This volume comprises published papers from the Ninth International Insular Art Conference held in Durham in 2022. It brings together the latest scholarship on early medieval (AD 400–1100) art in Britain, Ireland and beyond. Perspectives taken include classical art historical analysis of form, style and design, but also a close attention to the materials used and the complex process of production and artisan skill required to create these objects. This volume focuses on manuscripts, metalwork and other media, with research on stone sculpture appearing in Volume 2.

This volume comprises published papers from the Ninth International Insular Art Conference held in Durham in 2022. It brings together the latest scholarship on early medieval (AD 400–1100) art in Britain, Ireland and beyond. Perspectives taken include classical art historical analysis of form, style and design, but also a close attention to the materials used and the complex process of production and artisan skill required to create these objects. This volume focuses on stone sculpture and carving, with research on manuscripts, metalwork and other media appearing in Volume 1.

Eight hundred years ago, there were 56 parish churches in Norwich. Thirty-one remain standing – the greatest concentration of medieval churches in any town or city north of the Alps. Most retain medieval furnishings and monuments, painting and glazing, and about a quarter of them are of the very highest quality in terms of materials and design. The locations of most of the lost churches are known, and archaeological examination has been undertaken at several of their sites. Together they form an internationally important corpus of historic monuments. Remarkably, no detailed account of these churches as a group has ever been published. This book not only explores each of the churches – standing and lost – but also examines their contribution to the development of Norwich and its community in the Middle Ages.

Since the dawn of archaeology, the study of funerary contexts has provided invaluable insights into past societies, a trend that persists in contemporary research. Ongoing discoveries, site reevaluations, and advancements in techniques like DNA analysis continually reshape our understanding of the past.In the specific contexts we are addressing – the emergence of the first farming and herding communities in the Western Mediterranean – few regions in Europe display such systematic funerary practices. A notable example is the “Pit Burial” horizon in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. Approximately 6,500 years ago in this area, there was a significant increase in the number of found inhumations, with some clustering in cemeteries containing several dozen individuals.Despite sporadic mentions in international publications, the details of the “Pit Burials” horizon funerary practices – such as burial locations, characteristics and performed analysis – are generally not well known, primarily because most of the publications have been presented in Catalan or Spanish. This limits awareness of one of the best-documented archaeological records shedding light on Neolithic communities in the Western Mediterranean.Over a century, the northeastern Iberian Peninsula has yielded numerous Neolithic burials, totaling over 650 graves, predominantly featuring single inhumations. Many of these graves, excavated in ground pits, remain remarkably intact, facilitating interpretations of burial treatments and grave goods, indicative of time and effort invested in acquisition and production.Furthermore, this was also a period of well-established social networks, facilitating the distribution of materials such as flint, obsidian, or jadeite for crafting lithic tools, and variscite for producing ornaments across extensive territories spanning hundreds of kilometers. These networks had an impact on the social, economic, and ideological organization of these communities, as well as their interactions with other European populations. This interconnected world left archaeological traces, evident in the early stages of subsequent megalithic developments.

Butrint 8 is largely devoted to the Middle Byzantine archaeology discovered by the Butrint Foundation’s projects at Butrint itself, in its environs, and in the nearby port of Saranda, ancient Onchesmos. The volume includes a full report on the excavations in Butrint’s western defenses, built in the 6th century as a proteichisma, and maintained in use until the 9th century when tower 1 partly perished in a fire and tower 2 was abandoned. From these 9th-century levels came a major assemblage of traded and local ceramics as well as glass cullet. The report also describes the reuse of the defenses until the 16th century when Butrint was abandoned. This volume also includes a section devoted to Butrint’s Middle Byzantine enclave occupying its hinterland, including a new study of the Dema (boundary) wall, the hilltop fortress of Çuka e Aitoit and an excavation of a settlement on the plain opposite the town. The third part of the book focuses upon Saranda, ancient Onchesmos. This includes a short report on excavations made in the port that brought to light Middle Byzantine remains as well as a major reassessment of the sanctuary church of Santa Quaranta, re-examining its Late Roman origins and its major rebuilding in the Middle Byzantine period. Butrint 8 is a benchmark for research on the Middle Byzantine period in the southern Adriatic Sea region, shedding light on an age when Butrint lay on the western limits of Byzantium, on the long-distance trade of this period, and on the character of settlement in this period.

