Framing Fragmentation: (Re)Constructing Anglo-Saxon Sculpture (original) (raw)

When I ��rst began my doctorate on the non-Cruci��xion iconography of pre-Viking sculpture in the north of England, the only signi��cant study to-date on the subject was that of Betty Coatsworth, whose doctorate on the Cruci��xion iconography of Anglo-Saxon sculpture was the inspiration for my own work and provided much of the foundational scholarship on which I was lucky enough to be able to draw. This has remained the case, and decades on it is a considerable privilege to dedicate this essay to a scholar whose studies into Anglo-Saxon sculpture (and art generally), remain inspirational and required reading. ∵ Introducing the Fragmented With only three of the high crosses produced during the early medieval period still standing in situ in England, it is something of a truism to say that the once monumental Anglo-Saxon sculptures encountered today exist as nothing more than fragments:1 fragments recovered from church walls and excavated from church ��oors and foundations.2 Two pieces of the late eighth-century Rothbury cross, for instance, the top of the shaft and the remains of the cross-head, were recovered from the fabric of the Norman tower of the parish church in Rothbury in 1849-1850 and subsequently donated to the Society of 1 The three Anglo-Saxon crosses still standing in situ in England are those at Bewcastle, Irton, and Gosforth (all in Cumbria); the monuments at Bewcastle and Irton have been dated to the eighth century. That at Gosforth dates to the tenth. Se e Richard N. Bailey and Rosemary Cramp, Corpus of Anglo