Potters and pottery from afar: Some observations on long-distance contacts (original) (raw)
Offa's Dyke Journal 4, Special Issue: Borders in Early Medieval Britain
Offa's Dyke Journal, 2022
The contents of this special issue comprise the proceedings of a conference held over Zoom on the weekend of 11-12 July 2020. The event was originally planned to take place in Cambridge, but, as the unforeseeable events of 2020 began to unfold, it was soon realised that it would be necessary either to cancel the event or move it into digital space. The latter path was taken, making this conference part of the first wave of academic Zoom events that we have subsequently become so accustomed to. It was a steep learning curve, but hopefully a valuable learning experience for all concerned! The name of the conference was 'The Borders of Early Medieval England', reflecting the original intention to hold a multidisciplinary event that would consider the nature of 'borders' around and within England during the early medieval centuries. The event was planned as the culmination of my research fellowship in Robinson College, part of the purpose of which was to conduct research into Anglo-Welsh interaction in the region of the River Dee in the Middle Ages. The intention was to study processes of political, cultural and linguistic interaction in a regional border zone as a cohesive unit, moving beyond consideration of these areas as merely places where the boundaries or 'frontiers' of larger polities or cultural groups collided. There is a well-established historiography on this subject that Dr Lindy Brady helpfully recounts in her contribution to this issue, but studies of the Anglo-Welsh border (and of the other political/cultural borders of early medieval Britain for that matter) have not always kept pace with it. As it transpired, this research led me to reconsider the history of the entire Anglo-Welsh border zone in the early Middle Ages, along with the nature of the Anglo-Welsh interaction that took place not so much across it, but within it. My hope for the original conference was that it would help to put some of this work in perspective, allowing the experience of the early medieval Anglo-Welsh border to be compared with the experiences of other borders and borderlands around and within Anglo-Saxon England, from a range of historical, archaeological and linguistic perspectives. The speakers achieved this goal admirably and it proved a stimulating event. For the purposes of this special issue, the conference title has been altered to 'Borders in Early Medieval Britain', which was felt to convey more accurately the resulting contents after some of the original speakers decided not to publish their papers in this context. All the papers published in this issue began as presentations at the conference, with the exception of the excellent 'response' by Dr Lindy Brady which was commissioned to accompany the collection and provides reflection on it. I am grateful to Dr Brady for rising to the challenge and writing a thoughtful piece.
Typologies of the medieval cultural border
Roda da fortuna - Revista Eletrônica sobre Antiguidade e Medievo, 2017
This article seeks to explore the ways in which ideas about the peripheral, which drew on images from the Bible and from Graeco-Roman literature, were used in the Middle Ages to formulate other cultures. In this way, the border between the describing culture and the described culture often came to signify a border between the central and the peripheral, between the known and the exotic. I will here be dealing with a handful of features typical of the peripheral other in medieval text and thought. My aim is first of all to show how widely these features were applied across centuries, and secondly to show how similar descriptions of the peripheral could be even when describing very different peripheries.
Brit-art: Celtic Art in Roman Britain and on its Frontiers
In Celtic Art in Europe: Making Connections (eds) C. Gosden, S. Crawford & K. Ulmschneider, 315-324. Oxbow Books, Oxford., 2014
As is amply demonstrated in the Megaw’s extremely useful book Celtic Art, first published in 1989 and reprinted in 2001, designs recognisable as Iron Age or Celtic in character persist in Roman Britain, particularly in the north and the west where flourishing new regional art styles develop. Objects include horse-gear, as well as new varieties of other well-known Iron Age object types such as torcs. Recent surveys reveal that these objects are in fact more numerous than art made before the conquest (Gosden and Hill 2008, 2; Garrow et al. 2009). The influence of Rome can be seen especially in the use of enamels of multiple colours arranged in geometric patterns and brass, a Roman metal. However, although this paper is situated within a wider discourse of Romanisation, it is from the perspective not of how pre-Roman peoples became Roman but rather the role of art in the construction and renegotiation of identity. Building on recent research by Fraser Hunter (2006a; 2006b; 2008a; 2008b; 2010; 2012) and Mary Davis and Adam Gwilt (2008), which highlight regionality and diversity, it is argued that this art is not an historical fossil. Rather, through the making and wearing of these objects, people were actively working out how to live in the Roman world, or on its frontiers.
