Collectanea Antiqua: Essays in Memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes 9781407301082, 9781407331485

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BAR S1673 2007  HENIG & SMITH (Eds)  COLLECTANEA ANTIQUA

Collectanea Antiqua: Essays in Memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes Edited by

Martin Henig and Tyler Jo Smith

BAR International Series 1673 9 781407 301082

B A R

2007

Collectanea Antiqua: Essays in Memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes Edited by

Martin Henig and Tyler Jo Smith

BAR International Series 1673 2007

Published in 2016 by BAR Publishing, Oxford BAR International Series 1673 Collectanea Antiqua: Essays in Memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes © The editors and contributors severally and the Publisher 2007 COVER IMAGE S (front) - Gold bracteates, from Grave 203, Finglesham. Photograph: Robert Wilkins, Institute of Archaeology, Oxford. (back) - Glass claw beaker, from Grave 203, Finglesham. Photograph: Robert Wilkins, Institute of Archaeology, Oxford.

The authors' moral rights under the 1988 UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act are hereby expressly asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be copied, reproduced, stored, sold, distributed, scanned, saved in any form of digital format or transmitted in any form digitally, without the written permission of the Publisher. ISBN 9781407301082 paperback ISBN 9781407331485 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407301082 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library BAR Publishing is the trading name of British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd. British Archaeological Reports was first incorporated in 1974 to publish the BAR Series, International and British. In 1992 Hadrian Books Ltd became part of the BAR group. This volume was originally published by Archaeopress in conjunction with British Archaeological Reports (Oxford) Ltd / Hadrian Books Ltd, the Series principal publisher, in 2007. This present volume is published by BAR Publishing, 2016.

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Contents Preface David Davison

iii

Introduction Martin Henig and Tyler Jo Smith

1

History and Collecting Collectanea Antiqua: Sir John Soane’s Greek Vases Tyler Jo Smith

5

Historical Archaeology and the British Archaeological Association Martin Henig

17

E.T. Leeds and the Formulation of an Anglo-Saxon Archaeology of England Arthur MacGregor

27

The Novum Inventorium Sepulchrale: Anglo-Saxon Graves and Goods from Kent in the Sonia Hawkes Archive Birte Brugmann, Helena Hamerow and Deborah K. Harlan

45

Culture and Society Sonia Chadwick Hawkes and the ‘Three Ships’ Lydia Carr

49

‘Gomol is snoterost’: Growing Old in Anglo-Saxon England Sally Crawford

53

Was Redwald a European? Sutton Hoo as a Reflection of British Attitudes to Europe William Filmer-Sankey

61

Some Considerations on Religion in Early England James Campbell

67

Edgar’s Lost Grant of Exton, Hants Martin Biddle

75

Sites and Objects The ‘Altar’ of Sulis Minerva at Bath: Rethinking the Choice of Deities Stacey McGowen Swords, Seaxes and Saxons: Pattern-Welding and Edged Weapon Technology from Late Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England Brian Gilmour

81

91

The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Old Park, near Dover, Revisited Keith Parfitt and Tania M. Dickinson

111

Interlace – Thoughts and Observations George Speake

127



Soldiers and Settlers in Britain, Fourth to Fifth Century – Revisited Kevin Leahy, with an appendix by Barry Ager

133

What We Call Home: Reflections on Ancient and Modern Settlement in Deal, East Kent, UK Christine Finn

145

Sonia Chadwick Hawkes: Life and Career Sonia Chadwick Hawkes Martin Welch

151

Oxford University Lectureship in European Archaeology (Early Medieval Specialism) Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

153

The Oxford Institute of Archaeology, 1961-86: An Informal Retrospect Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

157

Contributors

165

ii

PREFACE David Davison

It is fitting that this memorial volume for Sonia Hawkes should appear in the BAR series: it is a series which she supported from the first and which, in its Oxford base, she was able to support and encourage from her home in Walton Street. At the beginning of the 1970s Sonia recognised the need for a simple mechanism to publish the burgeoning results of Anglo-Saxon archaeological research in monograph form. There was the new tide of doctoral theses and the results from archaeological excavations of all kinds whose reports and material were now too extensive for publication in the respective county journals or in the national archaeological journals. The major set-piece publications, such as her own Finglesham, would continue, but an additional vehicle was needed. Thus it was that Sonia fully supported Anthony Hands and David Walker when they outlined to her their plans for starting British Archaeological Reports. She had already contributed to their (with Conant Brodribb) proto-BAR Shakenoak report and opined that Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology would be a source of good material for the new series. The series was launched in 1974 with the publication of a study by one of her own research students, Tania Dickinson’s Cuddesdon and Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire: two early Saxon princely sites in Wessex (BAR 1). Sonia now took her place on the advisory editorial board which served the series in its early years and indeed provided her own AngloSaxon Studies in Archaeology and History 1 (BAR 72, 1979) and 2 (BAR 92, 1981) edited with David Brown and James Campbell. In the following decades she continued to forward likely MSS in the BAR direction, not the least of these being the Corpus of Ancient Brooches in Britain by the late Mark Reginald Hull - Pre-Roman Bow Brooches by M. R. Hull and C. F. C. Hawkes (BAR 168, 1987). On a personal note, my own studies did not lead me to the Anglo-Saxon world, but I attended Sonia’s lectures at the Institute of Archaeology and I well remember them for her beautiful slides and their frequently extended duration. I remain grateful to her for her support of the activities of the University Archaeological Society, with which I was involved at the time, and in later years for always taking an interest in my research and providing a ready source of encouragement. Many were the enjoyable impromptu conversations in Beaumont Street and Walton Street. When, in turn, I became involved in publishing titles in the BAR series, she was there to approve. I am very grateful to the editors of this volume for assembling a truly valuable set of papers in Sonia’s memory. David Davison Oxford, July 2007

iii

Sonia Chadwick Hawkes. Photo: Diana Bonakis Webster.

Introduction Martin Henig and Tyler Jo Smith

This volume was initiated by two Classical Archaeologists who studied at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford and were awarded their doctorates there. For us both Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, one of the pre-eminent AngloSaxonists in Britain in the second half of the 20th century, played an important part in our lives. As her memoir makes clear Sonia did a great deal for the Institute, not only by lecturing but in a remarkable career as a supervisor. It was very noticeable that her students all got positions, many in academic or museum settings. She left Anglo-Saxon studies in a flourishing state from which it has not looked back. She organised the 25th anniversary celebrations at the Institute and was always there to advise and comfort students in difficulty. And yet the sad combination of having to nurse her first husband, Christopher, in his last years which she did with selfless devotion, her own illness and far too early death, got in the way of an appropriate swansong, a celebration of a worthy and often remarkable career. She deserved a Festschrift and we can only hope that she is aware of the love and respect which generated this one in which colleagues, pupils, friends and one or two young scholars for whom Sonia was a legend have got together to prepare this memorial tribute.

interested in everything. Later, after Christopher retired, the regime changed and the temperature became much colder, though even then chatting to Sonia in the kitchen, generally in the early evening, cheered me up considerably. By then my academic interests had expanded considerably from my original thesis subject (Roman gemstones: Sonia at once pointed to some few examples in Anglo-Saxon settings) to embrace the wider culture of Roman Britain, especially its art. I became fascinated by that very nonclassical late Roman metalwork of which Sonia had long been the foremost authority. I wish she could have seen the two finest new examples which came my way after her death. We saw in each other a primary love of aesthetics; we were both very interested in art and architecture and we discussed these and any other subject which took our fancy with enthusiasm. Even though I felt myself to be somewhat on the edge of things in Oxford, as she was the first to realise, Sonia always treated me as a valued colleague and it was a privilege to be a co-examiner with her on several occasions, in one case awarding a distinction to one of the other contributors to this volume. Tyler Jo Smith: I met Sonia during Michaelmas 1990, my first postgraduate term in Oxford. Arriving from the southcentral United States, the academic climate of Oxford, both in College (in this case Merton) and out seemed rather formal and intimidating. The Institute of Archaeology became a home away from home early on, and Sonia was in part responsible for that. In Sonia’s own words appearing later in this volume: ‘Students of Classical and Aegean archaeology mostly kept to the Ashmolean but some certainly gravitated towards the Institute if they had friends there. A few even had attic rooms in the premises and were envied by some of their friends outside’. By 1990, however, the Institute-Ashmolean gap was being bridged somewhat with J.J. Coulton, my college tutor, at the helm as director of the Institute; he entreated the incoming Classicists to make use of the Institute, if only for coffee or tea. He also encouraged us to apply for attic study space, which I would happily occupy for four full years. A few years later, as coordinator of the ‘Greek Archaeology Group’, I would relocate the weekly seminars from the Cast Gallery basement, which lacked proper seating or projection, to the Institute lecture room, where they remain to this day. I became acquainted with ‘Mrs Hawkes’ through two compatriots and contemporaries – Katherine

As editors and creators of the volume, we open it on a personal note, with our own accounts and recollections of Sonia. Several of Sonia’s former pupils and colleagues have kindly submitted their personal tributes as well, and we include them here. Others have contained their comments within their papers.



Martin Henig: I came to the Institute in the autumn of 1967. The elegant late Georgian building in Beaumont Street was as much part of home – as well as academic – life as was Worcester College at the other end of the street. The presiding genius of the Institute was undoubtedly the paterfamilias Christopher Hawkes, but his wife – and Research Assistant – Sonia, mothered us. It was a real home, with real drawing room furniture in the main room; this drawing room, its décor lovingly restored, would later be converted into a lecture room and an unfortunate screen fastened to one wall. We all had tea together at 4.00 and tea continued while there was still water in the pot or, at least, until the dregs were well stewed. There were biscuits and there was cake...and loads of good conversation. Sonia, our house mother (as well as Christopher, our house father), was

Collectanea Antiqua: essays in memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

on the Anglo-Saxon migrations for my tutor, Marjorie Reeves, who dispatched me to Sonia for extra advice. Again she received me as an equal: we ended up on our knees in her cramped room at the Institute of Archaeology, poring over maps of Kent! Thus, when I decided to return to Oxford in 1969 to do a D.Phil., it was to be on an AngloSaxon topic and under Sonia’s supervision. Our academic and personal friendship developed from there.

Woodhouse-Beyer and Tyler Bell – both of whom wrote M.Phil. theses in European Archaeology under her rigid and critical supervision. As their friends, I found myself in Sonia’s company often, and thus was continuously offered snippets of Institute history. It is memorable that Sonia took an interest in areas of research, such as mine, quite distant from her own. There are other memories – chatting with Sonia in the library or the common room, and at an Institute Christmas party during which she famously helped me extinguish a fire in the ‘kitchen’ rubbish bin. My fondest memories of Sonia, however, would be of my final years in Oxford, during which I was a lodger in her home at No. 19 Walton St. She was by then married to Sveta Petkovic, who was convinced that I so resembled his own daughter, that we must somehow be distant relations. Sonia nurtured me through writing up the D.Phil. (providing Christopher’s own desk!) and the viva; applying for academic positions and interviews; and a very sad, sudden departure from Oxford and from England.

Keith Parfitt: It is one of my deep regrets that I never met Sonia personally. As an enthusiastic teenager, I keenly studied all her written works on Anglo-Saxon Kent and in later years had the chance to correspond with her on our most recent discoveries, notably the settlement site at Church Whitfield. This was the sort of find for which she had long been waiting, and upon examining the plans of the two halls which we had excavated she could instantly see clear Jutish influence here! On another occasion she wrote to me about new finds at Eastry, a place always of very particular interest to her and a crucial settlement site which she maintained was just crying out for more excavation. By chance, on the table beside me as I write this, are recently received papers from the office of the County Archaeologist arranging for trenching to be undertaken on a site within the very heart of historic Eastry. Work begins in a few days’ times; just maybe traces of the Anglo-Saxon palace, so long postulated by Sonia, will emerge. Either way, I believe Sonia’s spirit will be watching over us from the first cut of the spade.

George Speake: Sonia was my doctoral supervisor at Oxford, and thanks to her care and guidance, I was the first of Sonia’s post-graduate students to be awarded a D.Phil. Many more were to follow. My first meeting with Sonia was in February 1966, in the elegant common room of the Institute of Archaeology, Beaumont Street, Oxford. I had been invited for tea, prior to an interview with her husband Professor Christopher Hawkes. Sonia put me at my ease. I was in my final year at the Slade School of Fine Art, somewhat apprehensive, but with an ambition to study archaeology. So began my long association with the Institute. After completing the Diploma in European Archaeology, I participated in the final season of Sonia’s excavations at the Anglo-Saxon cemetery of Finglesham, Kent and it was here that my research project into Germanic art and archaeology was outlined and formalised. Sonia did help to open my eyes to the complexities and nuances of Germanic art and ornament, and for this I shall always be grateful. On June 8, 1999, in the church of St Cross, Holywell, Oxford, it was my privilege to give the address at Sonia’s funeral.

James Campbell: I knew Sonia as a colleague at Oxford from the time that she came here. It must have been about 40 years ago and so my memory is hazy. What I chiefly remember is her and Christopher’s organisation of the Kemble Club, a meeting and dinner for those interested in Anglo-Saxon things. It foundered after a time – I forget why and how. Sonia was extremely refreshing to meet because she stood for new approaches and arguments and showed how early Anglo-Saxon archaeology was far less cut-and-dried than some people seemed to think. Arthur MacGregor: My principal point of contact with Sonia was over the Finglesham excavations, the material from which was (and still is – unfinished business!) stored in the Ashmolean.

William Filmer-Sankey: I first met Sonia as an undergraduate reading history, when I attended her lectures on AngloSaxon archaeology (which always went on far longer than the allotted hour!). At the Institute of Archaeology, she was first my Diploma tutor (1980-81) and then the supervisor of my D.Phil. (1985-89).

Sally Crawford: Sonia agreed to supervise my doctoral thesis on early Anglo-Saxon burial ritual and age differentiation, which I began in 1986. Her approach to formal supervision was entirely ‘hands off’, especially when it came to reading anything I had produced (and I was extremely fortunate that John Blair agreed to ‘co’ supervise me from 1998), but Sonia introduced me to a tremendous range of academics and was always supportive in principle, and I owe her a debt of gratitude for having confidence that I could move from an undergraduate degree in English to a doctoral thesis in archaeology, and for sharing her knowledge and experience of Anglo-Saxon archaeology in chats over sherry and cats.

Tania M. Dickinson: I first met Sonia in Autumn 1965, when I had just gone up to St Anne’s College, Oxford, to read Modern History. She had come to give a paper to the college Medieval Society; I had already decided that the post-Roman period was of special interest to me. Sonia welcomed my enthusiasm, though gently suggested that while my reading E.T. Leeds’s, The Archaeology of AngloSaxon Settlements (1913) had been admirable, it was a trifle out-of-date. The following term I wrote a long and enthusiastic (but in retrospect hopelessly confused) essay 

M. Henig & T.J. Smith : Introduction

Martin Biddle: I can’t remember when I first met Sonia, but the first time I remember was in the Restaurant Budapest in Prague in 1966 when Birthe and I were at the 6th(?) International Congress of Pre- and Proto-historic Sciences. Birte and I and Christopher and Sonia went there quite independently (the only place, or at least the best place, then to get a half-way decent meal in Prague). About coffee time, Christopher realised we were there at another table and asked us to join them. The rest as they say is history and we remember happy times when they came to dinner at our home in Winchester or they took us to dinner in Oxford after my 1983 British Academy Rickett Lecture.

Archaeological evidence, namely ‘Sites and Objects’, is the common theme of the six papers in the third section. Stacey McGowen examines the iconography of the altar of Sulis Minerva at Bath, with particular attention to divinities. Brian Gilmour’s discussion of ‘Swords, Seaxes and Saxons’ is a subject most at home in a volume dedicated to Sonia, as is Kevin Leahy and Barry Ager’s ‘Soldiers and Settlers in Britain’. Similarly, the contribution on the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Old Park, by Keith Parfitt and Tania M. Dickinson, is of direct relevance to Sonia’s research. With George Speake’s chapter on interlace, we again confront iconographic problems and themes, and their wider implications across the medieval world. Finally, Christine Finn’s highly personal account of the ancient and modern settlement of Deal would have no doubt delighted Sonia by its originality and familiarity.

Ours is not the first tribute to Sonia. In 2002, Nicholas Hawkes (Christopher’s son) published ‘The Artist and the Archaeologist: A Presentation in Memory of Christopher and Sonia Hawkes’; and Volume 11 of Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History (the journal she co-founded) was dedicated to Sonia, and included the posthumous publication of Bifrons cemetery. The chosen title of the current volume, however, is a clear reference to Charles Roach Smith’s Collectanea Antiqua of the mid19th century; and to its mention in a personal account by Christopher Hawkes in reference to Sonia herself. The current book is divided into four sections with the intent of representing in some small way Sonia’s rather wide-ranging archaeological interests – everything from metalwork and iconography, to burials and excavations. The overall theme is ‘British’, and within each section is a roughly chronological arrangement.

The final section is devoted to Sonia’s own ‘Life and Career’. Martin Welch’s obituary appearing in The Independent has been reprinted here with the author’s permission, and with additional references. We felt it to be the best summary available, and one that, even with the aid of archival research or further anecdotes, we could not improve upon or add to significantly. It highlights her career at Oxford and before, the depth and breadth of her publications, and of course fieldwork. The next two contributions are Sonia’s own. The first is the ‘Oxford University Lectureship in European Archaeology’ composed by Sonia and discovered amongst her papers after her death. Written at the time of her retirement in 1994, it is now part of the Sonia Hawkes Archive at the Institute of Archaeology. It provides an interesting history of her post as well as information pertaining to students, conferences and lectures. In perfect Sonia style it combines the pertinent facts with somewhat personal information. The final contribution, ‘The Oxford Institute of Archaeology 1961-86: An Informal Retrospect’, was written by Sonia for the Silver Jubilee, and appeared in an unpublished brochure for the occasion. It is again a rather personal, individual view of the Institute during those formative years; however, it documents, in unexpected detail, life at the Institute, both academic and social. Many aspects of the piece are charmingly dated, and a number of important changes have occurred in the few years since Sonia’s death. As we approach the Golden Jubilee, it becomes increasingly clear that archaeology postgraduates at Oxford today and in the future will have no memory of Amstrads or non-digital slides. Nor will they have recollections of strewing pottery in the old Squash Court, lunch in the garden or an Institute entrance devoid of a CCTV camera!

In the first section on ‘History and Collecting’, Tyler Jo Smith opens with a paper on the Greek vases acquired by Sir John Soane, and addresses their place in the history of British collecting and display. This is followed by two papers devoted to the history of archaeology in Britain: Martin Henig’s on the British Archaeological Association and Arthur MacGregor’s devoted to the important work and career of E.T. Leeds. The final contribution is the co-authored paper of Birte Brugmann, Helena Hamerow and Deborah K. Harlan, who introduce the Sonia Hawkes Archive at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, with specific reference to excavation finds from Kent. The second section is a group of papers concerned with ‘Culture and Society’. Lydia Carr revisits Sonia’s own work on Anglo-Saxon burials with reference to social and ethnic issues. Sally Crawford’s lengthy contribution on old age in Anglo-Saxon society, as well as William Filmer-Sankey’s paper on Sutton Hoo, each provides much needed and updated surveys of these topics. James Campbell and Martin Biddle each use textual evidence to better understand religion and genealogy, respectively.

It is perhaps notable that we have not included a list of Sonia’s published works. This is in part because, to our knowledge, no such list exists, at least not amongst her papers or Archive, and that any attempt to compose

Oxford Journal of Archaeology 21: 311-7. 2000: 1-94.  G. Daniel and C. Chippindale (eds), The Pastmasters: Eleven Modern Pioneers of Archaeology (London, 1989), 46.  

   Other obituaries appeared in the Kent Archaeological Review (Winter 1999), 179; and Medieval Archaeology 43 (1999), 223-5, written by George Speake.



Collectanea Antiqua: essays in memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

College of Art and Sciences; and to Millie Dean, Renee Gondek and Dan Weiss, for their editorial assistance in preparing the manuscript. We also thank Martin Welch, Diane Bonakis Webster, Anthony Rudolf, Daniel Ehnbom and Dimitris Plantzos. We appreciate the support shown for this project by John Blair, Tyler Bell, Katherine Woodhouse-Beyer and Simon Esmond-Cleary, and regret they were unable in the end to contribute papers. Funding has been generously provided by the Linder Center for the Study of Art History, University of Virginia; the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia; the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford; and St Cross College, Oxford. To each of these groups we extend our heartfelt appreciation.



Collectanea Antiqua: Sir John Soane’s Greek Vases Tyler Jo Smith

Greek vases may seem rather out of place in a volume primarily devoted to British archaeology. As a dedication to Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, however, the antiquities from Sir John Soane’s collection are somehow strangely appropriate. Like Soane, Sonia was a lover of travel and beautiful objects, and both upheld an interest and appreciation for the antique. Not long before her death, Sonia purchased a piece of garden-art – a reproduction of the bust of the Capua Aphrodite – from the antique shop at the corner of Little Clarendon Street and Walton Street in Oxford. It was my pleasure to identify and date the work for her. Sadly, she enjoyed it only for a very short period.

excavations. He kept notes of his travels that ‘show him contrasting the daily reality with the evidence of the classical world’. More famously, however, his sketchbooks, such as one labelled Italian Sketches (1779), contain notes and measured drawings of the antiquities he viewed, including those at Pompeii and Paestum. A typical architect, he was ‘constantly measuring, sketching and recording his impressions of the finest antique and renaissance buildings’. Although every detail of his journeys is not recorded, Soane encountered several individuals who must have influenced his thinking as both architect and later collector. He was introduced to Piranesi, whose works he had studied and who has been described as Soane’s ‘life-long inspiration’. The great artist gave a gift to the young architect of four engravings from the Vedute di Roma series. It is also thought that Soane made professional connections – namely clientele – as a result of his Grand Tour.10

Sir John Soane (1753-1837) is perhaps best known as a London architect and for his museum at No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. As a collector he is most often associated with two sets of Hogarth paintings, an Egyptian sarcophagus of Seti I, neoclassical sculpture and architectural fragments. This paper will focus on a less-known and virtually unstudied part of his collection: the ancient Greek vases. We shall trace Soane’s interest in acquiring vases, perhaps a result of his Grand Tour, provide some details of the collection itself and, finally, consider the manner of their display in his eclectic house-museum.

Sir William Hamilton, who Soane may also have met, could have single-handedly sparked an interest in Greek vases.11 Hamilton had arrived in Italy in 1764 as British Envoy to the Court of Naples, and began collecting Greek vases so quickly and in such numbers that he was arranging for their elaborate publication within the year.12 Hamilton’s first vase collection was purchased by the British Museum in 1772, just a few years before Soane set off for Italy. His passion for vases is evident by their inclusion first in the portrait of Sir William and First Lady Hamilton painted by David Allan in 1770, and again in his better known individual portrait by the same painter of 1775.13 The substitution of vases for monumental sculpture in portraiture was a new practice at the time, Pompeo Batoni’s portrait of Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg (1767) often thought to

A Grand Tourist Like many men of his class and day, young Soane made his Grand Tour from England to Italy via France. He set off on the no doubt arduous journey on 18 March 1778 and arrived in Rome on 2 May. His three-year travelling scholarship, awarded by the Royal Academy, was funded by George III. During his extended stay in Italy he visited a number of archaeological sites outside Rome, including nearby Tivoli, Paestum, Cumae, Pompeii and several sites of Sicily, among them Agrigento. It is possible that he himself may even have participated in archaeological

   Dorey 1992: 123; and Darley 1999: 38, who mentions Soane’s ‘scouting for antiquities to make extra income’.  Darley 1999: 40.    Stroud 1996: 33, fig. 11 (Paestum), 35-6; Darley 1999: 38-9; Harris and Savage 2004: 21 (Pompeii).    Thornton and Dorey 1992: vii.    Buzas 1994: 6.    SJSM 2001: 66-7, fig. 42; and see previous note. 10   Dean 1999: 20. 11   Stroud 1996: 35. 12   Ramage 1990: 470; and now Nørskov 2002: 42-9. 13   Constantine 2001: 58 and 95; Jenkins and Sloan 1996: 106-7, no. 1.

  The term ‘Greek’ is one of convenience; many of the vases were produced in the Greek colonial towns of southern Italy. The GreekEtruscan vase controversy appears to have been more or less resolved shortly before Soane began collecting; Jenkins 1996: 57-8; Nørskov 2002: 35-48. Soane did, however, refer to vases as ‘Etruscan’ in his own 1835 Description; Dorey 1992: 123.    Stroud 1996: 29-48; and Darley 1999: chs. 2-3, for details of his journey.  SJSM 1995: A5. 



Collectanea Antiqua: essays in memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

be the earliest example.14 To quote Brian Sparkes: ‘painted pottery had started to become a fashionable adjunct and status symbol’.15 Just two years later, in 1777, Hamilton would sit for another portrait, this one by Sir Joshua Reynolds, with red-figure vases even more prominently displayed;16 the painter would again feature him central to a group of members of the Society of Dilettanti animatedly discussing Greek vases.17 Unfortunately, there is no record of ‘direct dealings’ between Soane and Hamilton, though it is known that the envoy provided the necessary permission for the tourist to visit the private collection ‘at Portici just south of Naples where the king displayed the recent rich archaeological finds of the area’.18 In later years Soane would purchase for his personal library a copy of Baron d’ Hancarville’s Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Honble Wm. Hamilton (1766-77). 19 It is also worth noting that Soane acquired four cork models of ‘Etruscan’ tombs thought to have been made by Domenico Padiglione around 1804.20 Soane’s model of a tomb excavated at Nola, near Naples, shows a miniature skeleton surrounded by vases and other artefacts; it is considered an accurate and detailed record of the archaeological discovery. It is particularly interesting as the vases are small-scale reproduction of objects later acquired by Hamilton.21

Fig. 1. Plan of ground floors of nos.12-14 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. After Thornton and Dorey 1992: x.

Soane’s Italian experiences with other collectors and collections are better documented. Already mentioned is one belonging to the King of Naples at Portici. At Velletri, accompanied by Frederick Hervey, the Bishop of Derry, Soane viewed the antiquities of Stefano Borgia. The private collector, whose vases and other objects are now housed in Naples Museum, would famously be visited by Goethe a few years later.22 During his time in Sicily, Soane would also see the holdings of Prince Biscari, housed in his Catania palace, which most certainly included Greek vases of various types and techniques.23 Though Soane would not himself have the means as a Grand Tourist to acquire objects, later in life he would become an avid collector. In the acquisition of vases in particular he must have in some small fashion desired to emulate these much more prominent, and in some cases, substantial collections. To have vases on display in one’s home would have been a marker of status and, at least in theory, an indicator that one was well-travelled and classically learned.24 The irony, of course, in Soane’s case, is that each of the vases in his

collection would be acquired in London over the course of several years, and following his return home. At the same time, their method of display, as we shall see, was carefully chosen with the aim of creating ‘the proper ambience of scholarship and culture’.25 Collecting: ‘Non multum sed multa’ Soane returned from Italy in spring 1780, but would lack for some ten years the necessary means to acquire vases or indeed anything at all. In 1784 he had married Elizabeth Smith, from whose uncle an inheritance would come in 1790.26 A short two years on Soane would purchase No. 12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, demolish it, and rebuild it to his own design. The ownership of No. 13 would follow in 1808, and No. 14 in the early 1820s (Fig. 1).27 Another important property acquisition was Pitzhanger Manor, Ealing, purchased in 1800, and after which ‘he began to earn a reputation as a collector’.28 His time away had introduced him firsthand to archaeological discoveries and it is hardly surprising that he focused much of his attention on Graeco-Roman antiquities, in a neoclassical setting. That said, over the years he would come into possession of medieval objects, including architectural

  Wilton and Bignamini 1996: 81-2, no. 39. See also McInnis 1999: 105. 15   1996: 54; and also Burn 2003: 148. 16   Jenkins and Sloan 1996: 176-7, no. 51. 17   Wilton and Bignamini 1996: 292, no. 254. 18   Darley 1999: 35. See also Haskell and Penny 1981: 74-8. 19   Harris and Savage 2004: 38. 20   Cf. Jenkins and Sloan 1996: 145, no. 27. 21   Thornton and Dorey 1992: 66; and Elsner 1994: 172-3. 22   Darley 1999: 30-1. See also Amorelli 1987. 23   Darley 1999: 47-8, and fig. 39. 24   Jenkins and Sloan 1996: 128-9. 14

  Burn 2003: 148.   Buzas 1994: 7-8; Palmer 1997: Darley 1999: 95-8. 27   Palmer 1997:1-2. The complicated history of the Lincoln Inn’s Fields properties is beyond the scope of this paper. The most concise introduction is Pevsner 1962: 299-301; for more extended discussion see Darley 1999: 97-116; and Dean 2006: chs. 2 and 7. 28   Thornton and Dorey 1992: vii. See also Palmer 1997: 3-4; and Stroud 1996: 74-87. 25 26



T.J. Smith : Collectanea Antiqua: Sir John Soane’s Greek Vases

fragments from the Old Palace of Westminster; Italian and northern Renaissance sculpture and fragments; plaster casts of several periods; a few Asian and South American pieces; paintings and drawings, including such greats as Watteau and Piranesi; architectural models, drawings and prints; neoclassical gems and casts; and of course books for his personal library.29 In addition to the vases, our subject here, from the ancient world he obtained architectural and decorative fragments, sculpture, cinerary urns and sarcophagi fragments, terracottas, bronzes, gems and scarabs. In 1796 he would be elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 30 whose stated aim, then as now, is ‘the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries’.31

crammed into the narrow limits of a private house, and is arranged in so ingenious a manner that no corner, however dark, is left unoccupied. In this respect the architect has achieved marvels; nevertheless this labyrinth stuffed full of fragments is the most tasteless arrangement that can be seen; it has the same kind of effect on the spectator as if the whole stock of an old-clothes-dealer had been squeezed into a doll’s house. For an appropriate situation has not been in all cases found for even the few good specimens. Two only are fairly well placed, the remarkable Egyptian sarcophagus discovered by Belzoni, and the Cawdor vase…; in fact, many sculptures worthy of notice are rendered quite unavailable for enjoyment and study by their bad position. In such a shape has this cabinet of rarities, by the will of the collector, become the property of the State.39

‘Despite his busy professional life Soane also found time to indulge his passion for collecting, and he frequently went to view or bid at sales. …time too was spent arranging his purchase in the house and museum’.32 As an antiquities collector operating at the turn of the century, Soane was in distinguished company. He competed at sales with the likes of Townley, Hope and Blundell, and it is notable that ‘these men bought the most expensive pieces while Soane made major purchases among the lower-priced items…’.33 Inevitably, Soane was not the most discerning collector. Among his purchases were second-rate items, fakes and ‘dubious pasticcios’.34 The classical antiquities have been labelled by modern scholars as ‘not spectacular’,35 ‘a pretty sorry bunch’,36 and the vases themselves as ‘undistinguished’.37 Indeed, Soane was no Hamilton. Rather, he would be described later in the century by Adolf Michaelis, in his Ancient Marbles in Great Britain, as one of a ‘group of amateurs’, who used the ‘art market at home in the formation of larger or smaller collections of antiquities’.38 Though Michaelis seems a bit hard on Soane, his comments pertaining to both objects and display are worth repeating here:

A more cheering and recent description comes from Peter Thornton and Helen Dorey in the introduction to their A Miscellany of Objects from Sir John Soane’s Museum: Soane prepared his Museum personally, spending huge sums of money and gathering items for their intrinsic value, their appearance or their associations… He wished to create a poetic setting, using architecture as an expressive art form evoking emotions and associations of antiquity. For this reason he eschewed didactic arrangements by periods and different cultures… Instead he displayed his collections mingled together. The museum was to be not just a repository but an inspirational setting; a springboard for the imagination.40

Regardless of tone – whether envisioned as a ‘ labyrinth stuffed full of fragments’ or rather as ‘ a poetic setting’ – the two descriptions emphasise Soane’s merging of artefact and architecture, in a combined private-public space. Though judged differently by different people at different times, Soane should indeed be honoured for his ‘intellectual breadth and curiosity’.41 It has been suggested that Soane acquired antiquities for a number of different reasons – their value and rarity, in large groups for effect, for unusual forms or subjects, as reminders of his years in Italy or of famous people and events.42

The most singular of these collections was that of the eminent architect Sir John Soane… Non multum sed multa appears to have been his motto in collecting; for there is something of everything. Along with a few choice specimens of high value, or at least of considerable interest, there is an immeasurable chaos of worthless fragments, of all times, from all countries, of all kinds of art, originals and copies mixed together. All this is

The Classical antiquities and neoclassical gems were catalogued by Cornelius Vermeule, later antiquities curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, but at the time a postgraduate research student at University of London. His comprehensive study of Soane’s collection, completed in the early 1950s, was never properly published, only printed in a limited number of copies in Boston in 1975.43 The fact that the vases and other antiquities are only now being published as a group may explain why (at least

  SJSM 2001: 130-5, for a handlist. For the library see now Harris and Savage 2004. 30   Dorey 1992: 22; Darley 1999: 127. 31   http://www.sal.org.uk/. 32   Palmer 1997: 40. 33   Dorey 1992: 126. 34   Dorey 1992: 126. See also Vermeule 1964: 122. 35   Vermuele 1953: 68. 36   Elsner 2002: 167. 37   Jenkins 1988: 454. 38   1882: 163. 29

  Michaelis 1882: 164.   1992: ix. 41   Millenson 1987: 78; cf. Elsner 2002: 166. 42   Dorey 1992: 123. 43   SJSM 2001: 136. See also Vermeule 1953; and Vermeule 1964: 4. 39



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Fig. 2. Front parlour of Pitzhanger Manor. Joseph Michael Gandy, 1802. After Palmer 1997: pl. 50. in the case of the vases) they have featured so little in extant scholarship. Soane’s assemblage could never rival Hamilton’s in quality or cachet. At the same time, Soane’s interests, to push the comparison, were quite different. He was an architect first, a collector second. His own writings make clear that most vases were acquired with display, architectural setting and, perhaps, in exceptional cases, form in mind, rather than myth, iconography or artist.44 As indicated by Michaelis, it is also the manner of Soane’s collecting that is significant. Of the total collection of nearly 60 Greek and South Italian vases, 40 were acquired at once ‘in bulk’ from a Christie’s sale in 1802.45 The practice was not unknown, as even Hamilton himself purchased whole collections.46 These vases were bought with the intent of display in Pitzhanger Manor, itself only purchased two years earlier; some are visible in Joseph Michael Gandy’s interior perspective of 1802 (Fig. 2), displayed either at eye level or on high shelves. Interestingly Pitzhanger would be sold a few years later, and its contents moved to London.47 Other vases were purchased as individual works of merit, such as the Cawdor and Englefield vases yet to be discussed. The general condition of many vases is poor, some have been repainted, and several even veneered(!), such as Athenian black-figure lekythos attributable to the Haimon Group.48

and, Gnathia/Hellenistic and Roman.49 These categories are under revision by the current author; they do, however, make clear that a large portion of the collection is in fact South Italian. The objects identified as East Greek, are small and non-figure decorated.50 Amongst the Attic wares Vermeule included a black-figure lekythos mentioned already, and two red-figure ones; several cups/dishes; kraters and a skyphos.51 The four Corinthian wares are each pyxides, again only lightly decorated.52 The remaining vases in the collection are South Italian, and represent a good, but by no means comprehensive range of decorative styles and shapes.53 A.D. Trendall has studied some of the better preserved vases and featured them in his vast lists of South Italian vases. He included six Campanian vases in his 1967 catalogue: two bell-kraters belonging to the Parrish Painter’s circle; 54 a bell-krater with female heads on either side, and an oinochoe with female subjects, both attributed to the workshop of the CA Painter;55 and a skyphos assigned to the Leiden Painter.56 As well, a mid-4th century Campanian bell-krater purchased by Soane in 1825, and depicting a female head on one side and a satyr’s head on the other (Fig. 3), has been tentatively considered (by Cambitoglou) the name vase of none other than the Soane Painter himself.57 Trendall and Cambitoglou also listed

Vermuele’s catalogue of the vases divides them into seven categories: East Greek, Attic (i.e. Athenian), Corinthian, South Italian Earlier Fourth Century, Apulian, Campanian

  Vermuele no. 535 (L46).   Vermeule nos. 497-500. 51   Vermeule nos. 501-14. 52   Vermeule nos. 515-8. 53   Vermeule nos. 519-55, the last of which is a Roman amphora with a stamped handle. 54   Trendall 1967: 251, no. 158 (L44); 259, no. 221 (L50). 55   Trendall 1967: 492, no. 382 (L17); and 481, no. 301 (HR9), pl. 185.4. 56   Trendall 1967: 284, no. 415 (HR6). 57   Vermeule no. 543 (L6); Thornton and Dorey 1992: fig. 6. Cambitoglou’s attribution appears in museum records; and SJSM 2001: 13. See Trendall 1967: 389, no. 215, pl. 150.3, where the vase is listed under the Frignano Group, and the Painter of Oxford 1945.73. 49 50

  Dorey 1992; In general, Nørskov 2002: 50-8.   SJSM 2001: 92-3; Millenson 1987: 86. Vermeule’s vase catalogue numbers 61 items, but some of these are non-figure decorated Hellenistic and Roman, and thus not part of the current study. 46   Ramage 1990: 470. 47   Thornton and Dorey 1992: viii; Palmer 1997: 4; Dean 1999: 96. 48   Museum no. HR 10. The wood veneer and plaster were identified and removed by a conservator in 1994, as indicated by museum records. 44 45



T.J. Smith : Collectanea Antiqua: Sir John Soane’s Greek Vases

Fig. 3. Name vase of the ‘Soane Painter’. Photograph, Sir John Soane’s Museum.

four Apulian vases in their published catalogues of those wares: a bell-krater attributed to the painter of Geneva 2754; a skyphos assigned to the style of the Wellcome Painter; the large volute-krater, known as the Cawdor vase; the so-called Englefield vase.58 The South Italian vases merit further attention, and it is possible that more of them will be attributed to painters and groups. The shapes include stemless cup/bowls, oinochai, lekythoi, skyphoi, kraters, ‘bottles’, amphorae and a hydria – by far the largest number are kraters. Apart from the elegant Apulian ‘barrel amphora’ formerly of the Englefield collection,59 the shapes are fairly standard South Italian forms.60 Their iconography has not received careful study, but a cursory glance at the images suggests familiar scenes, such as nude youths with cloaks or armour, figures holding boxes or wreaths, athletes, mantle figures, the ever-popular Dionysian realm.61 Worthy of mention is a Campanian oinochoe portraying a youth seated at a potter’s wheel, and a winged Thanatos decorating the tondo of an Athenian red-figure cup, attributed by Sir John Beazley to the painter of Vienna 155.62

Fig. 4. The Cawdor Vase. Photograph, the author.

