Interdisciplinary studies are increasingly widely recognised as being among the most fruitful approaches to generating original perspectives on the medieval past. In this major collection of 27 papers, contributors transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries to offer new approaches to a number of themes ranging in time from late antiquity to the high Middle Ages. The main focus is on material culture, but also includes insights into the compositional techniques of Bede and the Beowulf-poet, and the strategies adopted by anonymous scribes to record information in unfamiliar languages. Contributors offer fresh insights into some of the most iconic survivals from the period, from the wooden doors of Sta Sabina in Rome to the Ruthwell Cross, and from St Cuthbert’s coffin to the design of its final resting place, the Romanesque cathedral at Durham. Important thematic surveys reveal early medieval Welsh and Pictish carvers interacting with the political and intellectual concerns of the wider Insular and continental world. Other contributors consider what it is to be Viking, revealing how radically present perceptions shape our understanding of the past, how recent archaeological work reveals the inadequacy of the traditional categorisation of the Vikings as ‘incomers’, and how recontextualising Viking material culture can lead to unexpected insights into famous historical episodes such as King Edgar’s boat trip on the Dee. Recent landmark finds, notably the runic-inscribed Saltfleetby spindle whorl and the sword pommel from Beckley, are also published here for the first time in comprehensive analyses which will remain the fundamental discussions of these spectacular objects for many years to come.This book will be indispensable reading for everyone interested in medieval culture.

The kingdom of France was plunged into darkness. Weakened by war and famine, the country risked falling into English hands. As the dauphin Charles desperately aspired to one day become king, a young girl from Domremy, guided by mysterious voices, emerged from the shadows, swearing she would have him crowned in Reims. Driven by her fervour and her boundless will, she who would bear the epitaph of Maid of Orleans, led her small troop to raise the siege in the eponymous city. Behind her, the people of France took up arms with newfound courage, to plunge headlong into one of the greatest epics of all time.

Trusty's Hill is an early medieval fort at Gatehouse of Fleet, Dumfries and Galloway. The hillfort comprises a fortified citadel defined by a vitrified rampart around its summit, with a number of enclosures looping out along lower-lying terraces and crags. The approach to its summit is flanked on one side by a circular rock-cut basin and on the other side by Pictish Symbols carved on to the face of a natural outcrop of bedrock. This Pictish inscribed stone is unique in Dumfries and Galloway, and southern Scotland, and has long puzzled scholars as to why the symbols were carved so far from Pictland and even if they are genuine. The Galloway Picts Project, launched in 2012, aimed to recover evidence for the archaeological context for the inscribed stone, but far from validating the existence of Picts in this southerly region of Scotland, the archaeological context instead suggests the carvings relate to a royal stronghold and place of inauguration for the local Britons of Galloway around AD 600. Examined in the context of contemporary sites across Scotland and northern England, the archaeological evidence from Galloway suggests that this region may have been the heart of the lost Dark Age kingdom of Rheged, a kingdom that was in the late sixth century pre-eminent amongst the kingdoms of the north. The new archaeological evidence from Trusty's Hill enhances our perception of power, politics, economy and culture at a time when the foundations for the kingdoms of Scotland, England and Wales were being laid.

York has been England’s second city for much of its almost 2,000 years of history. This atlas, produced in the Historic Towns Trust’s large portfolio format, traces the origins and growth of the city from its foundation as a Roman legionary fortress c.AD71 right through to the 21st century, epitomising some of its greatest periods. Eleven maps, period by period, bring together topographical, archaeological, historical and cartographic evidence to present a clear picture of what is known of the city through time. The remarkable 1852 Ordnance Survey plan of York – originally at the huge scale of five feet to one statute mile – is here beautifully re-drawn, enhanced to show both surviving and lost medieval and post-medieval buildings of importance, and presented at the scale of 1:2500. It is used as the base for all the period maps. The period maps are supplemented by others which show York in its regional, geological, and topographical settings, and there are special maps of York’s 19th century parishes and wards. A substantial scholarly gazetteer explains every name on the maps, ancient or modern, and for each map there is an introductory essay by specialist authors: Patrick Ottaway (Roman York), Richard Hall and Ailsa Mainman (Anglian York; Anglo-Scandinavian York), David Palliser and Sarah Rees-Jones (York 1066-1272 and 1272-1536), and William Sheils (York 1536-1840 and York since 1840). Nine sheets of plates present numerous illustrations, from the earliest medieval images of York through reproductions of early maps, plans and views of the city and its structures to the latest aerial records. The York volume of the British Historic Towns Atlas has been prepared as a joint project by the Historic Towns Trust and the York Archaeological Trust and should prove a definitive cartographic resource for York for the foreseeable future.