A joint Icelandic–US archaeological project in North Iceland examined the development of the farmstead settlement pattern from the initial Norse settlement of Iceland in c. AD 870–1300. The results were compared with the distribution of early Christian household cemeteries following the conversion in AD 1000 and the later institutionalization of the Catholic church in the 12th century. Colonization and Christianity details the methods and results from an innovative systemic regional archaeological survey that integrated extensive soil coring and shallow geophysical surveying with targeted excavation, tephra and AMS dating and documentary research to produce a near complete inventory of Viking Age and medieval occupation in and around the Hegranes region in lowland Skagafjörður, North Iceland. The survey revealed 32 Viking Age and medieval farmstead sites and seven early Christian household cemeteries at 20 modern farm properties. Results included the first complete regional settlement pattern in Iceland based on systematic subsurface reconnaissance with control over negative evidence; identification and mapping of a household cemetery and Viking Age longhouse and ancillary structures; and barley has been identified for the first time in the middens of a broad swath of Viking Age farmsteads.The results of the project confirm that the Viking Age settlement, which started in about AD 870, was rapid and the landscape itself was filled in by immigrants from Northern Europe within 60 years, as the Icelandic Family Sagas suggest. However, the process of creating the medieval agropastoral landscape took much longer.

Obsidian, a shiny volcanic glass, was first used to make vessels in the mid-sixth millennium BC in the Near East, although other stone had been exploited for vessel manufacture since the thirteenth millennium BC. Unlike the stone used to make the earliest vessels, which was acquired from local and regional sources, obsidian had to be obtained from volcanoes located hundreds of kilometers from where vessels were made and used. The obsidian from these sources had long been exploited for making tools and by the tenth millennium BC obsidian artifacts can be found in communities located far distant from the sources. Nevertheless, it was not until the mid-sixth millennium BC that it was used to make vessels and even then they are rare: less than 200 have been found spread over four millennia (c. 5400–1500 BC). This is perhaps in part due to obsidian’s exotic origins but also because its comparative hardness and brittle nature made it difficult to work.To obtain a wider perspective on the use of obsidian for making vessels this book looks briefly at the properties of obsidian and the characteristics of the relevant sources and gives an overview of how obsidian has been understood and used by various communities around the world. The main part of the book examines the obsidian vessels found in the Near East. Previous studies have tended to take a site-specific viewpoint but here the opportunity has been taken to adopt a more holistic and integrated approach. This approach brings together different aspects of the vessels, including the provenance of the obsidian from which they were made, their morphologies, evidence for techniques of manufacture and the socioeconomic contexts in which they were produced and used, and attempts to determine whether the use of obsidian was of itself meaningful or significant.

Early medieval stone sculptures survive across Europe: at waysides, in architectural settings and in churches and graveyards, and provide an exceptional source for understanding the aesthetics and beliefs of early medieval communities. England is no exception to this. Thousands of intact and fragmentary stone monuments survive from the seventh to eleventh centuries CE, evidencing the emergence of a rich Anglo-Saxon sculptural tradition in stone. These often elaborately carved monuments that were generally painted – some with considerable sophistication – and could be inset with paste glass and metal, provide clear evidence of a rich and new form of visual material culture connected with the Church in the region. Some monuments acted as liturgical markers, others as markers of working relations between secular and ecclesiastical communities, while others still commemorated the dead, and some fragments demonstrate the ways in which stone buildings were decorated both inside and out. By the tenth century, stone crosses and monuments were frequently commissioned by the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian secular elites, demonstrating strong connections between sculptural commemoration, power, and identity. For decades, the celebrated project, the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, has provided information on these monuments, cataloguing each example in terms of date, geology, and decoration. This multi-authored volume draws on the expertise of many specialists connected with the Corpus to provide a first accessible national overview of the resource. Thematic chapters reflect on discoveries to date and archaeological and art historical approaches to researching and understanding sculpture. Key themes include quarrying and production, chronology, the intellectual and artistic context for sculpture, aesthetics and iconography, and the places and contexts of sculpture use. This extensively illustrated volume introduces Anglo-Saxon sculpture in its broader European context and offers a stepping-off point for all those wanting to learn more and research these often-enigmatic fragments.