Englefield vases each have interesting and documented histories, and are attractive and well-preserved artistically. They happen also to have been the most valuable vases in the collection at the time of purchase.63 According to Helen Dorey, Soane ‘was attracted to both by their unusual features’.64 The Cawdor vase (Fig. 4) is a large Apulian red-figure volute krater dated to the late 4th century, and standing almost one meter in height. According to Trendall, it has been ‘considerably repainted’, and depicts on one side the ‘sacrifice of Oinomaos before the chariot race’ and on the other youths and women.65 On the neck are representations of two Nikes, one driving a quadriga, and a youth carrying off a women; Trendall has further suggested that the latter two are Pelops and Hippodamia, thus connecting the different decorated areas of the vase.66 The multi-figure composition on a large object is characteristic of Apulian style, though the painting itself is arguably not of the highest quality available. The Cawdor krater was discovered in Lecce in 1790 and was initially in possession of the King of Naples.67 It would change hands

The two Soane vases receiving the most scholarly attention have been mentioned several times here. The Cawdor and   1978: 231, no. 40 (L40); 304, no. 181 (L11); and 1982: 931-2, no. 119 (L101); 803, no. 67 (L74). 59   Vermeule 534, and no. 537; cf. Trendall 1989: 85 and Trendall 1966: fig. 2, no. 11. 60   Trendall 1989: 9-11. 61   Trendall 1982: 18-20; Trendall 1989: 11-3. 62   Vermeule nos. 539 and 513. The Beazley attribution is found in Vermeule’s catalogue. 58

  Millenson 1987: 85.   1992: 123. 65   1982: 931-2. 66   1982: 932. Vermeule’s catalogue identifies the scene as the seizure of one of the daughters of Leucippos. 67   SJSM 2001: 9. 63



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collectors such as Hope and Townley.71 Their relation to Soane’s architectural setting has even been compared with Hope, whose interest in the supposed symbolism of vase iconography led to their display in columbariumtype niches.72 Soane, by contrast, was not particularly concerned with the figures or subjects portrayed on the objects. That being said, his interests may not have been purely decorative. He used architectural fragments for teaching and drawing, and believed an architect should receive training in other art forms. Put another way: ‘He was primarily interested in vases for their refined shape and for the overall impression created by groupings of them high up, rather than for their individual importance’.73 In some instances, such as at Pitzhanger Manor, Soane seems to have designed rooms around the objects he possessed.74 There is evidence that he made changes to his displays at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, including the vases, but ultimately wanted ‘the arrangements kept in the state in which they were left at his death’.75 In fact, the museum inventory numbers used for the vases today designate the location of each within the house. A large number of Soane’s vases are on view in the Library and Dining Room of No. 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, much as he left them. Not only would these have been the most public rooms or, the ‘focal points of social interaction within the house’,76 but Soane himself considered the open plan arrangement to represent ‘one room’ (see Fig. 1).77 The vases in these rooms are, for the most part, positioned high up either on the bookcases or displayed individually on specially provided wall brackets (Fig. 6). For aesthetic purposes convex circular mirrors were placed by Soane high up in the corners, who described that ‘the effect of these works is considerably heightened by the looking-glass’.78 The so-called ‘library tradition’ of display originated in Italy, and became fashionable in private collections elsewhere, including in English country houses.79 And perhaps it bears reminding that much of Soane’s collection was first intended for, and briefly displayed in, Pitzhanger Manor. The method of their display in London, in keeping with the ‘library tradition’, has been described by Lucilla Burn as ‘one of the few conventional aspects of the decoration of his eccentric house-museum’.80 Another notable feature of the vases found in this part of the house is that some share the space, literally, with Wedgwood reproductions of red-figure ‘Etruscan’ vases produced in the famous Staffordshire ‘Etruria’ workshop.81 The juxtaposition of

Fig. 5. Detail of the Englefield Vase. Photograph, the Author. several times before Soane purchased it in 1800.68 The Apulian amphora (Fig. 5) formerly of the collection of Sir Henry Englefield was not purchased by Soane until 1823.69 Trendall identifies the shape as a loutrophoros, though it is sometimes referred to as a barrel amphora; and he connects the vase stylistically with the work of the late 4th century Ganymede Painter.70 On one side a woman with a fan is seated in a naiskos, and on the other Eros is running to the left, holding a wreath and jug. Though considerably smaller than the Cawdor vase, the Englefield vase shares its basic fussy, ornate appearance, further enhanced by the use of polychrome. Art of Display The display of objects in Sir John Soane’s Museum has received a certain amount of attention from scholars. Already at the time of Michaelis, (and perhaps in Soane’s own day) there was scepticism about his methods and intentions. The ancient Greek vases seem particularly interesting in this regard, being relatively small and easily portable. However, the display of vases in a house-museum was not unique to Soane, and is associated with other British

  Burn 2003: 141.   Burn 2003: 148. 73   Dorey 1992: 123. 74   Richardson and Stevens 1999: 146. 75   Thornton and Dorey 1992: ix. 76   Opper 2003: 58. 77   SJSM 2001: 4; Buzas 1994: 10. 78   Buzas 1994: 12. 79   Nørskov 2002: 51-4. See also Jenkins 1994: 168. 80   2003: 148. 81   Dorey 1992: 123; and see Jenkins 1996: 60. 71 72

  Michaelis 1882: 163.   SJSM 2001: 6. 70   See note 59 above; and Trendall and Cambitoglou 1982: 803. 68 69

10

T.J. Smith : Collectanea Antiqua: Sir John Soane’s Greek Vases

Fig. 6. Detail of Library at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. After Buzas 1994: 26. ancient originals and modern reproductions may seem unorthodox today, but it reminds us that the colour schemes of each were consistent and their general impression from ground-level (surely Soane’s concern) was exactly the same.82

of the back window, the exact spot it occupies today.87 The next documented location of the Cawdor vase is the Picture Room. The purchase of Hogarth’s Election series in 1823 required the creation of an appropriate setting. Soane purchased No. 14, locating the Picture Room at the back. In Soane’s own Description of the House and Museum in 1832, the krater is situated on a table at the centre of the room (Fig. 7). But its final resting-place would be the Dining Room. Regardless of location, the impressive ancient wine mixing-bowl was always envisioned by its owner as an art object, displayed at eye-level, and for a time from 1866 was placed under a glass dome. Unfortunately, in its current location, its position against the north window allows it to be viewed from one side only. Similarly, the Englefield vase can be seen today, encased in glass, on ‘the projection pedestal under the “canopy”’ which divides the Dining Room and Library.88 Though at the juncture of the two most communal rooms in the house, it too is backed up against the wall, and is sadly not visible in-the-round. That said, the importance of eye-level display in Soane’s day should be stressed. Though technically both vases inhabited a ‘private’ domestic space, their visibility proves one of the more ‘public’ aspects of Soane’s museological extravaganza. The eye-level arrangement of Hamilton’s vases in the British Museum has been considered a ‘major advance in their status’; Greek vases were beginning to be appreciated as art objects, in their own right.89

The Cawdor and Englefield vases were also located in the central area of the house. The Cawdor vase currently sits at the centre of the window sill in the Dining Room. This, however, was its final location in the house and certainly not the first. At Pitzhanger Manor the vase was placed on a pedestal and base in the Front Parlour and, in the design by Gandy previously mentioned (Fig. 2), there are other, smaller vases visible on the fireplace mantle on the opposite side of the room, as well as on very high shelves on both sides of the room.83 The Back Parlour and Library at Pitzhanger seem also to have featured vases on bookshelves just above or at eye-level.84 Once relocated to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the massive krater was placed in a rather different setting. Soane first gave it pride of place ‘perched on top of a pile of fragments in the basement beneath the Dome, as the centrepiece for his Museum’.85 It would later be replaced by the much-treasured Egyptian sarcophagus, acquired by Soane in 1824, and the area would forever be known as the ‘sepulchral chamber’. The krater also appears prominently in Frank Copland’s 1818 Sectional Perspective of the Dome Area and the Breakfast Room,86 and in an 1813 watercolour of the Library and Dining Room it is very likely the black vase at the centre

The remainder of Soane’s vases are found throughout the house. Visitors today do not have access to entire collection; some objects are in storage or just simply kept in non-public areas. Another room in the house where a

  Cf. Wilton-Ely 1989: esp. 59-64; and Coltman 2001: 9-14.   Richardson and Stevens 1999: no. 61 (‘the breakfast room’); and see Millenson 1987: fig. 13 (section drawing). 84   Stroud 1996: fig. 37; Richardson and Stevens 1999: no. 62. 85   Dorey 1992: 123. 86   Richardson and Stevens 1999: 167-8, no. 76. 82 83

  Dean 2006: 127.   SJSM 2001: 6. 89   Burn 2003: 142. 87 88

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Collectanea Antiqua: essays in memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

Fig. 7. View of the Picture Room, from Soane’s Description, 1832. After Buzas 1994: 18.

12

T.J. Smith : Collectanea Antiqua: Sir John Soane’s Greek Vases

Fig. 8. View of Breakfast Parlour, from Soane’s Description, 1835. After Elsner 2002: 181, fig. 4. group of vases can be found, though rather less-obviously, is the Breakfast Parlour. The Breakfast Parlour vases have received, in short, no scholarly attention, though they are clearly visible in drawings from Soane’s 1835 Description (Fig. 8). Perhaps this is because they are discreetly arranged on brackets at the base of the octagonal lantern-light in the room’s central dome; or it may be due to the fact that the room contains a number of far more significant works.90 The Breakfast Parlour vases (originally nine in number, though one is now missing) are small, averaging c. 10 cm in height, and the shapes are either juglets or lekythoi. Some are very badly worn, and their red-figure decoration is practically invisible. Others have suffered an extreme version of repainting and/or lacquering, which masks both their condition and original decoration. The end result of this is that each of the vase when viewed from groundlevel appears to be black glazed. Only upon careful inspection is it clear that more than one was originally figure decorated. Again, we are reminded of Soane’s interest in the formalistic impression as opposed to the archaeological reality (the cork models being the obvious exception). Standing in the Breakfast Parlour today and gazing upwards, one cannot but wonder how these small dark vases would have appeared on a moonlit or candle-lit evening – ever darker one suspects!91

Fig. 9. ‘Vases in Mr Soane’s Collection’, J. Britton, 1827. After Elsner 1994: 174. page ‘Vases in Mr Soane’s Collection’ (Fig. 9).92 Not surprisingly the Cawdor and Englefield vases feature prominently, as do several other ancient vases. The crowded arrangement is a complete antithesis to the actual manner of display the vases enjoyed ay the time. As well, more than one Wedgwood vase has been added to the ensemble. Thus we conclude by asking: why are there only vases in this representation rather than other artefacts from the collection? The answer is, of course contained in the book’s title. Soane himself was an architect, a collector and a teacher. He quite reasonably considered vases to be integral to his didactic architectural scheme. Architectural features, forms and designs are everywhere to be found on both plain and ornate vessels, both mainland Greek and

When John Britton, antiquary and contemporary of Soane, published The Union of Architecture, Sculpture and Painting in 1827, a description of Soane’s house and museum dedicated to George IV, he chose for the title   See, for example, Darley 1999: 306, fig. 211; and Stroud 1996: 94, fig. 46. 91   Lighting in the house is addressed in Palmer 1997: 15-8. 90

  Darley 1999: 285-6 and 306.

92

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HARRIS, E. and SAVAGE, N. (curators) 2004: Hooked on Books: The Library of Sir John Soane Architect 1753-1837 (London). HASKELL, F. and PENNY, N. 1981: Taste and the Antique (New Haven/London). JENKINS, I. 1988: Adam Buck and the Vogue for Greek Vases. The Burlington Magazine 130, 448-57. JENKINS, I. 1994: Classical Antiquities. In A. MacGregor (ed.), Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, Scientist, Antiquary. Founding Father of the British Museum (London), 167-73. JENKINS, I. 1996: Ideas of Antiquity: Classical and Other Ancient Civilizations in the Age of Enlightenment. In Jenkins and Sloan 1996, 16877. JENKINS, I. and SLOAN, K. 1996: Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his Collection (London). MCINNIS, M.D. 1999: Cultural Politics, Colonial Crisis, and Ancient Metaphor in John Singleton Copley’s Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Izard. Winterthur Portfolio 34, 85-108. MICHAELIS, A. 1882: Ancient Marbles in Great Britain (Cambridge). MILLENSON, S.F. 1987: Sir John Soane’s Museum (Ann Arbor). NØRSKOV, V. 2002: Greek Vases in New Contexts (Aarhus). OPPER, T. 2003: Ancient Glory and Modern Learning: The Sculpture-Decorated Library. In Sloan and Burnett 2003, 58-67. PALMER, S. 1997: The Soanes at Home: Domestic Life at Lincoln’s Inn Fields (London). PEVSNER, N. 1962: London I. The Cities of London and Westminster. 2nd edn. (Harmondsworth) RAMAGE, N.H. 1990: Sir William Hamilton as Collector, Exporter, and Dealer: The Acquisition and Dispersal of his Collection. American Journal of Archaeology 94, 469-80. RICHARDSON, M. and STEVENS, M. 1999: John Soane Architect: Master of Space and Light (London). SJSM 1995: Soane: Connoisseur and Collector. A Selection of Drawings from Sir John Soane’s Collection (London). SJSM 2001: A New Description of Sir John Soane’s Museum. 10th rev. edn., published by the Trustees of the Museum (London). SLOAN, K. AND BURNETT, A. (eds) 2003: Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century (London/Washington DC). SPARKES, B.A. 1996: The Red and the Black: Studies in Greek Pottery (London). STROUD, D. 1996: Sir John Soane Architect. 2nd edn. (London). THORNTON, P. and DOREY, H. 1992: A Miscellany of Objects from Sir John Soane’s Museum (London). TRENDALL, A.D. 1966: South Italian Vase Painting (London). TRENDALL, A.D. 1967: The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania and Sicily (Oxford).

South Italian. The shapes themselves uphold a symmetry and geometry that is on par with the finest classical and classicising monumental sculpture. And as for painting, there are no finer extant examples, than the black and red figures themselves, considering that so little panelor wall-painting survives. In the end, it is hoped that this brief exploration of Soane’s collection will add something new to the ever-growing corpus of writings devoted to the master-builder and first ‘curator’ of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Soane’s curiosities may not be well-written into the history of Greek vase-painting, but they should surely find their place in the history of collecting. Acknowledgements For permission and assistance thanks are extended to curators and staff of Sir John Soane’s Museum, especially Helen Dorey and Steven Astley. My colleagues at the University of Virginia, Maurie McInnis and Douglas Fordham, greatly helped in the preparation of this paper. Abbreviations SJSM Vermeule

Sir John Soane’s Museum C.C. Vermeule, Catalogue of the Classical Antiquities in Sir John Soane’s Museum (London 1953; Boston 1975)

Bibliography AMORELLI, M.T.F. 1987: La Collezione Borgia (Rome). BURN, L. 2003: Words and Pictures: Greek Vases and their Classification. In Sloan and Burnett 2003, 140-9. BUZAS, S. 1994: Sir John Soane’s Museum, London (Tübingen/Berlin). CONSTANTINE, D. 2001: Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton (London). COLTMAN, V. 2001: Sir William Hamilton’s Vase Publications (1766-1776): A Case Study in the Reproduction and Dissemination of Antiquity. Journal of Design History 14, 1-16. DARLEY, G. 1999: Sir John Soane: An Accidental Romantic (New Haven/London). DEAN, P. 1999: Sir John Soane and the Country Estate (Aldershot). DEAN, P. 2006: Sir John Soane and London (Aldershot). DOREY, H. 1992: Soane as Collector. In Thornton and Dorey 1992, 122-6. ELSNER, J. 1994: A Collector’s Model of Desire: The House and Museum of Sir John Soane. In J. Elsner and R. Cardinal (eds), The Culture of Collecting (London), 155-76. ELSNER, J. 2002: Architecture, Antiquarism and Archaeology in Sir John Soane’s Museum. In A. Tsingarida and D. Kurtz (eds), Appropriating Antiquity. Saisir l’Antique (Brussells), 165-216. 14

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TRENDALL, A.D. 1982: Vase-Painting in South Italy and Sicily. In M.E. Mayo (ed.), The Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia (Richmond, Virginia), 15-21. TRENDALL, A.D. 1989: Red Figure Vases of South Italy and Sicily (London). TRENDALL, A.D. and CAMBITOGLOU, A. 1978: The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia I. Early and Middle Apulian (Oxford). TRENDALL, A.D. and CAMBITOGLOU, A. 1982: The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia II. Late Apulian (Oxford).

VERMEULE, C.C. 1953: Sir John Soane, His Classical Antiquities. Archaeology 6, 68-74. VERMEULE, C.C. 1964: European Art and the Classical Past (Cambridge, Mass.). WILTON, A. and BIGNAMINI, I. 1996: Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (London). WILTON-ELY, J. 1989: Pompeian and Etruscan Tastes in the Neo-Classical Country House Interior. In Jackson-Stops, G., Schochet, G.J., Orlin, L.C. and MacDougall, E.B. (eds), The Fashioning and Functioning of the British Country House (Hanover/London), 51-73.

15

Historical Archaeology and the British Archaeological Association Martin Henig

The sudden rise to prominence of archaeological research in Britain, with the founding of the British Archaeological Association (still affectionately known as the BAA) in December 1843, came at a time of considerable scientific and technological ferment. Charles Roach Smith, Thomas Wright and their friends were men of the widest culture and interests who clearly viewed standing buildings, documentary sources and artefacts as equally ‘archaeological’. This would have been the view of earlier Antiquaries back to the 16th and 17th century (William Camden, John Aubrey etc) in the light of the fact that written sources and inscriptions of some sort exist for Britain in every century from the 1st century BC. The fact that the true antiquity of mankind was not yet appreciated meant that the whole of what we call prehistory was still assigned to the period of the Celts, Ancient Britons, and Druids. The legacy of the BAA is that, in Britain at any rate, historical archaeology continues to be regarded as concerning the archaeology of peoples whose written records survive and some would even make the case that it embraces the whole of archaeology.

of scholarly bent together seized on the moment and created an organisation which articulated the way in which many educated Englishmen were coming to look at their past. Their aim is enunciated in the explanatory subtitle to Volume I of the Archaeological Journal for 1844, ‘published under the Direction of the Central Committee of the British Archaeological Association for the Encouragement and Prosecution of Researches into the Arts and Monuments of the Early and Middle Ages’. A society, which attracted the support of the higher clergy and many members of the aristocracy, was clearly a force to be reckoned with and Pettigrew was able to point to many achievements, including congresses in places of interest to the membership (generally, it should be noted, cathedral cities), which stimulated the foundation of local antiquarian societies. The BAA also had an impressive record of publication. The only real setback was an unfortunate split within its membership in 1845 occasioned in large part by irreconcilable personalities with a good dose of the British disease of social snobbery directed in particular at Wright who was a man of moderate means who needed to earn money by his writing. The creation of the Archaeological Institute (which now had control of the BAA’s original Journal!) however merely created a second society with the same aims. The fact that it, like the BAA, has flourished until the present day is a strong indication of the need for Archaeological societies.

1851 was a pivotal year in the modern history of Great Britain. It was the year of the Great Exhibition in London; an event that, more than any other, marked the apogee of British technology. There is something almost symbolic in the speech which T.J. Pettigrew, VicePresident of the British Archaeological Association, delivered to the membership, in which he reviewed the Association’s achievements in the eight or so years since it had come into being in 1843. The BAA had been established in response to the rapid rise of a large, increasingly well-educated Middle Class with the leisure and the ability to travel, largely thanks to the creation and rapid expansion of the Railways. The technological and transport revolution of the time resulted in the discovery and all-too-frequently the destruction of archaeological remains. The founders, Charles Roach Smith, a chemist, and Thomas Wright, a professional writer and journalist

Pettigrew defined the practice of the subject during his peroration as follows: The researches of the antiquaries of the present day… are no longer directed to the accumulation of antiques, or to the mere development of the characters of an ancient inscription, but have reference to their relation to history, and the illustrations they afford to the habits and customs of former times. The pursuit of the true antiquary demands a knowledge and exercise of various attainments. To render his labours effective, he must possess no little acquaintance with heraldry, with genealogy, with various languages in which inscriptions are to be found, either on monuments or in manuscripts, with numismatics, with history, in general and particular

  Pettigrew 1851; also Pettigrew 1846. It is very likely that the ultimate source of Pettigrew’s lies in Roach Smith’s passionately held views; see Rhodes 1990: 36.    Although strictly speaking he should be cited as C.R. Smith, he often used Roach or Roche as an (additional) surname. 

  Wetherall 1994.



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manners and customs, and a variety of other attainments too numerous to be expected to be efficiently combined in any one individual.

The centrality of history is to be noted here and a few pages later Pettigrew lays out the historical periods: Our experienced associates are now enabled with a precision that is almost marvellous, immediately to assign to the several objects thus brought to light, their nature and arrangement, either as Roman or Danish, ancient British, or Saxon…all of which are illustrative of the history of the human species.

The material published by the BAA contains many papers on medieval buildings just as the Journal still does. There was clearly an aesthetic side as is made clear in the Proceedings of the first congress held in Canterbury in 1844. Why did the Association wish to hold its first Congress there? A Norman keep; and one of its old gateways, with round towers and portcullis, still exist. Its monastic and palatial ruins, rich with historical recollections of early Christianity, of wedded loaves, and of pious retribution, are also to be found adorned with leering and grotesque corbels, commemorative of the monks that loved ‘a fat swan best of any rost’, and above all rises a cathedral no less venerable for antiquity than distinguished by its surpassing beauty and architectural excellence.

Fig. 1. Romanesque pillar with capital from Shobdon old church. After Wright 1844a: 235 fig. 2.

Then as now, when I find myself in the shoes of Thomas Wright as editor, very considerable use still continues to be made by contributors of documentary sources. Wright discusses Shobdon Old Church in the full knowledge of the approximate date and circumstances of its foundation by Oliver de Merlimond, which he derived from The Chronicles of Wigmore Abbey. He gives it as 1141; the leading modern scholar, George Zarnecki, suggests a slightly earlier date, 1135, but the disparity is that of historians working with historical sources and not of ethnographers working with a set of unverifiable assumptions. The paper is illustrated with woodcuts portraying what were surely the sculptural masterpieces of the Herefordshire school, when they were still in a near pristine state (Fig. 1) – a valuable record indeed!

Fig. 2. Anglo-Saxon window openings at Barnack and Deerhurst. After Wright 1844b: 32, figs 10 and 11.

In the earlier Middle Ages such close evidence appertaining to specific structures and artefacts may be uncommon but is, nonetheless, valuable. So Wright in a paper on ‘Anglo-Saxon Architecture Illustrated from Illuminated

Manuscripts’, uses historical sources to date extant buildings (Fig. 2); elsewhere, according to an anonymous review on pages 497-500 in the Gentleman’s Magazine published in May 1837 which Roach Smith attributes to Wright,10 he looked to Beowulf for evidence to show that rings were used as money amongst the Teutonic tribes. Roach Smith, himself, was pleased to find that the wood in the shaft of a spear found in railway works at

  Wetherall 1994: 163-4.   Pettigrew 1851: 167.    Dunkin 1845: 13.    Wright 1844a.    Zarnecki 1993: 88.  

  Wright 1844b.   Roach Smith 1844a: 12.



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Northfleet, Kent was of ash-wood and cites Beowulf again to demonstrate that for the Anglo-Saxon poet, a spear was simply called ‘ash’.11 There was a practical side to the study of the medieval past. Many of the members of the BAA (and its offshoot the Archaeological Institute) were members of the clergy and in the age of the Gothic Revival it was for them of great practical importance to study church monuments and fittings with a view to emulating them. Thus the Reverend J.L. Petit, an influential amateur architect with High Church tendencies,12 illustrates the steeple-like bell towers of churches at Harescomb and Acton Turvill in Gloucestershire and Leigh Delamere and Corsham in Wiltshire as models for architects: ‘If these specimens are worth imitation, a fortiori, they are worth preserving’.13 C. Winston assumed that glass too would be copied but was distressed by the poor quality of contemporary glass painting, apart from a few heraldic windows by Willement. ‘If then the ancient glass paintings are so replete with good taste, and proper artistic feeling as we have asserted, and upon which point we fear no contradiction, it follows, that in order successfully to imitate them, we must employ those who possess these artist-like qualities’.14 Such sentiments agree with those of another contemporary society, founded just a little earlier than the BAA (1839), the Cambridge Camden Society.15 Anglo-Saxon church architecture naturally found a place, alongside churches of later centuries.16 The roots of ecclesiology lay in history, in the publication and elucidation of texts sometimes with overtly partisan aims, in controversies between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, not with anthropological debate. Much of the archaeology of central importance at the time was Christian archaeology.

Fig. 3. Boar-helmet and other objects from Benty Grange, Derbyshire. After Bateman 1849: 278, fig. 3. For the pagan Saxon and Roman periods there were not the same contemporary factors as there were in the case of medieval buildings and ecclesiology, but it has to be remembered that education in Greek and Latin literature was central to the education of gentlemen in the Public Schools such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester as well as to the ancient Universities. This gave Roman remains a real interest as illustrative of history. The Anglo-Saxons were, by contrast, in the public mind, proto-Englishmen whose fierce independent character helped to make the nation what it was in the 19th century. It is quite clear from the publications of the BAA that the approach of most writers was tinged with the idea that here the writer and readership is looking at their ancestors. The majority of the papers are at one with, for instance the popular histories of the 18th and earlier 19th century or indeed Wright’s own The Celt, the Roman and the Saxon: A History of the Early Inhabitants of Britain, down to the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, Illustrated by Ancient Remains, first published in 1852. Even where the written sources do not exist, where ‘history is almost silent’,18 as it is in the pagan Saxon period when ‘it is to the Saxon’s barrow that we must look for information on the state of society among our own forefathers’, the words society and forefather imply a complex historical sequence.

The attitude in France was no different; indeed then (as now) some aspects of historical archaeology appertaining to the Middle Ages were at least as advanced even if not more so. Roach Smith reported to the BAA in 1844 that the Comité des Arts et Monuments had ‘established in many of the schools in France, and particularly in the ecclesiastical seminaries, chairs of archaeology, especially in connection with Christian art and Christian monuments, to excite inquiry into their origin and history, and to ensure their preservation’.17 In discussing the periods from the Middle Ages backwards, the historical narrative appears to grow dimmer so there is a great deal to be said for addressing these ages in reverse order.

However, there are still objective reports as in the case of Thomas Bateman’s short account of his excavation of a barrow at Benty Grange, Derbyshire and its contents, first communicated to the Worcester congress. Of the now famous helmet (Fig. 3) he writes:

  Roach Smith 1848: 239.   See Miele 1998: 108-9. 13   Petit 1844: 39. 14   Winston 1844: 21. 15   Wetherall 1998: 28-32. 16   E.g. Haigh 1846; Waller 1846. 17   Roach Smith 1845: 29. 11

12

  Wright 1847: 50.

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The helmet has been formed of ribs of iron radiating from the crown of the head, and covered with narrow plates of horn, running in a diagonal direction, from the ribs, so as to form a herring-bone pattern…Upon the top or crown of the helmet, is an elongated oval brass plate, upon which stands the figure of an animal, carved in iron, now much rusted but still a very good representation of a pig: it has bronze eyes. 19

Bateman cites Beowulf in what is a remarkably objective account. Again, as was so often the case in the early years of the BAA, the most notable exception to the romanticising attitude towards Englishness was that of Charles Roach Smith. In a paper on Bittern, a multi-period site on the Solent, he makes the following, and for the 1840s astonishing assessment of the effects of the AngloSaxon invasions: The commonly received accounts of the exterminating effects of the Saxon invasion, has probably been much exaggerated. It is difficult to conceive motives for overturning with indiscriminate fury public and private buildings and fortresses, which, to the conquering invaders, must have been indispensably useful; and we know from ancient writers, that for centuries after the Romans left Britain, their towns and stations were inhabited, their temples stood and were frequented, and the idols in them worshipped…We may with more reason believe that the desolation of the Roman stations referred to was accomplished slowly and by degrees, from various causes, and especially from the gradual growth of neighbouring houses, churches, villages and towns, for materials for the construction of which these ancient works were resorted to as convenient and useful quarries.20

Fig. 4. Anglo-Saxon pendants from Kent. Illustrations by F.W. Fairholt, from the Inventorium Sepulchrale. view the collection.23 The future history of the collection does not concern the BAA, beset by splits and rivalries, but Roach Smith remained the driving force both in securing the future of the publication and in the publication of the Inventorium. His friendship with the wealthy philanthropist Joseph Mayer following the 1849 BAA Congress at Chester, led eventually to the acquisition of the antiquities, following the British Museum’s refusal to purchase them,24 and also the publication with illustrations by F.W. Fairholt (Fig. 4), whose splendid archaeological drawings also enliven the pages of early volumes of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (JBAA) (Figs 5 and 6).25

Despite his reference to Richard of Cirencester, now known to be bogus, I could not have put the case for continuity and adaptation better myself. The history revealed by archaeology was infinitely complex. Roach Smith’s greatest claim to fame with regard to AngloSaxon antiquities is of course in connection with the collection of the 18th-century excavator and collector Bryan Faussett, who systematically explored such sites as Sibertswold, Barfriston, Chartham and Beakesbourne in Kent, and produced a splendid manuscript account of his discoveries.21 The collection was virtually forgotten until Roach Smith called on the Faussett family home at Heppington in 1841, then belonging to Faussett’s grandson.22 Roach Smith came to see the significance of these finds and of the manuscript, the Inventorium Sepulchrale. In the first congress of the BAA based at Canterbury in 1844, members were taken to Heppington to

In Roman times there were not only occasional inscriptions excavated or found casually with which to interpret the past but also the whole of classical literature was available to educated men and a few women. Many modern archaeologists who read Roach Smith (for example) should feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves for their inability to come to terms with what the Romans themselves wrote about their history, aspirations and daily life. Pettigrew’s admonition to the Antiquary to maintain an acquaintance with the languages of the past requires reiteration today.26   Dunkin 1845: 187-9.   Dunkin 1845: 37-44; See White 1988: 118-21. 25   Dunkin 1845: 44-8. See for example Dennett 1845: pl. 3; Roach Smith and Wright 1847: 240, fig.1. 26   Pettigrew 1851. 23

  Bateman 1849: 277-8. 20   Roach Smith 1846: 162-3. 21   Hawkes 1990. 22   Rhodes 1990: 30-1. 19

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What does knowledge of computing or the employment of abstruse and tired jargon drawn from the social sciences at second hand avail the researcher without this valuable tool. Roach Smith’s paper on Roman London like his later magnum opus on the antiquities he had saved from building sites and especially from the Thames at London Bridge and which provided the basis of the British Museum’s collection of Romano-British Antiquities,27 sparkles with such erudition. In Volume 4 of JBAA Roach Smith provides a very cogent account of samian ware, citing Virgil and Pliny as necessary.28 What is remarkable about this paper is that it precedes modern systematic works on Fig. 6. Roman altar depicting the Matres, from Cologne, by F.W. Roman red-gloss pottery by many decades Fairholt. After Roach Smith and Wright 1847: 240, fig.1. and though doubtless in detail defective, is far more aware of the historical context of such art than these more single-minded successors. What is in (Fig. 6) are discussed by the former who concludes they effect a joint paper by Roach Smith and Wright, altars and were of Germanic origin but then Romanised while Wright representations of the Matres in Britain and the Rhineland shows that they survive into medieval folklore. The story of the Worcestershire swineherd who ‘forcing his way through the dense thickets of the forests which then covered that part of the island, in search of a stray swine, came suddenly to a fair open lawn, in the midst of which he saw three beautiful maidens clad in heavenly garments, and singing sweetly’.29 Bishop Egwin interpreted this vision as the Virgin between two angels and the famous abbey founded here at Evesham adopted this image as its device, but as in other examples of medieval folklore about fates, norns and fairies we may wonder. Some places have a rich history including mentions in the sources as early as the Roman period. London is one such city; Colchester is another: The town is so full of ancient remains, so pregnant with historical connexions and associations, that it is difficult, in touching upon any one topic in its early epoch, to avoid being led into an essay, which, however entertaining it might be made, would be out of place in our present proceedings. As the regal abode of Cunobeline, the contemporary of Augustus, whose elegant coins shew the influence of the Roman arts; as the site of the colony of veterans established by Claudius, and the temple erected to that emperor, which in after times served as an altar to the retributive justice of the insurgent Britons, and was deluged in Roman blood; as one of the finest examples, in still later times, of a regularly fortified Roman town, the walls of which, nearly two miles in circumference, have partly survived the shock of so many centuries of war and rapine, and in pristine strength and solidity excite our wonder and admiration; as the source of discoveries of objects which illustrate the state of the arts in Roman Britain, Colchester is perhaps second in interest to none of our ancient towns and cities.30

Fig. 5. Anglo-Saxon antiquities from barrows on the Isle of Wight, by F.W. Fairholt. After Dennett 1845: 3.   Roach Smith 1844b; 1859.   Roach Smith 1849a.

  Roach Smith and Wright 1847: 250.   Roach Smith 1847: 30.