This fourth volume in the series examines workshops and discusses the craftspeople in the Viking town of Kaupang including their activities, crafted products, raw materials, skills and networks. The study focuses on artefacts used in on-ferrous metalworking: crucibles, moulds, matrix dies, tuyeres and a unique collection of lead models. The tools and the waste material provide a completely new understanding of the craftspeople who were working with gold, silver, copper alloys, lead and tin. These metalworkers mastered many different materials and techniques; indeed, they were well-informed, well-trained and skilful, and manufactured a range of different items for women and men. There is every reason to believe that visitors and residents perceived the non-ferrous metalworking as a defining feature of the Viking-period town. The combination of excavations and surface surveys has produced a broad and diverse collection of material very similar to finds in different Viking-period towns in Scandinavia including Ribe, Birka and Hedeby. The finds show that Kaupang was an important centre for the production of jewellery, and the craftspeople appear to have had access to a range of high quality raw materials including brass and kaolin clay. Their activity can be traced from the earliest layers of the beginning of the 9th Century to the early 10th Century, Altogether, the production waste from Kaupang illustrates how a range of different social groups were involved in the process of forging an urban identity.

This edited volume sets out the work of a team of scholars from Northwestern University and the University of Southampton led by Matthew Johnson, in collaboration with the National Trust. Between 2010 and 2014, different members of the group carried out topographical, geophysical and building survey at four different late medieval sites and landscapes in south-eastern England, all owned and managed by the National Trust: Bodiam, Scotney, Knole and Ightham. Studies were also undertaken into documentary, map and other evidence. A particularly important element of the research was to synthesise and re-present the ‘grey literature’ at all four sites. This volume seeks to present this work and discuss its archaeological and historical importance. It places the four sites and their landscapes in their setting, as part of the wider landscape of south-east England. It discusses the importance of these places in understanding later medieval elite sites and landscapes in general, and in terms of their long-term biographies and contexts. Central to the volume are the linked ideas of lived experience and political ecology in presenting a new understanding of late medieval sites and landscapes.

Aarhus is one of the oldest and most important Danish towns, but the archaeological sources have so far not been fully analyzed. Based on excavations and finds the Aarhus and its periphery the development of the town and its network is analyzed from Viking Age to mid-1800. Central is the special urban way of living which makes town dwellers into citizens. The urban communities are in focus as well as their challenges: division between town and countryside, but also social divisions of the towns people, and between newcomers and born and bred citizens.

The five authoritive papers presented here are the product of long careers of research into Anglo-Saxon culture. In detail the subject areas and approaches are very different, yet all are cross-disciplinary and the same texts and artefacts weave through several of them. Literary text is used to interpret both history and art; ecclesiastical-historical circumstances explain the adaptation of usage of a literary text; wealth and religious learning, combined with old and foreign artistic motifs are blended into the making of new books with multiple functions; religio-socio-economic circumstances are the background to changes in burial ritual. The common element is transformation, the Anglo-Saxon ability to rework older material for new times and the necessary adaptation to new circumstances. The papers originated as five recent Toller Memorial Lectures hosted by the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (MANCASS).