One of the most enjoyable moments of working with James on the Celtic Inscribed Stones Project occurred in the small Breton village of Bais. James, Kris Lockyear and myself had travelled there in the hope of inspecd(g two inscriptions found during excavations in the village but not seen since the 1980s. We found the woman who was supposed to be holding the stones and were delighted that they were safe and sound. The work of inspecting , reading and measuring had only just begun when we were asked if we would also like to see her 'other' stone. To our delight, the linen cupboard produced a third early medieval inscription. Since then, this good lady's garden (paved and decorated as it is with the slate slabs that once lined Merovingian-period graves) has produced a still further inscription. In spite of such new discoveries, the Breton corpus remains relatively meagre.l Moreover, despite the presence of Brittonic names, Insular palaeography, and Insular modes of epigraphic display, none of the Breton inscriptions can be pOinted to as commemorating one of the Britons who migrated to Brittany during the early Middle Ages. Such naming patterns and cultural traits became endemic in Brittany and are not indications of new arrivals. To find epigraphic evidence for Insular travellers to the continent one has to look further afield. This paper seeks to collect and analyse all the examples that can be found of such travellers from throughout Europe and the Mediterranean world in the period AD 350-800.2 Some may wonder at the inclusion of an article ranging from Croatia to Portugal in this volume, yet a discussion of the way early medieval Saxons, Britons and Scots used material culture need not apologise for its presence in a
The construction of communities in the early Middle Ages : texts, resources and artefacts
2003
Acknowledgements List of plates, figures and tables The construction of communities and the persistence of paradox: an introduction Walter Pohl Structures and resources of power in early medieval Europe Dick Harrison Gens. Terminology and perception of the 'Germanic' peoples from late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages Hans-Werner Goetz The refugees and evacuees in the age of migrations Wolf Liebeschuetz The 'gold hoards' of the early migration period in south-eastern Europe and the late Roman Empire Michael Schmauder Th enomad's greed for gold: from the fall of the Burgundians to the Avar treasure Matthias Hardt Alaricus rex: legitimizing a Gothic king Hagith Sivan Changes in the topography of power: from civitates to urbes regia in Hispania, Gisela Ripoll Deconstructing the Merovingian family Ian Wood Hair, sacrality and symbolic capital in the Frankish kingdoms Maximilian Diesenberger The ritual significance of vesels in the formation of Merovingian Christian ...
The topography of people’s lives: geography until 1314
2007
Societies are much messier than our theories of them, all the more so in this shadowy period of history when Scotland emerges from 9,500 years or so of prehistoric occupation into a time when documentary sources are still few and the extensive archaeological resource is scarcely yet tapped. Inevitably, if somewhat reluctantly, we are often forced to fall back on studying those physical remains that involved a higher investment of human labour and which, if in earth and stone, have best survived the ravages of time. Fortunately, we can be reasonably confident that these will be products of the impact and articulation of the big new ideas that resulted in changes in society, the ones we want to know about. Alas, the finer grain of human existence, particularly that of the disempowered, remains largely elusive. Any overview can be only simplistic, not least given the diversity of human practice. By the middle of the thirteenth century, to be a Scot meant to be an inhabitant of a historically defined kingdom with an increasingly monetary economy where a stable monarchy with mature and regularised tools of government and a regional church structure ruled over a political entity with geographic boundaries little different from those of today's Scotland (excepting that Shetland and Orkney were still Norwegian, Berwick, the Isle of Man and parish of Kirkandrews were yet to be lost). This is not to say that regional identities were not important, but that new perceptions of self and community had evolved over a lengthy period. To understand how this might have happened we need to recognise and explore the revolutionary, often dramatic, transitions that characterise this period. First and foremost of these is the move from a kindred-based network of locally-based lordships to more formalised and distant, nonkinship-based relations of lordship. Secondly, although people in some parts of southern and western Scotland were already Christian by the early sixth century, the major missionary movement began early in our period. Quickly making its mark, the relationship between the church and secular authorities is critical to our understanding of this period, not least since the new ideology brought with it the new technology of writing. This was the means by which new systems of administration could be introduced. The power of both secular and ecclesiastical authorities ultimately stemmed from how they generated wealth from the resources of the land, notably agricultural surpluses, and it is to this that our attention will first turn. (Exploitation of marine resources for anything but domestic purposes does not loom large until the second millennium AD, and then essentially in Norse parts of Scotland and the burghs). The Scotland of 550 AD was already largely deforested and at this time suffering from adverse climatic conditions. This may have induced a period of social instability. The majority of its inhabitants were farmers practicing a mixed economy (arable and animals), but also tapping into the rich natural resources of the land and sea. Enormous regional diversity in domestic architecture was the norm, whatever the building materials, and details of farming strategies clearly differ. We can imagine a landscape where the better land is busy with unenclosed individual farmsteads and hamlets,