinctive institutions of local government in the pre-Conquest period; radical new readings of key events such as the crisis of 1051 and a reassessment of the Bayeux Tapestry as the beginnings of theHistoria Anglorum; studies of the impact of the Norman Conquest and the survival of the English; and explorations of the social, political, and administrative cultures in post-Conquest England and Normandy. The individualessays are united overall by the articulation of the local, regional, and national identities that that shaped the societies of the period. Contributors: S.D. Church, William Aird, Lucy Marten, Hirokazu Tsurushima, Valentine Fallan, Judith Everard, Vanessa King, Pamela Taylor, Charles Insley, Simon Keynes, Sally Harvey, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, David Bates, Emma Mason, David Roffe, Mark Hagger.

Essays into numerous aspects of the Domesday Book, shedding fresh light on its mysteries. Compiled from the records of a survey of the kingdom of England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085, Domesday Book is a key source for the history of England. However, there has never been a critical edition of the textand so, despite over 200 years of intense academic study, its evidence has rarely been exploited to the full. The essays in this volume seek to realize the potential of Domesday Book by focussing on the manuscript itself. There are analyses of abbreviations, letter forms, and language; re-assessments of key sources, the role of tenants-in-chief in producing them, and the nature of the Norman settlement that their forms illuminate; a re-evaluation of the data and its referents; and finally, fresh examinations of the afterlife of the Domesday text and how it was subsequently perceived. In identifying new categories of evidence and revisiting old ones, these studies point to a better understanding of the text. There are surprising insights into its sources and developing programme and, intriguingly, a system of encoding hitherto unsuspected. In its turn the import of its data becomes clearer, thereby shedding new light on Anglo-Norman society and governance. It is in these terms that this volume offers a departure in Domesday studies and looks forward to the resolution of long-standing problems that have hitherto bedevilled the interpretation of an iconic text. DAVID ROFFE and K.S.B. KEATS-ROHAN are leading Domesday scholars who have published widely on Domesday Book and related matters.

A major genealogical advance: the first authoritative and complete biographical register of persons occurring in Domesday Book. This is the first of two volumes offering for the first time an authoritative and complete prosopography of post-Conquest England, 1066-1166. Based on extensive and wide-ranging research, the two volumes contain over eight thousand entries on persons occurring in the principal English administrative sources for the post-Conquest period -- Domesday Book, the Pipe Rolls, and Cartae Baronum. Continental origin is a major focus of the entries, as well as the discussion of family and descent of fees which characterise the whole work; genealogical tables are included. An introduction discusses Domesday prosopography; an appendix gives the Latin texts of the Northamptonshire and Lindsey surveys. Post-Conquest genealogy and manorial history start with Domesday Book: genealogists will welcome this work. Dr KATHERINE KEATS-ROHAN was awarded the Prix Brant IV de Koskull 1998 by the Confederation Internationale de Genealogie et d'Heraldique for her work on Domesday People. She is Director of the Linacre Unit for Prosopographical Research.

Though many small archaeological investigations have been made within the town in the last 35 years, it is only with the present Wallingford Burh to Borough Project that Wallingford has become the subject of an in-depth archaeological study. The papers here combine analysis of the results of this project with historical research to shed light on the evolution of the Anglo-Saxon and medieval townscape.

The second of a two-volume prosopography of persons occurring in the sources of post-Conquest England. This second volume of persons named in English records between 1066 and 1166 follows on from its predecessor Domesday People: [Of] undoubted importance...in understanding the nature of Norman aristocratic society and the forceswithin it... a monumental effort. HISTORY Drawn from extensive and wide-ranging research in British and French archives, the 7500 entries in this volume provide the first authoritative prosopographical key to over 60,000 names found in English administrative documents such as the Pipe Rolls and the Cartae Baronum, as well as various Surveys and thousands of royal and private charters. Both volumes focus upon regional origin, family, and the descent of fees, and together they provide the most complete view to date of the people responsible for the conquest and colonization of England. Dr K.S.B. KEATS-ROHAN is Director of the Linacre Unit for Prosopographical Research and Fellow of the European Humanities Research Centre, University of Oxford.

No single recent enterprise has done more to enlarge and deepen our understanding of one of the most critical periods in English history. ANTIQUARIES JOURNAL Anglo-Norman Studies, published annually and containing the papers presented at the Battle conference, is established as the single most important publication in the field, covering not only matters relating to pre- and post-Conquest England and France, but also the activities and influences of the Normans on the wider European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern stage; it celebrates its twenty-first anniversary with this volume. This year there is an emphasis on the examination of sources: translation-narratives, the Life of Hereward, the Book of Llandaf, a Mont Saint Michel cartulary, Benoit de Sainte-Maure and Roger of Howden. Secular topics include Anglo-Flemish relations and the origins of an important family; ecclesiastical matters considered are the Breton church in the late eleventh century, William Rufus's monastic policy, the patrons of the great abbey of Bec, and, for the first time in this series, the life of St Thomas of Canterbury.

First-ever full index to people and place-names in Domesday in their original forms. Presented here is the first complete, all Latin index to the Domesday Book, comprising two Indices Personarum and one Index Locorum. The main Index Personarumcontains all references to people: named individuals, title-holders, and `institutions' (collections of persons functioning as individual landholders in the Domesday text); individuals are listed alphabetically under the initial letter of their forename, while `institutions' are entered under the place where they are located. The second, shorter Index Personarum lists all people alphabetically under their surname. In both indexes the exact Latin forms given in Domesday Book and all variant spellingshave been retained. The Index Locorumlists all place-names in Domesday, except where linked to an `institution': the names of administrative units have been incorporated alphabetically into this index with the appropriate term added after the name. Cross-references to other counties have also been included. Again, the Latin form in the Domesday text is given exactly. References are to the 1783 Farley and more recent Phillimore editions. Dr K.S.B. KEATS-ROHANis Director of the Linacre Unit for Prosopographical Research; DAVID THORNTONis Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Bilkent University, Ankara.

Articles on the significance of genealogy and kinship ties in determining political events in the middle ages. In recent decades historians have become increasingly aware of the value of prosopography as an auxiliary science standing at the crossroads between anthropology, genealogy, demography and social history. It is now developing as an independent research discipline of real benefit to medievalists. The geographically and chronologically wide-ranging subjects of the essays in this collection, by scholars from the British Isles and the Continent, are united bya common theme, namely the significance of genealogy and kinship ties in determining political events in the middle ages. The papers, including a review of the history of prosopography and some of its major successes as a method by Karl Ferdinand Werner, range from general considerations of prosopographical and genealogical methodology (including discussion of Anglo-Norman royal charters) to specific analyses of individual political and kinship groups (including the genealogy of the counts of Anjou and a rehabilitation of the prosopographical material in Wace's Roman de Rou). The main geographic focus is England and France from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, but other areas as diverse as Celtic Ireland and the Latin Principality of Antioch also come under prosopographical scrutiny. Contributors: DAVID E. THORNTON, ANNE WILLIAMS, C.P. LEWIS, DAVID BATES, ELISABETH VAN HOUTS, EMMA COWNIE, JUDITH GREEN, JOHN S. MOORE, K.S.B. KEATS-ROHAN, CHRISTIAN SETTIPANI, HUBERT GUILLOTEL, KATHLEEN THOMPSON, VERONIQUE GAZEAU, MICHEL BUR, ALAN V. MURRAY, DANIEL POWER.