Textile tools offer a fascinating and yet intimate approach to ancient people. Textile production has been one of the core activities for millennia, spanning from domestic production to royal needs. Textiles were light and easy to transport goods, often exchanged over long distances. Technology and knowhow, however, might not have always traveled so easily. This work examines spinning and weaving tools from the Southern Levant (inland and coastal) and Egypt. The chronology of the study is broad, ranging from the Neolithic until the beginning of the Persian period (600 BC). The objects are investigated from both a diachronic and synchronic perspective to understand their evolution and continuity of use, as well as regional differences and textile production methods. The two areas present an only apparent discontinuity, as political boundaries gave way at various historical moments and the two areas had very close contacts, such as during the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt or the Egyptian domination of the Late Bronze Age. This seems to be reflected in textile documentation, which shows the appearance of Egyptian tools in the Levant, such as spinning bowls, and Levantine tools in Egypt, such as loom weights. However, the result is not so predictable.

This volume presents the Greek and Roman pottery collected and analyzed by the Sphakia Survey project and provides a ceramic model for a large section of western Crete, where ceramic traditions, both domestic and imported, are little known. This research integrates two approaches. It first presents a morphological and functional study of a body of pottery from a sizable part of Crete with little known archaeological evidence. Second, fabric analysis identifies and defines clays and clay mixtures, with macroscopic and petrographic analyses providing results from two perspectives. The rigorous application of fabric analysis, combined with the morphological examination, contribute to reconstructions of sites and areas within Sphakia. This data provides information about the history of individual sites, but then more broadly about that of Sphakia itself.Elements like site chronology, activities undertaken in particular areas, available landscape resources and their exploitation, and contact within the region, with other parts of Crete, and the wider Greek and Roman worlds are explored.

Monasticism is a form of religious life in which participants renounce worldly activities to dedicate themselves primarily to spiritual matters, living in small communities subject to a set of rules and isolated from the secular world. Christian monasticism, which originated at the end of the 3rd century in Egypt and North Africa, spread to different parts of Europe in the 6th century. However, it was not until the Middle Ages that monastic communities became one of the most powerful institutions in Europe. Monasteries and convents played a very important role not only as centers of spirituality but also as focal points of economic, technological and cultural activity. This multiplicity of activities carried out alongside their religious, social and political roles make monasteries spaces that can be studied from very different perspectives and that unfailingly provide essential information about our history.This first of two titles originates from an international conference that took place in Barcelona in January 2024, which sought to examine different aspects related to monastic life in the past and to promote and disseminate the results obtained in the latest studies undertaken within the framework of monastic complexes and their environments. These include contributions and multidisciplinary studies from archaeological, bioanthropological and/or documentary perspectives. Specialists from different disciplines present developments on the topic of monasticism from different fields of study, such as zooarchaeology, bioanthropology, palaeopathology, archaeology, history, documentary disciplines, archives, cultural heritage, etc.Volume 1 concentrates on health and lifeways within monastic communities, focusing on palaeopathological information providing insights into physical wellbeing and, in particular, the presence and significance of disabled individuals and evidence for longterm health and dental issues. A variety of scientific methods of analysis are applied to cemetery populations from monasteries and nunneries of different periods to examine both causes of and contributions to the death of individuals, the composition of communities and the treatment of the dead. Studies of assemblages of faunal remains from monastic complexes consider how faunal analysis can help interpret the role of domestic species.

