From February 2003 to March 2005, Oxford Archaeology (OA) carried out a programme of archaeological work in King's Lynn comprising evaluation, strip and map, excavation and watching brief integrated with the redevelopment of the Vancouver Centre and the construction of the Clough Lane multi-storey car park. The work was carried out on behalf of Alfred McAlpine Capital Projects. Despite extensive modern construction, archaeological features, structures and deposits of medieval date (12th-15th centuries) were recorded along the existing frontages of Broad Street and New Conduit Street. Archaeological deposits, building foundations and yard surfaces of late medieval/post-medieval date (15th and 16th-18th centuries) were recorded in localised areas in the car parks to the rear of Sainsburys, the rear of Broad Street and to the south west of New Conduit Street. Piezometers were installed in order to carry out a two-year monitoring programme on the physical and chemical effects of the development's piled construction on the underlying, and otherwise unexposed, reclaimed marine and estuarine sediments. Evaluation of the Clough Lane car park site revealed an intact marine sediment sequence underlying all of the development area as well as localised medieval structures and features.

St Peter's, Barton-upon-Humber, is a redundant medieval church in the care of English Heritage. As a result of a major programme of research carried out between 1978 and 2007, it is now the most intensively studied parish church in the UK. Excavations between 1978 and 1984 investigated most of the interior of the building, as well as a swathe of churchyard around its exterior. At the same time, a stone-by-stone record and detailed archaeological study of the fabric and furnishings of the church was undertaken, continuing down to 2007. The twin aims of the project were to understand the architectural history and setting of this complex, multi-period building (Volume 1, Parts 1 and 2) and to recover a substantial sample of the population for palaeopathological study (Volume 2). An extensive programme of historical and topographical research also took place in order to set the archaeological evidence firmly in context. The nearby substantial church of St Mary, which was once a chapel dependent on St Peter's, has also been studied, as have the furnishings, fittings and funerary monuments in both buildings. The topography of the small market town and port of Barton has been researched and its Saxon and Norman defensive earthworks have been traced. All aspects of settlement, from the Roman period onwards, have been studied and the vicissitudes of the Christian community in this typical English country town reconstructed through the history, archaeology and architecture of its two magnificent churches.

The inscription from Mesas do Castelinho, south Portugal, was discovered in September 2008. With 82 readable signs it is now the longest of the corpus of 95 Tartessian inscriptions. These texts survive from the Early Iron Age in the south-western Iberian Peninsula, the earliest writing from Atlantic Europe. By recombining word roots, prefixes and endings previously attested, the new inscription permits a major breakthrough with the language, confirming word divisions and contributing to the critical mass of evidence. It is now possible to take the case for Tartessian as an Indo-European and specifically Celtic language a step further, to ask what sort of Celtic language Tartessian was and how its syntax and sound system compares with those of Celtiberian, Gaulish, Old Irish and Welsh.

This volume examines conceptions, ideas and habits connected with children in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, focusing on the "dark sides of childhood" in the pre-modern world. The authors investigate the long-term attitudes of people, as well as ruptures in habits and customs. The book is divided into three parts. "Unwanted" deals with parents who were unable to bring up their baby and handed it over to other people or the cruel whims of destiny. "Disabled" addresses what we would label as children's illnesses since disability was a concept largely unknown to ancient people. "Nearly Lost" examines demons, viewed as destructive forces with the ability to destroy children or young people, sometimes by literally sucking their lives away. The articles are written by an international team of specialists from Belgium, Finland, Italy and the United States and were presented at conferences organised by the research project "Religion and Childhood. Socialisation from the Roman Empire to Christian World", funded by the Academy of Finland (2009-2012, directed by Dr. Katariina Mustakallio), at the University of Tampere, Finland.

The Bayeux Tapestry, perhaps the most famous, yet enigmatic, of medieval artworks, was the subject of an international conference at the British Museum in July 2008. This volume publishes 19 of 26 papers delivered at that conference. The physical nature of the tapestry is examined, including an outline of the artefact's current display and the latest conservation and research work done on it, as well as a review of the many repairs and alterations that have been made to the Tapestry over its long history. Also examined is the social history of the tapestry, including Shirley Ann Brown's paper on the Nazis' interest in it as a record of northern European superiority and Pierre Bouet and François Neveux's suggestion that it is a source for understanding the succession crisis of 1066. Among those papers focusing on the detail of the Tapestry, Gale Owen-Crocker examines the Tapestry's faces, Carol Neuman de Vegvar investigates the Tapestry's drinking vessels and explores differences in its feast scenes and Michael Lewis compares objects depicted in the Tapestry and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 11. The book also includes a résumé of four papers given at the conference published elsewhere and a full black and white facsimile of the Tapestry, with its figures numbered for ease of referencing.

The Sturlunga Saga is a collection of secular contemporary literature of historical events in the 11th and 12th century. The Sturlunga Saga has mainly been used as a source in historical research. This book, however, emphasises the expression of secular contemporary stories as a whole as interactions regarding the events they portray without questioning the truthfulness of the storytelling. The common opinion is that it is necessary to validate the narrative study of the Sturlunga Saga before it is used as a source. Its validity as a source is not merely based on what it portrays, but is based also on its narrative. Icelandic text,

This book examines Fraserburgh's historic development from the late medieval period, when it was laid out to a continental-style grid, to its heyday as a fishing port in the early twentieth century. The town has received very little archaeological investigation so the authors consider where the areas of archaeological potential lie, in order to inform future management.

