The question of the British presence in Anglo-Saxon England readdressed by archaeologists, historians, linguists, and place-name specialists. The number of native Britons, and their role, in Anglo-Saxon England has been hotly debated for generations; the English were seen as Germanic in the nineteenth century, but the twentieth saw a reinvention of the German "past". Today, the scholarly community is as deeply divided as ever on the issue: place-name specialists have consistently preferred minimalist interpretations, privileging migration from Germany, while other disciplinary groups have been less united in their views, with many archaeologists and historians viewing the British presence, potentially at least, as numerically significant or even dominant. The papers collected here seek to shed new light on this complex issue, by bringing together contributions from different disciplinary specialists and exploring the interfaces between various categories of knowledge about the past. They assemble both a substantial body of evidence concerning the presence of Britons and offer a variety of approaches to the central issues of the scale of that presence and its significance across the seven centuries of Anglo-Saxon England. NICK HIGHAM is Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History at the University of Manchester. Contributors: RICHARD COATES, MARTIN GRIMMER, HEINRICH HARKE, NICK HIGHAM, CATHERINE HILLS, LLOYD LAING, C.P. LEWIS, GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER, O.J. PADEL, DUNCANPROBERT, PETER SCHRIJVER, DAVID THORNTON, HILDEGARD L.C. TRISTRAM, DAMIAN TYLER, HOWARD WILLIAMS, ALEX WOOLF

An exploration of the landscape of Anglo-Saxon England, particularly through the prism of place-names and what they can reveal. The landscape of modern England still bears the imprint of its Anglo-Saxon past. Villages and towns, fields, woods and forests, parishes and shires, all shed light on the enduring impact of the Anglo-Saxons. The essays in this volume explore the richness of the interactions between the Anglo-Saxons and their landscape: how they understood, described, and exploited the environments of which they were a part. Ranging from the earliest settlement period through to the urban expansion of late Anglo-Saxon England, this book draws on evidence from place-names, written sources, and the landscape itself to provide fresh insights into the topic. Subjects explored include the history of thestudy of place-names and the Anglo-Saxon landscape; landscapes of particular regions and the exploitation of particular landscape types; the mechanisms of the transmission and survival of written sources; and the problems and potentials of interdisciplinary research into the Anglo-Saxon landscape. Nicholas J. Higham is Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History at the University of Manchester; Martin Ryan lectures in Medieval History at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Ann Cole, Linda M. Corrigan, Dorn Van Dommelen, Simon Draper, Gillian Fellows-Jensen, Della Hooke, Duncan Probert, Alexander R. Rumble, Martin J. Ryan, Peter A. Stokes, Richard Watson.