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29

28

30

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Fig. 7. The south wall of Caerwent. After Roach Smith 1849b: 254. and Roman cultures of the Mediterranean.36 Again, in his discourse ‘On the Sepulchral Character of Cromlechs in the Channel Islands’ (Figs 8a and b) Lukis writes: ‘we seem to speak with a remote people whose habits and manners are as far apart, as the polite and intelligent cities of Europe are from the rude native of the islands of the Pacific’.37 Even when one journeys back to an even more remote time, as when T. Wake Smart commented on what we now know to be Palaeolithic remains at Kent’s Cavern, Torquay in Devon, the artefacts are assigned to ‘the era of the Savage Celt and that of the more civilised Romano-Briton’.38 The only alternative would have been to place them before the Flood. The vision of the men of the mid-19th century was rooted in a world view which began with the Creation and would some day end with the Last Judgement. The President of the BAA, Lord Albert Denison Conyngham expressed the theological basis of archaeological research on 9 September 1844:

But especially evocative is Roach Smith’s account of the town with the best preserved walls in Roman Britain, Caerwent (Venta Silurum), illustrated with a cut showing them still overgrown, being discussed by two antiquaries, Roach Smith and friend, in converse in front of them (Fig. 7).31 Before the Romans there were the Ancient Britons, the people described by Julius Caesar circa 55 BC. These too can be seen in an historical context. Thus Roach Smith again, noting in a general paper on numismatics that the earliest British coins derive from Greek models and that coins of Cunobelinus often bear the legend CAMV and are found in greatest abundance near Colchester where that king is known to have ruled.32 The Rev. Beale Post published a number of papers in JBAA on Celtic coins, assigning them within their historical contexts and employing the inscriptions upon them to provide a story.33 Although perhaps the most systematic study to date, Celtic coins had been studied previously, from the late 16th and early 17th centuries onwards, by scholars as significant as William Camden, John Speed, Robert Plot, William Stukeley and others. Thus there was nothing truly innovatory in regarding such objects as historical.

In reverting to the original inhabitants of this country, they would find the intrepid aborigines, toto orbe divisos, rude and uncultivated as they were boldly opposing themselves to the veteran legions of Rome, and gallantly flinging themselves into the waves, to protect their native coast – then might be traced the gradual establishment of the Romans in the country – and after their departure, the arrival of the Saxons… Next they would see St Augustine at the head of a mission from the papal court, coming over to convert the Anglo-Saxons to the Christian religion – that religion in comparison with which all human knowledge will ever be but foolishness…39

Finally what of the ages before such coins? In the mid19th century, when the age of the earth was still not fully appreciated, still less evolution, essentially all prehistoric antiquities would be lumped together and explained through what Classical authors wrote on the Druids. Typical is the work of F.C. Lukis: ‘Observations on the Primeval Antiquities of the Channel Islands’.34 He writes that ‘ the early antiquarian remains in these islands belong to a period connected with that which has usually been called British, Gaulish, Cymric, and Celtic, and were certainly the works of the primeval race which inhabited them’.35 It is implied by Lukis that they date from the same time as the Greek

The concept of Prehistory could only begin later in the 19th century. The subjects an archaeologist should know about according to Charles Boutell’s A Manual of British Archaeology were architecture, architectural accessories, sepulchral monuments, heraldry, seals, coins, palaeography, arms and armour, costumes and personal ornaments,

  Roach Smith 1849b.   Roach Smith 1844a. 33   Beale Post 1846-7. 34   Lukis 1844. 35   Lukis 1844: 145-6. 31

  Lukis 1844: 230.   Lukis 1849: 327. 38   Wake Smart 1847. 39   Conyngham 1845: 23-4.

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Fig. 8a-b. Two views of a cromlech on Jersey. After Lukis 1849: 334.

pottery, porcelain and glass; the book does not always even go back to the Roman period.40 The list of subjects sounds remarkably like a checklist for the present day BAA (see below), though a paper on porcelain is by now rather overdue! As late as Henry Godwin’s The English Archaeologist’s Handbook,41 it was possible to give the archaeological periods as Celtic, British, Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman and Medieval. There is just a hint of what was to come in a brief mention of Prehistoric archaeology very early in the work:

The last few years of the Journal have seen papers on a Roman mosaic from Stonesfield, Oxfordshire which was used as a design for a piece of 18th century embroidery,43 the hoard of 4th century Eucharistic church plate found at Water Newton, Cambridgeshire,44 Anglo-Saxon York,45 abbeys and cathedrals,46 chantry chapels,47 fonts,48 tombs,49 church woodwork,50 and special volumes devoted respectively to medieval floor tiles and medieval cloisters.51 There have been Gloriettes in castles,52 Renaissance portraits,53 and a 17th century church library,54 and discussions of the halls where King Henry III distributed alms.55And there have been conferences in beautiful cathedral cities, including Salisbury, Chester, Utrecht, St Albans, Carlisle, Rochester and Mainz, occasions every bit as convivial as those of a century and a half ago. These conferences in themselves form the bases of volumes far more scholarly than the original 19th century transactions but preserving the immediacy and feeling for place of those pioneering efforts. The writer of this paper, watching the play of light on an ancient wall at evening, a pint of beer in his hand, would maintain that this historical engagement with the past which goes back so many years is what historical archaeology is all about. He often raises his glass and proposes toasts to the memory of Charles Roach Smith and Thomas Wright!

A work on Archaeology would hardly be considered complete which contained no allusion to this subject [prehistory]: but the whole matter is at present involved in so much uncertainty and controversy that it does not seem expedient to give it more than a passing notice.42

Thereafter, in the wake of the evolutionary ‘discoveries’ of Darwin and Huxley, the previously universal theological model was largely (and often thoughtlessly) discarded; like all revolutions this one went too far. Blind faith in ‘science’ has replaced blind faith with the result that study of the more distant past has too often fallen into the hands of scientists, both physical and social, who have created their own language to describe what they have found to each other and, all too often, to mystify the rest of us. Only now is the spiritual side of humanity as reflected in archaeology again taking its place in such subject areas. That the histories, often drawn from very ancient histories (such as those encountered in the Bible and Mesopotamian clay tablets) look different…that in some cases (as in large parts of Africa) they rely on oral tradition…does not make them impervious to historical methodology.

Beyond the Association, there is a long and honourable tradition in Great Britain that treats archaeology, all   Freshwater et al. 2000.   Painter 1999. 45   Norton 1998. 46   Coppack, Hayfield and Williams 2002; Gilchrist 1998. 47   Heard 2001; Gilderdale-Scott 2005. 48   King 2002. 49   Munby 2002. 50   Tracy 1999. 51   Keen and Henig 2000; Henig and McNeil 2006. 52   Ashbee 2004. 53   Hepburn 2001. 54   Carrick and Ryder 2002. 55   Dixon-Smith 1999. 43 44

At any rate, the British Archaeological Association has continued to keep faith with the selfsame historical vision, which had fired Charles Roach Smith and Thomas Wright.   Boutell 1858.   Godwin 1867. 42   Godwin 1867: 2. 40 41

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CARRICK, M. and RYDER, C. 2002: Sources for the Kederminster Library Paintings. JBAA 155, 255-71. CONYNGHAM, A.D. 1845: Address upon the Objects of the Association. In Dunkin 1845, 22-5. COPPACK, G., HAYFIELD, C. and WILLIAMS, R. 2002: Sawley Abbey: The Architecture and Archaeology of a Smaller Cistercian Abbey. JBAA 155, 22-114. DENNETT, J. 1845: Note of Discoveries which have been made in the Barrows etc. in the Isle of Wight in the Year 1816, and at Several Subsequent Periods. In Roach Smith 1846, 148-60. DIXON-SMITH, S. 1999: The Image and Reality of AlmsGiving in the Great Halls of Henry III. JBAA 152, 79-96. DUNKIN, A.J. 1845: A Report of the Proceedings of the British Archaeological Association at the First General Meeting held at Canterbury in the Month of September,1844 (London). FRESHWATER, T., DRAPER, J., HENIG, M. and HIND, S. 2000: From Stone to Textile: The Bacchus Mosaic at Stonesfield, Oxon., and the Stonesfield Embroidery. JBAA 153, 1-29. GIBSON, M. and WRIGHT, S.M. (eds) 1988: Joseph Mayer of Liverpool 1803-1886. Society of Antiquaries of London, Occasional Papers XI (London). GILCHRIST, R. 1998: Norwich Cathedral: A Biography of the North Transep. JBAA 151, 107-36. GILDERDALE-SCOTT, H. 2005: ‘This Little Westminster’: The Chantry Chapel of Sir Henry Vernon at Tong, Shropshire. JBAA 158, 46-79. GODWIN, H. 1867: The English Archaeologist’s Handbook (London). HAIGH, D.H. 1846: Deerhurst Church, Gloucestershire. JBAA 1, 9-19. HAWKES, J. 1971: Nothing But…Or Something More. John Danz Lecture (Seattle). HAWKES, S.C. 1990: Bryan Faussett and the Faussett Collection: An Assessment. In Southworth 1990, 1-24. HEARD, K. 2001: Death and Representation in the Fifteenth Century: The Wilcote Chantry Chapel at North Leigh. JBAA 154, 134-49. HENIG, M. and McNEIL, J. 2006 (eds): The Medieval Cloister in England and Wales (Leeds) = JBAA 159 HEPBURN, F. 2001: Three Portrait Busts by Torrigiani: A Reconsideration. JBAA 154, 150-69. KEEN, L. and HENIG, M. 2000 (eds): JBAA 153 [special volume on floors, especially medieval tiles, dedicated to L. Keen] KING, J.F. 2002: The Tournai Marble Baptismal Font of Lincoln Cathedral. JBAA 155, 1-21. LUKIS, F.C. 1844: Observations on the Primeval Antiquities of the Channel Islands. Arch. Journ. 1, 142-51; 222-32. LUKIS, F.C. 1849: On the Sepulchral Character of Cromlechs in the Channel Islands. JBAA 4, 323-37. MIELE, C. 1998: Real Antiquity and the Ancient Object: the Science of Gothic Architecture and the

archaeology, as part of history rather than anthropology, as humanity rather than science. Jacquetta Hawkes expressed this most eloquently in her 1971 John Danz lecture, Nothing But…Or Something More that she delivered at the University of Washington, Seattle in 1971. It was not ‘natural selection’ but historical processes, which encouraged some individuals in the Upper Palaeolithic of southern France and northern Spain to become imaginative artists,56 and the same events can be inferred from archaeology in the creation of stone vases in preDynastic Egypt or stone pyramids in Meso-America.57 Put simply, ‘It was the will of Cato in particular and Rome in general that caused the destruction of Carthage’.58 Many archaeologists in Britain have never set foot in a department of ‘anthropology’ and would no more consider themselves to be anthropologists than nuclear scientists! They see the real subject of their research as Ancient or Medieval History and the historical discipline as being essentially unlimited in time or space. Historical archaeology in all its aspects is, indeed, alive and well throughout Europe and certainly in the British isles. This is true whether we can date every event in the past or have to be content to make use of potsherds and small objects to help to reveal the lives of all those women and men who have lived, loved, had children, quarrelled with each other and worshipped God for century after century on this earth before us.59 Abbreviations Arch. Journ. Archaeological Journal JBAA Journal of the British Archaeological Association Bibliography ASHBEE, J.A. 2004: ‘The Chamber called Gloriette’: Living at Leisure in 13th and 14th Century Castles. JBAA 157, 17-40. BATEMAN, T. 1849: Description of the Contents of a Saxon Barrow, Recently Opened in Derbyshire. JBAA 4, 276-9. BEALE POST, Rev. 1846-7: On the Coins of Cunobeline and of the Ancient Britons. JBAA 1, 224-36 and 298-305; JBAA 2, 11-29. BOUTELL, C. 1858: A Manual of British Archaeology (London). BRAND, V. (ed.) 1998: The Study of the Past in the Victorian Age (Oxford).   Hawkes 1971:20.   Hawkes 1971:22. 58   Hawkes 1971:18. 59   I am sure that Sonia would have been horrified to see her (and her husband’s) beloved Oxford Institute relegated into part of the Life Sciences Division rather than with History, Classics and the other humanities. 56 57

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ROACH SMITH, C. 1859: Illustrations of Roman London (London). ROACH SMITH, C. and T. Wright 1847: On Certain Mythic Personages, Mentioned on Roman Altars Found in England and on the Rhine. JBAA 2, 23955. SOUTHWORTH, E. (ed.) 1990: Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: A Reappraisal. Proceedings of a Conference Held at Liverpool Museum 1986 (Stroud). TRACY, C. 1999: The Importation into England of Church Furniture from the Continent of Europe from the Later Middle Ages to the Present Day. JBAA 152, 97-149. VYNER, B. (ed.) 1994: Building on the Past. Papers Celebrating 150 Years of the Royal Archaeological Institute (London). WAKE SMART, T. 1847: Account of Some Ancient British Antiquities Discovered a Few Years Ago in Kent’s Cavern, near Torquay, Devon. JBAA 2, 171-4. WALLER, J.G. 1846: Notes on Anglo-Saxon Masonry. JBAA 1, 117-20. WETHERALL, D. 1994: From Canterbury to Winchester: The Foundation of the Institute. In Vyner 1994, 821. WETHERALL, D. 1998: The Growth of Archaeological Societies. In Brand 1998, 21-34. WHITE, R.H. 1988: Mayer and British Archaeology. In Gibson and Wright 1988, 18-36. WINSTON, C. 1844: Painted Glass. Arch. Journ. 1, 1423. WRIGHT, T. 1844a: Remains of Shobdon Old Church, Herefordshire. Arch. Journ. 1, 233-7. WRIGHT, T. 1844b: Anglo-Saxon Architecture Illustrated from Illuminated Manuscripts. Arch. Journ. 1, 2435. WRIGHT, T. 1847: On Recent Discoveries of AngloSaxon Antiquities. JBAA 2, 50-9. WRIGHT, T. 1852: The Celt, the Roman and the Saxon: A History of the Early Inhabitants of Britain, down to the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity (London). ZARNECKI, G. 1993: The Future of the Shobdon Arches. JBAA 146, 87-92.

Restoration of Medieval Buildings. In Brand 1998, 103-24. MUNBY, J. 2002: Richard Beauchamp’s Funeral Car. JBAA 155, 278-87. NORTON, C. 1998: The Anglo-Saxon Cathedral at York and the Topography of the Anglian City. JBAA 151, 1-42. PAINTER, K.S. 1999: The Water Newton Silver: Votive or Liturgical? JBAA 152, 1-23. PETIT, J.L. 1844: On Bell-Turrets. Arch. Journ. 1, 36-9. PETTIGREW, T.J. 1846: Introductory Paper. On the Objects and Pursuit of Antiquarian Researches. In Transactions of the British Archaeological Association, Second Congress, Winchester, August 1845 (London), 1-15. PETTIGREW, T.J. 1851: On the Study of Archaeology and the Objects of the British Archaeological Association. JBAA 6, 163-77. RHODES, M. 1990: Faussett Rediscovered: Charles Roach Smith, Joseph Mayer, and the Publication of Inventorium Sepulchrale. In Southworth 1990: 25-64. ROACH SMITH, C. 1844a: Numismatics. Arch. Journ. 1, 7-13. ROACH SMITH, C. 1844b: Roman London. Arch. Journ. 1, 108-17. ROACH SMITH, C. 1845: Explanatory of the Objects and Operations of the Association. In Dunkin 1845, 2535. ROACH SMITH, C. 1846: On the Roman Remains at Bittern, near Southampton. 161-70. In Transactions of the British Archaeological Association, Second Congress, Winchester, August 1845 (London), 6170. ROACH SMITH, C. 1847: Notes on Roman Remains at Colchester. JBAA 2, 29-45. ROACH SMITH, C. 1848: Discovery of Anglo-Saxon Remains at Northfleet, Kent. JBAA 3, 235-40. ROACH SMITH, C. 1849a: On the Red Glazed Pottery of the Romans, found in this Country and on the Continent. JBAA 4, 1-20. ROACH SMITH, C. 1849b: Notes on Caerwent and Caerleon. JBAA 4, 246-64.

25

E.T. Leeds and the Formulation of an Anglo-Saxon Archaeology of England Arthur MacGregor

Edward Thurlow Leeds (1877-1955) (Fig. 1) is widely acknowledged as the author (in every sense) of the first conspectus of Anglo-Saxon England compiled primarily on an archaeological rather than a historical basis. His was the viewpoint that would underpin archaeological thinking on the period for the whole of the first half of the 20th century. If more recent trends have taken Anglo-Saxon researches in a variety of different directions and have at times led to the modification or even complete rejection of the concepts on which Leeds modelled his view of the great migration from the Continent, the extensive literature he produced continues to form an impressive monument to his vision and his scholarship. Rather than attempting to bring Leeds up to date, as it were – a task quite beyond

the author’s capacities and one that would inevitably depend heavily on the researches of others – and would even lead us into disciplines undreamed of in Leeds’ time, the following essay will limit itself to attempting to characterise something of his thinking and its evolution through the course of his long career Almost the only viewpoint offered on the Anglo-Saxons at the beginning of the 20th century was that which had been compiled from historical sources by scholars who, since at least the days of Humfrey Wanley, had sought to interpret them. While by no means text-free, Leeds’ thesis, as first expounded in his book, The Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements, was at best sceptical and at times downright dismissive of the accepted wisdom based exclusively on historical sources. His analysis depended primarily on the evidence provided by a body of artefacts that had by the early 1900s become sufficiently extensive to allow a range of broad conclusions to be drawn from it. Over the following decades Leeds added to this corpus with the fruits of his own excavations, which also contributed for the first time valuable settlement evidence to complement the cemetery-derived artefacts that hitherto had dominated the field. He deployed this information in a highly original manner to draw conclusions about settlement patterns in particular, and about the progress of early Anglo-Saxon England in general. Interpretations on both fronts undoubtedly have changed in the meantime, but much of the methodology he employed has survived and evolved to become a standard part of the present-day archaeologist’s armoury of techniques. The interpretations proffered by Leeds were neither universally nor immediately welcomed, however, so that it should not be thought that his views changed the face of Anglo-Saxon England overnight. His scornful treatment of unsound historical hypothesis attracted in return sharp criticism from the historians of any errors he might make (and he made several) in using data from their domain. Some historians, for whom texts hitherto had held an    Amongst recent works see, for example, Lucy 2000; Lucy and Reynolds 2002; and Hills 2003.    Leeds 1913.    See the introduction by J.N.L. Myres to the 1953 reprint of Leeds 1913.

Fig. 1. Edward Thurlow Leeds, 1877-1955. Photograph: Elliott & Fry Ltd. 27

Collectanea Antiqua: essays in memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

gained recognition for their expertise) but that inevitably produced also a regular harvest of man-made artefacts in which the young Leeds became highly knowledgeable. An intended career in the Colonial Service was cut short when his health suffered a breakdown, obliging him to retire to his parental home for what proved to be a five-year period of recuperation. This enforced rest was brought to a close by his introduction in 1908 to Evans, who promptly offered him employment.

unassailable authority, remained unimpressed with the body of disjecta membra placed in the balance against their long-accumulated body of documentary evidence, and it took the whole of Leeds’ lifetime for a more fully integrated and mutually supportive climate of scholarship to reach full maturity. The Festschrift under preparation in the very year of his death observes, significantly, that ‘Anglo-Saxon archaeology is now [sic] beginning to receive the recognition without which it cannot realise its great potentialities’, indicating the lengthy period of probation the new discipline would have to endure before achieving its full scholarly independence and the tentative nature of its authority even by mid-century.

Arriving in Oxford at the end of March, Leeds found that Evans, having appointed him for a period of three months’ probation as assistant keeper, had promptly left for Crete. A few days later a letter arrived from Evans, posted in Brindisi, suggesting that Leeds should occupy himself initially with re-labelling the medieval collections. The task, in which Leeds was assisted from time to time by the youthful T.E. Lawrence, would occupy him well into the following year, but in the meantime momentous changes overtook the Ashmolean.

An assessment is offered here of Leeds’ role in this process, starting with his early survey volume and tracing thereafter some of the amplifications and modifications he made over the years to his early thesis. This information is drawn from the many papers he published in the course of his long career and also from the extensive archive of preparatory papers, notebooks and illustrations which he bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Sir John Evans had died two months after Leeds’ arrival at the Museum, leaving his son Arthur independently wealthy and in possession of a large archaeological collection. On 10 December 1908 a printed letter to the Vice-Chancellor of the University, drawn up by Evans and headed ‘Gift by Dr. Arthur Evans of Anglo-Saxon Jewelry to the Ashmolean Museum’ made the following declaration:

The Leeds archive illustrates eloquently the way in which he went about his researches into every aspect of archaeology. Drawings, tracings, photographs, postcards and illustrations cut from printed sources are mounted on single octavo sheets of paper and annotated with their salient details. This format allowed the records to be shuffled into groups according to the particular enterprise in hand. Leeds’ custom was to store them in re-used brown paper envelopes, but a recent exercise involving the repackaging and calendaring of the archive has seen it transferred to conservation-grade storage and provided with a digitised catalogue.

I am handing over as a free gift to the Ashmolean Museum the Collection of Anglo-Saxon Jewelry and other relics bequeathed to me by my father, Sir JOHN EVANS. With it also a Comparative Series illustrating the early Teutonic Art of the Continent, including specimens of Scandinavian, Frankish, Lombard and Gothic work. I venture to believe that some of the specimens of Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths’ work will not be found unworthy to set beside King Alfred’s Jewel. It is also my wish to provide a large Exhibition Case to hold the Collection.

Leeds’ Introduction to Archaeology Leeds was already thirty-one when he was recruited to his first archaeological post as an assistant keeper at the Ashmolean, under A.J. [later Sir Arthur] Evans. His introduction to antiquities had come during his boyhood on the western fringes of the East Anglian fenlands, where he regularly accompanied his father on expeditions primarily in search of fossils (in which both father and son

Evans resigned his keepership at the end of the year in order to concentrate on the interpretation and publication of the results of his excavations at Knossos, at which point an institutional merger took place with the University Galleries, leading to the establishment of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology under the keepership of D.G. Hogarth, a specialist in the archaeology of the Near East; Hogarth was also designated keeper of the ‘Antiquarium’, while Leeds was confirmed as his assistant.

  See the introduction to Harden 1956: ix. A few years later David [later Sir David] Wilson (1960: 16) observed that with no more than four or five full-time Anglo-Saxon archaeologists then employed in England, the subject remained in ‘a parlous state’.    Recent cataloguing and conservation of the Leeds archive has been financed by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and was carried out by Anna Petre during 2004-5. A separate grant from the HLF has allowed the development of an educational website for schools on Anglo-Saxon archaeology, prepared by Sarah Glover and based on material from the Leeds collection. Both of these projects were skilfully managed by my colleague Alison Roberts. For the website see http://anglosaxondiscovery. ashmolean.museum; for the catalogue of the contents of the Leeds archive see http://www.A2A.org.uk and http://www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk/ash/amps/ Leeds.    See note 2. 

An early and perhaps decisive task that fell to him was the registering of Sir John Evans’ bequest of Anglo-Saxon   Summarised from MacGregor 2001: 191‑3, which in turn is indebted to Harden 1956.    Introductory commentary by Leeds, published in Wilson 1988: 1-3.    Reproduced in full in MacGregor 1997: fig. 3. 

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Fig. 2. Entries in the registers of the Ashmolean Museum by E.T. Leeds.

and Migration Period artefacts. The duty of describing, classifying and arranging this extraordinarily rich collection, and of tracing the relationships between its component parts, formed an admirable introduction to the material that was to feature so prominently in his life.

sporadically in the years that followed until 1927 when an even bigger tranche of material arrived from Sir John Evans’ collection to be accessioned by Leeds, most of it prehistoric but with lesser quantities of Roman, medieval and later objects.

The registers of the Ashmolean contain the first fruits of this exercise. Starting in February 1909,10 Leeds’ handiwork can be found in the accessioning of items from Anglo-Saxon England and from contemporary Migration Period contexts on the Continent.11 The association was to be an important one, for Leeds’ sense of the range and character of Anglo-Saxon material culture was, from its beginnings, rooted in a wider appreciation of the continental background from which it sprang. A primary division of the material catalogued is made in the registers by country of origin, although the sequence is discontinuous here and there: the first 120 or so entries are for Scandinavian material of Migration Period, Viking Age and early medieval date; they are followed by over 360 relating to Anglo-Saxon objects, more than 160 from France, some 37 from Germany, 14 from Italy, 25 from Kerch (Kerč) in the Crimea, and 5 from Hungary. Other items arrived

Following the broadly national divisions mentioned above, the objects are on the whole grouped topographically according to the sites which produced them, and only then typologically. Scattered references to ‘Evans cabinets’ seem to indicate that the divisions imposed may in some degree have perpetuated those already adopted by Sir John Evans. Leeds’ descriptions are concise and to the point (Fig. 2); they are frequently accompanied by sketches in his own hand, which render his records of exceptional value to the present day in identifying material that may have become separated in the meantime from its identifying label, or through corrosion or breakage may have lost the number with which it was inscribed at the time. Any record of the history of discovery or of previous ownership is noted for each object – an invaluable aid in assessing the importance of several contributors to Sir John Evans’ collection, such as Joseph Warren (1792-1876) of Ixworth and Henry Prigg (1838-92) of Bury St Edmunds, both of whom played influential roles in the salvaging of antiquities from their respective localities.12

  Extensive entries by Leeds also appear in the previous register, covering the years 1896-1908; many of these can be seen to be retrospective insertions, however, and could have been made at any time in Leeds’ career. 11   For Migration Period material from the collection see MacGregor 1997. 10

  See the historical introduction to MacGregor and Bolick 1993: 7-8.

12

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comparanda for the as-yet comparatively inexperienced Leeds. While the Faussett collection ultimately would be acquired by the Liverpool Museum,17 with respect to several other bodies of material Leeds was fortunate, as we shall see, in having access not only to published reports but also to the original materials themselves.

Where appropriate, references are included to previous publications of the items in question or to comparanda. Leeds had the advantage of being an excellent linguist, able to profit from the work of authors such as Alois Riegl, Sophus Müller, Haakon Schetelig and Bernhard Salin on the archaeology of the continental Migration Period in formulating his view of the Anglo-Saxon world. He was also keenly aware of the advantages of being able to study the disparate populations of immigrants within the comparatively narrow geographical and chronological limits of Anglo-Saxon England, where their similarities and differences would be thrown into sharper focus than in their widely-spread homelands.

Faussett’s contribution to Anglo-Saxon archaeology can scarcely be separated from that of another clergyman, the Revd James Douglas (1753-1819). As a young man Douglas had lived for a time on the Continent, serving for a period in the imperial cavalry in the Austrian Netherlands, during which time his close friend the Abbé Van Muyssen had introduced him to artefacts of the Merovingian and Frankish eras and had taught him the rudiments of field prospecting and excavation.18 Later (from 1779 to 1782) we find Douglas serving as a captain with the Corps of Engineers charged with re-fortifying the defensive works at Chatham Lines (Kent); finding that the new defences were cutting through a major cemetery, he took steps to ensure that each of the burials was recorded before destruction and that the contents of the graves were preserved.19 On resigning his commission in favour of the Church in 1783, Douglas extended his researches over much of Kent and Sussex and beyond. At this time he also came into contact with Henry Godfrey-Faussett, who had preserved his late father’s notes and finds, which he now made available to Douglas. Armed with the fruits of Faussett’s excavations as well as his own, and backed up by his early familiarity with contemporary material from the Continent, Douglas set about compiling what was to become the first great literary monument on the road to establishing an identity for some part of the Anglo-Saxon population – his Nenia Britannica: or A Sepulchral History of Great Britain from the Earliest Period to its General Conversion to Christianity (1793), which may claim a place of honour amongst the firstever published archaeological excavation reports. Most importantly, he presents in that text convincing reasons why the peoples he had discovered were indeed to be identified as Anglo-Saxons, rather than the ‘Romans Britonized or Britons Romanized’ propounded by Faussett.

Beyond his work in the Anglo-Saxon period with which we are concerned here, Leeds’ archaeological interests ranged widely. In the course of his long career, his list of publications attests to his detailed knowledge of topics from the Neolithic period (including pottery and megalithic tombs), the Bronze Age (beakers, barrows and metal hoards) and the Iron Age (hill forts), down to the inns of Oxford in the post-medieval period; the geographical spread of his interests stretches from Scandinavia to the Iberian peninsula.13 These wide-ranging preoccupations found expression too in a book on Celtic Ornament in the British Isles down to AD 700;14 he was further the author of a volume on Oxford Tradesmens’ Tokens15 and indeed his prowess as a numismatist deserves special recognition. Anglo-Saxon Archaeology before Leeds In order to obtain an accurate assessment of the value of Leeds’ contribution to Anglo-Saxon archaeology, a glance may be cast at the nature of the accumulated knowledge available to scholarship – and more particularly to him – at the turn of the 20th century. It is well known that the honours for instituting serious research through the medium of excavation are to be shared between two 18th century clergymen whose most important investigations took place in Kent. The Revd Bryan Faussett (1720-76) excavated widely over a twentyyear period in mid-century and made careful notes and drawings of the material he found. His death cut short the possibility that he would undertake the publication of this material, although his papers (described as comprising a ‘plain, clear narrative of facts’) as well as the objects he had recovered were sufficiently well preserved for them to form the basis of an important publication produced by Charles Roach Smith in 1856 with the title Inventorium Sepulchrale.16 This substantial volume, illustrated with accuracy and flair to match Faussett’s text as edited by Roach Smith, would have formed an important source of

Douglas’ approach represented a major step forward. He established a formal framework for the treatment of archaeological evidence; he recognised the importance of comparing ‘relics’ found in one place with those from another and the necessity of paying special attention to items with the potential for accurate dating; and he recognised too the essentially collaborative nature of   Faussett’s work held a long-standing interest for our dedicatee and formed the subject of an important paper by her (Hawkes 1990). More recently, Faussett and his works have formed the basis of a research project by Helena Hamerow, Birte Brugmann and Debbie Harlan, resulting in an internet presentation; see Brugmann et al. in this volume. 18   See Jessup 1975: ch. 3. 19   The history of the fortifications at Chatham Lines has recently been chronicled in a report for English Heritage, titled ‘Defending the Dockyard. The Story of Chatham Lines’, by Peter Kendall, to whom I am indebted for a copy. 17

  A bibliography of Leeds’ publications, compiled by R.F. Ovenell, is included in Harden 1956: xvii-xxii. 14   Leeds 1933a. 15   Leeds 1923b. 16   Faussett 1856. 13

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the archaeological process, in which ‘the work of other antiquaries ... will doubtless produce a succession of discoveries which, by degrees, will convey a great accession of light into the dark pages of history’. When Leeds came to take up this challenge more than a century later, he had the advantage not only of Douglas’ text but also of the bulk of the artefacts around which it had been compiled, for the entire collection – still in its original grave-groups, where appropriate – had been acquired from Douglas’s widow by Sir Richard Colt Hoare and was presented by him to the Ashmolean in 1829.20

the secretary-ship of the Society of Antiquaries in 1860, John Yonge Akerman (1806-73) settled in Abingdon for the remaining thirteen years of his life and it was from here that he made his most important contributions to the Anglo-Saxon archaeology of the region. His earlier published works had included the very creditable Remains of Pagan Saxondom,25 which presented a well-illustrated survey of artefacts recovered from all over Anglo-Saxon England, with whole-page plates providing starting-points for discussions of each type in turn. Once settled in the Oxford region, his attentions were turned on more than one occasion to cemeteries in the field, most notably at Long Wittenham (Berkshire, now Oxfordshire), where he recovered the contents of over 200 graves in three seasons’ work,26 and at Brighthampton (Oxfordshire), which yielded a further fifty-four inhumations and ten cremations.27

The first antiquary to augment further this important founding collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities at the Ashmolean was William Wylie (d. 1887), who presented the Museum in 1865 with the contents of a number of Anglo-Saxon graves found at Fairford (Gloucestershire).21 A few years before his arrival at Fairford in 1847, several skeletons had been uncovered during quarrying operations there; when subsequent work began that ultimately would uncover a further eighty or more graves, Wylie personally supervised the excavation of over half of them. In 1852 he published a very creditable account of them with the title Fairford Graves, illustrated with his own drawings which, he states with modesty but accuracy, would be ‘far more likely to be of use to the antiquarian reader, than any attempt to describe them in writing’.22

Responsibility for the latter excavations was shared by Stephen Stone (d. 1866), an assiduous recorder of archaeological features who produced not only valuable measured drawings of his excavations but also, in the case of an Iron Age complex at Standlake (Oxfordshire), a three-dimensional model of the features he encountered. The Ashmolean’s list of donations from this period includes finds presented by Stone from his excavations at Yelford and at Ducklington (both Oxfordshire),28 while Akerman and Stone are recorded as joint donors of the finds from Standlake and Brighthampton, the costs of the latter excavations having been defrayed ‘by subscriptions from several clergymen and gentlemen interested in such researches, residing in Oxford and the neighbourhood; under conditions that whatever, of value, might be found, should be deposited in the Ashmolean Museum’.29

Wylie is to be regarded as a significant figure in the introduction to English archaeology of the spirit of Romanticism that gave rise for the first time on the Continent to a widespread interest in ‘national antiquities’ – that is to say, in the material culture of early indigenous populations that hitherto had been largely ignored by antiquaries of a more classical turn of mind. His donation to the Ashmolean is indeed to be seen in the context of the struggle that took place in mid-century to ensure that Anglo-Saxon antiquities were placed firmly on the national agenda, for the objects were originally destined for the British Museum but were withdrawn in an attempt to force the Museum trustees to accord a higher priority to ‘national antiquities’.23 The writer of Wylie’s obituary observes that ‘he seemed to form a medium of communication between the antiquaries in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy and those of our own country.’24 Certainly, he was at the forefront of the establishment of Anglo-Saxon archaeology as a serious field of study and Wylie too is noteworthy for his capacity to place the English material in a European context.

