How did the elite in Anglo-Saxon England use textiles and clothes to express their status and power? As an archaeologist, can we ever find evidence of this material culture, or is it all hypothetical? We looked briefly before at how the thegnly class in Anglo-Saxon England sought to distinguish themselves from the masses through a […]
How did rich late ‘Anglo-Saxons’ live? Can their use of buildings and shape tell us about how they viewed themselves, and how they maintained their power? In the final part of the series discussing how Anglo-Saxon thegns expressed their power and status, after examining diet and textile use, we move onto the biggest archaeological category […]
The poetry of ‘Anglo-Saxon England’ holds an interesting middle-ground in public perception. On the one-hand Beowulf is perhaps the single most famous piece of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cultural output, of any form. Tolkien famously translated it, as did Heaney, and there was that terrible movie in the 2000s that we try and forget… However, the sheer quantity […]
Conspiracy Theorists are the bane of the academic. After years of research, experimentation and peer-review, some random person on the internet appears and instantly disregards your work, choosing to accept a sinister cover-up instead. I’ve written before about how these conspiracy theories can often be actively damaging and dangerous, rather than simply laughable. But today, […]
Archaeology is a fascinating subject, but is often quite difficult to get into. There’s an awful lot of complex jargon associated with it, scientific wizardry, and illegible publications. However, with a little bit of background reading, it’s absolutely possible for even the most casual enthusiast to develop a deep and complex understanding of the fundamental […]
This week, I thought I’d run through the beginnings of a broader introduction to archaeological theory I have planned. The focus here is on the so-called ‘New’ or Processual Archaeology – one of several competing ways to ‘do’ archaeology. What was it, how was it different, and was it in fact ‘New’? The text here […]
Food is a universal, but frequently invisible to the historian. What and how did people of the past eat? Do these questions vary by ‘class’, gender, age etc. In the first of these Deep-Dives into smaller topics of early medieval history, we’ve going to approach this broadly by looking at the food consumption of the […]
The ‘Anglo-Saxons’ inhabited what would become England following the fall of Rome, from c.410, up until the invasion of the Normans in 1066. Their lives covered some momentous social changes – the widescale (re?)adoption of Christianity, the emergence of an idea of ‘England’, invasion and occupation by the ‘Vikings’. But there’s also a lot to […]
History is far more than simply the old dusty books of kings and rich men. Archaeology, anthropology, art, and economics (to name just a few) all contribute towards constructing a better understanding of the past. The curricula allows you to explore a broad range of methods and theories to approaching the past. If you’re starting […]
One of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ period‘s most impressive, and most complex, artefacts is the so-called ‘Franks Casket’. A lidded whalebone box, covered in intricate carvings and text, the casket appears to originate from an early eight-century Northumbrian context. But what was it used for, and what can it tell us? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks_Casket#/media/File:Franks_casket_03.jpg) Finding the Casket The existence […]
One of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ period‘s most impressive, and most complex, artefacts is the so-called ‘Franks Casket’. A lidded whalebone box, covered in intricate carvings and text, the casket appears to originate from an early eight-century Northumbrian context. But what was it used for, and what can it tell us? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks_Casket#/media/File:Franks_casket_03.jpg) Finding the Casket The existence […]
Archaeology is about much more than treasure-hunting but, inevitably, popular attention tends to be drawn towards rich and magnificent finds. Within an early medieval context, the ‘Princely’ burials of the Mid Saxon period are particularly notable in this context. The Sutton Hoo Mound 1 ship-burial is deservedly famous and the most impressive example, but the […]
As an introduction to the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ history and archaeology course I have put together (available free and online here), I’ve compiled a reading list of suggestions. It’s often hard to track down these resources even when someone name-drops them so I’ve included links to them all and, where possible, their free versions. While this reading […]
The ‘Anglo-Saxons’ inhabited what would become England following the fall of Rome, from c.410, up until the invasion of the Normans in 1066. Their lives covered some momentous social changes – the widescale (re?)adoption of Christianity, the emergence of an idea of ‘England’, invasion and occupation by the ‘Vikings’. But there’s also a lot to […]