37 studies of the adoption of Christianity across northern Europe over1000 years, and the diverse reasons that drove the process. In Europe, the cross went north and east as the centuries unrolled: from the Dingle Peninsula to Estonia, and from the Alps to Lapland, ranging in time from Roman Britain and Gaul in the third and fourth centuries to the conversion of peoples in the Baltic area a thousand years later. These episodes of conversion form the basic narrative here. History encourages the belief that the adoption of Christianity was somehow irresistible, but specialists show theunderside of the process by turning the spotlight from the missionaries, who recorded their triumphs, to the converted, exploring their local situations and motives. What were the reactions of the northern peoples to the Christian message? Why would they wish to adopt it for the sake of its alliances? In what way did they adapt the Christian ethos and infrastructure to suit their own community? How did conversion affect the status of farmers, of smiths, of princes and of women? Was society wholly changed, or only in marginal matters of devotion and superstition? These are the issues discussed here by thirty-eight experts from across northern Europe; some answers come from astute re-readings of the texts alone, but most are owed to a combination of history, art history and archaeology working together. MARTIN CARVER is Professor of Archaeology, University of York.

This book brings together new archaeological, historical and palaeoecological approaches to the transition from the Romano-British to medieval Celtic economy between the fourth and ninth centuries AD, re-examining well-known sources of evidence and introducing new material. While the emphasis is on the Celtic-speaking areas of Britain after AD 400, the geographical and chronological scope of the contributions is wide-ranging. The articles include a reassessment of the end of the Romano-British economy, suggesting that the conventional interpretation - a sudden collapse in production in the early fifth century - is incorrect; pollen analysis is a key approach in understanding the end of the agricultural economy, and here, for the first time, all relevant pollen sequences are catalogued and discussed. A fresh investigation into imported pottery and glass and inscribed stone monuments clarifies and understanding of these problematical sources, while the nature of the contacts which brought imports into Britain and Ireland is re-evaluated from new evidence which, together with archaeological material from shipwrecks of AD 400-600 (of which a catalogue is presented here) and historical data, indicate that Byzantine contacts with Britain are unlikely to have been on entirely commercial grounds.