Seven discrete areas of land were excavated by Archaeological Solutions to the north-east of Stowmarket in Mid Suffolk, on the clay hillside above the river Gipping. Four phases of medieval and post-medieval land use were identified; the main period of activity was in the 13th–14th centuries AD. To the north of Cedars Park, where the hillside levels off to a plateau, excavation revealed part of an enclosed farmstead. The remains of two buildings with earth-fast foundations were identified, as well as cobbled yard surfaces, numerous quarry and rubbish pits and a large pond or watering hole. On the lower slopes to the south-west was an area of roadside settlement marked by regular property boundaries/drainage ditches either side of Creeting Road. The direct relationship between the road and the medieval boundary ditches demonstrates that it was in use by the 13th century if not earlier. Because the excavation areas were set back slightly from the road, evidence of dwellings was absent. However, the rear areas of several roadside tofts, containing cobbled yard surfaces and the remains of barns or other agricultural buildings, were revealed. Scattered pits containing quantities of pottery, animal bone and other domestic rubbish attested to occupation close by. Field name evidence indicates that the settlement lay on the edge of a green which had been enclosed by the early post-medieval period. It is likely to have been directly associated with the medieval manor at Thorney Hall, 250m to the west. To the east of the site, close to Sheepcote Hall, was a small double-ditched stock enclosure which is thought to have been used for corralling sheep, with another area of medieval roadside settlement nearby at the junction of Creeting Road and Mill Street. Cedars Park was probably settled under the favourable environmental conditions of the 12th and early 13th centuries, at a time of rising population. The spread of small, dispersed settlement sites across the landscape was also a result of the gradual breakup of the large late Saxon royal estate of Thorney into a multitude of separate manors. The reasons for the abandonment of much of the site around the mid 14th century are unknown but the Black Death and subsequent outbreaks of plague, and the difficulty of farming the local clay soil in the worsening climate of the 14th century, may have played a part. The enclosed farmstead can be tentatively identified with a tenement documented in the records of Thorney Hall manor court, which was owned by one William Le Newman until its abandonment in c.1340. At the end of the 14th century, the green-edge plots were probably held by one Geoffrey Atte Grene. By 1408, Geoffrey’s tenements had passed to Thomas Mysterton, a gentleman, who is unlikely to have occupied them himself. Changing patterns of land ownership therefore contributed to the final abandonment of this part of the site. Subsequent agricultural land use was represented by a series of field boundary ditches which closely matched those recorded on the 1839 Stowupland tithe map. The dispersed medieval settlements at Cedars Park were occupied by people of relatively low status, with little evidence for specialised agricultural or craft production and few signs of wealth. Mixed farming with an important pastoral component produced enough food for their subsistence and a modest surplus with which they were able to purchase pottery and other commodities at local markets; most items found at the site were produced within a thirty-mile radius. Similar small farms and roadside or green-edge settlements were typical of the medieval landscape of the Suffolk, Essex and Norfolk claylands. However, while these types of dispersed settlement are well known from documentary records and field survey, very few have been subject to modern open-area excavation and the recovery of detailed structural, economic and environmental evidence.

If there is a central theme of this volume, it is the supply of money in circulation, rather than the importance of money, per se . It was this circulation that determined the movement of prices, of trade, and of credit - in short, it was this that underpinned the commercialisation of the economy, and therefore was the most important medieval money matter.

A selection of papers from the 13th Viking Congress focusing on the northern, central, and eastern regions of Anglo-Saxon England colonised by invading Danish armies in the late 9th century, known as the Danelaw. This volume contributes to many of the unresolved scholarly debates surrounding the concept, and extent of the Danelaw.

The study of monasteries has come a long way since late the late 19th century. The emphasis has shifted away from reconstructing the layouts of monastic buildings to a better understanding of the wider monastic environment. The papers in this volume, partly based on a conference held in Oxford in 1994, are written by some of today's foremost scholars and reflect the diversity of research now being carried out.

Rosemary Cramp's influence on the archaeology of early Medieval Britain is nowhere more apparent than in these essays in her honour by her former students. Monastic sites, Lindisfarne and Whithorn, are the inspiration for Deirdre O'Sullivan's and Peter Hill's papers; Chris Loveluck discusses the implications of the findings from the newly-discovered settlement at Flixborough in Lincolnshire; Nancy Edwards describes the early monumental sculpture from St David's in South Wales; Martin Carver reviews the politics of monumental sculpture and monumentality; and Catherine Hills reassesses the significance of imported ivory found in graves. Richard Bailey, Christopher Morris and Derek Craig top and tail the book with tributes to Rosemary Cramp and a bibliography of her work.

