Early medieval Wales: a framework for archaeological research (original) (raw)
Related papers
CIFA Wales/Cymru, 2023
Early medieval archaeology in Wales is particularly challenging. There is little diagnostic material culture and comparatively few sites have been identified and excavated. Nevertheless, the period since the last review has witnessed significant advances and knowledge. The publication of Professor Nancy Edwards' monograph on Life in Early Medieval Wales (2023, Oxford University Press) heralds a major watershed, to which readers are referred for a comprehensive and detailed overview of the current state of knowledge. This revision of the Research Framework offers an opportunity to re-evaluate its content, structure and scope. The fundamental issues that were set out in the three earlier versions of this Research Framework are still relevant. Thus, key research priorities remain: the identification and investigation of settlements, cemeteries, and ecclesiastical sites; improvement of chronological frameworks; analysis of artefacts, ecofacts, paleoenvironmental and osteological data; the further of understanding of power and authority; and also of the development of understanding of frontiers and dyke systems. The failure to significantly address and move on from these priorities demonstrates the severity of the challenges to the realisation of research potential for the early medieval period in Wales. In the light of this and the fact that Professor Edwards' monograph offers an up-to-date synthesis of the archaeology of the period, this revision of the Framework aims to set priorities that will facilitate and maximise opportunities for research, funding, and collaboration. This document considers nine overarching themes: working better together; maximising fieldwork potential; improving resources; sharing knowledge; improving and refining chronology; landscape perspectives on sites, monuments, social and economic processes; artefact and ecofact/biofact analysis; burials; power and authority; and community and engagement. Recent publications (post 2016) are noted in a separate bibliography.
Medieval Settlement Research, 2021
More than 25 years of development-driven archaeology in historic settlements in mid- and north-east Wales has revealed new insights into the origins and development of medieval settlements. This paper reviews the evidence, providing an analysis of the effectiveness of planning-led interventions as well as discussing the results. Improvements in understanding defences, town planing, urban life and industry are highlighted, and challenges for the future identified.
Defended Settlement in Early Medieval Wales, Problems of Presence, Absence and Interpretation
Fortified Settlements in Early Medieval Europe: Defended Communities of the 8th‐10th Centuries (eds. N. Christie and H. Herold), 2016.
The remains of defended settlements are a common feature of the Welsh landscape, but a remarkably small number can be attributed to the early medieval period. Indeed, despite several decades of concerted research less than twenty-five early medieval settlements, defended or otherwise, have been firmly identified, and few of these have been excavated and published to modern standards. We can be confident that the Welsh landscape was occupied and exploited between the fifth and eleventh centuries, but the identification of settlements, both defended and non-defended, has been greatly constrained by a lack of diagnostic material culture, particularly native pottery traditions. Pottery and glass imported from the Mediterranean and the Continent has aided in the identification of a small but significant number of settlements occupied between the fifth to seventh centuries, but we are heavily reliant upon scientific dating techniques and historical sources for the eighth to eleventh centuries, and thus far only a handful of sites have been attributed to this period. The lack of settlement evidence means that our knowledge of even basic issues, such as the location and layout of settlements and the form of houses is underdeveloped, and as such, our understanding of the early medieval period as a whole is weak when compared to many of the regions discussed in this volume. Addressing these problems continues to be a major research priority, but there has been some important developments in the years since the topic was last reviewed, and some interesting patterns are starting to emerge. In this chapter I will examine the evidence for defended settlement in early medieval Wales and explore some interpretive models for their presence and absence.
TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE SETTLEMENT PATTERN IN SOUTHEAST WALES DURING THE ROMAN PERIOD
This paper (drafted in 2001 but never formally published) reports on the South East Wales Romano-British Lowland Settlement Survey, carried out by the Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust with grant aid from Cadw, between 1998 and 2001. Following a review of known Roman period sites in the former counties of Glamorgan and Gwent, an area of some 15 square km was selected for further study by means of fieldwalking supplemented by limited geophysical survey and trial excavation. The results provide an insight into settlement patterns, which are likely to be representative of a wider area.
Excavations at Longbury Bank, Dyfed, and Early Medieval Settlement in South Wales
Medieval Archaeology, 1993
LONGB URY BANK, Dyfed is a native British early medieval settlement occupied in the 6th and 7th centuries A. D. The excavations in 1988-89 produced a series ojarteJacts which provide evidence ojhigh status: imported Mediterranean pottery; continental pottery and glass; fine metalworking debris; and an unusual Type G penannular brooch. The site is unusual in being undefended and it is suggested that it belongs to a newly recognized class ojundefended high status secular sites, other possible examples ojwhich are discussed. The site is placed in its historical and landscape context through the use ojpre-Norman and later documentation which appears to show a major shift in settlement in the 8th or 9th centuries.
West Wales in the Iron Age contained a diverse range of settlement types, from hill-forts to unenclosed farmsteads, with the dominant type of settlement the enclosed farmstead. However, a recent review of information available for the British Iron Age identified a relative lack of systematised information for Wales and consequently there is a pressing need to re-examine the settlement record for this area, as the belief in a single Iron Age "culture" gives way to recognition of regional difference in material cultures, social institutions and life-ways. This thesis examines the settlements and landscape of West Wales in an attempt to contribute to our understanding of this region in the Iron Age. In order to make a regionally synthesised investigation of the social, I conducted a survey of excavation and survey information for Iron Age settlements in West Wales. Analysis centred on examining the spatial patterning of settlements by considering the morphology, distribution,...