One further contributor to the collections at this time deserves special mention, namely George Rolleston (1829-81), professor of anatomy and physiology at Oxford from 1860 until his death in 1881. Rolleston excavated periodically at Frilford (Berkshire, now Oxfordshire) between 1864 and 1868, uncovering a total of over 130 graves;30 he took part too in the important excavations at Dyke Hills, Dorchester (Oxfordshire), and in the investigation of a major cremation cemetery at Sancton (East Yorkshire) c.1873.31 Rolleston’s anatomical skills added   Akerman 1855. The necessary reliance of Akerman and his contemporaries on grave goods for insights into the Anglo-Saxon period is alluded to in his opening remarks (p. vii), where he comments that they afford ‘almost the sole evidence, as well as the most lively illustration, of their arts, manners, customs and superstitions’. 26  Akerman 1860a; Akerman 1861. 27   Akerman 1857; Akerman 1860b. 28   See PSAL 4 (1859): 213-19; and PSAL (2nd series) 1 (1860), 100-1; Ashmolean Museum 1870: 16. 29   Ashmolean Museum 1870: 5. 30   Rolleston 1869; Rolleston 1880. 31   For the Rolleston archive at theAshmolean see http://historicoxfordshire. ashmolean.museum/ArchivePages/Rolleston.html. For Sancton see also Myres and Southern 1973. Further aspects of Rolleston’s researches are currently being investigated by Malgosia Nowak-Kemp of the University Museum of Natural History, Oxford. 25

The Ashmolean continued to enjoy a prominent position in the Anglo-Saxon field with new acquisitions of material systematically excavated in the Oxford region by J.Y. Akerman and by Stephen Stone. Having retired from   See Ashmolean Museum 1836: 128-31.   See Ashmolean Museum 1870: 18. 22   Wylie 1852: vi. 23   This episode is described in MacGregor 1998: 130-1. 24   PSAL (2nd series) 11 (1885-7): 370. 20 21

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although it is clear that he had already begun to make his own mark in the field of Anglo-Saxon archaeology by this time. In 1909, the year in which he began this task, his first archaeological publication appeared in print, dealing with an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Holdenby (Northamptonshire).37 Thereafter, apart from the period 1917-19, when he was wholly occupied in intelligence duties at the War Office, and despite repeated bouts of ill health, only a single year went by until the time of his death when he produced no further publication and more usually there were several. Of the first importance among these from our point of view was a paper of 1912 that sought to use the distribution of saucer brooches to draw deductions about the progress of Anglo-Saxon settlement,38 which is further discussed below, but remarkably the following year would see the publication of his survey volume, The Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements, in which the fruits of his researches were deployed on a broad front for the first time. The insights to be found here are by no means restricted to those drawn from artefacts; rather they are so multi-faceted that they are best dealt with under a number of separate headings.

an important new dimension to the quality of evidence that came to be expected from cemetery excavations while his record of prompt publication offered, in the words of one contemporary, ‘an excellent example of what the science of archaeology may become under the quickening influences of the scientific spirit of the nineteenth century’.32 Fortunately for Leeds, then, the finds from all of the above excavations (with the exception of Faussett’s) were already contained within the Ashmolean’s collections and, together with their respective archives and publications, would have provided an excellent basis for the task of bringing order and meaning to Anglo-Saxon archaeology. As an example of the close attention he paid to these resources, we may take a notebook compiled some years later by Leeds containing notes on excavations at Yelford, Brighthampton, Long Wittenham and Milton in the period 1858-60 by Akerman, and annotated ‘Copied from his field note-book formerly in the possession of Admiral W.R. Clutterbuck of Long Wittenham, & lent for study by Miss Davenport of Milton’.33 Apart from the published volumes of excavation reports mentioned above (and the privately-owned journal which Roach Smith produced under the title Collectanea Antiqua, seven volumes of which were published between 1843 and 1880), the few other sources that helped in the framing of Leeds’ ideas would have included the Hon. R.C. Neville’s Saxon Obsequies34 – with good illustrations but almost devoid of useful commentary or analysis – and the Baron de Baye’s Industrial Arts of the Anglo-Saxons, though the latter was judged by Leeds ‘a somewhat antiquated work and not always correct’.35 Apart from these, the periodical proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, the Archaeological Institute, the British Archaeological Association and various local societies all carried reports from time to time of new finds and excavations. Leeds freely acknowledged his debt to all of these latter sources where, as he observed, ‘hardly a year has passed without the recovery of some cemetery or isolated relics in some part of the territory occupied by the invaders’ being reported.36

Leeds and ‘The Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements’ An excellent synthesizer of evidence culled from a variety of disparate sources, Leeds drew in his admirable survey on several fields of his growing experience in presenting the first attempt at a rounded picture of the progress of Anglo-Saxon settlement. His grasp of the material at his disposal was exceptional: no one up to that point had built up such a close knowledge of such a wide variety of material and textual sources. These are examined in turn in the following analysis. The Historical Status Quo Before Leeds’ day the picture provided by the historical record had been regarded as sacrosanct and the few archaeologists in the field had felt obliged to interpret their discoveries within the rigid framework of dates and events imposed on them by the documentary sources. From their point of view, the historians anticipated that little of value would emerge from the fieldwork of the archaeologists: ‘The spade ... helps us little here’, Leeds quotes Charles Oman as saying; ‘Saxon graves of the pagan period give us a good deal of information concerning the social life and culture of the incoming race, but not definite history’.39 By no means all historians were ranged against Leeds, however: F.M. [later Sir Frank] Stenton welcomed The Archaeology of the Anglo-

These resources, in the form of both original artefacts and printed works, provided the basis of the material at Leeds’ disposal when he came to catalogue the Evans collection,   PSAL (2nd series) 9 (1881-3): 120.   Ashmolean Museum, E.T. Leeds Archive, ETL/1/AS/10/1. 34   Neville 1852. 35   Baye 1893; Leeds 1913: 3. Baldwin Brown’s The Arts in Early England would not appear until after Leeds’ volume had been published, but the two were in touch and on good terms: Baldwin Brown, in the final stages of preparing his manuscript, writes warmly to Leeds on 21 July [1913] from Edinburgh to say that The Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements ‘is my constant companion and I congratulate you upon it as a very clear, level-headed, and most useful piece of work’. He also reports the ‘cordial appreciation’ of it expressed by Francis Haverfield and Hercules Read (Ashmolean Museum, E.T. Leeds Archive, ETL/1/ AS/7/2). 36   Leeds 1913: 40. 32 33

  Leeds 1909.   Leeds 1912. It appears that Leeds suffered some nervousness at the likely reception of this paper: in a letter from Jerablus dated 25 February 1912, T.E. Lawrence asks ‘Was the brooch paper a success: who poured vitriol upon your head? who salved the remains with butter? It is your biggest job so far, and you dismiss it in a line!’ (Wilson 1988: 37). 39   Oman 1910: 187-8; quoted in Leeds 1936: 12. 37 38

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Saxon Settlements with a very positive review, asserting that ‘It really represents a new method of inquiry into the obscure phase of history ... a method of peculiar interest, since it is only in the sphere of archaeology that we are ever likely to obtain new facts bearing upon the AngloSaxon conquest’. 40

Amongst the few exceptions to the general dearth of useful literature that he bemoaned in his survey volume were the valuable introductory chapters compiled for the volumes – covering twenty-one counties by 1912 – of the Victoria History of the Counties of England by Reginald Smith of the British Museum. These essentially historical volumes are notable too for including amongst these same introductions surveys of the topography and geology of each county, a convention that may have helped to focus Leeds’ attention on the importance of these factors and helped him to develop the approach into a more generally applicable system. It seemed clear to him, for example, that there was a strong correlation between the Jutish settlement of Kent, largely confined to areas east of the Medway, and the Upper Cretaceous rock formations that provided attractive farming land, while the Forest of Dean and the Romney Marshes acted as strong disincentives to settlement in the west of the county. Elsewhere, he conjectured that the dearth of archaeological evidence to support the traditional belief that the East Saxons were a particularly populous people was likely to reflect the true situation, for a third of their territory lay on the London Clay and the immigrants seemed habitually to avoid heavy soils. The apparent contrast in settlement patterns between the Angles in Norfolk and their neighbours in Suffolk he similarly explained by reference to the drift maps published by the Geological Survey, from which the diffuse pattern of settlement in Norfolk could be seen to reflect the distribution of patches of gravel within the wide strip of boulder clay that dominates the centre of the county, while the more concentrated picture presented by the cemeteries in Essex, grouped principally in the Lark valley, bore witness to the same preference for well-drained soils within the thickly wooded stretches of London Clay.43 It was a broad theme to which he returned on a number of occasions, most notably in a paper of 1928 in which he acknowledged the success of Cyril Fox in deploying these principles in his Archaeology of the Cambridge Region44 and observed that ‘application of the same line of investigation to the Upper Thames Basin throws a flood of light on the relation of early settlement to its geographical features’, noting too a reversion to patterns of settlement last seen in the pre-Roman period.45

While Leeds was prepared to take the written record as his starting point, and by frequent reference reveals a close familiarity with the course of the settlement history as outlined by Gildas, Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he recognised that the materials accumulated over some 150 years of archaeological researches by now constituted a body of evidence with a coherence and an independent authority of its own, if it were but interpreted accurately. Furthermore it had the capacity, in contrast to the documentary record, of being expanded simply by means of recovering more material under controlled conditions and of being tested in order to develop and to verify any new theories that might be put forward. Even the existing corpus held enormous potential: ‘It is certain’, he wrote, ‘that a continued application of methodical comparison and correlation ... will lead to important results in showing the relative value of archaeology in the reconstruction of early Anglo-Saxon history, which has hitherto depended mainly on the researches of the historian, philologist, and the student of social institutions’.41 Even Leeds might have acknowledged the over-generous nature of one review he received, which asserted that ‘archaeology deduces truth from the varied and contradictory statements of the historians’,42 though the sentiment was one with which he was in broad agreement.  Much of Leeds’ career would be dedicated to exploring the potential of this alternative body of data and to presenting it in a manner that certainly acknowledged the parallel contribution of history but was no longer constrained by it in the conclusions that it reached. Geographical and Topographical Considerations While Leeds was notably successful in drawing broad conclusions from the artefactual evidence at his disposal, he was also especially original in applying the insights accumulated since his childhood years in relating settlement patterns to topography and surface geology. These he presented as primary conditioning factors in the choice of dwelling sites habitually adopted by immigrant communities. Today the practice of interrogating the local landscape in order to understand and even to predict the likely positioning of settlements is widely used, but Leeds was one of the earliest exponents of the technique on a broad scale.

At a more detailed level, he draws attention to the positioning of settlements in Northamptonshire at the junction of the Lower Lias clays and the Northampton Sands, a conjunction that would have brought the twin advantages of a dry subsoil and abundant sources of water.46 The settlers’ sensitivity to these features he saw as ‘demonstrating the close communion with nature in   The long-standing nature of these controlling factors throughout prehistory is explored in Leeds 1926. 44   Fox 1923. 45   Leeds 1928: 527, 534. 46   Leeds 1913: 43, 52; Victoria History of the Counties of England: Northamptonshire, Vol. I: 226. Leeds would later have the opportunity of observing for himself these controlling factors at work on a site in neighbouring Rutland: see Leeds and Barber 1950. 43

  English Historical Review 30 (1915): 103-7.   Leeds 1913: 25. 42   Journal of the British Archaeological Association (new series) 19 (1913): 288-9. 40 41

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which the invaders, like most semi-civilised and primitive peoples, lived’;47 in many cases, he noted, account had also been taken in the siting of settlements of natural advantages for defence and communication. In interpreting the means by which immigrant communities penetrated the interior, Leeds attributed key importance to river systems and waterways. The migrants were, he observed, characteristically a seafaring race with access to ‘long keels’ capable of making the North Sea crossing as well as to shallow-draft vessels that would carry them to the headwaters of the river systems. Not only did the settlement patterns he was able to map from the evidence of burials (Fig. 3) conform closely to those of the principal arteries and their tributaries (except in Kent, where there was a notable scarcity of major waterways), but the boundaries between the different tribes he sought to identify were, he conjectured, often marked by important watersheds. The river systems presented ‘the key by means of which the whole distribution of the settlements can be solved’.48 Initially he sought to explain the lack of evidence for West Saxon settlement along the Thames from the Surrey border to Reading by the presence of heavy clay soils, probably heavily wooded, but this was a theory that would later be abandoned in the face of other forms of archaeological evidence (see below). The same mapping process showed by contrast that the traces of Roman occupation that had been imprinted on the landscape, in the form of a network of metalled roads with stone-built Fig. 3. Anglo-Saxon burial places, AD 450-650. After Leeds settlements and strongholds at their nodal points, 1913: 20. exercised little influence on the preferences of the settlers. Anglo-Saxon settlements were, he noted, almost invariably and deliberately placed at some parties could mount lightning strikes, taking unsuspecting distance from the lines of Roman roads, so that little communities by surprise and withdrawing with equal speed coincidence could be found between them; again, only before retribution could overtake them. Small wonder, in Kent, where topography and history conspired to deny then, that prudent settlers avoided placing themselves, their the opportunity for any such selectivity, did these general families and their property at risk, preferring sites removed rules not apply. The courses followed by Roman roads had at some distance from these dangerous highways. By the been dictated by military considerations, Leeds observed: same token, Roman towns – especially those of any size they adopted straight lines wherever possible, favouring – held little appeal as settlement sites for the bulk of the higher ground and avoiding the lower lands watered by population, and when historical records begin to appear, rivers and streams that would have appealed to farming mention of towns is scarce indeed: on this basis, he states, communities. Furthermore, for the early generations of ‘such important towns as Colchester (Camalodunum) [sic], settlers, attempting to put down roots in a land still plagued St Albans (Verulamium), Winchester (Venta Belgarum), by mercenary bands living by the sword and intent only and York (Eboracum) are almost as if they had never on pillaging, roads presented the means by which raiding existed at all’.49 Only with the coming of Christianity would the former Roman towns begin to regain something of their former importance as, he suggests, the missionaries 47   Leeds 1913: 22. While Leeds thought the appellation ‘barbarians’ deliberately sought to establish themselves in centres where to these agrarian invaders to be ‘somewhat strong’, he was prepared to the Roman atmosphere could most easily be revived.50 The concede that ‘their culture, institutions, and beliefs all betoken a race occupying a comparatively low place in the ranks of European civilization of the time’ (ibid.). 48   Leeds 1913:18

  Leeds 1913: 20.   Leeds 1913: 20.

49 50

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passage of time came to alter these perceptions: Leeds himself came to acknowledge the evidence for continuity of use of Roman cemeteries at York, for example, while in the years since his death growing indications for continuity of occupation have been found elsewhere.51

remarked over fifty years earlier on the close resemblances to be observed between Anglo-Saxon cremation urns and those from cemeteries in northern Germany, where Kemble had carried out excavations over a period of five months on the Lüneburgerheide on behalf of the Königliches Museum in Hanover.55 Leeds, however, rejected Kemble’s assertion that the groups he had examined were contemporary with the Anglo-Saxon populations, citing recent advances in the practice of the comparative method in archaeology as the means by which it could be shown that the cultures represented in the continental homelands were of an earlier date than those in England, with few indications of direct links between the two. While this evidence included dates derived from pottery, he quickly moves on to a discussion of the testimony provided by cruciform brooches and the like, for he never seems to have been comfortable with ceramic studies and would later be criticised for his failure to capitalise on the opportunities they offered; indeed, much more concordance in the ceramic output of the two areas is now recognised than he was willing to concede.56

A further contrast was drawn by Leeds between the manmade social landscape of the late Roman occupation, characterised by villa estates populating a landscape that spoke of a society living under the imperially imposed pax Romana (but which ultimately would prove ephemeral) and the new population that, after an initial phase marked only by a quest for loot, would take hold of the land and bind themselves to it with new and more lasting forms of ownership. Primary evidence for the settlements of this new and markedly heterogeneous society remained undiscovered at this time: apart from the burial grounds that dominated the archaeological record, the only means of inference was that offered by place-names, but given the state of knowledge at the time it was, as Leeds commented, ‘in the majority of cases ... impossible to fix even approximately between the first arrival and the Domesday Book the date at which those settlements were established’.52

Ethnic (or ‘racial’) factors had attracted the attention of earlier researchers, amongst whom the most influential was undoubtedly George Rolleston. As the inheritor (in curatorial terms) of Rolleston’s archaeological legacy, Leeds was well attuned to the problems of applying the remains at his disposal to one ethnic group or another and easily accepted that the evidence of skull types, for example, was clearly in step with the broad picture of Germanic intrusion into England, even if no one yet tried to distinguish between its constituent streams on this basis. His own conclusion, based purely on material culture, was, in the case of the West Saxons and Anglians, that the evidence pointed to them being ‘races of the same general stock, the differences [representing] tribal variation within the limits occupied by that stock’,57 but as we shall see, belief that the forms of skulls could contribute anything useful to the debate would have only a limited currency.

The Ethnic Partition of England Attempting to establish the cultural ethnicity of the component groups of settlers from the Continent – a pursuit and a concept equally out of favour with presentday archaeologists53 – was a problem that absorbed a great deal of Leeds’ energies, though it is an area in which he has fewer disciples today. Even before the appearance of his pioneering volume, with its successive chapters on the archaeology of the Anglian, Saxon and Jutish territories and their respective homelands on the Continent, Leeds had attempted to use material evidence in order to correct (as he saw it) or to undermine (in the eyes of some historians) the historical record. His first foray into this territory, drawing heavily on his close knowledge of the Evans collection but already showing in its range of references a remarkably wide first-hand knowledge of material in other museums both in England and on the Continent, opens with the statement that ‘In some cases … the evidence of archaeology appears to find itself in conflict with the witness of history’, before proceeding to probe these ‘incongruities’ (see below). 54

The twin burial rites of inhumation and cremation had also been used as indicators of ethnic origin, cremation being widely believed to have been largely an Anglian rite while inhumation was seen as indicative of Saxon or Jutish populations. Leeds quickly recognised that these simplistic divisions failed to conform to the evidence derived from historical sources or from the record of associated artefacts. Some attempt had been made by H.M. Chadwick in his

Almost as important as the coherent picture of AngloSaxon England that Leeds would paint for contemporaries was the succinct summary he provided of the evidence then available for the origins of various groups of immigrants on the Continent. As he pointed out, John Kemble had

  Kemble 1855, reprinted in his (posthumously published) Horae Ferales (1863): 221-32. For Kemble, a philologist imbued with Romantic spirit who wrote of the contents of Anglo-Saxon urns that ‘The bones are those of men whose tongue we speak, whose blood flows in our veins’, see also Haigh 2004. 56   On Leeds’ ‘blind spot’ for pottery, see the introduction by J.N.L. Myres’ to the 1970 reprint of Leeds 1913. Myres points out that Leeds had under his care at the Ashmolean one of the most extensive series of Anglo-Saxon cremation urns, those from Sancton in Yorkshire which had come to the Ashmolean via Rolleston, but that they receive no mention whatever in Leeds’ survey. 57   Leeds 1913: 63. 55

  See Leeds 1932.   Leeds 1913: 15. 53   See, for example, Hamerow 1994: 164-6, as well as the works cited in the opening paragraph of this essay. 54   Leeds 1912: 159. 51 52

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Origin of the English Nation58 to reconcile these anomalies but Leeds was dismissive of Chadwick’s explanations and secure in his own handling of the evidence provided by archaeology. Amongst other trends, he observed that while cremation was most common in the Anglian territories it was, even there, less practised than inhumation; he also conjectured that while the West Saxons made use of both rites, it was possible to detect a mounting preference for inhumation in those cemeteries lying towards the headwaters of the Thames, indicating that cremation was falling from favour with them during the years in which they completed their westward push. This was a theory for which he would later find confirmation from his own excavations, but which ultimately would be called into question.59

Anglian settlers who came to dominate the area, leaving the Thames corridor as the principal means by which their successors could continue to gain access to the westerly areas that ultimately would become their heartland.60 In this way, quite major folk movements that hitherto had escaped documentation were postulated for the first time. Leeds’ analysis of saucer brooches from the cemeteries at Alfriston and High Down (both in Sussex) also produced indications that he was able to use in correcting the longheld belief that the coastline of West Sussex and Hampshire had formed a gateway for West Saxon settlement, for here he found only a limited number of styles of decoration in use and all of them simple, seemingly providing an inadequate basis to account for the development of the type as witnessed elsewhere. These findings complemented the strong conclusion reached on other evidence, as we shall see, that penetration of the West Saxons into the heartland of their territory had been achieved from east to west rather than by northward diffusion from the south coast.

A superficial survey of Anglo-Saxon material culture revealed that some elements of it – notably brooches – differed from each other in their distribution. The occurrence of some brooch types in particular seemed to conform broadly with the tripartite division of England between Jutes, Angles and Saxons as recorded by Bede, but it was the anomalies revealed by closer study of decorative motifs – the first time they had ever been examined in such detail – that caught Leeds’ eye and which allowed him to draw a number of conclusions relating to the manner of the arrival of the first immigrants and their subsequent relations. He conjectured, for example, that the great wave of permanent migration from the Continent had been preceded by a phase marked purely by raiding, a phase that had escaped historical documentation; and he concluded from the evidence of distribution of the saucer brooch, a type transferred to England almost at the moment of its conception, that relations between the West Saxons (from whose territory the majority had been recovered) and their neighbours were already well established several generations before the supposed date of 571 when Saxons and Britons clashed in the decisive Battle of Bedcanford which, Leeds now suggested, cleared the way for the immigrants’ westward push at a date likely to have been up to a century earlier than suggested by the historical sources (which were themselves far from being contemporary records). Indeed, he suggested the whole area between the Thames and the Trent might once have been occupied by early representatives of the group that would come to be designated as the West Saxons, but that these had been displaced (or absorbed) by later waves of

A later monograph on square-headed brooches would prove similarly an influential model of typological method;61 only within the past decade have the results of new research overtaken its conclusions and consigned it to historical rather than current interest. 62 The Coming of Christianity The end of the heathen rite of cremation had long been observed by historians as one of the signs of the arrival of Christianity. The abandonment of the practice of providing inhumations with rich assemblages of grave-goods placed a similar chronological limit on the graves equipped in this way, but other signs of the early impact of Christianity were more difficult to identify in the period before burial in the open countryside was abandoned in favour of the churchyard, an event conventionally placed in Leeds’ day in the early part of the 8th century. Hitherto, a disproportionate significance had been attributed to the alignment of inhumation graves, with almost any skeleton with its head oriented to the west and its feet to the east being assigned to the proto-Christian community. Leeds went so far as to accept that there might be some correlation here, but pointed out that some early pagans were regularly buried with an east-west orientation and further that ‘a constant series of naked graves’ had yet to be found in later cemeteries, such as might be attributed to converts.63

  Chadwick 1907.   See Kirk 1956. It is perhaps to be seen as a measure of Leeds’ receptiveness to new ideas that his junior successor at the Ashmolean should have felt able to present this piece as her offering in Leeds’ own Festschrift. Observing that few of the cremation urns from the Thames valley are as early as might be expected in order to fulfil Leeds’ hypothesis, Joan Kirk makes a number of alternative suggestions to explain the distribution of cremation cemeteries including the possibility that crematoria may have been limited in number and close to the river for ritual purposes or for ease of transport of bodies; she also questions whether the constant use of inhumation by Britons in the west may ultimately have contributed to the decline of cremation among the immigrants. 58 59

  Myres (in the 1970 reprint of Leeds 1913) observes that if Leeds had been prepared to spend more time in closer inspection of the ceramic evidence ‘he would have found reinforcement for many of the conclusions to which his work on the metalwork was pointing, especially perhaps for the 5th century Saxon elements among the settlers of East and Middle Anglia’. 61   Leeds 1949. 62   Hines 1997. 63   Leeds 1913: 27-8. 60

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There remained an apparent hiatus following the date of the latest pagan burials (which Leeds consigned to the mid-7th century), during which it proved difficult to identify the burials of those who had already been received into the faith. The 5m-high barrow at Taplow, containing a fully-equipped heathen burial dating from the turn of the 7th century but situated within the enceinte of a Christian churchyard, seemed to him to stand at the cusp between the old rite and the new. Many of these difficulties have since evaporated with the recognition that several of the relevant cemeteries continued in use up to the first half of the 8th century, a full hundred years later than had earlier seemed possible.64

of a bishopric. Although the conundrum proved incapable of resolution, Leeds pointed in at least one plausible direction with the question he posed, as to whether the burial might be a relic of the attacks of ‘that stout old heathen Penda of Mercia’.67 The cemetery investigated in 1934 and 1935 by Leeds and his assistant Donald Harden at Abingdon (Berkshire, now Oxfordshire), by contrast, proved distinctly unspectacular in its contents, yet its controlled excavation was sufficiently extensive to add a most useful range of objects of everyday variety to the local corpus and for the slim volume that formed their jointly compiled report to become one of the classic texts of the subject. Abingdon proved to be a mixed cemetery of cremations and inhumations, with the cremated burials forming a much higher proportion of the total (at 82 cremations to 119 inhumations) than Leeds had anticipated for a burial ground of the West Saxons.68 This factor too would later be put to use in charting the progress of the early settlers (see below).

Leeds the Field Archaeologist Considering its comprehensive scope, it remains remarkable that The Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements represents effectively the opening tract of Leeds’ career rather than forming a retrospective assessment of a lifetime’s engagement with the subject. Characteristically, he would use it merely as the jumping-off point for an engagement with the subject that would remain with him for the next forty years and more.

The opportunity of assessing another riverside cemetery site arose at Wallingford (Berkshire, now Oxfordshire), where sporadic finds of burials over a fifteen-year period were followed by a systematic excavation undertaken in 1936 by Christopher Musgrave.69 Leeds, who noted similarities in the siting of the Abingdon and Wallingford settlements at strategically important fords on the Thames, observed that it was exactly the sort of place where a settlement should exist: both sites would have been secured as a matter of importance in the course of the Saxons’ westward push, while metalwork recovered from the excavations included cross-shaped brooches that indicated a continuing occupation up to the 7th century at the least. Interestingly, the ceramics from the site included, in addition to undoubted cinerary urns, small accessory vessels whose status Leeds was unable for the time being to determine.70

In terms of fieldwork, he had already shown his potential with a very competent account of excavations at Holdenby as mentioned above, and quite apart from the investigations he would carry out on prehistoric monuments in southern England65 he proved a prolific excavator of Anglo-Saxon sites and a publisher and interpreter of finds made by others, whether his contemporaries or his predecessors in the field. It was appropriate that one of the first such sites that presented itself to Leeds’ attention should have been the distinctly anomalous barrow containing a highstatus cremation burial at Asthall (Oxfordshire). He was contacted by George Bowles in 1923, after the latter had begun excavations at the site; Leeds’ opinion on the finds was canvassed to good effect, and the two men got on so well that the finds recovered from Bowles’ excavations that year and the next were deposited in the Ashmolean and it was Leeds who would compile the report for publication.66 What especially interested him was the occurrence there of a burial of undoubtedly 7th century date (Leeds was confident in finding dated parallels for the metalwork on the Continent, as well as drawing comparisons with other 7th century barrow burials as at Taplow) within the territory of the West Saxons, a people who supposedly had long since abandoned cremation and who were likely to have been heavily penetrated by Christianity following the baptism of Cynegils at Dorchester in 635 and the consequent establishment there

‘The present lull in active field-work’ occasioned by the outbreak of war provided Leeds with another opportunity to clear up some old discoveries that hitherto had escaped formal publication, namely material from cemeteries at North Leigh and Chadlington (both Oxfordshire). These had been excavated in 1928 and 1930 respectively, and were welcomed particularly as providing further evidence for settlement in the north of the county, an area that, though widely occupied, appeared to have had only a sparse population. Leeds was able to draw out from the finds a conclusion that they were entirely consonant with the picture of a gradual diaspora to the   The complexities of interpreting the origins of the occupant (or occupants) of the barrow are well covered by Dickinson and Speake 1992. While not taking issue with Leeds’ conclusions, their own discussion is more detailed and more finely nuanced. 68   Leeds and Harden 1936. 69   On Captain Musgrave, as he was customarily acknowledged, see http://www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk/ash/amps/oha/ArchivePages/Archives.html. 70   Leeds 1938. 67

  Hawkes 1986: 92.   See R.F. Ovenell, A Bibliography of the Works of E.T. Leeds. In Harden 1956: xvii-xxii. 66   Leeds 1924. 64 65

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Finally, it was appropriate that Leeds should have had a hand too in the interpretation of the earliest and most interesting graves within his area, namely those at Dyke Hills, Dorchester (Oxfordshire). These had been excavated in 1874 and had reached the Ashmolean in 1876 (the year before Leeds was born); since that time they had been cited repeatedly by historians as providing some of the earliest evidence for an Anglo-Saxon presence anywhere in England, but had never been published in detail before they were re-examined by Leeds (by now retired) and his successor as Anglo-Saxonist at the Ashmolean, Joan Kirk.76 Together they confirmed that there were close correspondences with continental metalwork in such items as the complex belt-mounts (reconstructed at this time as a ‘sporran top’), pointing to a Germanic presence at Dorchester in the final years of the Roman period and evidently including women as well as men; the presence of actual Roman objects in the graves, which, they conjectured, could have been collected during the lifetimes of the occupants, reinforced the dating to this crucial transitional phase from Roman to Anglo-Saxon hegemony. They rejected the suggestion made in 1936 by Collingwood and Myres, that these interments, evidently of recent arrivals from north Germany or Frisia, represented ‘casualties to a raiding-party in the last phase of the Roman occupation ... [or] one of those nests of river-pirates’ already testified from Gaulish contexts,77 favouring instead the conclusion that the Saxon presence at Dorchester represented not invaders but foederati, settled with their families and perhaps involved in protection duties on the waterway – a suggestion that continues broadly to hold sway.78

north from the initial settlement area within the Thames basin.71 Further opportunities for confirming long-held theories emerged with the discovery of two early Saxon cemeteries near Cassington (Oxfordshire), which corroborated his suggestion of links between early settlers in the upper Thames valley and those in parts of East Anglia,72 while another cemetery at Nassington (Northamptonshire), allowed a similar exercise to be performed for the early inhabitants of the Nene valley. Here the contents of fifty graves had been salvaged by G. Wyman Abbott; Richard Atkinson drew up the excavation report and the list of grave contents, while Leeds provided a series of broad observations on the character of the finds. Here he saw the population as falling into two chronological phases, the first Saxon in character though ‘tinged with those elements which in the earlier period of the settlements appear to be common to Anglian and Saxon areas alike’, and the second marked by ‘a more powerful infiltration of Anglian influences’ and presumed to represent veritable Anglian settlers.73 At Petersfinger near Salisbury (Wiltshire), the presence of an inhumation cemetery containing a number of wellequipped warrior burials, which Leeds published in collaboration with Hugh Shortt in 1953, brought a welcome opportunity to verify another of his long-held theories concerning the progress of the population of Wessex by the Anglo-Saxons. This denied that immigration had taken place (as suggested by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and maintained by certain historians) from the early 5th century by way of Southampton Water, and having earlier commented on the absence of archaeological evidence for any such movement Leeds was pleased to conclude that the population buried at Petersfinger constituted ‘a composite Juto-Frankish force’ of the 6th century and that his earlier conjectures remained intact. It provided him with another irresistible opportunity to revisit the theme of documentary versus archaeological evidence: ‘Beneath the insufficiencies and inconsistencies of the historical material there lies a solid stratum of archaeological facts, from which each new scientific exploitation can add its quota to the knowledge already won’.74 By contrast, any residual faith he may have retained in the potential offered by study of skull types must have been finally sunk by the contribution to the publication on the skeletal remains by A.J.E. Cave, who commented on the ‘great homogeneity of anthropological (racial) character’ of the burials, observing that ‘Much the same physical (osteological) features characterise material of Roman British and even of Long Barrow date – i.e., a particular physical type persists almost unchanged through the successive historic periods’.75

Settlement Excavations While Leeds was notably good at drawing broad conclusions from the contents of cemeteries, it was his excavation for the first time of a settlement site, at Sutton Courtenay (Berkshire, now Oxfordshire), that added an entirely new dimension to the evidence provided by archaeology. The first report opens with the observation that ‘It is not too much to say that our knowledge of the dwellings of the Anglo-Saxons, at any rate for the earlier period, has hitherto been practically a blank’, and an acknowledgement of how incomplete the historical record must be here, comprising as it did little more than the ‘mental pictures conjured up by the often high-flown language of the earlier scalds’. Leeds recognised from earlier reports that Stephen Stone had in all probability already found traces of dwellings at Standlake and Yelford, but that he had failed to appreciate their significance,79 so effectively it was Leeds who   Kirk and Leeds 1952-3.   Collingwood and Myres 1936: 394-5. 78   Sonia Hawkes, in an important paper published a few years after Leeds’ death, confirmed the military status of the Dorchester warrior, characterising him either as a member of a garrison drafted in for the protection of the town or as one of a force of laeti or foederati stationed nearby. See Hawkes and Dunning 1961. 79   The excavation report appeared in three parts: Leeds 1923a; 1927; and 1947. 76 77

  Leeds 1940.   Leeds and Riley 1942. 73   Leeds and Atkinson 1944. 74   Leeds and Shortt 1953: 3-5. 75   Leeds and Shortt 1953: 64. 71 72

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introduced the world to the Anglo-Saxons in a domestic setting.

investigation formed a very significant advance in its day and the data recovered remain of lasting value.

Attention had been drawn to the site at Sutton Courtenay by earlier finds of annular clay loom-weights, whose function and dating were imperfectly understood, and it was in the hope of gaining insights into these that the first season of excavations began there in July 1921;80 they would continue at a leisurely pace, with work being confined to one day a week, under Leeds’ general supervision, until the following year, by which time eleven structures and a number of associated pits were uncovered. A range of spinning and weaving implements recovered from the site demonstrated at least one dimension of its economic basis; considerable amounts of domestic pottery were also found, providing a valuable context for the few stray finds that had previously been identified among the overwhelming mass of cremation urns from other sites, and an equal-armed brooch conveniently recovered from one of the structures provided Leeds with a date for the settlement in the latter half of the 6th century.81

Surveys Leeds was notably successful in extrapolating from the evidence of individual finds in order to draw broad conclusions. The Archaeology of the AngloSaxon Settlements was followed first by a survey of the Oxfordshire area, in which he incorporated and augmented the work first carried out in 1896 by Percy Manning but which had remained unpublished at the time of Manning’s death in 1917.84 More significant and far-reaching was an essay that appeared in 1925, in which Leeds carried his theorising on the progress of West Saxon settlement as revealed by archaeological evidence to a new and persuasive conclusion and whose publication he carried into the historians’ own territory with a paper in the journal History.85 Here he acknowledged that while he had at first accepted the idea of primary penetration by the newcomers via the Thames, following the model first put forward by Reginald Smith, he now found this less than satisfactory on several counts. The historical evidence had long suggested that London had never succumbed to Saxon domination and the presence of the former Roman stronghold on the Thames seemed to present an impassable barrier to up-river migration. It would indeed have been possible for migrants to pass overland further to the south, reaching as far as Mitcham and Croydon where cemetery evidence pointed to their presence; beyond the Surrey border, however, there were no further signs of settlement along the Thames as far up-river as Reading, a phenomenon that had earlier been explained by positing dense forestation along the London Clay of the flood plain (see above).

Nine more structures emerged during the second campaign, including one in which a row of annular loom-weights showed conclusively their true function and provided confirmation of their currency during the Anglo-Saxon period. Further indications of economic activity suggested themselves, notably in the form of one structure that Leeds concluded was engaged in pottery-making for the whole community. (This is one area in which his interpretation has not stood the test of time, for the so-called pottery workshop is now interpreted as a water-hole or well, of a type represented in several Anglo-Saxon contexts in the Oxford region.)82 Exploration of the site continued on an irregular basis until a total of thirty-three ‘houses’ had been recovered, which Leeds saw as bearing a close relationship to finds made in the Germanic homeland. Leeds himself was aware that these were unlikely to represent a full complement of dwellings, suggesting that (at best) some might be the ‘cots’ or hovels of the most impoverished stratum of peasants while others were little more than sheds; not only were the traces recovered unlikely to represent the full range of structures in the settlement, but the very spasmodic presence of the excavation team on site meant that no single unit was fully investigated in a controlled manner.83 None the less, Leeds’

Finding no compelling affinities between the downstream settlements and those of the upper Thames, Leeds felt obliged to look elsewhere for the antecedents of the West Saxons. Adopting an entirely new perspective, based on what he perceived as a chain of more persuasive analogies amongst decorative metalwork from sites stretching in a swathe from East Anglia to the upper Thames, Leeds put forward the novel claim that the initial advance to the West Saxon heartland was achieved not via the Thames (and certainly not overland from the south coast) but by a land route that broadly followed the line of the Icknield Way. A line of settlements could be charted along this route (Fig. 4). As mentioned above, this proposal involved abandoning the date of 571 traditionally accepted for the historically attested Battle of Bedcanford, but needless to say, Leeds had no trouble in throwing it overboard and interpreting the encounter as a much earlier event in which the Saxons overcame British resistance and opened the way for their sweep westwards. Securing a series of bridge-heads on the

80   Leeds provides an interesting sidelight on the lack of sympathy for these researches evinced by his keeper, D.G. Hogarth: ‘I recall how in 1922 I showed him a Saxon loom-weight from Sutton Courtenay and explained that its identification and dating, hitherto quite controversial, had at last been fixed. This received the chilling comment, “That is what I call the dregs of archaeology”’ (Leeds, commentary within Wilson 1988: 4). 81   The brooch (and hence its archaeological context) is now dated to the mid-5th century (see most recently Bruns 2003: 28-32), with consequent major implications for the interpretation of the site. 82   Helena Hamerow (personal communication). 83   Ralegh Radford 1957.

  Manning and Leeds 1921.   Leeds 1925.

