Since the early 20th century the scholarly study of Anglo-Saxon texts has been augmented by systematic excavation and analysis of physical evidence - settlements, cemeteries, artefacts, environmental data, and standing buildings. This evidence has confirmed some readings of the Anglo-Saxon literary and documentary sources and challenged others. More recently, large-scale excavations both in towns and in the countryside, the application of computer methods to large bodies of data, new techniques for site identification such as remote sensing, and new dating methods have put archaeology at the forefront of Anglo-Saxon studies. The Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, written by a team of experts and presenting the results of the most up-to-date research, will both stimulate and support further investigation into those aspects of Anglo-Saxon life and culture which archaeology has fundamentally illuminated. It will prove an essential resourse for our understanding of a society poised at the interface between prehistory and history.

In addition to its unshakeable position on academic History curricula, Anglo-Saxon England remains popular with the general public. However, despite numerous specialist volumes on the political and economic history of the period, there are no books currently on the market which offer an overview of Anglo-Saxon daily life. This book fills that gap, covering a great range of common life experiences of individuals in England, AD c. 450-c.1066, including domestic and family life, work and leisure, education, clothing and housing, food, religion, magic and superstition, health and sickness, warfare, crime and punishment, ethnic and national identity, the creation of kingship, slavery, urban life, and political life for men, women and children. Archaeological evidence gives a dramatic picture of social organization in Anglo-Saxon towns, and sources such as wills provide insight into the way families were structured and organized. Evidence in the law codes and literature shows how Anglo-Saxons experienced childhood, youth, marriage, adulthood, parenthood and old age; how they were educated and engaged in trades, and what they did in their leisure time. Archaeological and documentary evidence, including pictorial representations in sculpture and manuscripts, give a vivid picture of Anglo-Saxon food and dress, and also of the military and governmental forces of Anglo-Saxon England. Religion was an important part of daily life, and so was crime, justice, punishment and slavery. Indeed, the struggle to survive meant that health and sickness were crucial everyday concerns. All these aspects of daily life are examined in Sally Crawford's book, creating a rich picture of ordinary, but complex, lifein Anglo-Saxon England.

Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England examines and recreates many of the details of ordinary lives in early medieval England between the 5th and 11th centuries, exploring what we know as well as the surprising gaps in our knowledge. Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England covers daily life in England from the 5th through the 11th centuries. These six centuries saw significant social, cultural, religious, and ethnic upheavals, including the introduction of Christianity, the creation of towns, the Viking invasions, the invention of "Englishness," and the Norman Conquest. In the last 10 years, there have been significant new archaeological discoveries, major advances in scientific archaeology, and new ways of thinking about the past, meaning it is now possible to say much more about everyday life during this time period than ever before. Drawing on a combination of archaeological and textual evidence, including the latest scientific findings from DNA and stable isotope analysis, this book looks at the life course of the early medieval English from the cradle to the grave, as well as how daily lives changed over these centuries. Topics covered include maintenance activities, education, play, commerce, trade, manufacturing, fashion, travel, migration, warfare, health, and medicine. Takes an interdisciplinary approach, using archaeological and textual sources Supports the text with references to key sites, artifacts, and documents Focuses on everyday life Reflects the subject expertise of the author

Real understanding of past societies is not possible without including children, and yet they have been strangely invisible in the archaeological record. Compelling explanation about past societies cannot be achieved without including and investigating children and childhood. However marginal the traces of children's bodies and bricolage may seem compared to adults, archaeological evidence of children and childhood can be found in the most astonishing places and spaces. The archaeology of childhood is one of the most exciting and challenging areas for new discovery about past societies. Children are part of every human society, but childhood is a cultural construct. Each society develops its own idea about what a childhood should be, what children can or should do, and how they are trained to take their place in the world. Children also play a part in creating the archaeological record itself. In this volume, experts from around the world ask questions about childhood - thresholds of age and growth, childhood in the material culture, the death of children, and the intersection of the childhood and the social, economic, religious, and political worlds of societies in the past.

The ancient Celtic world evokes debate, discussion, romanticism and mythicism. On the one hand it represents a specialist area of archaeological interest, on the other, it has a wide general appeal. The Celtic world is accessible through archaeology, history, linguistics and art history. Of these disciplines, art history offers the most direct message to a wider audience. This volume of 37 papers brings together a truly international group of pre-eminent specialists in the field of Celtic art and Celtic studies. It is a benchmark volume the like of which has not been seen since the publication of Paul Jacobsthal's Early Celtic Art in 1944. The papers chart the history of attempts to understand Celtic art and argue for novel approaches in discussions spanning the whole of Continental Europe and the British Isles. This new body of international scholarship will give the reader a sense of the richness of the material and current debates. Artefacts of rich form and decoration, which we might call art, provide a most sensitive set of indicators of key areas of past societies, their power, politics and transformations. With its broad geographical scope, this volume offers a timely opportunity to re-assess contacts, context, transmission and meaning in Celtic art for understanding the development of European cultures, identities and economies in pre- and proto-history. Essays in honour of Vincent Megaw on his 80th birthday.

Six papers which reassess medieval medicine. Contents: Rage Possession: A Cognitive Science Approach to Early English Demon Possession (Kirsten C. Uszkalo); Outlawry and Moral Perversion in Old Norse Society (Anne Irene Riis); Hermaphroditism in the western Middle Ages: Physicians, Lawyers and the Intersexed Person (Irina Metzler); The nadir of Western Medicine? Texts, contexts and practice in Anglo-Saxon England (Sally Crawford); This should not to be shown to a gentile: MedicoMagical Texts in Medieval Franco-German Jewish Rabbinic Manuscripts (Ephraim Shoham-Steiner); Asclepius, Biographical Dictionaries, and the transmission of science in the Medieval Muslim World (Keren Abbou Hershkovits).

Contents: 1) Children, childhood and society: an introduction (Sally Crawford and Gillian Shepherd); 2) Past, present and future in the study of Roman childhood (Mary Harlow, Ray Laurence and Ville Vuolanto); 3) The pitter-patter of tiny feet in clay: aspects of the liminality of childhood in the ancient Near East (Alasdair Livingstone); 4) The child's cache at Assiros Toumba, Macedonia (Diana Wardle and K. A. Wardle); 5) Transitions to adulthood in early Icelandic society (Chris Callow); 6) Had they no shame? Martial, Status and Roman sexual attitudes towards slave children (Niall McKeown); 7) Vital resources, ideal images and virtual lives: children in Early Bronze Age funerary ritual (Paul Garwood); 8) Companions, co-incidences or chattels? Children in the early Anglo-Saxon multiple burial ritual (Sally Crawford); 9) Poor little rich kids? Status and selection in Archaic Western Greece (Gillian Shepherd).

Since the early 20th century the scholarly study of Anglo-Saxon texts has been augmented by systematic excavation and analysis of physical evidence-settlements, cemeteries, artefacts, environmental data, and standing buildings. This evidence has confirmed some readings of the Anglo-Saxon literary and documentary sources and challenged others. More recently, large-scale excavations both in towns and in the countryside, the application of computer methods to large bodies of data, new techniques for site identification such as remote sensing, and new dating methods have put archaeology at the forefront of Anglo-Saxon studies. The Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, written by a team of experts and presenting the results of the most up-to-date research, will both stimulate and support further investigation into those aspects of Anglo-Saxon life and culture which archaeology has fundamentally illuminated. It will prove an essential resourse for our understanding of a society poised at the interface between prehistory and history.