The Impact of the Edwardian Castles in Wales publishes the proceedings of a conference held in 2007 a year that marked the seventh centenary of the death of King Edward I which set out to review recent scholarship on castles that he built in north Wales after two wars, in 1277 and 1282-83 and a Welsh uprising in 1294-95, and to rethink the effect that their building had upon Wales in the past, present and future. Building upon the seminal work of Arnold Taylor, whose study of the buildings and documentary evidence has been pivotal to Edwardian castle studies for more than fifty years, the volume includes papers which call into question the role of Master James of St George as the architect of the kings new castles; the role of Richard the Engineer, the nature of royal accommodation in the thirteenth century and a detailed look at how households worked, especially in the kitchen and accounting departments. New approaches to castle studies are encouraging a more holistic understanding of the Edwardian castles and their context and to this end papers consider their impact on Welsh society and its princes in the thirteenth century, notably Llywelyn ab Iorwerth ( Fawr , the Great) and his grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Wales. Their symbolism and meaning through the words of Welsh poets and the mythology behind Caernarfon Castle are also examined, so too is the role of Welshmen in Edward Is armies. The wider context is considered with papers on the Edwardian towns in Wales, the baronial castles in north Wales and Edward I in Scotland and Gascony. The castles still have powerful resonance and the Minister for Heritage in the Welsh Assembly Government considers their role and presentation in Wales today and in the future. Robert Liddiard concludes that the volume 'not only takes our knowledge of the Edwardian castles forward, but also informs the study of castles in the British Isles'.

October 14, 1066, on the hill of Caldbec the armies of William the Conqueror and Harold Godwinson confronted each other in a bloody battle, which will later be called the battle of Hastings. The victory Normandy obtained on that occasion is still perceived as pivotal in determining the common destiny of the Kingdom of England and the Duchy of Normandy; it is also around this axis that the future of England is determined, giving the idea of how impactful the Normans had been in influencing the Saxon society. Overall, the course of the battle is relatively well known, thanks to the many medieval authors who mention it, or simply through the research that has been done. However, the before and after the battle remain rather unfamiliar topics. The origins of the conflict can however be easily traced back in early Eleventh century, when a certain Cnut the Great, who was in fact the king of Norway and Denmark, became King of England by marrying Emma of Normandy. Similarly, also the impressive political game between the three contenders to the throne – Harald III of Norway, Godwinson Harold and William the Conqueror – played a determining role for the conquest of England. From Stamford Bridge to appeasement of the North, through the battles of Hastings and London, this book will allow the reader not only to rediscover this pivotal battle and understand the political and strategic aspects of the conquest, but also to learn about Norman and Saxon warriors outfits.

The study of medieval Scandinavian society necessarily involves learning Norse language. Its vocabulary should be considered a vestige of the past as much as archaeological artefacts. These words, indeed, allow everyone to establish a direct contact with the medieval civilization of the North. Thus ‘Le Parler Viking’ was born of out a desire to catalogue in a simple and didactic way the key words of medieval Scandinavian society. Scandinavian legends translations are sometimes interspersed with indigenous words that at times leave the reader confused and doubtful about their true meaning. By collecting these words in one place, the author wants to offer a valuable tool towards the discovery of the fascinating ancient and medieval Scandinavian society . Easily accessible, ‘Le Parler Viking’ aims to be as accurate as possible, addressing both students as well as amateurs and historians. The entries, which are deliberately short, have been organised by theme, so to allow the reader to consult only the sections of interest. Therefore, the most varied aspects of this fascinating society are addressed, including both concrete and abstract concepts, such as weapons and tactics or costumes and traditions. Vikings fans will not be disappointed either as also the most popular terms used by the pirates of the ancient North have been included; even if some of these words do not properly belong to the Viking age, they have nonetheless been included as they represent important linguistic milestones for the XII and XIII century Scandinavia. The author Grégory Cattaneo obtained a PhD in medieval history at the Paris VI Sorbonne and Iceland University. He has been living in Iceland since 2005 and has taught at the University of Iceland between 2007 and 2014.