84 85

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Fig. 4. Saxon burials and the Icknield way. After Leeds 1925: 97 (opposite). Thames frontier as they progressed (as at Abingdon and Wallingford), they proved unstoppable until their luck ran out in a decisive encounter with a British force at the Battle of Mount Badon (Mons Badonicus), which established on a permanent basis the western limit of Saxon penetration. The claim was reiterated by Leeds in series of later papers;86 it was widely accepted at the time (even Smith was converted) but has since been brought into question (see below).

have attempted to leave history almost entirely on one side’. The heroic image of Anglo-Saxon society provided by literary sources received sober treatment here on the basis of the archaeological evidence: while allowing for a measure of poetic licence, he professed himself doubtful whether, ‘at its highest the Saxon hall was any better than [a] simple farmstead’, while the bulk of the population ‘were content with something that hardly deserves a better title than that of a hovel, only varying in its greater or lesser simplicity’ as attested at more than half a dozen sites in southern England that in every case had proved to be ‘of the same primitive type’. Surveying the results of his own excavations at Sutton Courtenay, he found that even the most pretentious structure recovered there ‘hardly leaves hope that at first even the chieftains could provide themselves with much greater comfort or luxury’.88 This view would later be modified by his own observations on the likely partial nature of the settlement as recovered at

An invitation from the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland to deliver the Rhind Lectures in 1935 led to the preparation of a further fundamental survey, published under the title of Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology.87 Leeds’ text opens with a declaration of his continuing commitment to the establishment of a thesis based essentially on material evidence, with the words ‘In these chapters I   See, for example, Leeds 1933b; Leeds 1939.   Leeds 1936.

86

  Leeds 1936: 21, 26.

87

88

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Sutton Courtenay, and of course the whole thesis relies on a somewhat questionable telescoping of the time-frame within which the literary and archaeological was to be viewed.

brooches of florid type that hitherto had lain unpublished in the Leeds archive at the Ashmolean.91 Writing in the year before his death, Leeds was glad to find the results of recent work appeared to confirm his earlier theories on the importance of the Icknield Way route in the settlement of the West Saxons, though his thesis still met with resistance from certain quarters: ‘That those arguments [which he had earlier put forward] were mainly of an archaeological nature is not to be denied’, he writes, ‘but there still exists a body of opinion in whose eyes such evidence is of very secondary worth as opposed to an exposition of the problem dependent mainly on documentary data, even though the historians are not entirely at one in regard to the value of the evidence on which their case is built up’.92 Confident of his own position, Leeds now posited a two-pronged advance westwards which shed settlers along the way until they arrived in what would become their heartland, a moment presented in almost evangelical terms: clearly they had foreknowledge of their destination, he suggests, and ‘to any band so informed the sight of the spread of the Thames valley stretched out before their gaze from Ivinghoe Beacon would equal that which met the eyes of the Israelites or any Cortes on a peak in Darien’.93

Leeds’ entire hypothesis for the peopling of England from the Continent was reviewed in this volume and brought up to date with his latest thinking. Kent was especially reassessed in the light of developments over the previous twenty years and adjustments were proposed to the patterns of immigration that he had previously proposed. The political landscape of AngloSaxon England was here characterised as comprised of ‘petty states, unconsolidated and mutually antagonistic’, with little overall cohesion; the hegemony ascribed by Bede to Æthelbert (570-617) could have been, in Leeds’ view, at best of a nominal nature. The end of pagan Saxondom was also subject to revision here, and Leeds did not exclude himself from the body of those who, he now felt, had been too ready to imagine that the arrival of Christianity in Kent had brought about the rapid abandonment of pagan burial practices, a misapprehension that had inevitably caused errors in the interpretation of cemetery evidence. World War II provided an opportunity for a further thoughtful review, which opens with the observation that ‘enforced abstention from archaeological field-work’ had turned his mind to making available in concentrated form the results of a survey of decorative metalwork first undertaken in 1938, in which the individual brooches would be treated ‘as elements in a complex system, not ... as isolated phenomena’.89 True to his word, Leeds presses items such as small long brooches into service in support of his invasion hypothesis, tracing their distribution from the Cambridge region ‘westwards until it reaches the watershed between the tributaries of the Nene and the headwaters of the Warwickshire Avon’ where ‘it swings due westwards to the Severn between the Avon and the tributaries of the Trent’ to form ‘the Anglo-Saxon line’. This deployment of the artefactual evidence, in language redolent of the period when the whole of Europe was again under arms, is about as exciting and insightful as brooch studies can get.

Appealing as Leeds’ imagery might be, he could not have known that at the very moment when he composing his essay Joan Kirk would have been working on another one, to be included in Leeds’ own Festschrift, which cast doubt on the likelihood that the Icknield Way could have held the importance attributed to it by Leeds in the populating of the Thames valley. Using the ceramic evidence, to which her erstwhile mentor had always been less than receptive, she observed that if the immigrants had come by this route they evidently had been too nervous of their position to plant settlements along the way; rather, she suggested, the scattered burials that had contributed to Leeds’ distribution map represented no more than ‘stragglers, and those who died on the march’, and in any case, the critical area at which the Icknield Way enters the Thames valley was curiously bereft of settlements. Although the evidence remained inconclusive, she was more willing than Leeds had been to entertain the possibility that the Thames had indeed formed the principal corridor affording an entry to the area.94

Two posthumously published surveys may also be mentioned here, one of them, ‘Notes on Jutish art in Kent between 450 and 575’, prepared for the press by the then youthful but already incisive Sonia Chadwick.90 More than a mere art-historical survey, Leeds developed his thesis here as a ‘logical culmination’ (in the words of his editor) of his thinking on the settlement of Kent, finally abandoning his earlier vision of a late period of Frankish immigration in favour of a series of ‘strong impulses from south Jutland’. And finally, sixteen years after Leeds’ death, Michael Pocock brought into print a paper on cruciform

The year 1954 also saw the publication of a paper that reviewed the end of pagan burial on which so many of Leeds’ most influential essays had been based and which attempted to reconcile the archaeological evidence with the first great assessment of the population contained in the Tribal Hidage. Several awkward problems that   Leeds and Pocock 1971; Ashmolean Museum, Leeds archive, ETL/1/ AS/1/1/1. 92   Leeds 1945b: 45. 93   Leeds 1954b. 94   Kirk 1956: 125-6. 91

  Leeds 1945.   Leeds 1957.

89 90

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had disturbed the smooth flow of earlier surveys were acknowledged here, from the temporal dislocation between the progress of Anglo-Saxon material culture and that of the Continent which had bedevilled the conclusions of those who had sought to follow too closely the precise limits of the system propounded in 1904 in Salin’s Die altgermanische Thierornamentik to the pace at which Christianity was adopted throughout Anglo-Saxon England, a process acknowledged here as having taken much longer to complete than had earlier appeared.95

Professor Helena Hamerow, both of whom read a draft of my text and made helpful and insightful comments on several aspects of it. Some of the work on this paper was undertaken in the course of projects funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and by the Arts and Humanities Research Council: I am grateful to both bodies for their enlightened support of my own work and, more particularly, that of my colleagues Christine Edbury, Sarah Glover, Anna Petre and Alison Roberts, who have done so much to transform the physical well-being of the Leeds archive and to make it accessible and useful to those whose researches follow in his footsteps.

Conclusion By the time of his death Leeds by no means retained a monopoly in his championing of Anglo-Saxon archaeology, but it may reasonably be claimed that the broad picture he had first constructed and had continually refined throughout his long career remained not only influential but still to a large extent intact. His achievement is all the more remarkable for having been spread over a curatorial career at the Ashmolean spanning almost forty years. Having turned to archaeology when he was already over thirty and having been subject to several major episodes of ill health during his working life, Leeds’ career was almost brought to an end by two serious heart-attacks in the 1930s. He did indeed intend to retire just as war broke out over Europe but was persuaded to stay in his post as keeper of the Museum while his younger colleagues were called up to military service. Eventually he retired in his late sixties in 1945 but continued, as we have seen, to pursue his interests in the archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon and other periods until his death ten years later. Few scholars have made such a sustained and effective impact.

Abbreviations AJ Antiquaries Journal MA Medieval Archaeology PSAL Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London Bibliography AKERMAN, J.Y. 1855: Remains of Pagan Saxondom (London). AKERMAN, J.Y. 1857: Report of Researches in a Cemetery of the Anglo-Saxon Period at Brighthampton. Archaeologia 37, 391-8. AKERMAN, J.Y. 1860a: Report on Researches in an Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Long Wittenham, Berkshire, in 1859. Archaeologia 38, 327-52. AKERMAN, J.Y. 1860b: Second Report of Researches in a Cemetery of the Anglo-Saxon Period at Brighthampton, Oxon. Archaeologia 38, 84-97. AKERMAN, J.Y. 1861: Report on Further Researches in an Anglo-Saxon Burial Ground at Long Wittenham, in the Summer of 1860. Archaeologia 39, 135-42. ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM 1836: A Catalogue of the Ashmolean Museum, Descriptive of the Zoological Specimens, Antiquities, Coins and Miscellaneous Curiosities (Oxford). ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM 1870: A List of Donations to the Antiquarian and Ethnological Collections in the Ashmolean Museum, from the Year 1836 to the End of the Year 1868 (Oxford). Baldwin BROWN, G. 1925: The Arts in Early England (London). BAYE, Baron de 1893: The Industrial Arts of the AngloSaxons (London). BRUNS, D. 2003: Germanic Equal Arm Brooches of the Migration Period. (Oxford). CHADWICK, H.M. 1907: Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge). COLLINGWOOD, R.G. and MYRES, J.N.L. 1936: Roman Britain and the English Settlements (Oxford). DICKINSON, T.M. and SPEAKE, G. 1992: The SeventhCentury Cremation Burial in Asthall Barrow, Oxfordshire: A Reassessment. In M. Carver (ed.),

By the mid-1950s, although the numbers of professionally engaged specialists remained limited, the pursuit of Anglo-Saxon archaeology indisputably had become much more of a collaborative effort in which a range of scholars in London, Cambridge, Durham and elsewhere built on (and at times completely amended) the foundations laid by Leeds. In Oxford one of the most influential of his successors would be Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, appointed lecturer in European Archaeology in 1973 and retired in 1994, a few years before her death in 1999.96 Others will comment on her own very considerable contribution: she would certainly have been much better qualified than the present author to compile this survey of the work of one of the great figures in her discipline, but perhaps this essay may form an acceptable tribute to her memory as one of those who have built so effectively on the legacy of E.T. Leeds. Acknowledgements I am grateful to my colleagues Dr Birte Brugmann and   Leeds 1954a.   See S.C. Hawkes in this volume.

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The Age of Sutton Hoo. The Seventh Century in North-Western Europe (Woodbridge), 95-127. FAUSSETT, B. 1856: Inventorium Sepulchrale. Edited by C. Roach Smith (London). FOX, C. 1923: Archaeology of the Cambridge Region (Cambridge). HAIGH, J.D. 2004: Kemble, John Mitchell (1807-1857). In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 31, 153-5. HAMEROW, H. 1994: Migration Theory and the Migration Period. In B. Vyner (ed.), Building on the Past. Papers Celebrating 150 Years of the Royal Archaeological Institute (London), 164-77. HARDEN, D.B. (ed.) 1956: Dark Age Britain: Studies Presented to E.T. Leeds (London). HAWKES, S.C. 1986: The Early Saxon Period. In G. Briggs et al. (eds), The Archaeology of the Oxford Region (Oxford), 64-108. HAWKES, S.C. 1990: Bryan Faussett and the Faussett Collection: An Assessment. In E. Southworth (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: A Reappraisal (Liverpool), 1-24. HAWKES, S.C. and DUNNING, G.C. 1961: Soldiers and Settlers in Britain, Fourth to Fifth Century. MA 5, 1-70. HILLS, C. 2003: Origins of the English (London). HINES, J. 1997. A New Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Great Square-Headed Brooches (London). JESSUP, R. 1975: Man of Many Talents: An Informal Biography of James Douglas 1753-1819 (London and Chichester). KEMBLE, J.M. 1855: On Mortuary Urns Found at Stadeon-the-Elbe, and Other Parts of North Germany, Now in the Museum of the Historical Society of Hanover. Archaeologia 35, 270-83. KEMBLE, J.M. 1863: Horae Ferales, or Studies in the Archaeology of the Northern Nations. Edited by R.G. Latham and A.W. Franks (London). KIRK, J.R. 1956: Anglo-Saxon Cremation and Inhumation in the Upper Thames Valley in Pagan Times. In Harden 1956, 123-31. KIRK, J.R. and LEEDS, E.T. 1952-3: Three Early Saxon Graves from Dorchester, Oxon. Oxoniensia 17-8, 63-76. LEEDS, E.T. 1909: Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Holdenby, Northants. Northamptonshire Natural History Society and Field Club 15, 91-9. LEEDS, E.T. 1912: The Distribution of the Anglo-Saxon Saucer Brooch in Relation to the Battle of Bedford, A.D. 571. Archaeologia 63, 159-202. LEEDS, E.T. 1913: The Archaeology of the AngloSaxon Settlements (Oxford). Reprinted with an introduction by J.N.L. Myres, 1953. LEEDS, E.T. 1923a. A Saxon Village near Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire. Archaeologia 73, 147-92. LEEDS, E.T. 1923b: Oxford Tradesmen’s Tokens (Oxford). LEEDS, E.T. 1924: An Anglo-Saxon Cremation-Burial of the Seventh Century in Asthall Barrow, Oxfordshire. AJ 4, 113-25.

LEEDS, E.T. 1925: The West Saxon Invasion and the Icknield Way. History (new series) 10, 97-109. LEEDS, E.T.1926: Early Settlement (from the Neolithic to the Saxon Period). In J.J. Walker (ed.), The Natural History of the Oxford District (Oxford / London), 27-9. LEEDS, E.T. 1927: A Saxon Village near Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire (Second Report). Archaeologia 76, 5980. LEEDS, E.T. 1928: Early Settlement in the Upper Thames Basin. Geography 14, 527-35. LEEDS, E.T. 1932: Early Anglo-Saxon Period (c. A.D. 450-700). In A Handbook of the Prehistoric Archaeology of Britain, Issued in Connexion with the First International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (Oxford), 61-8. LEEDS, E.T. 1933a: Celtic Ornament in the British Isles down to AD 700 (Oxford). LEEDS, E.T. 1933b: The Early Saxon Penetration of the Upper Thames Area. AJ 13, 229-51. LEEDS, E.T. 1936: Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology (Oxford). LEEDS, E.T. 1938: An Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Wallingford, Berkshire. Berkshire Archaeological Journal 42, 93-101. LEEDS, E.T. 1939: Anglo-Saxon Remains. In Victoria History of the Counties of England: Oxfordshire 1 (London), 346-72. LEEDS, E.T. 1940: Two Saxon Cemeteries in North Oxfordshire. Oxoniensia 5, 21-30. LEEDS, E.T. 1945: The Distribution of the Angles and Saxons Archaeologically Considered. Archaeologia 91, 1-106. LEEDS, E.T. 1947: A Saxon Village near Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire (Third Report). Archaeologia 92, 79-93. LEEDS, E.T. 1949: A Corpus of Early Anglo-Saxon Great Square-Headed Brooches (London). LEEDS, E.T. 1954a: The End of Mid-Anglian Paganism and the ‘Tribal Hidage’. AJ 34, 195-200. LEEDS, E.T. 1954b: The Growth of Wessex. Oxoniensia 19, 45-60. LEEDS, E.T. 1957 (ed. S. Hawkes): Notes on Jutish Art in Kent between 450 and 575. MA 1, 1-26. LEEDS, E.T. and ATKINSON, R.J.C. 1944: An AngloSaxon Cemetery at Nassington, Northants. AJ 24, 100-28. LEEDS, E.T. and BARBER, J.L.1950: An Anglian Cemetery at Glaston, Rutland. AJ 30, 185-9. LEEDS, E. T. and HARDEN, D.B. 1936: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Abingdon, Berkshire (Oxford). LEEDS, E.T. and POCOCK, M. 1971: A Survey of the Anglo-Saxon Cruciform Brooches of Florid Type. MA 15, 13-36. LEEDS, E.T. and RILEY, M.1942: Two Early Saxon Cemeteries at Cassington, Oxon. Oxoniensia 7, 6170. LEEDS, E.T. and SHORTT, H. de S. 1953: An AngloSaxon Cemetery at Petersfinger, near Salisbury, Wilts. (Salisbury). 43

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LUCY, S. 2000: The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death (Stroud). LUCY, S. and REYNOLDS, A.J. (eds) 2002: Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales (London). MACGREGOR, A. 1997: Ashmolean Museum: A Summary Catalogue of the Continental Archaeological Collections (Roman Iron Age, Migration Period, Early Medieval) (Oxford). MACGREGOR, A. 1998: Museums and ‘National Antiquities’ in Nineteenth-Century England. In V. Brand (ed.), The Study of the Past in the Victorian Age (London), 130-1. MACGREGOR, A. 2001: Edward Thurlow Leeds, 1877-1955, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 18, 191-3. MACGREGOR, A. and BOLICK, E. 1993: Ashmolean Museum: A Summary Catalogue of the AngloSaxon Collections (Non-Ferrous Metals) (Oxford). MANNING, P. and LEEDS, E.T. 1921: An Archaeological Survey of Oxfordshire. Archaeologia 71, 227-65. MYRES, J.N.L. and SOUTHERN, W.H. 1973: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Sancton, East Yorkshire (Hull).

NEVILLE, R.C. 1852: Saxon Obsequies Illustrated by Objects and Weapons Discovered by the Hon. R.C. Neville in a Cemetery near Little Wilbraham, Cambridgeshire (London). OMAN, C. 1910: England before the Norman Conquest. In A History of England, Vol. 1 (London). RALEGH RADFORD, C.A. 1957: The Saxon House: A Review and Some Parallels. MA 1, 27-38. ROLLESTON, G. 1869: Researches and Excavations Carried on in an Ancient Cemetery at Frilford, near Abingdon, Berks., in the Years 1867-1868. Archaeologia 42, 417-85. ROLLESTON, G. 1880: Further Researches in an AngloSaxon Cemetery at Frilford, with Remarks on the Northern Limit of Anglo-Saxon Cremation in England. Archaeologia 45, 405-10. WILSON, D.M. 1960: The Anglo-Saxons (London). WILSON, J.M. 1988: T.E. Lawrence: Letters to E.T. Leeds (Andoversford). WYLIE, W.M. 1852: Fairford Graves. A Record of Researches in an Anglo-Saxon Burial-Place in Gloucestershire (Oxford).

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The Novum Inventorium Sepulchrale: Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods from Kent in the Sonia Hawkes Archive Birte Brugmann, Helena Hamerow and Deborah K. Harlan

Sonia Hawkes’major excavations at Finglesham in Kent, and Kingsworthy in Hampshire have now been posthumously published, adding further to her considerable reputation as an excavator of Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. Her literary estate also includes, however, a large archive pertaining to a highly ambitious project conceived in the 1960s but never completed, namely the Corpus of AngloSaxon Graves and Grave Goods. The first volumes of the series were to deal with Kent, a county whose archaeology – as Sonia was instrumental in demonstrating – sheds unique light on the complex ethnic, cultural and economic relations between Anglo-Saxon England, continental Europe and Scandinavia. The exceptionally rich cemeteries of Kent reflect above all close ties to the Frankish world, connections that help explain its precocious political and economic development during the 5th to 7th centuries.

Richardson has also observed that, remarkably, ‘most of the graves excavated by Faussett in the 18th century were recorded to a higher standard than many in the 19th and 20th centuries’. Sonia Hawkes recognised that the publications dealing with these early excavations, with their inadequate descriptions and illustrations of the grave-goods, do not meet modern research needs. In 1961, the need for re-publication of these key sites to a modern standard led her, together with her husband Christopher Hawkes (then at the Oxford Institute of Archaeology) to propose to the British Academy the publication of these Kentish cemeteries as the first stage of a nationwide monograph series, the Corpus of AngloSaxon Graves and Grave-Goods. Work on the first three volumes, carried out mainly between 1961 and 1971 and funded by the Academy, dealt with the c. 1140 graves and large numbers of unassociated objects from Bifrons, Sarre and the seven cemeteries of the Inventorium.

Systematic excavations directed by the Revd Bryan Faussett between 1759 and 1773 uncovered altogether c. 750 graves on Tremworth Down (Crundale) and in a sandpit at Gilton, on Chartham Down, Kingston Down, and Breach Down (Bishopsbourne), as well as on the downs between Sibertswold and Barfreston, and on Adisham Down, Bekesbourne. Nearly a century later, the grave-goods from these excavations were bought by Joseph Mayer, who enabled Charles Roach Smith to publish the diaries in which Faussett had meticulously recorded his excavations as the Inventorium Sepulchrale. Further excavations in the 19th century, in particular by Bryan Faussett’s greatgrandson Thomas Godfrey-Faussett at Bifrons, and by his contemporary John Brent at Sarre, were published in the Archaeologia Cantiana and raised the number of Kentish graves from controlled excavations to well over 1000.

For this purpose, Sonia Hawkes examined first-hand the grave-goods in the Mayer Collection held at the National Museums, Liverpool. Apart from the Faussett Collection, this includes objects from the William Henry Rolfe Collection: the so-called ‘Canterbury St. Martin’s hoard’ and objects from Ozengell and from the parish of Ash. Some finds from Faversham and Strood and any unprovenanced Anglo-Saxon material in the Mayer Collection were also included for re-publication. The objects were described, drawn and x-rayed and/or photographed as appropriate. The grave-goods from Bifrons and Sarre held at Maidstone Museum were similarly recorded. Sonia devoted considerable effort to reconstructing grave-good assemblages which had become disassociated over time, and into researching unpublished sources that contain additional information regarding the 18th- and 19th-century excavations. The documentation of and research into the grave-goods were completed but, regrettably, work came to a standstill thereafter due to editorial and financial difficulties.

To this day, these early excavations form a substantial part of the evidence available for early Anglo-Saxon Kent. Of the almost 3000 graves which Andrew Richardson included in the sample on which he based his recent doctoral thesis on the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of Kent, almost a third were excavated by Bryan Faussett and John Brent.   Hawkes with Grainger 2003; Hawkes and Grainger 2006.   Faussett 1856.    Godfrey-Faussett 1876; 1880.    Brent 1863; 1866; 1868.    Richardson 2005.  

  Richardson 2005: 87.   Richborough, Cop Street or Gilton; see Richardson 2005: 2-4, 15, 63ff.    See Richardson 2005: 34ff., 76.  

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only to the few scholars able to examine it first-hand. The potential value of the Hawkes Archive as an international research tool is enormous in light of the great advances in the study of material culture and burial practices made in the last thirty years, and there has been a long-standing call for wider access to this material. Editorial work on the first volume of the Corpus – on Bifrons – had advanced furthest at the time of Sonia’s death, and it was possible to publish the grave catalogue and the drawings of the grave-goods only a year later. In view of the prohibitive costs involved in printing the much more substantial second and third volumes, online publication presented itself as a solution: a website enables primary data to be published in a way that can bring together information from numerous sources; it furthermore offers efficient data management through a search facility and immediate access worldwide. In 2004, a successful application was submitted to the Arts and Humanities Research Board’s (now Research Council) Resource Enhancement Scheme to publish the second volume on Faussett’s excavations and the Mayer Collection and the third volume on the cemetery at Sarre in the form of an illustrated online inventory, the Novum Inventorium Sepulchrale. The project has attracted international interest and the support in particular of the Römisch-Germanische Kommission of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut will provide for a German-language version of the main pages. In keeping with Sonia Hawkes’ original vision, the Novum Inventorium aims to publish the Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods as fully as possible. The information will include published and, by kind permission in particular of the National Museums, Liverpool, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the Kent Archaeological Society, unpublished antiquarian sources. The website will make available in full the work carried out by Sonia and her team and, where appropriate, will supplement this with the results of more recent research. The search functions will include concordance lists that take into account changes in the ways in which finds and features have been described over a period of 250 years and thus enable researchers to work with the material at least as effectively as with a modern, conventionally published, excavation report.

Fig. 1. Examples of illustrations of objects in the ‘Novum Inventorium’: from Faussett’s original 18th century diaries held at the National Museums, Liverpool; from the 19th century publication of these diaries (Faussett 1856); and 20th century drawings by Marion Cox and photographs by Robert Wilkins in the Sonia Hawkes Archive. Not to scale. By then, Sonia’s work on the Faussett excavations and on the cemetery at Sarre had resulted in an archive which includes thousands of records on index cards for sites and objects as well as several thousand images. The images are in the form of x-rays, black and white and colour photographs of exceptional quality by Robert Wilkins (then of the Institute of Archaeology) and line drawings by two of the most accomplished archaeological illustrators of the time, Marion Cox and Elizabeth Fry-Stone.

The Novum Inventorium is scheduled to ‘go live’ on the website of the Oxford Institute of Archaeology in July 2007 (web.arch.ox.ac.uk/archives/inventorium). To ensure long-term sustainability, the electronic data created for publication, both visual and textual, will be archived with the Archaeology Data Service of the Arts and Humanities Data Service. It is hoped that the project will enable and encourage new generations of researchers to offer new interpretations of Anglo-Saxon Kent, the earliest of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

The need for modern publication of this remarkable material is today greater than ever. The history of AngloSaxon Kent and, to an extent, England as a whole, has been written on the basis of archaeological material known

  Hawkes 2000.



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B. Brugmann, H. Hamerow & D.K. Harlan : The Novum Inventorum Sepulchrale

Abbreviation AC Archaeologia Cantiana

GODFREY-FAUSSETT, T.G. 1876: The Saxon Cemetery at Bifrons. AC 10, 298-315. GODFREY-FAUSSETT, T.G. 1880: The Saxon Cemetery at Bifrons. Concluded. AC 13, 552-6. HAWKES, S.C. 2000: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Bifrons, in the Parish of Patrixbourne, East Kent. Edited by E. Cameron and H. Hamerow. AngloSaxon Studies in Archaeology and History 11, 194. HAWKES, S.C. with GRAINGER, G. 2003: The AngloSaxon Cemetery at Worthy Park, Kingsworthy, near Winchester, Hampshire (Oxford). HAWKES, S.C. and GRAINGER, G. 2006: The AngloSaxon Cemetery at Finglesham, Kent (Oxford). RICHARDSON, A. 2005: The Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries of Kent (Oxford).

Bibliography BRENT, J. 1863: Account of the Society’s Researches in the Saxon Cemetery at Sarr. AC 5, 305-22. BRENT, J. 1866: Account of the Society’s Researches in the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Sarr. AC 6, 157-85. BRENT, J. 1868: Account of the Society’s Researches in the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Sarr, part III. AC 7, 307-21. FAUSSETT, B. 1856: Inventorium Sepulchrale: An Account of Some Antiquities Dug up at Gilton, Kingston, Siberswould, Barfriston, Bekesbourne, Chartham, and Crundale, in the County of Kent. Edited by C. Roach Smith (London).

47

Sonia Chadwick Hawkes and the ‘Three Ships’ Lydia Carr

In January 1987, Sonia Chadwick Hawkes organised the 4th in a series of Oxford conferences on Anglo-Saxon studies, on the general theme ‘Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England’. Its, or her, goal was to correct the neglect of ‘the whole topic of Anglo-Saxon warfare and weapons…in modern literature…[which is] probably for modern sociological reasons’. To combat this, new research was solicited on the subject from a wide, interdisciplinary range of scholars. Hawkes herself, besides presiding over the seminar, wrote an introduction for the companion book setting out the objects of the conference and the individual papers it had produced. This brief essay moved swiftly from chapter to chapter and contributor to contributor, describing and commenting on each piece of work. Hawkes’ thoughts ranged through the specialist topics present, moving from specific studies on warrior training, to those on placename variants and radiographic sword analyses, with an ease and fluency reflecting her confidence and knowledge about the larger subject to which they all contributed. John Hines’ contribution ‘The Military Contexts of the adventus Saxonum: Some Continental Evidence’, which proposed a conquest involving small war-bands, generated a particularly long commentary.

…land could be taken and held in Britain with just one or two major weapons-bearing families in charge…at a local level a very few armed men must have been sufficed to intimidate and contain the British population…

Hawkes saw this version of the Anglo-Saxon conquest supported by the anthropological writings of Hines and Davidson on continental Saxon social structures, by the historical evidence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and even the poems of Maldon and the Gododdin, and most especially for our purposes by the archaeological evidence of British cemeteries. And when these three strands of evidence are drawn together, her argument is convincing. Models of immigration from varying historical periods show a distinct pattern of groups of males going into a new territory first, establishing basic farms and possessions, and then bringing in women, children, and other noncombatants once the situation is secure. An early modern example is the repeated pattern in the first European settlements of North America: one or two men in a family unit going out to a new territory to settle a farm or otherwise prepare the situation for the arrival of a larger family unit (an arrangement often still followed by immigrants today). That fits well with a picture of a disorganised country slowly infiltrated by a rising number of invaders, rather than a large cataclysmic event. A smaller number of new inhabitants would lead to their greater practical integration within the existing British population, and even its communities.

There has been much discussion about the actual numbers of fighting men engaged in the invasion of Britain and the early battles. Modern cemetery and settlement evidence from this country begins seriously to suggest that Anglo-Saxon numbers were initially small…we could expect the ‘invasion’ of Britain to have been carried out by warrior groups of anything from two-hundred downwards, but scarcely more. Given such a scenario, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler’s much maligned record of land-takings by two, three or five ship-loads of men, far from being merely formulaic, must represent something approximating to the truth.

It is more accurate, though, to describe the majority of the British as being integrated into the Anglo-Saxon social structure, rather than the reverse. Much has been made of the perceived closeness of the Iron Age peasant lifestyle in Roman Britain and the Germanic countries, and of the theory, coming from archaeological excavations of farmsteads, that at the ‘ground level’ peasants were not heavily involved or invested in the Romanised culture

It was an idea Hawkes had brought up a few years before. And when speaking of Heinrich Härke and Hilda Ellis Davidson’s contributions, Hawkes returned to the theme again.

  Hawkes 1989: 4.   Wood 1997: 63. Discussion: P.J. Fowler speaking.    Gillian Shepherd discusses the issues around the early North American colonies from a slightly different perspective in her discussion of the cemetery evidence from the Greek colonies on Sicily (Shepherd 2005: 129-30). Her paper also touches on the general difficulties of using grave goods as ethnic markers; see especially 130-2.  

  Hawkes 1989: 1.   Hines 1989: 26.    Hawkes 1989: 3.    Hawkes 1986: 74.  

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Collectanea Antiqua: essays in memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

of Roman Britain. Higher up on the economic ladder, considerable dependence may have existed on imported goods, and more of an investment made in a Roman or Romano-British identity. But at the farm level Roman contact was most likely limited to more intangible Roman items, cultural ideas, and hard cash flowing from landowners and towns.

and even legalistic signs of status. And though the numbers of women and children involved in the invasion is an interesting one, men, undoubtedly foremost in numbers and time, provide the clearest evidence set from which to work. There are also difficulties in distinguishing between native British and Saxon women exclusively through their grave goods, a problem not present with men.13

On a side note, where the elite fit into this picture is an interesting question. Should we consider them as essentially veneered, rather than imbued, with Roman culture – relating to the Saxons as competing warlords, rather than as a totally alien people? This seems likely in the countryside, but what about the merchants and inhabitants of the Roman towns? It is hard to see them immediately throwing off the Roman culture that created and partially supported them.10

The best proof of this comes from Härke’s several discussions of the meaning of male weapons burial (including that in Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon Society).14 He shows that the presence of weapons was a sign of elite status, not necessarily of warlike activity; for example, in his sample of 1990, 1 in 12 weapons graves was a boy below the age of 14. Even granted the young age at which Anglo-Saxon males entered the fighting world, it is unlikely all of these children engaged in combat.15 Härke finds more proof in a different direction by examining in the presence in early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of inhumations buried without weapons, yet with skeletal damage indicative of participation in combat.16 His general conclusion is that despite the many difficulties in analysing burial evidence, the presence of weapons signals elite social and/or ethnic status, rather than martial activity during life.17

For our present purposes and data set, the essential point is that a case can be made for a general population familiar with and acceptant of the Saxons and their social structures. The basic unit of the Germanic household was flexible enough to absorb the extended family farmsteads of Roman Britain, and the farmers of Roman Britain were close enough culturally to the new dominant forces to allow it to happen.11 What that means practically is that in examining early Saxon sites, we should look at their populations without necessarily assuming that everyone present came from overseas, or was a descendent of someone who had. For the most part, only the Saxon style of burial is present in cemeteries. The evidence, especially that concerning grave goods and burial style, points to a degree of funerary separation based on elite and non-elite status rather than identification as ‘foreign’ and ‘native’ or Saxon and British. Of course, how elite status was determined is another question, and it is here that we may be able to identify tentatively Saxons and Britons. Put simply, while all those present in early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries were buried as Saxons, a generation or two earlier the ancestors of the non-elite were likely British, and those of the elite, Saxons.12

There is also a connection between epigenetic and other physical traits (especially height) and elite status. Shared epigenetic traits indicate a close genetic relationship – most probably a familial relationship.18 Although this type of evidence, again, is not always clear-cut, early cemeteries like that at Abingdon I, Oxfordshire (used from the early 5th to the 7th century) and Berinsfield, Oxfordshire (used from the late 5th to late 6th or early 7th century) show two interesting physical and epigenetic features; the first relates to relative height, and the second to household groupings. In Abingdon I: men [buried] with weapons were, on average, c. 0.04 m (1 ½ in) taller than men without weapons…Such a stature difference is a widespread phenomenon in the 5th/6th century in England, and can be explained in terms of ethnic differences [between British and Saxon]…19

Male graves exhibit this difference in status more clearly; the weapons assemblages buried with them are distinctive

Differences in height at the slightly later cemetery in Berinsfield are not as extreme, and cannot be as obviously linked with weapons burials, but there is a noticeably smaller variation in stature in those buried with weapons than in those buried without. This, according to Härke ‘suggests that the men buried with weapons were a more homogenous group than those buried without weapons’.20

  See, for example, White 1988: 165-6.   Esmonde Cleary 1989: 115-6. The question of the cultural role of the expanding Christian church in this period (especially in the west) is an interesting and seductive one (see especially Henig 2002). However, as it is not an issue in the two sites examined closely here, it must be passed over for the moment. 10   Esmonde Cleary 1989: ch. 4, provides a full picture of the complexity of Romano-British society at the end of the 4th century and beginning of the 5th. 11   Esmonde Cleary 1989: 110-4. There was considerable regional variety within this basic structure, of course. A wide number of local factors could affect the model; for example, a well-established or powerful local leader (whether of the Celtic or Roman pattern; see above). Two relatively close cemeteries in time and place have been used here as primary examples: Abingdon I and Berinsfield, both in Oxfordshire. 12   Härke 1997: 152.  

  Härke 1997: 150.   Härke 1989; 1990; 1995; 1997. 15   Ellis Davidson 1989. 16   Härke 1990: 36-7. 17   Härke 1997: 145-6; See also Lucy 2000: 87. 18   Boyle and Dodd 1995: 133, figs 12 and 31. 19   Härke 1995: 69; Härke 1997: 150. 20   Härke 1995: 69. 13 14

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L. Carr : Sonia Chadwick Hawkes and the ‘Three Ships’

BOYLE, A. and DODD, A. 1995: Discussion. In Boyle et al. 1995, 112-43. DICKINSON, T. 1976: The Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites of the Upper Thames Region, and their Bearing on the History of Wessex, circa AD 400-700 (Unpublished D.Phil. Thesis, University of Oxford). ELLIS DAVIDSON, H.R. 1989: The Training of Warriors. In Hawkes 1989, 11-23. ESMONDE CLEARY, A.S. 1989: The Ending of Roman Britain (London). Härke, H.R. 1989: Early Saxon Weapons Burials: Frequencies, Distributions and Weapons Combinations. In Hawkes 1989, 49-61. Härke, H. 1990: Warrior graves? The Background of the Anglo-Saxon Weapon Burial Rite. Past and Present, 126, 22-43. Härke, H. 1995: Weapons Burials and Knives. In Boyle et al. 1995, 67-74. Härke, H. 1997: Early Anglo-Saxon Social Structure. In Hines 1997: 125-70. Hawkes, S.C. 1986: The Early Saxon Period. In Briggs, G., Cook, J. and Rowley, T. (eds), The Archaeology of the Oxford Region, (Oxford), 64-114. Hawkes, S.C. (ed.) 1989: Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford). Henig, M. 2002: The Heirs of King Verica: Culture and Politics in Roman Britain (Stroud). Hines, J. 1989: The Military Contexts of the adventus Saxonum: Some Continental Evidence. In Hawkes 1989, 25-48. Hines, J. (ed.) 1997: The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the 8th Century: An Ethnographic Perspective (San Marino). Leeds, E.T and Harden, D.B. 1936: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Abingdon, Berkshire (Oxford). Lucy, S. 2000: The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death (Stroud). Powlesland, D. 1997: Early Anglo-Saxon Social Structures, Forms, and Layouts. In Hines 1997, 101-24. SHEPHERD, G. 2005: Dead Men Tell No Tales: Ethnic Diversity in Sicilian Colonies and the Evidence of the Cemeteries. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 24, 115-36. White, R. H. 1988: Roman and Celtic Objects from Anglo-Saxon Graves (Oxford). Wood, I. 1997: Before and After the Migration to Britain. In Hines 1997, 41-64.