Well known for the Early Anglo-Saxon settlement previously excavated on Rookery Hill and its impressive pre-Conquest church, Bishopstone has entered archaeological orthodoxy as a classic example of a 'Middle Saxon Shift'. This volume reports on the excavations from 2002 to 2005 designed to investigate this transition, with the focus on the origins of Bishopstone village. Excavations adjacent to St Andrews churchyard revealed a dense swathe of later Anglo-Saxon (8th- to late 10th-/early 11th-century) habitation, including a planned complex of timber halls, and a unique cellared tower. The occupation encroached upon a pre-Conquest cemetery of 43 inhumations.

Bermondsey Priory was founded in the 1080s on the south bank of the Thames, located opposite the White Tower on an island which was also the site of an Anglo-Saxon minster. Bermondsey became a centre of pilgrimage and in 1399 the priory became an abbey, before its transformation in the 16th century into a courtier's mansion. The results of modern excavation of the eastern parts of the church and cloister and inner court are complemented by documentary research and a detailed, 19th-century survey of the abbey. The early chapel and timber latrine and the free-standing lavabo in the main cloister and possible bathhouse are particularly important features of this Cluniac house. The 12th-century building programme and the subsequent remodelling of the priory church and cloister, including the east range and chapter house, and of the second infirmary cloister are examined. The development of the monastic cemetery is described and 193 individuals buried at Bermondsey are analysed. Contraction and disuse of part of the eastern area in the abbey's final years was followed by the discarding of a wealth of artefacts and other material from the conventual buildings and by systematic stripping at the Dissolution. The private Tudor mansion constructed by Thomas Pope around the former main cloister reused parts of the monastic buildings

One of the largest excavations in the City of London at 1 Poultry recovered a remarkable archaeological sequence from the 1st to the 20th century AD. This volume presents the evidence for Late Saxon, medieval and post-medieval development of this part of the city. Poultry occupied a prominent position at the eastern end of Cheapside, the city's principal medieval market street; integrating documentary evidence with the archaeological record has provided an outstandingly detailed account of this area. Re-occupation of the site in the later 10th century began with the construction of scattered sunken-floored buildings; a more regular pattern of settlement, characterised by narrow-fronted timber buildings along the roadsides, developed by the early 11th century. Occupation became progressively denser up to the 13th century when large stone-built houses began to be built in previously open areas behind the street frontages. Metalworking evidence from the excavated buildings provides evidence of early economic activity, corresponding with later documentary evidence for smiths, ironmongers and other metalworkers in the area.

Focusing on the differences and similarities between the renowned 'Alpais' Limoges ciborium, dated to c. 1200, in the Musée du Louvre, and examples in the British Museum, the National Museums of Scotland, together with two electrotype copies of the 'Alpais' ciborium in the Victoria and Albert Museum, this volume uses a cross-disciplinary approach, based on the differing specialisations of the authors (curators, scientists and conservators) to examine the group of ciboria. New and previously unpublished information, analyses and conclusions are presented that will serve to locate all the ciboria in their respective artistic and cultural context.

An essential survey for all interested in the pottery of the London area, this study charts the development, peak and decline of two ceramic traditions: the shelly wares of c 1140–1220, mainly city-based but reaching Scotland and across the North Sea to Norway, and the greywares of c 1170–1350, widely used in the city and even more so in its hinterland. In addition to fabric analyses, form typologies, a gazetteer of find spots and scientific data, the study includes a summary of greyware production centres, and considers function, use, marketing of medieval pottery and the chronology of selected consumer sites in London and its region.

The articles published in this volume are based on papers which were delivered at a conference in Iceland in 2007 entitled "Nordic Civilisation in the Medieval World". Twenty five participants from eight countries, representing a range of scholarly disciplines - history, archaeology, anthropology, literary studies, philosophy and runology - took part in the conference.

Traditionally the study of early medieval burial practices in England has focused on the furnished burials of the early Anglo-Saxon period with those of the later centuries perceived as uniform and therefore uninteresting. The last decade has seen the publication of many important cemeteries and synthetic works demonstrating that such a simplistic view of later Anglo-Saxon burial is no longer tenable. The reality is rather more complex, with social and political perspectives influencing both the location and mode of burial in this period. This edited volume is the first that brings together papers by leading researchers in the field and illustrates the diversity of approaches being used to study the burials of this period. The overarching theme of the book is differential treatment in death, which is examined at the site-specific, settlement, regional and national level. More specifically, the symbolism of conversion-period grave good deposition, the impact of the church, and aspects of identity, burial diversity and biocultural approaches to cemetery analysis are discussed.

Christianity changed the culture and society of Iceland, as it also did in other parts of Northern Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One of the important areas of change involved the introduction of new rules on the legal requirements for marriage. This book examines Icelandic law codes, marriage contracts, and other documents related to court proceedings. Based on extensive source material never researched before, this pioneer study explores the very gradual Christianisation of marriage in Iceland. It shows that this process, which lasted for hundreds of years, had consequences for family and kinship politics, for inheritance and property transfer, and for gender relations. As canon law began to change the old ritual of betrothal, the virginal state of the woman entering marriage gained greater importance. At the same time, marriage in the Late Middle Ages continued to include many elements of its older understanding as a contract concerning property transfer between families. A new perception of gender relations also arose, whereby women became partners in the actual contract-making. The 'handshake' was now between the husband and wife, instead of between the father of the bride and her future husband. The rituals connected to the different bonds gained new meaning: marriage was no longer a financial matter alone, but also involved religious beliefs and a closer union of the spouses.