Monasticism is a form of religious life in which participants renounce worldly activities to dedicate themselves primarily to spiritual matters, living in small communities subject to a set of rules and isolated from the secular world. Christian monasticism, which originated at the end of the 3rd century in Egypt and North Africa, spread to different parts of Europe in the 6th century. However, it was not until the Middle Ages that monastic communities became one of the most powerful institutions in Europe. Monasteries and convents played a very important role not only as centers of spirituality but also as focal points of economic, technological and cultural activity. This multiplicity of activities carried out alongside their religious, social and political roles make monasteries spaces that can be studied from very different perspectives and that unfailingly provide essential information about our history.This second of two titles originates from an international conference that took place in Barcelona in January 2024, which sought to examine different aspects related to monastic life in the past and to promote and disseminate the results obtained in the latest studies undertaken within the framework of monastic complexes and their environments. These include contributions and multidisciplinary studies from archaeological, bioanthropological and/or documentary perspectives. Specialists from different disciplines present developments on the topic of monasticism from different fields of study, such as zooarchaeology, bioanthropology, palaeopathology, archaeology, history, documentary disciplines, archives, cultural heritage, etc.Volume 2 focuses on diet, food practices, water management, and the organization and use of space within monastic complexes and landscapes.

For many years now, the main thrust of European prehistory has followed a fundamentally terrestrial plot line. This terrestrial paradigm has undervalued the story of Europe as a peninsula between the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic, and likewise downplayed that of many navigable rivers that reach deeply inland and the large lakes important for travel and subsistence. In vast areas of Europe the survival of incoming groups depended on coping and interacting with a seascape as much as a landscape. From the late Mesolithic onwards, in regions such as Scandinavia, the British Isles and the Mediterranean, most occupation was coastal; seas or rivers provided the most important infrastructure for transport, exchange and communication. Know-how about seascapes, boatbuilding, navigation and maritime networks had a profound impact on social organisation, ritual monuments and iconography, and the spread of materials and ideas, enabled by the adaptation of languages to these new environments. Given these facts the time is long overdue to critique the dominant terrestrial paradigm of European prehistory. This book is the first in the multi-author series Maritime Encounters, outputs of the major six-year (2022–2028) international research initiative funded by Sweden’s central bank. Our programme is based on a maritime perspective, a counterpoint to prevailing land-based vantages on Europe’s prehistory. In the Maritime Encounters project a highly international cross-disciplinary team has embarked on a diverse range of research goals to provide a more detailed and nuanced story of how prehistoric societies realised major and minor sea crossings, organised long-distance exchange, and adapted to ways of life by the sea in prehistory.