It also suggests that the more homogenous group was drawing from or descended from a smaller genetic pool – that is, from less people. Epigenetic examination of the inhumations at Berinsfield has enabled a division of the recovered bodies into ‘descent groups’ of probably related individuals. The cemetery is also physically divided into several burial plots, and examination of at least one group in the large southeast plot allows Härke to connect occurrences of rich weapons burial with a shared set of epigenetic traits. Given the size of the plot, and the presence in it of some burials which did not exhibit all of the elite weapons or epigenetic traits just described, he sees this southeast section as a ‘household’ rather than ‘family’ plot, representing several levels of society enclosed within one household unit. His arguments remain compelling.21 What does this evidence mean when matched back against the Hawkes quote that opened this paper? It means that the Saxon social patterns were bringing local men into household groups and lifestyles. It also means that presence in a ‘Saxon’ cemetery or settlement cannot be taken as evidence of Saxon ancestry. The household system allowed for the absorption of local men and women at a low status level, and indeed their incorporation would have been desirable. A relatively small group in a new country would find it in their interests to be inclusive up to a carefully defined point. The numbers of men in these early cemeteries who were actually Saxon may have been much lower than previously suspected. Perceived cultural sympathies between the British and the invaders, necessity, and simple opportunism may all be looked to for local reasons to become part of the new social order. Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, with her humanistic view of history and archaeology and sure grasp of wide-ranging facts from several disciplines, was able to understand and explain that social order in a logical and appealing way that can only be imitated here. Acknowledgments With appreciative thanks to Martin Henig and Tyler Jo Smith. Bibliography BOYLE, A., DODD, A., MILES, D. and MUDD, A. 1995: Two Oxfordshire Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: Berinsfield and Didcot (Oxford).

  Härke 1995: 70-1, fig. 12.

21

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‘GOMOL IS SNOTEROST’: GROWING OLD IN ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND Sally Crawford

The aim of this paper is to consider the social implications of surviving to an old age in Anglo-Saxon society, and in particular, to discuss the extent to which gender roles, and status through the affirmation of gender roles, were compromised or altered in those who lived longer than the majority of the community.

these wicked creatures, having both bodies and minds in a higher degree corrupted, should work both these and greater mischiefs?4

Current assessments of mortuary evidence from earlier Anglo-Saxon England and Merovingian France have identified changes in type and quantity of grave goods associated with burials of the dead as also reflecting a diminishing status for older adults in the burial ritual, and have linked this to a diminished status for the elderly in early medieval society.5 Archaeological evidence and documentary sources seem to be in agreement. This said, there may be a case for suggesting that scholars such as Alcuin and Byrtferth were consciously imitating Classical models of old age, rather than reflecting Old English society, because, by contrast, other later Old English documentary sources suggest that survival to mature adulthood brought with it particular value and usefulness to the community, and was not regarded as inevitably burdensome. In contrast to modern English, where ‘old’ as a referent almost always has negative connotations (as in ‘old boot’), in the Old English lexicon, ‘old’ almost always had positive connotations. An old peace, or old wisdom, or an old sword – these were all better than new ones. There were four words for ‘old’ in Old English. The first, and by far the most common, was eald, related to a number of words: yldu (old age), ylde (men), ealda (an elder or a chief), and ealdor (leader, prince, chief). The idea of age, it would appear, was synonymous with leadership and authority. The second most common synonym is frod, derived from a word family that denotes ‘wisdom’. Har, derived from an old Germanic stem referring to the colour white or grey, is also paralleled by the Old High German her, which can mean ‘high’ and ‘venerated’. Finally, gamol (gomol; gomel; gamel), the least common adjective, has the most obscure derivation. It may simply mean ‘grizzled’ or ‘grey’.6 People, too, were given a positive association through the use of eald as an intensifying compound – ealdhlaford (hereditary lord), ealdwita (venerable man), ealdwine (old friend), and ealdgesiþ (old and loyal companion).7 Eald- (or Ald-)

There are some passages in Old English sources that present a negative view of advanced age. An old man was like winter, because he was ‘cold and sniffly’, suggested Byrtferth in his Manual.1 Alcuin repeatedly mentioned the burden of longevity in his letters to Charlemagne and others, particularly complaining about the sickness he associated with old age. In his poem on the sack of Lindisfarne, Alcuin likened the decay he saw in the church to the decay of the human body with advancing years: ‘what more can I say? All youth grows feeble, and all beauty of the body now passes and fails. Slack skin just scarcely adheres to the bones and the old man does not even recognise his own body’.2 This negative perception of the elderly body, likening the ageing process to a disease, has parallels in ancient and later medieval society: the poet Horace regarded the evils of old age as including dotage, greediness and impotence, while Innocent III inveighed against the unremitting evils of old age in the 12th century.3 By the 17th century, the model of the old person as an evil and unpleasant being, lingering on past the decent age of death, unwanted by the living or by God, was well established. The infirmities of age were perceived as a physical manifestation of the diseased hearts of the aged: The bodies of aged persons are impure, which, when they wax cankered in malice, they use their very breath and their sight, being apt for contagion, and by the Devil whetted for such purposes, to the vexation and destruction of others. For if they which are troubled with the disease of the eyes called opthalmia do infect others that do look earnestly upon them, is it any marvel that Crawford 1929: 12, lines 17-8. ‘quid iam plura canam? Marcescit tota iuventus,/Iam perit atque cadit corporis omne decus,/Et pellis tantum vacua vix ossibus haeret,/nec cognoscit homo propria membra senex.’ Cited in Dutton 1990: 76-94 (from Carm. 9 Monumenta Germaniae Historica Poetae 1:232, lines 111-4). 3 Coffman 1934: 249-77 for further details of a genre of abusing old age – though Coffman’s survey neatly misses the Anglo-Saxon period altogether. 1 2

4 5 6 7

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Fubecke 1618, cited in Thomas 1973: 553. Stoodley 2000; Halsall 1996. Crandall Amos 1990: 95-106. Crandall Amos 1990: 95-106.

COLLECTANEA ANTIQUA: ESSAYS IN MEMORY OF SONIA CHADWICK HAWKES

was frequently documented as the first part of a personal name: Aldhelm, Aldfrith and Aldred are well known, and Ashley Crandall Amos has found 263 other individuals listed with the same first element. All argue for the concept of age being positive – an old helmet or lord, old peace, and old wisdom or counsel. These were all valuable because tried, tested, and known not to fail.8 As Ashley Crandall Amos remarked, ‘reading modern idioms using old is a lowering experience, and a drastic contrast to the Old English patterns’.9 If a vocabulary indicates how people think, then Old English writers had a very positive cognitive map of old age.

AD 731, Bede described him as ‘still living, and is much revered for his great age’.13 Bede recorded a number of other men who lived to old age, including Archbishop Berhtwold who died of old age; the priest Egbert, who died naturally at about ninety (having survived a plague); Theodore of Tarsus, who lived to eighty-seven, and abbot Hadrian, who was definitely over fifty when he died.14 Women, too, are recorded as having lived to a good age, and some maintained their status within the ecclesiastical community throughout their maturity. Abbess Hilda of Whitby was sixty-six when she died of an illness; Ælflæda, a nun and abbess, was about sixty when she died of natural causes; Hildelith presided as abbess over the monastery at Barking until she was in ‘extreme old age’.15 Leoba, the only daughter of aged parents, who was placed in a monastery as soon as she was old enough to leave her parents, followed their example by living at least sixty years.16 She was advised to retire from her office of abbess because of her old age, perhaps because she had become too ill to continue in her duties; she died shortly afterwards.17 John of Beverley also opted to retire from his onerous work because of his ‘great age’, although his age at death is unknown.18 In the mid-7th century, there were concerted attempts to fill the vacant archbishopric of Canterbury – no sinecure, given that much of England was still pagan, and the kingdom of Kent itself had only been converted at the turn of the century. Wighard was elected to the seat, but was ‘snatched away by pestilence’. The seat was passed on to Hadrian, who declined it, but recommended Andrew because ‘his learning and age were fitter for the episcopal office’. Andrew was prevented by ‘bodily infirmity’ from taking the post, and it was passed on to Theodore of Tarsus, ‘of known probity of life, and venerable for age, being sixty-six years old.’ 19 St Boniface was actively engaged in dangerous missionary work in Frisia while he was in his late seventies or early eighties; he and his companions were attacked and killed by a band of pagans.20

This said, there is an argument that ‘old age’ as a recognised, specific phase in the life course is a modern construct, that would have had no relevance or meaning to Anglo-Saxon society: ‘Old age is a typically human phenomenon, of recent date, thanks to life-prolonging advances in medicine. From here, it is only a step to denying the existence of old people before the 19th century’, noted Georges Minois, before cautioning that this is: ‘a step we must be careful not to take’.10 Georges Minois goes on to do just this in his chapter on the early Middle Ages, which ignores archaeological evidence altogether, dismisses hagiography, discusses King Arthur as an historical character, and sticks to a very limited number of ecclesiastical sources before declaring that ‘the early Middle Ages were in fact not aware of old age as a specific entity…in a world where noone, apart from a few great individuals, retired, there was no distinction between adults and old adults’.11 Old English historical sources offer ample evidence for the survival of individuals into old age, but they do little to suggest that there was any significant social differentiation between adults at different stages in the life course. Old English law codes contain no suggestion of an upper age threshold for participation in legal affairs, and there is no sense, in the documentary record, that old age brought with it any expectation of a disadvantageous change in status or behaviour. Aldhelm was born around AD 639, died in AD 709, and must have lived about seventy years. When he was aged about sixty-six, he was pressed to take a bishopric but refused. The council rejected his protest saying that ‘maturity brought with it greater wisdom and freedom from vices’.12 Alcuin was over sixty and in poor health when he became Abbot of St Martin of Tours in AD 796. Willibald, who was born in AD 700, survived a sickly childhood, a plague in Rome, blindness in Gaza and stomachache in Jerusalem, before going on to administer the see of Eichstatt, which he did for forty years. He was over eightyfive years of age when he died. Similarly Willibrord, born in AD 658, lived to the age of eighty-one years. In about

This catalogue of aged saints, abbesses and bishops reveals that, certainly within a monastic context, old age was perceived as a privileged state, and senior members of the ecclesiastical community were conceptualised as gaining value in their employment with age, which was equated with wisdom and sobriety, not with retirement. Alcuin’s advice to a Christian king was that he should have around him not young, able warriors, but ‘old and wise and sober men for counsellors’.21 Sobriety was also considered the defining attribute of old age by Wærferth when he commended one who was ‘young in years, but old Talbot 1954; Ecc. Hist. V:11. Ecc. Hist. III:27; V:23; V:20. 15 Ecc. Hist. IV:23; IV:26; IV:9. 16 Talbot 1954. 17 Talbot 1954. 18 Ecc. Hist. V:6. 19 Ecc. Hist. IV:1. 20 Talbot 1954. 21 Stubbs 1874: 356. 13 14

Crandall Amos 1990: 99. Crandall Amos 1990: 104. 10 Minois 1989: 3. See also de Beauvoir 1977: 100, who similarly argued that ‘old age’ is a modern construct. 11 Minois 1989: 154. 12 Gallyon 1980: 35; Colgrave and Mynors 1991: 514. 8 9

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S. Crawford : ‘Gomol is snoterost’

and sober in his habits’.22 Maxims II asserted that gomol [is] snoterost – ‘the old man is wisest’.23 While there were cases of retirement from ecclesiastical positions of authority because of terminal ill health, health and strength were secondary considerations to age and wisdom, and this is less surprising when it is taken into account that, in an age when medical skills were rudimentary, and mortality rates were high for children and young adults, an older person who had survived (and possibly gained immunity to) all the diseases of youth, would have had a longer adult life expectancy than a younger man who had yet to prove his resilience; Theodore of Tarsus, for example, continued as Archbishop of Canterbury for another twenty-one years after his appointment.

nation, he gave up the kingdom in like manner to younger persons’.26 The wisdom of these decisions is attested by the fact that these two are some of the very few kings in Anglo-Saxon history to have died of old age. Within the context of heroic poetry, a slightly different account of attitudes towards old age is given. Infirmity does not cripple the old; it challenges them. In the poem The Battle of Maldon, two old warriors are illustrated; the first, Earl Byrhtnoth, a war veteran in his sixties when he died, is presented as the hero of the poem, without comment on his age. The second was Byrhtwold, an ealdgeneat (old comrade and follower) of Byrtnoth’s. Some questions have been asked about whether this man was actually supposed to be old, or whether eald here was employed with its positive associations to mean ‘trusty’ or ‘faithful’. ‘Of what use is an old man in battle?’, queried Alfred J. Wyatt.27 But Byrtnoth himself was old by any likely Anglo-Saxon standard, and if Byrhtwold was a longtime follower of the Earl’s, then he must needs be an old man too. The poignant rallying cry of Byrhtwold, following his aged leader Byrhtnoth to death at the battle of Maldon, can be taken as the Anglo-Saxon heroic model of old age:

Factors relevant to ecclesiastical society may not have transferred to secular society. The church offered both sexes some protection from the most life-threatening hazards of secular life; pregnancy and childbirth for women, warfare and violent conflict for men, and the physically degenerative aspects of the ageing process may have had much greater impact in the secular world. For women, maturity brings with it a biological mark of transition from fertility to infertility at the menopause. By entering the church, women of a young age removed themselves from any participation in family reproductive strategies, placing themselves beyond fertility-related gender considerations, and for them, from this perspective, the ageing process may have had little impact on their social position, but the same may not have been true for their secular counterparts. As for men, early medieval society is acknowledged to have been a violent place, where fighting and making war, and the threat of warfare, were a central part of political, economic and social life, and AngloSaxon England was no exception.24 Minois has argued that, even if the elderly were valued in the church for their experience and knowledge, the distinction in the warrior classes was more between strong and weak than between young and old.25 It is much harder to establish cases of longevity within a secular setting, if only because the texts tend to discuss the exploits of royalty, who specialised in violent lifestyles and early deaths. The fates of Regenhere, Osfrid, Oswald, Elfwin, Edmund and Egfrid, all of whom were killed in battle, or of Hereric, Edwin, and Eorpwald, all of whom were assassinated, exemplify the usual end of royalty when it was recorded. Examples of voluntary secular retirement are known, however. When Cadwalla of Wessex, after an exemplary career as a warrior, gave up the throne to go on a pilgrimage to Rome, he appointed Ine as his successor. That no Lear-like repercussions followed this relinquishment of the throne is illustrated by the fact that Ine, in his turn, ‘having reigned 37 years over that

Hearts shall be harder, courage shall be keener, spirits shall be the greater, the more our strength fades.28

So much is certainly true within the poem Beowulf, where, as Kemp Malone has pointed out, old age is consistently seen as being wiser than youth.29 The elders wisely counsel Beowulf to fight Grendel while his young king Hygelac urges him to have nothing to do with the monster. When Beowulf himself is an old man, he wisely rejects the advice of his young – and, as events prove, cowardly – advisers, and chooses instead to fight the dragon. Hrothgar too, though characterised as an old man, holds an unassailable position amongst his people. He is treated with respect throughout, and even though the poet makes it clear that disaster will befall his house, as long as Hrothgar is alive, there will be no challenge to his kingship and his authority will restrain his rebellious dependants. The same may be said of Beowulf: his power and authority grew, rather than diminished with age, and it was only after his death that his kingdom was torn apart. This literary representation of kingdoms disintegrating after the death of an unusually long-lived king may reflect a genuine political disadvantage of surviving to mature adulthood in a context where the social structures were designed to encompass a short life span. When an aged king persists on the throne, normal laws of inheritance are suspended, and growing young men, who ought to have established their status in their teens and twenties, remain

  Translating Gregory’s Dialogues: ‘Se wæs wintrum geong 7 on his þeawum eald 7 gedefe’. See Crandall Amos 1990: 100. 23   Maxims II, lines 11-2; Dobbie 1942: 56. 24   Halsall 1998 for a comprehensive exposition of the level of violence in early medieval society. 25   Minois 1989: 188. 22

  Ecc. Hist. V:7.   Wyatt 1919: 282. 28   ‘Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,/ mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað’; Gordon 1937: 312-3. 29   Malone 1972: 139-45. 26 27

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and the loss of status in the old man, jeered by the young, consequent on his physical appearance and weakness in a warrior context.

in limbo until, on the eventual death of the leader, the kingdom is torn apart as not one but several generations vie for control, because an unusually prolonged adult life will allow a much larger pool of males of royal blood to reach maturity with no possibility of gaining power and independence. An historical example of exactly this situation is to be seen in the consequences of the long reigns of Louis the Pious and Charlemagne. When Charlemagne was fifty, his son Pepin the Hunchback led a revolt against him, while Louis the Pious had trouble from his son Louis the German, who first rebelled when his father was fiftytwo, and continued to cause problems until his father’s death. He, in his turn, faced revolt from his own sons when he was fifty-four.30 A more poignant example of the impact of old age on inheritance strategies designed to accommodate a society with short life expectancies comes from the early medieval Irish Táin. The story concerns an old man and warrior, Iliach, who, in an age-weakened state of disability and socially-transgressive longevity, was being cared for by his grandson, Láegaire. Iliach’s prolonged existence was depriving Láegaire of full adult male status, a situation which Iliach found unacceptable. When the younger warriors went into battle, Iliach, too, turned up for the muster, to the jeers and derision of the young men:

The extent to which fighting was a masculine activity is exemplified by the pre-Christian burial ritual in AngloSaxon England, where a profusion of weapons were placed in the graves. Although each burial within an Anglo-Saxon furnished inhumation burial is likely to differ from its neighbour in terms of type and number of artefacts, as well as showing variation in deposition of the body, presence of coffin or other mortuary container, and treatment of the grave (presence/absence of postholes, ditches, mounds etc), nonetheless there are clear and uniform patterns within the Anglo-Saxon deposition ritual. The clearest signal given by the objects associated with this furnished burial ritual is about gender; men’s status and gender was signalled by weaponry, while women’s were buried with dress artefacts such as brooches and beads.32 Differentiation in terms of biological age have also been identified in the mortuary evidence, and the apparently deliberate distinctions between the ‘rich’ graves – those exhibiting a range of status artefacts such as gold brooches, necklaces, weaving battens and other artefacts in the case of women, or swords, shields, spears and other effects in the case of men – and the ‘poor’ graves, where the occupants were buried without any archaeologically recoverable artefacts, indicates that the disposal of grave goods with the corpse was a deliberate and ritual act indicating the status or otherwise of the deceased within the community.33

So he came like this: in his shaky, worn-out chariot, without rugs or covering, drawn by two old sorrel nags. He filled his chariot with stones as high as the skin coverings. He kept striking all those who came to gaze at him stark naked as he was, long membered, with his clapar hanging down through the frame of the chariot. Then the host noticed in what manner he came and they mocked the naked man. Dócha mac Mágach checked the jeering of the rabble. And for that, Iliach told Dócha that at the day’s end, he, Dócha, should take Iliach’s sword and strike his head off, provided only that Iliach had exerted all his strength against the host... Then in the evening, Dócha struck off Iliach’s head and carried it to his grandson. He made peace with him and Láegaire kept Iliach’s sword.31

There are difficulties in using the cemetery data to identify mortuary rituals pertaining to old age. The method of identifying the biological age of skeletons in current published site reports is by a simple analysis of tooth development and wear, and by epiphseal fusion. Age at death can also be gauged by levels of arthritis and bone thinning, but it is difficult to hazard any guesses as to the precise age of an adult Anglo-Saxon at the time of death, and for the vast majority of the excavated skeletal material, the ages ascribed to adults are broad in range, predominantly relative, and probably underestimated at the older end of the age scale.34 However, it is reasonable to say that it is possible to recognise, with a fair level of confidence, the oldest section of an Anglo-Saxon mortuary population relative to others in that burial group, and that, no matter what their chronological age at death, these people would have been perceived to be, within that community, significantly older than ‘normal’. Given the uneven survival of skeletal material from excavation, and the probability that the majority of known cemetery sites have only been partially excavated, there is no way at present of calculating a population pyramid for the Anglo-

This case emphasises the socially-imposed duty of care between an old man and his male heirs, the impossibility of two adult males holding primary status within one family,   Dutton 1990: 76-94.   ‘Dolluid chucu íarom h-Ilech senathair Lóegairi Búadaig for Áth Feidli. Lóegaire Búadach mac Connaich Buidi meic h-Iliach. Buí icá gairi la h-úa h-i Ráith Impail. Dofóccair dochom in t-slúaig co tóetsad a n- dígail lais. Is amlaid dolluid ina charput chretach n-imbi cen fogaimen cen fortgai. Dí sengabair buidi fón charput crín. Ocus línais a charpat n-imbi di chlochaib co m-bu lán co tici a focharpat. Asorggad cách dothéiged dia déchsain ossé tarrnocht lebarpentol & in clapar triasin creit sís. Rathaigis íarom in slóg indas in toichime dombert, contibset in fear tarnocht. Is and ro choisc Dóchae mac Mágach in dáescorslóg ocon chuidmead, & asbert-som fri sudiu tara h-éisi is é no bered a chlaideb & no bíad a chend de deuth laí acht imrobreth-som a chumang forsin slóg…. Gatais Dóchá a chend de-som íarom d’ adaich & bertai dia húa. Dogéni cairdes fri suidiu & baí a chlaideb lais’; O’Rahilly 1976: 3366-3387. 30 31

  Pader 1982; Brush 1998; Stoodley 1999.   Grave goods, status and age discussed in e.g. Arnold 1980 and Pader 1982 (status); Crawford 1993 and 1996 (chronological age); Härke 1990 and 1992 (masculinity). 34   Chamberlain 1997: 249; Brothwell 1972; Waldron 1994: 20. 32 33

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Saxon period. By looking at similar populations for which statistics are available, it could be argued that distinctly ‘old’ people above the age of about fifty are unlikely to have made up more than ten percent of the living population.35 The archaeological evidence from the furnished inhumation cemeteries suggests that ‘older’ people made up fifteen percent of the total, where approximate age could be identified. This rather high figure should not be taken to reflect the actual population pyramid: children are notoriously absent from Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, and it is relatively easy to assign an ‘over forty-five’ age to older skeletons on the basis of the skeletal characteristics noted above.

at least within the genre of heroic poetry, old people could fight too. The literature also gives some clue as to which males might maintain and strengthen their display of weaponry with age, and how they might retain their status as leaders: Hrothgar, the old king in Beowulf, sustained his power through an entourage of younger warriors, as well as through conspicuous display (the great hall of Heorot) and through decision-making based on experience. Looking at the local, rather than national, level, a more detailed picture of the place of old males within the mortuary communities emerges. At the large furnished inhumation cemetery at Buckland, Dover, Kent, the excavation report identified seventeen ‘old’ males. The Buckland site can be divided into plots, phased on the basis of artefact typology. Old men are scattered fairly evenly throughout the site, which contained around 200 bodies. Of the eleven old males buried within the phases before c. AD 650, eight were buried with weapons. The remaining old males were buried in the phases after c. AD 650, when weapon burial seems to have decreased in frequency across Anglo-Saxon England. In plots A, B, D and G, no old male is without weapons, while in phase E, the only weapon burials are those of the three old adult males in graves 63, 61 and 65. It is also in this sector that two of the unweaponed old male burials occur. These five old men seem to be buried in a group, and their burial area is marked by a pre-AngloSaxon barrow.

My own study of earlier Anglo-Saxon inhumation cemetery evidence suggests that, within the mortuary ritual, old age did not bring with it a dramatic decline in the presence of grave goods with age, but the ‘value’ of artefacts, when measured by the presence of precious metals and stones, decreased.36 Gender differentiation also became weaker with increasing age, for both males and females: the number of shields and spears as a proportion of the grave assemblage declines for older males.37 Recent work on the distribution of weaponry within the furnished burial ritual has insisted that weapons were not buried with ‘warriors’ per se – that mortuary weapons were symbols of social identity and status, not of the warrior function of those buried with them.38 Corroborative evidence for this interpretation comes from the assumption that those identified in the archaeological record as ‘children’; ‘disabled’ or ‘elderly’ must have been ‘non-combatants’, even though they were buried with ‘weapons’.39 However, weapons buried with older males should not be assumed to be purely symbolic; the literature offers evidence that,

At Sewerby in Yorkshire, about sixty bodies were interred in a cemetery relatively poor in artefacts. Only two of the burials possess a shield and spear. One, grave 55, was too badly preserved for an age to be established, but the other, grave 45, contained an old male. At Alton in Hampshire, out of around fifty burials, only two could be identified as males aged over forty-five, but both were buried with a spear, although sword burials do occur here with younger men. At Appledown in Sussex, a mixed cremation/ inhumation cemetery, only two inhumations were marked by post-hole structures (out of around 121 burials). Grave 157 contained an elderly woman whose burial was marked by a six-post structure, but whose only furniture was an iron buckle, while grave 99 contained the remains of a male aged over forty-five, whose burial was marked by a four-post structure, and whose grave goods included a shield, a spear and a knife. This was also one of only two exceptionally deep graves on the site.

  Chamberlain 1997: 249, who argues that there must have been ‘considerable numbers’ of people over 50 in ancient populations: Laslett 1977: 66-7. 36   Information derived from a database of over 1000 aged skeletons from 5th-7th century Anglo-Saxon inhumation cemeteries; see Crawford 1991: Appendices for data and methodology. The statistics discussed below are drawn from a database of over 1600 excavated skeletons and their associated archaeologically recoverable attributes from inhumation cemeteries. Only 54% of the identifiable ‘children’ were buried with grave goods, while 82% (336 out of 410 burials) of ‘adults’ and 84% (107 out of 127) of ‘old people’ were buried with grave goods. 36% of the grave assemblages associated with ‘adults’ contained silver, while only 13% did in the ‘old’ population. Gold is not a common inclusion in grave assemblages, but it is least likely to occur within the older population – 1.8% of older people’s assemblages included gold, compared to 3.6% with ‘children’ and nearly 6% with adults. 37   Statistics derived from Crawford 1991: 19% of older people are buried with spears, compared to 24% of ‘adults’; see also Stoodley 2000: 462. 38   Härke 1990; Härke 1992. 39   See Barnwell 2003: 4, for recent use of this theory; but see Crawford 1999: 157-63 for a reconsideration of the functionality of weapons with child burials; a reappraisal of the types of weapon sets buried with ‘children’; and a questioning of some of the evidence used to support Härke’s case. Härke’s suggestion (1990) that ‘disabled’ adults with spina bifida were buried with weapons is a misreading of spina bifida occulta, a condition with a genetic basis which does not produce significant symptoms, and which would have had no effect on its bearers (Roberts and Manchester 1995: 36). 35

If weaponry was an indicator of a particular role or status within Anglo-Saxon society, then the decrease in weaponry amongst some males (assuming that men in the ‘warrior status’ groups had similar chances of surviving to old age as men in other status groups), would imply that some men who had had ‘warrior’ role or status in earlier life were yielding it or replacing it with another role in later life – perhaps passing this social persona on to their sons, who might now have reached their physical prime. This could explain the pattern of burial at Alton, where the older males are buried with weaponry, but do not have 57

Collectanea Antiqua: essays in memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

have been worn during a specific phase in the female life course, and only those who died during that period would be buried with that item of dress. All older women within the appropriate status group may have displayed a girdle in their youth, and held the social role it implied, but, just as some males seem to have yielded the role indicated by weaponry, so most older women appear to have given up the role indicated by girdle items as they reached old age.

swords. However, for a few males, old age brought with it a reinforcement and accentuation of the role symbolised by weapons, as at Buckland, where there is a positive correlation between old age and weaponry, and at Sewerby, where one of the only two burials with male gendered weapon sets contained an ‘old’ man. Nicholas Stoodley noted that, while there was a decrease in the proportion of male burials with two weapons with age in his analysis of earlier Anglo-Saxon inhumation cemeteries, there was a rise in the number of male burials with three or more weapons – an unusually high number of weapons with burials as a whole – as age increased, and that this elderly group recorded ‘some of the longest spears and knives’.40 There was a positive link between age and spear length in the Anglo-Saxon burial ritual, so the fact that the oldest males in the mortuary community were buried with the longest spears and knives is worth further thought.41 It might not be unreasonable to suppose that the older males with the longest spears and knives, and with a relative excess of displayed weaponry, were the leading males in the leading families of the communities using the burial grounds. This picture is corroborated by the information derived from individual cemeteries. As the examples cited above indicate, not all older males lost status with age. Some males did, but some continued to retain symbolic warrior status within the mortuary ritual.

One gauge of the ‘value’ of the elderly within society is the level of care they receive. ‘Care’ need not be equated with ‘caring’, but high levels of care require an expenditure of effort and energy, and that investment reflects a personal or social need to look after older and weaker members of the community. Anthropological studies of old people within non-industrial communities have shown ways in which the care of the elderly can be constructed as a social benefit: Louis-Vincent Thomas commented that, in the Africa he studied, ‘society needs its old people, symbols of its continuity, both in their role as the group’s memory and as the prerequisite of its (the memory’s) reproduction’. Louis-Vincent Thomas added his own interpretation of this phenomenon: ‘in order to make [the old people’s] power more bearable, and also to enhance one’s own value by esteeming them, the group does not hesitate to idealise them. Since nothing can be done without old people, they might as well be attributed every quality – and their somnolence taken for meditative contemplation’.44 Saints lives do corroborate the function of old men and women as repositories of history. Adomnan’s 7th-century Life of Columban, written some sixty years after the Saint’s death, drew heavily on the reports of ‘informed and trustworthy aged men’, and likewise Bede claimed to draw on the statements of old monks, who, if not eyewitnesses themselves, had spoken in their youths to someone who had been an eyewitness to miracles or holy events.45 The Life of St Edmund testifies how it was possible for a writer to span several generations to give his tale validity, if only he could call on old men. The poem opens with an elaborate ‘proof’ of authenticity:

Women, within the mortuary ritual, fared rather worse than males. In his study of Merovingian burials, Guy Halsall noticed that, once past the age of forty, women in Merovingian burials suffered ‘drastic reductions in the numbers of artefacts placed in their graves, rarely having more than one or two feminine-specific objects, usually necklaces’.42 Within the Merovingian ritual, Halsall argued that women’s status was predominantly derived from their ability to bear children. Once past childbearing age, women lost status, and the artefacts associated with their burials, like those of children, were genderless. The position for Anglo-Saxon women was not so drastic, nor so clearly defined. Nicholas Stoodley has noted that some types of artefacts – specifically girdle items – became less common in the graves of older women. He also noted that women with girdles had a shorter life expectancy, and were more likely to be buried in multiple graves, though multiple graves are relatively rare within the Anglo-Saxon burial ritual.43 Stoodley suggested that the girdle within the burial ritual indicated a specific role for the wearer which might have increased their risk of earlier death – perhaps caring for children, or a role as a healer, with more exposure to disease. The girdle artefacts probably did indicate some specific, gendered role or status in society, just as the weapons did for males, but if gendered artefacts were related to fertility in females, then they would only

A certain learned monk came south over the sea from Fleury in the time of King Aethelred to archbishop Dunstan three years before he (the archbishop) died, and the monk was called Abbo. Then he began to relate what Dunstan had said about Saint Edmund, just as Edmund’s swordbearer had told Aethelstan, when Dunstan was a young man and this swordbearer was a very old man.46

The sword bearer here, a rare surviving witness to important events which took place in the previous   Minois 1989: 6.   E.g. Ecc. Hist. III:19, IV: 3. 46   ‘Sum swiðe gelaered munuc com suþan ofer sae fram Sancte Benedictes stowe on Aeþelredes cynincges daege to Dunstane arcebisceope þrim gearum aer he forðferde, and se munuc hatte Abbo; þa wurden he aet spreace oþ ðat Dunstan rehte be Sancte Eadmunde, swa swa Eadmundes swurdbora hit rehte Aethelstane, ða ða Dunstan iung man waes and se swurdbora waes forealdod man’; Needham 1976: 43. 44 45

  Stoodley 2000: 462.   Härke 1990 for a discussion of spear length and age; and Crawford 1999: 157-63. 42   Halsall 1996: 11. 43   Stoodley 2000: 464. 40 41

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Conclusions

generation, encapsulates the value of old age in a society where literacy was for the few.

The archaeological evidence in this paper, drawn largely from the pre-Christian period, suggests that in practice, the position of the aged in early Anglo-Saxon society was far from secure. Yet, as Keith Thomas observes, ‘there is nothing constant about the social meaning of age’.51 In a pre-industrial society, and even more, perhaps, in a pre- or proto-literate society such as Anglo-Saxon England was in the 5th to 7th centuries, old age may hold more attraction, where status may be obtained through the valuable gift of experience and longevity – compounded by scarcity value.52 The archaeological evidence makes it clear that, within the mortuary ritual at least, not all old people needed to fear a decline in status.

Early Irish law codes emphasised that organising the care of ageing parents was a family duty, and the person who carried out this duty would receive specific benefits at the time of inheritance.47 Surviving Old English law has nothing similar to say on the subject – does this reflect Anglo-Saxon lack of care, or does it suggest that care of the elderly was part of Anglo-Saxon culture, rather than a problem that required legislation to force family members to carry out their social obligations? Examples of relationships between adult children and their aged parents are limited in the Old English documentary evidence. St Cuthman, so his Life records, used to transport his disabled old mother in a contraption similar to a wheelchair, with a wheel at the front and a strap over his shoulders. One day, under divine inspiration, he launched his mother down a hillside, and where she came to rest, there he founded his church.48 Whether this indicates Cuthman’s belief in the holy powers of his mother to pick the optimum spot for a church, or whether Cuthman was implementing a Freudian desire to swap his burdensome mother for the monastic life, is open to question. It is likely that care of the elderly was a family responsibility within Anglo-Saxon society, just as in Early Irish society; that, at least, is the implication contained in the poem The Wanderer, which highlights the dreadful disadvantages of outliving friends and family. The Wanderer laments his fate – without a living relative or friend to take care of him, he has to beg strange noblemen to take him in.

According to the majority of the Old English literary evidence, old people were idealised and venerated in Anglo-Saxon society. There is minimal indication within the literary accounts that old people were in any way maltreated, or pushed to the limits of the social framework. According to the literary evidence, the later Anglo-Saxon period was the golden age for the elderly. If they survived the vicissitudes of childhood and adolescence, and belonged to the appropriate social group, power that they acquired during young adulthood could be maintained, and their qualifications for some ecclesiastical posts might even improve as a direct result of longevity. For males at least, there was no specific age threshold defining a transition between ‘youth’ and ‘age’, and to that extent, ‘old age’ did not exist, yet old age was recognised to be different from youth, and different physical and mental attributes were ascribed to this part of the life course.

The Middle Saxon cemetery at Nazeingbury, Essex, offers some archaeological evidence for the treatment during life, and disposal after death, of a mortuary group unusual for the longevity of its population.

Abbreviation Ecc. Hist.

One of the most interesting burials is that in grave 53, of an old man aged about fifty at the time of death. According to the skeletal report, he must have suffered from severe problems in walking, and had the use of only one arm. As the cemetery report notes, ‘there is no way in which this man could have reached the age of fifty without a great deal of help’.49 Of the 230+ burials in this cemetery complex, twenty-nine burials were aged over forty-five, including a small group of seven burials, males and females, to the east end of church 1. This was, the report says, ‘an area of special sanctity even after church 1 was demolished’, and included four burials aged over fifty, and two estimated at somewhere between thirty and forty-five years at the time of death.50 It seems probable that this special mortuary community were being cared for during life by a small monastic community, and were either religious themselves, or had been given to a hospice for care.

B. Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (eds), Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Reprinted edition (Oxford, 1991).

Bibliography ARNOLD, C.J. 1980: Wealth and Social Structure: A Matter of Life and Death. In Rahtz, P., Dickinson T. and Watts L. (eds), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries 1979 (Oxford), 81-142. BARNWELL, P. 2003: Britons and Warriors in PostRoman South-East England. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 12, 1-8. DE BEAUVOIR, S. 1977: Old Age. Trans. By P. O’Brien. (London). BLAIR, J. 1997: St Cuthman, Steyning and Bosham. Sussex Archaeological Collections 135, 173-92.

  Charles-Edwards 1993: 75.   Blair 1997: 173-92. 49   Huggins 1978: 57. 50   Huggins 1978: 51. 47 48

  Thomas 1976: 1-46.   Wilson 1970: 219 for this view of pre-industrial attitudes towards old age. 51 52

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BLAIR, J. 2005: The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford). BROTHWELL, D. 1972: Digging Up Bones (Oxford). BRUSH, K.A. 1998: Gender and Mortuary Analysis in Pagan Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 7, 76-89. CHAMBERLAIN, A.T. 1997: Commentary: Missing Stages of Life – Towards the Perception of Children in Archaeology. In Moore J. and Scott E. (eds), Invisible People and Processes (London), 248-50. CHARLES-EDWARDS, T. 1993: Early Welsh and Irish Kinship (Oxford). COFFMAN, G. 1934: Old Age from Horace to Chaucer: Some Literary Affinities and Adventures of an Idea. Speculum, 9, 249-77. COLGRAVE, B. and MYNORS, R.A.B. (eds) 1991: Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Reprinted edition (Oxford). CRANDALL AMOS, A. 1990: Old English Words for Old. In Sheehan 1990, 95-106. CRAWFORD, S.E.E. 1991: Age Differentiation and Related Social Status: A Study of Earlier AngloSaxon Childhood (Unpublished D.Phil. Thesis, University of Oxford). CRAWFORD, S.E.E. 1993: When Do Anglo-Saxon Children Count? Journal for Theoretical Archaeology 2, 17-24. CRAWFORD, S.E.E. 1996: Children, Death and the Afterlife in Anglo-Saxon England. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 6, 83-92. CRAWFORD, S.E.E. 1999: Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England (Stroud). CRAWFORD, S.J. (ed.) 1929: Byrtferth’s Manual (London). DOBBIE, E.V.K. (ed.) 1942: The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems (New York). DUTTON, P.E. 1990: Beyond the Topos of Senescence: The Political Problems of Aged Carolingian Rulers. In Sheehan 1990, 76-94. FUBECKE, W. 1618: A Parallele of Conference of the Civil Law, the Canon Law, and the Common Law (London). GALLYON, M. 1980: The Early Church in Wessex and Mercia (Lavenham). GORDON, E.V. (ed.) 1937: The Battle of Maldon (London). GWILT, A. and HAZLEGROVE, C. (eds) 1977: Reconstructing Iron Age Societies: New Approaches to the British Iron Age (Oxford), 96-107. HADLEY, D. 2000: Burial Practices in the Northern Danelaw, c. 650-1100. Northern History 36, 199-216. HALSALL, G. 1996: Female Status and Power in Early Merovingian Central Austrasia: The Burial Evidence. Early Medieval Europe 5, 1-24. HALSALL, G. (ed.) 1998: Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West (Woodbridge). HÄRKE, H. 1990: ‘Warrior Graves’? The Background of the Anglo-Saxon Weapon Burial Rite. Past and Present 126, 22-43.

HÄRKE, H. 1992: Changing Symbols in a Changing Society. In Carver, M. (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo (Woodbridge), 149-65. HUGGINS, P.J. 1978: Excavations of a Belgic and Romano-British Farm with Middle Saxon Cemetery and Churches at Nazeingbury, Essex 1975-6. Essex Archaeology and History (3rd series) 32, 63-96. KERSHAW, P. 2001: Illness, Power and Prayer in Asser’s Life of King Alfred. Early Medieval Europe 10(2), 201-21. LASLETT, P. 1977: Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge). MALONE, K. 1972: Beowulf the Headstrong. AngloSaxon England 1, 139-45. MINOIS, G. 1989: The History of Old Age from Antiquity to the Renaissance. In Tenison, S.H. (trans.), Histoire de la Vieillesse: de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance (Cambridge). MOORE, J. AND SCOTT, E. (eds) 1997: Invisible People and Processes: Writing Gender and Childhood into European Archaeology (London). NEEDHAM, G.I. (ed. and trans.) 1976. Aelfric: Lives of Three English Saints (Exeter). O’RAHILLY, C. (ed. and trans.) 1976: Táin Bό Cúalange, Recension I (Dublin). PADER, E.-J. 1982: Symbolism, Social Relations and the Interpretation of Mortuary Remains (Oxford). ROBERTS, C. AND MANCHESTER, K. 1995: The Archaeology of Disease. 2nd edition (Stroud). SHEEHAN, M.M. (ed.) 1990: Ageing and the Aged in Medieval Europe (Toronto). STOODLEY, N. 1999: Burial Rites, Gender and the Creation of Kingdoms: The Evidence from 7th Century Wessex. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10, 99-107. STOODLEY, N. 2000: From the Cradle to the Grave: Age Organisation and the Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Rite. World Archaeology 31.3, 456-72. STUBBS, W. (ed.) 1874: Memorials of St Dunstan (London). TALBOT, C.H. (ed. and trans.) 1954: The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, Being the Lives of SS. Willibrord, Boniface, Sturm, Leoba and Lebuin, Together with the Hodoeporicon of St Willibald and a Selection from the Correspondence of St Boniface (London). THOMAS, K. 1973: Religion and the Decline of Magic (London). THOMAS, K. 1976: Age and Authority in Early Modern England. Proceedings of the British Academy 62, 1-46. WALDRON, T. 1994: Counting the Dead: The Epidemiology of Skeletal Populations (Chichester). WILSON, B. 1970: The Youth Culture and the Universities (London). WYATT, A.J. (ed.) 1919: An Anglo-Saxon Reader (Cambridge).

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Was Redwald a European? Sutton Hoo as a Reflection of British Attitudes to Europe William Filmer-Sankey

The relationship between archaeology and contemporary political and social concerns is complex and fascinating. As archaeologists, we do not work in a vacuum; inevitably wider issues influence us (if most often subconsciously), as we select our areas for research and interpret our data. At one extreme, the interpretation of archaeological finds can help to mould public opinion on key matters of the day. The Nazis, for example, were notoriously adept at (ab)using archaeology to cement notions of Ayrian racial superiority: in 1935 Himmler set up the Ahnenerbe Research Institute in order to provide archaeological evidence to support his bizarre theories about the origins of the Ayrian race and German archaeology magazines of the time regularly published the latest finds and ‘research’. More generally, however, the role of archaeology has been that of a mirror, which reflects rather than forms public opinion, though the boundaries can be blurred. This is especially the case where a major find grabs public attention and thus gives the voice of the archaeological interpreter an unusual prominence.

Professor Dr Joachim Werner (1909-1994), arguably the greatest and most influential of Germany’s 20th century early medieval archaeologists and himself a key voice in the Sutton Hoo debate. England and Europe: Before Sutton Hoo The study of Anglo-Saxon history began in earnest during the 17th century, when the supposed pre-Conquest origins of Common Law, among a nation of ‘free Saxons’, became an important strand in the Parliamentarian cause against the king’s growing despotism. That the Anglo-Saxons also existed in the archaeological record took some time to recognise. Anglo-Saxon urns from Old Walsingham in Norfolk were famously illustrated by Sir Thomas Browne in his Hydriotaphia or Urne-Buriall of 1658, but they formed the trigger for a metaphysical treatise on the nature of death rather than a debate on Englishness. It was not until the later 18th century, in Kent, that James Douglas realised the significance of the presence of Byzantine coins in otherwise undatable graves and was able to identify them as belonging to the earliest Jutish settlers. However, the relative poverty and technological backwardness of the remains (with the occasional startling exception, such as the Snape boat grave with its gold ring, excavated in 1862) made most classically educated Victorians unwilling to see

Sutton Hoo has been one such case, and it continues to attract wide public fascination, even though nearly seven decades have passed since the excavation of the great ship burial in Mound 1. Its unusually photogenic nature means that it makes good television and the sheer scale, variety and wealth of the finds (combined with a beguiling mysteriousness) give a unique appeal and endless scope for reinterpretation.

   Joachim Werner is worth a study in his own right. He sprang to prominence in 1935 with his study of Münzdatierte austrasiche Grabfunde, which set the basis for the understanding of the chronology of Germanic graves. In 1942 he was appointed as the first Professor of Archaeology in German occupied Strasbourg University. According to Sonia, his wife sewed up his torn trousers with a strand of her golden hair before he swam the Rhine in 1945 to escape to Switzerland, where he was interned, but still managed to write up the Bülach cemetery. He returned to Munich to become Professor of Archaeology, in which post he remained until his death. Many of the foremost German early medieval archaeologists were his students and he continued to publish widely until shortly before his death.    Pocock 1957, especially 56-8 and 125-7. I am indebted to Robert Thorne for this reference and to Caroline Filmer-Sankey – who was far more relaxed with Sonia and Christopher than I could ever be – for improving this paper.    Browne 1658. Browne’s musings on the Walsingham urns were elegaically continued by the German writer, W.G. Sebald in Die Ringe des Saturn, a book describing a walking holiday in the Suffolk Sandlings. It is translated as Sebald 1998: see esp. 21-36.    Rhodes 1990.    See Filmer-Sankey and Pestell 2001: 5-7, 193-8.

This paper takes one aspect of that interpretation – that relating to the fact that the grave contains evidence for a wide variety of cultural traditions: native Anglo-Saxon, Celtic British, Scandinavian and continental Germanic, as well as Byzantine – to show how the debate over the meaning of Sutton Hoo reflects (and may to some extent have formed) changing British attitudes to Europe over the past 70 years. As a subject it is of particular relevance to Sonia, whose interest in the relationship between the Anglo-Saxons and the wider Germanic world stemmed from her early work in Kent. This was strengthened by her (and Christopher’s) friendship with, among others,   For the Ahnenerbe Institute, see Pringle 2006. For archaeological propaganda in German archaeological magazines, see for example the editorial for the first edition of a (short-lived) periodical, Reinische Vorzeit im Wort und Bild, which can be found in the Ashmolean Library. 

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cemeteries – there were no settlements known until E.T. Leeds’s work in the 1920s at Sutton Courtney – in England and on the northern European continent were a vital tool in this research on the spread of Anglo-Saxon settlement in the years following the ‘departure of the Romans’ in AD 410. This approach was further developed and refined in the 20th century notably by T.D. Kendrick, E.T. Leeds and (later) J.N.L. Myers. These pioneering 19th and 20th century Anglo-Saxon archaeologists were largely insular in their concerns. Although J.N.L. Myers (to take but one example) was far more familiar with the urnfields of Schleswig-Holstein than are most British early medieval archaeologists today, his purpose was to understand which Germanic tribes settled where and how long it took them to extend their conquest across England.10 There is in all works of this period an assumption that, once they had arrived, the Anglo-Saxons quickly lost contact, or any sense of common identity with their continental or Scandinavian homelands; they became, in short, English. The same assumption is found in a superb ghost story, A Warning to the Curious, by the Cambridge antiquary, M.R. James. Here three gold crowns of the East Anglian kings were buried along the Suffolk coast in order to deter German invasions.11 This in itself reflects the wider background of increased Anglo-German hostility, as the intricate network of family ties, which linked the various royal houses of Europe, fell apart in the period up to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Fig. 1. A worried Redwald: Swede, Anglo-Saxon or European Union? After Carver 1998: pl. 3.

Sutton Hoo

citizen of a

One of M.R. James’ crowns was buried at Rendlesham, the vicus regius of the East Anglian kings,12 and A Warning to the Curious in many other ways foreshadows Sutton Hoo. What no one had anticipated, however, was the sheer wealth of the Mound I ship burial, as revealed by its excavation in the summer and autumn of 1939. To those for whom Anglo-Saxon archaeology – particularly in East Anglia – comprised crudely handmade and decorated burial urns, containing small glass beads, rusty iron and the occasional bronze or gilded brooch, it came as a revelation: Beowulf’s tales of feasting and the exchange of precious gifts and rings were not a poet’s fantasy, but represented reality after all.13 Symbolically, the excavation of the ship burial and its contents, which throws so much light on the historical relationship between England and the Continent, was completed literally days before the outbreak of war in

any direct association with contemporary England. The attitude was summed up by the British Museum’s refusal in 1858 to agree to the acquisition of the Rev. Bryan Faussett’s collection of finds from his excavations in Kent and by one of the trustees who remarked that he ‘did not want a heap of Saxon antiquities in the Museum’. In the later 19th century, however, Anglo-Saxon archaeology began to be taken more seriously. Its Victorian pioneers, amongst them Charles Roach Smith and J. M. Kemble, sought to relate the archaeological record to the history of the Anglo-Saxon migration and settlement, as set out by Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. At that date, these documentary sources were believed to represent a basically reliable account of the origins of the settlers and of the chronology of their invasion and expansion. There was an early realisation that typological similarities between objects (particularly brooches and urns) found in

  Rhodes 1990.   See for example Kendrick 1938; Leeds 1913; or Myres 1969. 10   Myres 1977. 11   A Warning to the Curious was first published in 1925, but is most easily accessible in James 1931 (or later editions). In it, an amateur archaeologist finds the third and last of the crowns in a barrow near Aldeburgh, only to upset its ghostly guardian, with dire consequences. 12   According to Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, ch. 22. 13   For an historian’s view of the impact of Sutton Hoo, see Campbell 2000.  

  Rhodes 1990. Faussett’s collection was eventually acquired by Sir Joseph Mayer and donated to Liverpool Museum, where it can be seen today. Sonia assessed the importance of Faussett and Douglas’s work in Kent in laying the basis for the proper study of Anglo-Saxon archaeology in Hawkes 1990. 

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Europe and, after initial conservation and the briefest of inspections, the finds were removed to a disused mine in Wales for safe storage.

burial were Swedish.16 This was the most extreme statement but the British Museum’s 1947 Provisional Guide devoted a chapter to ‘The Swedish Connection’ which suggested that the East Anglian royal family of the Wuffingas was of Swedish origin. The case was set out in detail by Rupert Bruce-Mitford, who had been appointed to lead the British Museum’s team, in a paper in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History in 1949.17 For him, there were three indications of Swedish influence: the use of the rite of boat burial, the fact that (in his belief) the helmet, sword and shield had actually been made in Sweden, and the Swedish influence on the forms and decoration of items, such as the drinking-horns, purse lid and buckle, which were made in England. The latter, which he described as acting ‘like leaven at work in the artistic milieu of the East Anglian court’, demonstrated the particular nature of the link between Anglo-Saxon East Anglia and Scandinavia; for Bruce-Mitford, the close connection between the art-styles of the two areas proved a close connection between the peoples.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the outbreak of World War II, the first account of the find appeared in the March 1940 edition of Antiquity, which was given over to a series of papers by, among others, C.W. Phillips (the excavator), T.D. Kendrick (on the gold ornaments, the jewellery and the hanging bowl) and O.G.S. Crawford (on the coins in the purse).14 It also included H. M. Chadwick’s seminal paper (‘Who Was He?’) which first made the suggestion that the grave had contained Redwald (who died in AD c. 624), despite the initial dating of the coins in the purse to AD 650-660. The various authors, particularly Kendrick, used the established techniques of archaeological analysis to understand the influences visible in the ship and in the various grave goods. Three influences were identified as dominant. The first, typified by the purse lid, buckle and shoulder clasps, was native Anglo-Saxon; the second was British/Celtic and was represented by the hanging bowls and by the whetstone ‘sceptre’ with its four enigmatically carved heads; the third was Scandinavian, specifically Swedish, and was based above all on the use of a ship for burial (closely paralleled by the Swedish sites of Vendel and the then recently excavated Valgärde),15 but also on initial reconstructions of the shattered remains of the helmet and shield.

Under Bruce-Mitford’s leadership, the ‘Swedish Connection’ continued to be a strong element in the British Museum’s evolving interpretation of the Mound 1 ship burial. It was repeated in the 1968 edition of the Sutton Hoo Handbook and in Volume 1 of The Sutton Hoo ShipBurial, which appeared in 1975.18 Outside the Museum, however, the view that there was a special and direct link between East Anglia and Sweden came increasingly to be challenged. Three parallel developments contributed to this change in interpretation.

In early 1940, the authors’ emphasis on the find’s Anglo-Saxon and wider native British links is entirely understandable, at a time when the United Kingdom stood alone against a seemingly unstoppable tide of Nazi German advance. In this context, the Scandinavian connection is also understandable; though Sweden had declared herself neutral, Norway and Denmark had either been conquered by force or were resisting heroically their more powerful neighbour’s tyranny. The interpretation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial as a combination of native British, indigenous Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian influences links it directly to those parts of the Celtic and Germanic worlds that were fighting against German aggression. An heroic burial from the past was interpreted in the light of a contemporary heroic struggle.

The first was that, as the finds were conserved and (in the case of the helmet) painstakingly reconstructed, it became apparent that the shield, sword and the helmet were probably not actually made in Sweden, as BruceMitford had argued, though the helmet and shield, in particular, might show Swedish influence in their form and decoration. Even the boat burial link was not as clear as had originally been suggested. The re-excavation of the Mound 1 ship by the British Museum in 1965-70 drew attention to some interesting differences: the Mound 1 ship, at 27 metres in length, is far larger than the Vendel and Valsgärde boats which are generally c. 8-10 metres.19 In Swedish boat graves, the grave goods are spread throughout the length of the boat, whereas in Mound 1 they are concentrated amidships. Finally, the Swedish graves are typically surrounded by large numbers of sacrificial

The 1940 edition of Antiquity proved very influential on subsequent Sutton Hoo studies, which began in earnest in 1945, when the finds could be returned to the British Museum (to which they had been given by the site’s owner), for conservation, reconstruction and interpretation. In 1946, Herbert Maryon (in charge of reconstructing the shield and helmet) wrote that virtually all the objects in the

  Maryon 1946. A Swedish archaeologist went so far as to argue that the grave was actually that of a marauding Swede who had died in Suffolk: Nerman 1949. 17   Bruce-Mitford 1949. 18   Bruce-Mitford 1975: especially 692-3. 19   During the War, the unbackfilled excavation trench was used for tank training. The plan of the ship was destroyed by bombing and its author, Commander Hutchison, was killed. The 1965-70 excavations were first published in Antiquity, 1968, 36-39 and republished in Bruce-Mitford 1974, as well as in Volume 1 of The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial (see note 18). 16

  Antiquity 14, no. 53, March 1940.   For Vendel, see Stolpe and Arne 1927. For Valsgärde, see Arwidsson 1942 and 1954. 14 15

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Against this changing archaeological, economic and political background, the British Museum’s Sutton Hoo team was slowly making its way through the finds and writing up the report. There was mounting criticism of the delays, but Volume 1 of the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial (covering excavations, background, the ship, dating and inventory) was published in 1975, followed by Volume 2 (arms, armour and regalia) in 1978 and Volume 3 (the Byzantine silver, the hanging bowls and remaining finds) in 1983. As their subjects indicate, the volumes were principally concerned with the analysis and discussion of the individual objects which made up the grave. A projected fourth volume, which would have contained essays of synthesis, had unfortunately to be abandoned for reasons of cost.

animals: Valsgärde 7, for example, was reasonably representative and contained four horses, one cow, a pig, a snowy owl, the leads of several hunting dogs, various joints of pork, beef, lamb, as well as a grouse, a duck, a goose and a pike.20 Much to the disappointment of the 1965-70 excavators, the trench into which the Mound 1 ship had been lowered contained no animals at all. The Swedish connection, in short, began to look less clear-cut than it had in 1940. The second development was that Sutton Hoo increasingly began to attract the attention of German archaeologists, who (in striking contrast to their English counterparts) had always regarded the Anglo-Saxons as part of the wider early medieval Germanic world whose archaeology could not, and should not, be seen in insular isolation. So, for example, Joachim Werner discussed the origins and dating of the Snape ring in 1971, and both Reichstein’s study of crossbow brooches and Böhme’s analysis of the pattern of Germanic settlement in the late Roman Empire were as much concerned with interpreting English finds as they were with continental ones.21 Of direct relevance to the understanding of the wider continental context of Sutton Hoo were Michael Müller-Wille’s 1970 study of boat burial and Hayo Vierk’s (slightly mischievous) 1972 paper. The latter argued that a small fragment of unidentified burnt bone in the Anastasius dish (which had gone missing during the War) demonstrated that the ship burial was actually a cremation.22 The attention of so many distinguished German archaeologists introduced a different, continental perspective to the debate, which gradually and patchily spread to the UK. In 1984, John Hines argued that enduring similarities between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian wrist clasps indicated that contacts between the settlers and their homelands continued after the initial phase of immigration.23 From an English perspective, this was a radical change of view with its implicit assumption that the ‘insular’ view of the Anglo-Saxons was incorrect.

The volumes, in their discussions of the individual objects, tend to reflect the 1940 Antiquity’s and Rupert Bruce-Mitford’s long-established ‘pro-Swedish’ views. Their final appearance triggered a violent reaction against this interpretation. In 1981 David Wilson chose the occasion of a special exhibition and conference in Stockholm, dedicated to the exploration of the links between Sutton Hoo and the Swedish finds, to claim that the parallels between Sweden and Sutton Hoo were no more significant than those between Sutton Hoo and anywhere else in Europe.24 They represented not a special link, but reflected simply one facet of the wide connections enjoyed by Germanic rulers at this time. He was joined by Joachim Werner who, in a 1982 review of Volumes 1 and 2 of the Sutton Hoo publication, accused Bruce-Mitford of being so blinkered by the Scandinavian connection that he had ignored the continental links of Sutton Hoo.25 Among these were the coins from the purse, the great buckle, with its hinged, hollow back, which Werner compared with Burgundian reliquary buckles, and the sword belt set with its use of mushroomshaped garnet cloisons. In this interpretation, the man buried in Sutton Hoo had no special affinity with any particular area, but was simply a member of a northern European Germanic elite, who shared a common culture (with minor regional variations) with his aristocratic colleagues from Norway to Lombardy. The parallel with the way in which leading European politicians were

The final development was not restricted to the archaeological world: Europe was recovering, economically and politically from the Second World War. The Common Market was founded in 1957 and was eventually joined by the UK in 1973. With the coincidental end of the British Empire, the UK’s economic and political interests were increasingly (if often reluctantly) focused on Europe, where West Germany’s remarkable recovery made it the economic heart of the Continent. The partition of Europe between communists and capitalists, and the Cold War, meant that the nations of Western Europe were now united in military alliance. The political and military background that had shaped the initial interpretation of Sutton Hoo was now, increasingly, a distant memory.

  Wilson 1983.   Werner 1982. The review was translated by Sonia and Christopher Hawkes as ‘The Sutton Hoo Ship-burial. Research and publication between 1939 and 1980’, but was never published in England for fear that it might be libellous! Apart from his remarks on the Swedish connection, Werner also accused Bruce-Mitford of purposefully withholding information: ‘Through a tendency to concealment, as one is constrained to say in retrospect, discussion of the great find has not infrequently led to error, by starting while facts were insufficient, or withheld from public knowledge. Withholding statements of plain act, about some pieces of peculiar importance, clearly just for the sake of their value to the final publication, is an unusual proceeding in any nation’s scholarship, especially for a national treasure, and one that has been excavated by someone else’. Werner’s more interesting, and less inflammatory review of Volume 3 appeared in German as Werner 1986 and in translation as Werner 1992. 24 25

  Arwidsson 1954   Werner 1971; Böhme 1974; and Reichstein 1975. 22   Müller-Wille 1970; Vierk 1972. 23   Hines 1984: a doctoral thesis, supervised by Sonia. 20 21

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portraying the European Union during the 1970s and 1980s is clear.

on the exact nature of the relationship between Sutton Hoo and the wider world of early medieval Germanic Europe.30 This cannot last.

Although Bruce-Mitford remained defiantly unrepentant in the face of this storm of criticism, the British Museum’s view changed. The 1986 version of the Handbook (edited by Angela Evans, following Bruce-Mitford’s retirement) contained no chapter on ‘The Swedish Connection’.26 Instead, the possible Swedish links were discussed under the general heading of ‘Sutton Hoo: Poetry and Style’ and the emphasis was on the negative points, such as the differences in boat burial as practised at the Swedish sites of Vendel and Valsgärde, and Sutton Hoo, which are described a ‘fundamental’. The new, Euro view of Sutton Hoo was well summarised by the chapter’s concluding paragraph, which states that ‘Sutton Hoo reflects a melange of fashionable styles that were current in late 6th and early 7th century Europe and Sweden’.

Acknowledgment The figure is reproduced with Martin Carver’s kind permission. Bibliography Arwidsson, G. 1942: Die Gräberfunde von Valsgärde, I, Valsgärde 6. Acta Musei Antiquitatum Septentrionalium Regiae Universitatis Upsaliensis I (Uppsala). Arwidsson, G. 1954: Die Gräberfunde von Valsgärde, II, Valsgärde 8. Acta Musei Antiquitatum Septentrionalium Regiae Universitatis Upsaliensis IV (Uppsala). Böhme, H.W. 1974: Germanische Grabfunde des 4. bis 5. Jahrhunderts zwischen unterer Elbe und Loire: Studien zur Chronologie und Bevölkerungsgeschichte (Munich). Browne, Sir T. 1658: Hydriotaphia or Urne-buriall, or, A Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes Lately Found in Norfolk (London). Bruce-Mitford, R. 1949: The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial: Comments on General Interpretation. Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 1949, 1-78. Bruce-Mitford, R. 1974: Excavations at Sutton Hoo, 1965-9. Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology (London), 170-4. Bruce-Mitford, R. 1975: The Sutton Hoo ShipBurial. Volume. 1 (London). CAMPBELL, J. 2000: The Impact of the Sutton Hoo Discovery on the Study of Anglo-Saxon History. In Campbell, J., The Anglo-Saxon State, (Hambledon/ London), 55-84. Carver, M. 1998: Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? (London). Carver, M. 2005: Sutton Hoo: A Seventh-Century Princely Burial Ground and its Context (London). Crumlin-Pedersen, O. 1991: Bådegrave og Gravebåde. In Andersen, S.H., Lind, B. and

Just as significant numbers of British people, and their politicians, have reacted against the view of Europe as one single state, so archaeologists too have begun to move away from the pan-Germanic interpretation of Sutton Hoo. The evidence for connections with Scandinavia (rather than specifically with Sweden) is undoubtedly stronger than for the rest of Europe, and is epitomised by boat burial. As Müller-Wille showed, boat burial is an almost exclusively Scandinavian/ Baltic and East Anglian phenomenon.27 The Mound 1 ship (and the Snape ship burial) have their closest parallels in Vendel and Valsgärde, but Martin Carver’s masterful re-excavation of Mound 2 demonstrated that the boat had been placed over the top of the grave chamber – a variation only paralleled in a 10th century grave at Hedeby in Schleswig-Holstein – while the logboat burials from Snape are best paralleled by those from Slusegård on the Danish island of Bornholm.28 The National Trust’s Sutton Hoo visitor centre and the accompanying guidebook to the site sum up the current view well: ‘The noble cemeteries of central Sweden […] also reflect ship-burial customs and contain helmets and shields very like those from the Sutton Hoo ship. These Suffolk rulers belonged to an international culture […]. The Kingdom of the East Angles arose as part of a European process […]’.29 At the time of writing, the political debate about the role of the UK in Europe, with its associated debate on the nature of Englishness, has fallen quiet, a testimony not to lack of interest, but to fears of the passion that the debate gives rise to and of the potential damage to all the main UK political parties that might result. Recent publications and writings on Sutton Hoo have tended to adopt a similarly quiet tone

  Martin Carver has recently written that ‘The task of mapping the emergent territories from which northern Europe was built […] has scarcely begun but it is an exciting prospect, and one with relevance to modern Europe’; Carver 2005, 502; see also Carver 2000. The recently excavated Prittlewell (Essex) burial, like Sutton Hoo, attracted widespread popular interest. Also like Sutton Hoo, it contains various objects which derive from, or show influence of the wider Germanic world, but the coverage to date has included no serious discussion of what this means. The focus, instead, has been on answering the question which Chadwick asked of Sutton Hoo in 1940: Who was he? In many ways, and rather depressingly, Anglo-Saxon archaeology has hardly moved since 1939! See, for example, Current Archaeology 190 (February 2004), 430-6. 30

  Evans 1986.   Müller-Wille 1970. 28   Filmer-Sankey and Pestell 2001:199-203. For Slusegård, see CrumlinPedersen 1991. 29   Plunkett 2002:18. 26 27

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Crumlin-Pedersen, O., Slusegårdgravpladsen III: Gravformer og Gravskikke, Bådegravene (Aarhus), 93-263. Evans, A.C. 1986: The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial (London). Filmer-Sankey, W. and Pestell, T. 2001: Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery: Excavations and Surveys 1824-1992. East Anglian Archaeology 95 (Ipswich). Hawkes, S.C. 1990: Bryan Faussett and the Faussett Collection: An Assessment. In Southworth, E. (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: A Reappraisal (Stroud), 1-24. Hines, J. 1984: The Scandinavian Character of Anglian England in the Pre-Viking Period (Oxford). James, M.R. 1931: The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James (London). Kendrick, T. 1938: Anglo-Saxon Art to AD 900 (London). Leeds, E.T. 1913: The Archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Settlements (Oxford). Maryon, H. 1946: The Sutton Hoo Shield. Antiquity 20, 21-30. Müller-Wille, M. 1970: Bestattung im Boot. Studien zu einer nordeuropäischen Grabsitte. Offa 25-26 for 1968-9. Myres, J.N.L 1969: Anglo-Saxon Pottery and the Settlement of England (Oxford). Myres, J.N.L. 1977: A Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Pottery of the Pagan Period (Cambridge). Nerman, B. 1949: Sutton Hoo – en svensk kung – eller hövdinggrav? Forvännen 2-3, 65-9. Plunkett, S. 2002: Sutton Hoo (The National Trust). Pocock, J.G.A.1957: The Ancient Constitution and The Feudal Law: English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge).

Pringle, H. 2006: Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust (London). Reichstein, J. 1975: Die kreuzförmige Fibel: zur Chronologie der späten römischen Kaiserzeit und der Völkerwanderungszeit in Skandinavien, auf dem Kontinent und in England (Neumünster). Rhodes, M. 1990: Faussett Rediscovered: Charles Roach Smith, Joseph Mayer and the Publication of the Inventorium Sepulchrale. In Southworth, E. (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: A Reappraisal (Stroud), 26-64. Sebald, W.G. 1998: The Rings of Saturn (London). Stolpe, H. and Arne, J. 1927: La Nécropole de Vendel (Stockholm). Vierk, H. 1972: Redwalds Asche. Offa 29. Werner, J. 1971: Zur Zeitstellung des Bootgrabes von Snape. In Filip, J. (ed.), Actes du VII Congrès International des Sciences Préhistorique et Protohistorique, Prague 1966. Volume 2 (Prague), 997-8. Werner, J. 1982: Das Schiffsgrab von Sutton Hoo. Germania 60, 193-209. Werner, J. 1986: Nachlese zum Schiffsgrab von Sutton Hoo. Bemerkungen, Überlegungen und Vorschläge. Germania 64, 465-97. Werner, J. 1992: A Review of The Sutton Hoo ShipBurial Volume 3: Some Remarks, Thoughts and Proposals. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 5, 1-24. Wilson, D. 1983: Sweden-England. In Lamm, J.P. and Nordström, H.-Å. (eds), Vendel Period Studies: Transactions of the Boat-Grave Symposium in Stockholm, February 2-3, 1981 (Stockholm), 1636.

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Some Considerations on Religion in Early England James Campbell

Patrick Wormald once said that faced with the heathenism of early England, historians have retreated into ‘collective amnesia’. The force of the accusation has been lessened by Dr Wilson’s good book on Anglo-Saxon heathenism; but even he has not been able to face some of the more important questions, above all because of his anxiety to confine himself to contemporary evidence, so far as possible. I believe that conscientious disregard of arguably relevant evidence, however much earlier or later it may be, limits harmfully the range of possible understandings of Anglo-Saxon paganism (or paganisms). Often such a range of possibility is the most to be hoped for. The generality of the most important questions are partly or largely unanswerable in a fully determinative way.

cannot. He is describing not Anglo-Saxon heathenism, but our knowledge of it. It is our knowledge of the pantheon which is incomplete, our knowledge of the religion as a whole which is woefully weak. A powerful response to such arguments as Professor Brown’s is a most remarkable book by Richard North, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature. Dr North points out that ‘many scholars find it easier to be “sceptical” than observant about heathen gods in Old English literature’. He sees them as fixated by the fear of anachronism. In his book he argues that there are meaningful connections between our earliest and much later information on Germanic religion, and that the religious scene in England c. AD 600 would have been far more coherent and, even, more sophisticated than scholars such as Professor Brown would suggest. Dr North argues for there having been generally accepted fertility religion which formed what he calls the subsoil, as it were a foundation for a fluctuating and variously named pantheon. Importantly, he draws attention to the extent to which traces of what appears at length in Old Norse writings can be found amongst the scattered evidence of early beliefs.

First unanswerable question: what did the heathen AngloSaxons believe? Here the prudent historian does well to retreat into the mist of amnesia. Our earliest account of Germanic religion is that of Tacitus, c. AD 100. Our most comprehensive comes from Old Norse sources from the 13th century and later, especially the works of Snorre Sturluson who was murdered in 1241. Tacitus was to an extent a moral propagandist. Snorre wrote in an intellectual climate affected by Christian and Classical learning. The written sources intermediate between Tacitus and Snorre are fragmentary and all from enemies of paganism. To attempt to produce any coherent account of Anglo-Saxon paganism, drawing on either the Roman or the Old Norse sources is to become the target of cold water, cast by eminent scholars. Evasive diffidence is the best defence.

Some examples of this are as follows. The earliest account, by far, of Weland the Smith appears on the Franks casket which is probably 7th or early 8th century. An unmistakeable scene from the 13th century stories of Thor, that of the god fishing for the world serpent with a bull’s head as bait, appears on a stone cross at Gosforth (Cumbria) which is earlier 10th century, and other scenes from Norse mythology appear on another cross there of similar date. More striking in relationship to present concerns is the earlier and later context of Bede’s crucial account of the conversion of Edwin of Northumbria, when we are told that the pagan temple at Goodmanham was desecrated by the introduction of a weapon there. We can legitimately recall Tacitus’ account of the cult of Nerthus, telling us that arms could not be carried in the presence of the goddess and that the priest who served her had always

It is with the more surprise that one reads some remarks on Anglo-Saxon paganism by Professor G.H. Brown, the author of the best single book on Bede. He writes of ‘the inherent inadequacies of Germanic paganism, an incomplete pantheon, and a woefully weak and drearily fatalistic religion’. If the strictly contemporary sources are abysmally inadequate, and if we are forbidden the Roman and Old Norse sources, how possibly can Professor Brown be certain of the truth of what he says? Answer: he

  North 1997.   North 1997: x.    North 1997: 33-4.    Bailey and Cramp 1988: 109, 102-3.    Colgrave and Mynors 1969: 182-4. 