Monumental spaces were fundamental in the construction of power, political order and community identities in the ancient and pre-modern world. It was for this reason that authorities invested heavily in the construction of ideal landscapes of power that embodied the basic representation about what a harmonious society and an ordered world under the inspired guidance of the ruler(s) was. Such landscapes conveyed thus powerful cultural values and ideals about the social order that had produced them, not to speak about the authorities’ ability –who designed and built them – to lead their societies. However, far from being fixed over time, those spaces underwent changes to accommodate new values, to express a new balance of power resulting in transformations, rebuilding, integration of selected aspects of the past or, simply, utter destruction of landscapes no longer functional.In some societies, ceremonies were open, addressed to the whole society―at least as witnesses―in which their rulers performed the construction of social order and received divine support. The Maya cities, for example, with their loose urban density and open spaces dominated by autonomous neighbourhoods, epitomize the ideological need to gather society as spectators. Plazas became thus essential to negotiate consent and social consensus. In other cases the absence of open spaces – including cult ones – in which the community may gather and participate in collective performances points to oligarchical and somewhat secluded configurations of power, as in pharaonic Egypt, while, in the Classical world, agoras, forums and open spaces were intended to facilitate collective political deliberation.Urban layouts may bear traces of rival uses of space, for instance between “official” ceremonial areas, reserved to pageantry displays, and areas that were more organic, difficult to control but which favoured the concentration of crafts and guilds, alternative circulation of news and construction of counterpowers, like bazaars. The archaeological focus put on ceremonial spaces and prestige buildings may thus conceal the political importance of those other spaces and the counter-power issued there, with the lack specifically-designed buildings significant in itself.The aim of this book is to explore the relation between built environments, collective identities and political agency and the potential conflicts arising from competing or alternative social uses of the space, be it public, ritual, civic or a mix of all of them. A selection of historical case-studies from different regions of the world may help rethink current concepts and views about the traces that communal political agency left in the organization of settlements and in planning monumental areas. Such cases may also cast some light over the limits of rulers’ authority and the existence of collective institutions―formal or informal―rarely evoked in official sources. In the end, this book explores the importance of comparative research to address collective decision-making and communal identities in the pre-modern world.

This book provides the exciting results of a long-term project examining Bronze Age round barrow construction and burial practices in Orkney, Scotland. A main focus of this research is on the act of cremation; a technology of bodily metamorphosis as articulated through complex mortuary practices, which produced a distinctive form of funerary architecture. This, and other topical themes, are explored through the results of extensive excavations at several barrow cemeteries including Linga Fiold, Gitterpitten, Varme Dale, Vestrafiold and the Knowes of Trotty, the latter being famous for rich grave goods including gold discs and amber beads. In this context, in being built on the ruins of an early Neolithic settlement, Knowes of Trotty provides an intersection of relational fields, fusing local tradition with faraway places.At Linga Fiold, the barrow cemetery was almost entirely excavated, and by employing sophisticated recovery techniques and analyses, unique evidence is presented for a complex sequence of barrow building and mortuary practices. This enables the reconstruction of an extraordinary ritual journey of the deceased from cremation pyre to final interment.Additionally, several cist excavations are published here for the first time. This evidence allows an appraisal of the developing cist burial tradition in Orkney through the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, from the insertion of remains into chambered tombs and large re-enterable unobtrusive cists, to the development of imposing linear barrow cemeteries, to the drawing in of the dead closer to home.Overall, the new findings presented here allow a reconsideration of the chronology and specifics of changing Orcadian burial technologies and traditions: clearly, such results have significance beyond Orkney for understanding the complexities of Bronze Age cremation and burial practices across Britain and north-west Europe.

From the first steps taken into the darkness of High Pasture Cave, it was clear that this complex site would challenge current thinking on cave use and function in prehistory, and wider understanding of Iron Age cultural practice and beliefs. Situated in a dramatic location under the slopes of the Cuillin Mountains on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, this cave and its monumentalised environs were a focus for specific and special activities throughout the Iron Age – a venue for spectacular and extensive ceremonies featuring feasts, fire, crafts and the symbolic deposition of a plethora of artefacts and environmental materials, as well as human remains. This volume sets out the results of fieldwork carried out at High Pastures between 2004 and 2010, presents results from the extensive post-excavation analysis, and provides a biography of the High Pasture Cave complex from the early Bronze Age through 900 years of Iron Age activity. Recent research has led to a resurgence of interest in caves, in particular the place of these enigmatic sites in the worldviews of later prehistoric communities. Their investigation in the past has generally attributed a domestic function, comprising temporary homes and shelter for hunter-gatherers, farmers and pastoralists, and as workshops and places of refuge. However, it is now proposed that many caves, including High Pasture, were used for rituals involving the preparation and display of human remains, the deposition of material culture and other types of organic materials. These were clearly performative acts and the recurrent use of caves as the arenas for such performances, tells us much about their role in the cosmology of later prehistoric communities.