  Wilson 1992.    Ellis Davidson 1988.    Stanley 2000: 65-6.    Brown 1987: 5. 



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to be unarmed.10 Or we could put beside Bede’s account a late Old Norse story of a temple dedicated to Freyr in Iceland to which weapons could not be admitted, and the visitor who entered carrying a sword, had to forfeit the weapon.11

second book on the measurement of time. There he gives a detailed account of the organisation of the pagan calendar.14 The year consisted of twelve lunar months. In order to keep in line with the solar year, additional months were inserted in certain years. Thus in three of every eight years, numbers three, six and eight, there were not twelve months, but thirteen. There were other refinements. It was a complicated calendar.15 Who, so to speak, ran it and kept things organised around it? It is hard to see who this could be other than a priesthood, and this would have to have been an organised and recognised priesthood.

The general direction of Dr North’s strongly documented case is that early Germanic religion may have had, as one might say, a lot more to it than accounts such as those which Professor Brown suggests, and that something of its true life and force be recovered from the sagas (though of course with numerous reservations). My concern here is not with what can definitively be known, but with what might have been the case. Dr North reminds us that AngloSaxon paganism may have been more sophisticated and more deeply rooted than contemporary references, virtually all cursory and/or hostile, seem to imply.

I now turn to perhaps the most remarkable possibility of those which face us if we look hard enough at AngloSaxon paganism. The most striking contrast in the history of Anglo-Saxon law codes is that between the first two – those of Æthelberht and of Hlothere and Eadric, belonging to the early and mid-7th century on the one hand, and the two codes from near AD 700, those of Wihtred and of Ine, on the other. They seem to belong to different worlds. The first two have no religious content, except in a group of clauses for the protection of ecclesiastical property at the beginning of Æthelberht’s code. More remarkably, they do not contain any reference to physical penalties. Thus Æthelberht, in clause 90, imposes no harsher penalty on a slave who steals than the repayment of double what he took.16 In the two earliest codes everything is on a cash basis. The laws of three or four generations later present a stark contrast. First they have to say a lot about religion. Thus Ine starts off by saying that the servants of God should observe their right rule. Both late 7th century sets of laws dwell on the general enforcement of the rules of Christian life, for example, on baptism and the observance of the Sabbath. Not least, both codes include many physical penalties. Wihtred 10 makes the first reference: a servant who makes a journey on a Sunday and who does not pay six shillings to his lord, shall be flogged.17 The first reference to a death penalty is Wihtred 26: the king shall decide whether a freeman caught in the act of stealing shall be put to death.18 Thereafter, often enough, the crack of the whip is heard and the shadow of the gallows falls. So, contrasts between the first two codes and the two next are strongly apparent. One thing to notice about them is that in Wihtred’s laws 5 and 9 a penalty for entering into an ‘illicit union’ or one for Sabbath breaking goes not to the king or to the church but to the lord.19 Christianity has become a source of secular revenue. The proliferation of physical penalties in the later codes and their absence in the earlier stands out particularly when the penalties for similar offences in the different codes are considered. Thus while Æthelberht 90 imposes on a slave who steals the modest penalty of paying twice the value of the stolen

In the whole of our fairly extensive sources for 7th century England we have only two references to priests, but both are notably important. One is in the account by Bede of Edwin’s conversion, where we are told that one Coifi was the chief priest, primus pontificum, and that at a meeting to discuss the possibility of conversion, he spoke first. Bede, of course, is describing what he thought ought to have happened, not, necessarily, what did happen; but his audience was such that it is highly improbable that he could have invented the notion that there was a chief priest, or that he was of such a status as to have the highest precedence. It was Liebermann who emphasised the significance of the high priest’s speaking first.12 Maybe there is some connection here with the very high status that the archbishops of Canterbury and of York came to enjoy. Bede’s whole story here with its account of how priests were not allowed to carry weapons or ride a stallion suggests, one might also say, an established church. Our other reference is to a chief priest, princeps sacerdotum, this time in Sussex, and we find him very much in action. The bishop and his big ship got stranded. As the South Saxons prepared to go for him, this priest stood on a tumulus and encouraged them. It was a bad move because Wilfrid was not a prelate who travelled without an escort, one of whom killed the priest with a sling-shot. Here we are again told of a chief priest (and we might notice in passing that the tumulus on which he stood could well have been a seaside barrow such as those at Sutton Hoo). The security of our knowledge of pagan priests and temples depends on so limited a handful of references that without Bede one would have to echo Professor Wood on paganism among the continental Germans: ‘little evidence for temples or a priesthood’.13 One major source for Anglo-Saxon paganism and priests is neglected. Yet it seems to tell us a lot. It is in Bede’s

  Jones 1943: 211-3.   Harrison 1976: 3-4. 16   Liebermann 1913: i, 8. 17   Liebermann 1913: i, 8, 13. 18   Liebermann 1913: i, 14. 19   Liebermann 1913: i, 12, 13. 14 15

  Anderson 1938: ch. 40.   Ellis Davidson 1964: 101. 12   Liebermann 1913: 3. 13   Wood 2001: 6. 10 11

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goods, by contrast Wihtred 27 lays down that such a slave may be put to death.20 Æthelberht 5 provides that if one man slays another on the king’s premises, he shall pay 50 shillings compensation, while Ine 6 is far more condign: if anyone fights in the king’s house, he shall forfeit all he owns and it shall be for the king to decide whether he shall be put to death.21

says that pagan temples should be converted to Christian uses; in the other he says that pagan temples should be destroyed.26 Possibly these letters were drafted by different secretaries? Bede gives us famous references to the pagan temple at Goodmanham and to king Redwald’s syncretist establishment holding both a pagan and a Christian altar; he also says that the East Saxons, upon a temporary reversion to paganism, rebuilt their derelict temples.27

It might be thought that this apparently major contrast between the earliest laws and the somewhat later ones represents no more than some quirk of the English evidence. Analysis of the Frankish laws is against this. Physical penalties hardly appear in the earliest Frankish laws, but become more conspicuous in the later ones. In the Pactus Legis Salicae the only references to flogging relate to theft or fornication by a slave.22 One of only two references to hanging is the appearance of a heavy penalty for cutting down a freeman from the gallows without consent.23 A good question is this then: how did this freeman get on the gallows? The other reference to a death penalty in the Salic Laws gives a possible clue and may be helpful in considering England. It says that if someone owes legal compensation and neither he nor his family can meet it, his life is forfeit.24 Probably the peoples concerned were in their pre-Christian times not in the least strangers to the death penalty. But both the Frankish and the English laws strongly suggest that there was a major change, in England a 7th century change, in the way in which the imposition of physical penalties came to be justified and organised.

What then were the physical realities? The tiny handful of Bedan references cannot possibly shed adequate light upon the inevitably complicated scene of cultic topography. Dr Blair has made a good start, but only a start, on identifying possible temple sites.28 A major difficulty here has to be that such a study has almost certainly to be of relict sites because so much of what was major almost certainly lies under existing churches and churchyards. At present the overwhelming weight of our evidence comes not from archaeology, but from place-names, explored in a major pioneering article by Stenton 70 years ago, and more recently by Dr Wilson.29 An important indication is that of the number, almost density, of pagan places of worship at least in some areas. Stenton: ‘for fifty miles on either side of the Thames from Crickdale to Foulness few places are much more than twenty miles from a known centre of pagan worship ... five undoubted places of heathen worship can still be identified within twelve miles from Augustine’s church in Canterbury’.30 This, of course, relates only to pagan establishments toponymically identifiable. Almost certainly there were others. It looks as if one place-nameelement, weoh, indicates a fairly minor cultic site, while hearh stands, generally, for something grander.31 Should one think of a network with many a ‘parish’ weoh and a fair sprinkling of grander hearhs, ‘ministers’, one might dare to say? A particular point made by Stenton is that there are instances in which a place-name ‘temple’ element is linked with a personal name in a way which suggests ownership.32 The possibility of pagan Eigenkirchen is one reminder, among no few, of how many may be the elements in Christian organisation which had pagan roots.

We are warned by eminent voices not to try to use Tacitus to explain the 7th century. At risk of excommunication let us, however timidly, consider a passage in his Germania, chapter 7: ‘capital punishment, imprisonment and even flogging are permitted to nobody but the priests, and are inflicted not merely as punishments or on leaders’ orders, but in obedience to the god whom they believe to rule over battle’. There does certainly seem to be a great contrast between the position of physical punishment in the earlier 7th century laws and the late 7th century laws. It seems dangerous to devise an explanation which does not envisage relevance for Germania chapter 7.25 And if one does, however diffidently, allow Tacitus a look in, one can see why kings could have often been keen on Christianity. Conversion may have brought much more power if it was associated with the transfer of responsibility for major punishment.

The role of major ecclesiastical sites in relation to secular ones has received important attention from Dr Blair. Consider what he says about Thundersfield, Surrey. Thundersfield means Thunor’s open space. Thundersfield appears as a royal property in King Alfred’s will. A royal council met there in the 930s. The place lies in the Weald and was not agriculturally rich or a likely centre of population. The next parish has a name which seems to mean ‘meeting place at a stronghold’. Dr Blair says that this evidence ‘evokes a lost class of central places in Anglo-

In considering the possibility of a widely and variously embodied pagan church system the number and nature of temples obviously matters. Our earliest references come in two letters from Gregory the Great. In one he

  Colgrave and Mynors 1969: 106, 112.   Colgrave and Mynors 1969: 186, 190, 322. 28   Blair 1995. 29   Stenton 1970: 281-97; Wilson 1992: 5-21. 30   Stenton 1970: 296-7. 31   Wilson 1992: 6-11. 32   Stenton 1970: 290-1. 26

  Liebermann 1913: i, 8, 14. 21   Liebermann 1913: i, 3, 91. 22   Pactus Legis Salicae: 12/1, 25/6, 7, 40; Eckhardt 1962. 23   Pactus Legis Salicae: 41/11a; Eckhardt 1962. 24   Pactus Legis Salicae: 158/6; Eckhardt 1962. 25   Anderson 1938: ch. 7. 20

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every single one.38 The antiquity of church scot, which may be this tributum goes back at least as far as the laws of Ine.39 Now it might of course be that ecclesiasts, supported by powerful kings, could institute systems of taxation or add an ecclesiastical share to existing royal taxation which already existed for the benefit of pagan churches. Late references to pagan temple taxes in Scandinavia have been devalued as anachronistic echoes of Christian practice but Icelandic evidence suggests that they may, in fact, have existed.40 There may be those who regard it as inappropriate to use such expressions as ‘systems of taxation’ in a 7th century context; but if so they have to explain away the consistent use of what appear to be quite detailed hidage assessments in the earliest charters.

Saxon England: which were religious rather than political. The pattern by which a mid-Saxon regio would have two centres, a royal vill and a minster church, may perpetuate pre-Christian arrangements’.33 Dr Blair’s mild expression is illuminating on possibilities. What he suggests, with some diffidence, is that important elements in the pattern of Christian organisation, as we try to apprehend it in, let us say, the 8th century need not have represented a de novo structure, replacing an etiolated paganism; but, rather, a Christianised version of pagan structure. Let us come to these matters from another angle. It is this. The possibility of the private ownership of temples raises a larger question: that of the economics of religion. Richard Fletcher has written of the ‘welcome candour’ of a passage in Altfrid’s Life of Liudger. Missionary journeys were made to ‘smash the pagan shrines of the Frisians. “They brought back great quantities of treasure which they found in the shrines”’, according to Altfrid’s account .34 This is a major reminder of the possibility of temples containing great treasures. When the Flateyjahrbók speaks of Olaf Tryggvason visiting a temple where there was an idol of Thor ‘of enormous size and worked all over in gold and silver’ it makes one wonder whether the gold and silver plated life-sized statues of late Anglo-Saxon England may not have had their earlier pagan counterparts.35 In short, it is a fair question as to how far the conversion of England was accompanied by a dissolution of the temples. Of course while there were many in the Christian church who were as keen on treasures as any pagan priest, there were quite powerful figures who despised them. If pagan temples, or some pagan temples, had rich goods; if some kings were anxious to seize these; then clerics sharing the views of Aidan or Bede, could well have been glad to let the treasures go.36

The suggestions put forward in this paper (for much of which I make no claim for originality) are these: first, that there was a powerful, and to an extent hierarchically organised, pagan priesthood. Second, that an indication of the importance of priests comes in more ways than one, but in particular, in Bede’s account of events at the court of King Edwin, and in his account of the complications of the Anglo-Saxon calendar. Third, that there was an extensive range of cult centres, large and small, and that their distribution and functions may in some general sense have corresponded to what came about in Christian times. Fourth, that until conversion made its effects felt, it was priestly, not secular authorities who were responsible for the imposition of physical penalties. Fifth, that pagan priests and temples could have been endowed in one or all of three ways: by owning rich treasure, by landed endowment, and by the right to tax. Suppose these suggestions hold water. What would the implications be for our view of the conversion of England? Well, first, that a key element could have been the conversion of priests. In Ireland it is common scholarly ground that there were probably significant elements of continuity between the class of druids, poets and lawyers, and the Christian church. It is not absurd, though it may be wild, to suggest that Bede may have known so much about the intricacies of the pagan calendar because he could have come from a priestly family. Two, that the economic aspects of the conversion may have been exceedingly important in more directions than one. If there was a Dissolution of the Temples, then there may have been a strong motive for men in power to convert and to impose conversion; as Alcuin thought Edwin had done, partly by using ‘gifts and threats’.41 If the fines for the infraction of ecclesiastical regulations went to lords, they could have seen something to be said for the introduction of such regulations. If the introduction and dominance of the Christian church removed control over physical punishments from the pagan priesthood and put them in the hands of the secular

The question of landed endowment, of course, arises. Were the vast grants of lands to early churches sometimes of hundreds of hides, really made from the property of the kings concerned, or did they represent the redirection of landed possessions from one god to another? Thus when Caedwalla made a great grant for a monastery, and made it at a place whose name indicates, so Stenton says, that it ‘must recently have been a tribal heathen sanctuary’ was he possibly giving away not estates of his own, but rather the endowment of the said sanctuary.37 A similar possibility arises in relation to church dues. A well-known passage in Bede’s Letter to Egbert says in denouncing the negligence of certain bishops that there were remote villages which although they had never enjoyed the presence of a bishop still paid tributum to him,

  Blair 1991: 19-20.   Fletcher 1997: 218. 35   Ellis Davidson 1964: 75-6; Dodwell 1982: 211. 36   Colgrave and Mynors 1969: 226. 37   Stenton 1970: 288-9. 33

  Plummer 1896: i, 410-1.   Clause 4; Liebermann 1913: i, 90. 40   Sawyer and Sawyer 1993: 105; Bycock 1993: 83-4, 210-1. 41   Fletcher 1997: 220.

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Fig. 1. Paysans dansants, Frans van Momper, c. 1650. Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, inv. no. 6046. Photograph courtesy of the museum.

power or powers, then conversion brought about in a fairly short time a governmental revolution. The organisation and distribution of pagan shrines may not have been so very different from that of Christian churches. Here the association of royal and religious sites could have a special significance.

Some of the questions in hand are helpfully illustrated by a picture hanging in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, by Frans van Momper (1603-1660) (Fig. 1). The museum entitles it Paysans dansants but, plainly, there is a lot more to it than peasants dancing and it suggests things about the nature of pagan religion and its relation to political power, worth dwelling on a little. We have here a barrow, surely a burial mound, on top of it a gallows, with a dead man hanging from it. Beside it is a very ancient tree, round which a number of peasants are dancing.

None of these things is demonstrable. That for which there is the most suggestive evidence is that for a change in the control of punishment; though this seems to be seldom, if at all, mentioned in accounts of 7th century England. It is indeed justifiable to question all that I have suggested; for the evidence is notably anorexic. True. But one must avoid a confusion prevalent in Dark Age studies. It is that between arguments from the silence of evidence and those from the absence of evidence. It is one thing to say ‘there is no evidence for such and such’ when there are sources which would have mentioned it had it existed. It is an entirely different thing to say ‘there is no evidence for such and such’ when the evidence is nearly blank for very many aspects of the period concerned. In periods where the evidence is too often near blank, willingness to entertain a range of possibilities is an intellectual necessity. And thus I would defend the present observations.

Does the 17th century representation (or, as may be, reconstruction) do anything to help an attempt to imagine the lost world of Anglo-Saxon paganism? It may well. First, it is interesting to consider how this picture relates to the discoveries at Sutton Hoo. Conspicuous is the hanging man on top of the barrow. Traces of an apparent gallows have been found on Sutton Hoo and the remains of executed people some maybe as old as the 7th century.42 We do not know that there was a gallows   Carver 1998: 66, 73-6, 90-1, 137-44. Professor Martin Carver has kindly informed me that the probable gallows has been carbon dated to the 8th century. 42

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from paganism to Christianity. This is the transformation with which the speculations of this paper are concerned. Dogmatism is out of place, but to quote Milton, there is something interesting about trying to ‘make the darkness visible’.

on top of mound one, or any other of the barrows there. But the graves of what appear to be sacrificial victims have been found and at least in later centuries this was a known execution site. There is no doubt that in Norse mythology hanging had a cultic significance, strongly connected with Odin and sacrifice to Odin and there are references to sacrificial hanging from the 11th century and earlier.43 Whatever doubts are shared about the use of very early or very late evidence it is worth setting side by side this 17th century picture, what Norse mythology says about Odin and hanging, what Tacitus says about priests and physical punishments, and the apparently great 17th century shifts in the emphasis in English law codes. I would not dare to maintain that one learns anything definite by such exercises, but one does gain an apprehension of possibilities, maybe even a glimpse of distant realities, otherwise unobtainable.

Bibliography ANDERSON, J.G.C. (ed.) 1938: Cormeli Taciti De Origine et Situ Germanorum (Oxford). BAILEY, R.N. and CRAMP, R. 1988: The British Academy Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, II, Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands (Oxford). BLAIR, J. 1991: Early Medieval Surrey: Landholding, Church and Settlements (Stroud). BLAIR, J. 1994: Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Stroud). BLAIR, J. 1995: Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines and their Prototypes, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 8, 1-28. BROWN, G.H. 1987: Bede and the Venerable (Boston). BYCOCK, J.L. 1993: Medieval Iceland. Society, Sagas and Power (Enfield Lock). CARVER, M.O.C. 1988: Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings (London). COLGRAVE, B. and MYNORS, R.A.B. (eds) 1969: Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford). DODWELL, C.R. 1982: Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (Manchester). ECKHARDT, F. (ed.) 1962: Pactus Legis Salicae, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Legum, Sectio I. Volume 4, part 1 (Hanover). ELLIS DAVIDSON, H.R. 1964: Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Harmondsworth). ELLIS DAVIDSON, H.R. 1988: Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe (Manchester). FLETCHER, R.A. 1997: The Conversion of Europe from Paganism to Christianity 371-1386 A.D. (London). HARRISON, K. 1976: The Framework of Anglo-Saxon History (Cambridge). JONES, C.W. (ed.) 1943: Bedae Opera de Temporibus (Cambridge, Mass.). LIEBERMANN, F. 1913: The National Assembly in the Anglo-Saxon Period (Halle). NORTH, R. 1997: Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge). PLUMMER, C. 1896: Baedae Opera Historica. 2 Volumes (Oxford). SAWYER, B. and SAWYER P. 1993: Medieval Scandinavia from Conversion to Reformation circa 800-1500 (Minneapolis/London). STANLEY, E.G. 2000: Imagining the Anglo-Saxon Past: The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism and AngloSaxon Trial by Jury (Woodbridge). STENTON, F.M. 1970: Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England. Edited by D.M. Stenton (Oxford).

Let us conclude, by briefly considering another element in this picture, that is to say the ancient tree round which the peasants are playing ring-a-ring of roses. Tree veneration, maybe tree worship, was important in Anglo-Saxon England. When one looks at this extraordinary picture, one is reminded that excavation has discovered undated remains of trees one or more of which could have been, but cannot be proved to have been, of cultic significance.44 In short, van Momper’s painting reminds one of the role of such burial places as Sutton Hoo as cult sites and leads to consideration of the relationship between pagan burial sites and later churches. There came to be a Christian church in close proximity to the well-known ‘princely’ burial at Taplow. How many Taplows were there? Here one might spare a thought for an extraordinary place with a rather ordinary name, Bampton, Oxfordshire. Bampton has been closely studied by Dr Blair. It represents a type-site for the creation of parishes. It was undoubtedly the site of a major minster, and the burial place of an obscure saint. It retained a quasi-collegiate status even into the 19th century. At various stages from the late Anglo-Saxon period parts of Bampton’s once extensive area of ecclesiastical authority split off to form separate parishes, not all with complete independence from the mother church. The name of Bampton has special interest. The ‘Bam’ is ‘beam’; the Old English for a tree, a beam, or a pillar. Dr Blair by most ingenious argument has determined the likely former site of the tree, beam, or pillar which gave its name to this significant place and its attendant hundred.45 It is a fair guess that Bampton’s importance as a central religious place goes back to the pagan period and is related to the tree (or whatever) which gives the place its name. Here we have just a flickering ray of light on the process of transformation   For the sacral significance of punishment and, in particular, of hanging, see von Amira 1922: esp. 178-235; Ström 1942: esp. 115-61; Ellis Davidson 1964: 51-2. 44   Carver 1998: 94. 45   Blair 1994: 63-4. 43

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STRÖM, C.J. 1942: On the Sacral Origin of the Germanic Death Penalties, Kungl Vitterhets Historic Och Aantikvitets Akademiens Handlingar, Del. 52 (Stockholm). VON AMIRA, K. 1922: Die germanischen Todesstrafen. Untersuchungen zur Rechts- und Religionsgeschichte (Munich).

WILSON, D. 1992: Anglo Saxon Paganism (London/New York). WOOD, I. 2001: The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe 400-1050 (Harlow).

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Edgar’s Lost Grant of Exton, Hampshire1 Martin Biddle

This note on a lost Anglo-Saxon charter relating to land at Exton is offered in Sonia’s memory as to one who loved Hampshire and Wessex and devoted a great part of her scholarly life to the prehistory and early medieval society of central southern England.

bridges, walles) by King Edgar An. 960 Edgar Rex totius Albionis.

The charter is not recorded again at Winchester after 1643 and it has always seemed that it was probably destroyed in the aftermath of the second raid on the muniment house in October 1645 when, as Chase recorded, charters were burnt or thrown in the river, ‘divers large parchments being made kytes withall to flie in the aire’. The tracing of the pedigree of the Winton Domesday showed, however, that the charter must have passed into the hands of Dean Young between 1643 and 1645. It descended together with the Domesday in a large trunkful of the dean’s papers to his grand-daughter and then to her nephew, John Bailey, rector of South Cadbury, Somerset, who discovered it in 1739 and in a letter to the antiquary, Browne Willis, on 11 September that year, wrote:

Exton lies about 9.5 miles (15 km) across the chalk downs to the southeast of Winchester, in the valley of the River Meon (NGR SU 612210). There was an Anglo-Saxon settlement there from at least the 6th century. In December 1642 the muniment house of Winchester Cathedral was ransacked by Parliamentary troops. Four months later in April 1643 the chapter clerk and registrar of the cathedral, John Chase, drew up a list of the documents he had rescued after the raid. The entries include Edgari Carta donacionis maneri de Exton ecclesiae Winton.

I am pleas’d with a very Solemn Charter of K. Edgar of his donation of the Manor of Exton in Hampshire ... to his niece Alwara who by her request was to enjoy it for life and afterwards leave it ... familiae veteris Monasterii in Wentana Civitate. It is thus attested; – X Ego Edgar Rex Indeclinabiliter Concessi. X Ego Dunstan Archiepūs cum Sigillo Scē Crucis Roboravi. & c.

Edgar’s charter has been known until now only from this reference, but there are three other accounts with additional information. On 26 November 1636 John Young (dean of Winchester from 1616 until the expulsion of the cathedral body in 1645) noted in his diary:

Browne Willis seems to have written back, asking for more information about Dean Young.

... I find in a faire deed in our muniment house, that Exton was given to Wera a noble woman pro amabili obsequio, and at her request efter her life to our church for euer, and so freed from all payments (except for expeditions,

After an interval Bailey replied on 3 July 1740 in a long letter and again mentioned the Exton charter, as if he had forgotten describing it before:

   I am much indebted to the late Dr Olof von Feilitzen, to the late Professor Henry Loyn, to Professor Peter Sawyer, and to Professor Simon Keynes for reading earlier versions of this article and for their comments. They must in no way be held responsible for the conclusions reached.    Five brooches found by metal-detectorists and recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme suggest a cemetery and/or settlement of the 4th/5th to 6th/7th centuries on the lower slopes of the west side of the Meon Valley to the northwest of the present village of Exton (Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle 2007: 199). A 7th-century inhumation burial of so-called ‘Final phase’ type with gold pendants and a chain was found on the high ground of Preshaw Down, 3 km further to the northwest in 1870 (Hawkes with Grainger 2003: 204, no. 39, with further references).    ‘A charter of Edgar about the donation of the manor of Exton to the church of Winchester’; Stephens and Madge 1897: 64, no. 23.    Finberg 102; Sawyer 1815. The charter is not mentioned by Birch 1893 (hereafter CS).

The Manor of Exton, as appears by a Charter of Kg. Edgars, wch I can likewise send you, was given by him to his Cousin Alware, at her request, and after her death given by the said king – familie veteris monasterii in Wentana civitate.   Goodman 1928: 122. For Dean Young (1585-1654), see now ODNB.   Stephens and Madge 1897: 57. The date of the second raid was 1645 not 1646, although the latter appears several times in Chase’s notes.    Society of Antiquaries of London, Antiquaries’ Common Place Book, MS. 264, f. 33 (pencil foliation). For Browne Willis, see now ODNB.    Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Willis 95, f. 299v. The signature is missing, but the address at the top of the letter and the family relationships described show that the writer was John Bailey.  

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The discrepancies between this and Bailey’s first and more precise description suggest that he was writing from memory, although the use of ‘cousin’ instead of ‘niece’ could reflect an ambiguity in the original Latin which Bailey was recalling as he wrote (see below).

late 13th century she appears in a list of the founders and benefactors of the cathedral church and convent: Alwara nobilis [dedit] pro anima Leowyni viri sui Alwerestoke Extone et Wydehay.16 All three estates were in the hands of the community before the conquest and the reliability of the tradition regarding Exton is supported by the charter under discussion. The use of the adjective nobilis in the 13th century compares with the ‘noble’ of Young’s account and suggests that this word was originally in the charter. The phrase pro amabili obsequio is presumably also a direct quotation.17

The subsequent history of the charter and its present whereabouts, if it has survived, are unknown. Equally obscure are the steps by which the Winton Domesday left Bailey’s possession to emerge in 1756 in the hands of the antiquary and collector, James West. These four accounts allow some discussion of the charter. It was clearly a single-sheet copy or purported original and it seems probable that John Chase’s entry provides the text of his own endorsement which is in turn echoed in the opening of Bailey’s first description.10

The grant to Alwara need not imply that the estate had reverted to the crown at some date between 940, when it was granted by Edmund to Æthelgeard,18 and 960 when by the charter under discussion Edgar granted it free of all but the three common dues to Alwara with reversion, at her request, familiae veteris monasterii in Wentana civitate.19 It may mean only that she had acquired Exton some time between these dates, either directly from Æthelgeard or from someone else, and had obtained a new charter from the king.

Young’s note suggests that the charter was dated specifically to AD 960 and that Edgar’s title was rex totius Albionis. That this was the royal style in the dispositive clause can be inferred from Bailey’s account of the attestations where Edgar was simply styled rex. There is nothing in these styles nor in the attestations as we have them to cast doubt on the authenticity of the charter11 – Dunstan was translated from London to Canterbury in 95912 – but the evidence is too incomplete for certainty. As far as they go, the details we have suggest that the Exton charter was similar to other grants made to laymen during Edgar’s reign.13

John Young held the lease of the manor from the Dean and Chapter until 1642 when it was made over to his son James and eventually passed to his younger son John.20 It was probably this interest which led the dean to acquire the charter and thus to ensure its survival in his family for at least another century. II

Were, Alwara, and Alware are presumably forms of the OE feminine personal name Ælfwaru.14 Bailey provides the information, presumably from the charter, that she was Edgar’s ‘niece’ or ‘cousin’, and she may perhaps be identified with Ælfwaru, the sister of Ælfgifu.15 In the

In her will, datable between 966 (perhaps 967) and 975, Ælfgifu, a kinswoman of Edgar, granted to her sister Ælfwaru, in common with Ælfweard and Æthelweard who were probably her brothers, estates at Mongewell (Oxfordshire) and Berkhampstead (Hertfordshire).21

  Biddle 1976: 1-3.   See the remarks of Stephens and Madge 1897: xxx, on surviving Winchester charters endorsed in Chase’s hand with a phrase corresponding to that entered in his notes (and cf. their pp. 61 (nos. 7, 8), 62 (no. 10), 63 (nos. 18, 20, 21). The documents are as follows: SM 7, CS 620, Sawyer 376, BM Facs. iv. 10 SM 8, CS 677, Sawyer 416, BM Facs.iii. 3 SM 10, CS 1003, Sawyer 649, OS Facs. ii. Winchester 2 SM 18, CS 1072, Sawyer 697, BM Facs. iv. 11 SM 20, CS 1176, Sawyer 738, BM Facs. iii. 27 SM 21, CS 1312, Sawyer 801, BM Facs. iii. 31 For comment on CS 677 and CS 1003, and on the other charters endorsed by Chase, see also Chaplais 1965, 57 and n. 11   The royal style and the subscriptions are paralleled (but with signo for sigillo) in an original Winchester charter dated 961 (CS 1072, cf. Sawyer 697). The use of sigillum in this sense is common in charters of the period. 12   For Dunstan, see now ODNB (Nicholas Brooks) and BEASE (Michael Lapidge). Dunstan attests one charter in 960 as episcopus, but four others as archiepiscopus, possibly after his return from Rome with his pallium late in the year; Whitelock 1973: 237-40. 13   E.g. CS 1072, 1093, 1104, and 1217 (Sawyer 697, 705, 721, and 763). 14   Olof von Feilitzen took the view that ‘formally Alwara goes better with Ælfwaru than with Æðelwaru (although the latter is a formally possible source of the form)’: letter of 25 May 1975 to the writer. Ælfwaru is also perhaps the more common name, with four occurrences, all in the late 10th century, given in Searle 1897, s.n. 15   For this suggestion, which I owe to Dr von Feilitzen, see below. 

10

  ‘The noble lady Alwara [gave to the cathedral church and convent] for the soul of Leofwine, her husband, [the manors of] Alverstoke, Exton, and Woodhay [East Woodhay, Hants]’; Deedes 1924: 610. A variant form of the list was copied by Leland (1770: 430; cf. Leland 1907: 273 ‘Alwarestok’). Since neither of the extracts from the charter mention Alwara’s husband, this 13th-century note may have been derived at least in part from another source, perhaps a will. 17   This phrase is found in a charter of Eadwig to his thegn Eadric in the form ob illius amabile obsequium (CS 996, Sawyer 665). Cf. the phrase pro obsequio eius devotissimo used three times in Edgar’s charters with reference to women (CS 1176, 1189, and 1218, cf. Sawyer 738, 737, and 762, respectively) and on at least eighteen occasions with reference to men (e.g. CS 1075, Sawyer 698).Variants include ob eius fidele obsequium (CS 1076, Sawyer 695), pro eius benivolo obsequio (CS 1138, Sawyer 730), and pro fideli eius obsequela (CS 1259, Sawyer 775). 18   CS 758; Sawyer 463; Finberg 58. The bounds are discussed by Grundy 1924: 109-15. 19   This phrase does not seem to occur in Winchester charters of Edgar’s reign. For other grants made by Edgar with reversion to Old Minster, see CS 1054 (Sawyer 683) and CS 1077 (Sawyer 693). 20   Goodman 1928: 36-7, 40-1, 101, 149, 153. The dean’s and his descendants’ interest in Exton is set out in John Bailey’s letters of 11 Sept. 1739 and 3 July 1740, for which see above, notes 7 and 8. 21   Whitelock 1930: 20-3 (no. VIII), 118-21. 16

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some less precise word such as consobrina, indicating a general kinship not necessarily of the second degree.28

The Alwara of the Exton charter of 960 can perhaps be identified with this Ælfwaru, since i. the dates agree

Even in this latter sense the Exton charter provides some additional information on two related genealogical problems. In 958 King Eadwig was compelled to divorce his wife Ælfgifu ‘on grounds of consanguinity’.29 Dorothy Whitelock, in conjecturing that this Ælfgifu was the testatrix of the will of 966 (?967) x 975 who was herself a kinswoman of Edgar (and hence of his brother Eadwig), noted that Ælfgifu and Eadwig shared the same greatgreat-grandfather.30 This would be a relationship of the fourth degree and forbidden according to the teaching of the church from the first half of the 9th century.31 It was thus perhaps a sufficient pretext for Archbishop Oda and Bishop Dunstan first to oppose and eventually on political grounds to terminate Eadwig’s marriage. The Exton charter may, however, have implied that the relationship between Eadwig and Ælfgifu was closer.32 Wider consideration of their family history may tend to support this view.

ii. Alwara granted estates in Hampshire to Old Minster, while Ælfgifu in her will left various estates and other bequests to Old Minster, New Minster, and to Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, directing that her body should be buried in Old Minster iii. Alwara is said to be the ‘niece’ or ‘cousin’ of King Edgar and is seemingly styled nobilis, while Ælfwaru as the sister of Æthelgifu is also a kinswoman of Edgar and of royal descent.22 The identification of Alwara with Ælfwaru, if correct, supports the view that Ælfwaru rather than Æðelwaru is the original form from which Alwara derives. This in turn affects the etymology of the Hampshire place-name Alverstoke. The 13th century spelling Alwerestoke,23 shows that the first element of this name, which is aet Stoce 948 (first recorded in the 12th century)24 and Alwarestoch 1086 (Domesday Book), must have been Ælfwaru (or theoretically Æðelwaru), not Ælf- or Æðelweard as Ekwall suggested, basing his etymology on the late isolated form Alvardstok (1316), which is due to association with the masculine Ælfweard.25 If the first element of Alverstoke does refer to Alwara, this is an example not only of an identifiable owner’s name being added to the simplex stoc, ‘secondary settlement’,26 but also of place-name being changed and fixed by the granting of an estate to a great church.27

Whatever can be deduced about Ælfgifu from her relationship to Ælfwaru/Alwara must also be true of their brother Æthelweard, who has been identified with Æthelweard the chronicler and future ealdorman.33 Æthelweard recorded that he and Matilda, abbess of Essen (to whom he addressed his chronicle), were the great-greatgreat-grandchildren of King Æthelwulf (king of Wessex 839-58).34 The descent from Æthelwulf to Edgar, Eadwig, Matilda, and Æthelweard shows that the generation of Matilda and Æthelweard followed that of Edgar and Eadwig (Table 1). Ælfwaru/Alwara, if she was the sister of Æthelweard the chronicler, can only in a general sense have been cousin to Edgar, but she could perhaps have been his niece. This is what Bailey claimed in his letter of 1739 describing the Exton charter. If this was so, Ælfgifu in marrying Eadwig married her uncle, ample theological grounds for the hostility of Oda and Dunstan towards their marriage.

III The tentative identification of Alwara/Ælfwaru of the Exton charter with Ælfwaru, the sister of Ælfgifu, implies that Ælfgifu, like Alwara, was herself a ‘niece’ or ‘cousin’ of King Edgar. If, moreover, the Ælfweard and Æthelweard mentioned in Ælfgifu’s will were brothers of herself and of Alwara/Ælfwaru, they would have been Edgar’s ‘nephews’ or ‘cousins’. It is particularly unfortunate that Bailey should have described Alwara as Edgar’s ‘niece’ in his first letter and as Edgar’s ‘cousin’ in his second. One explanation, given Bailey’s other variations in the brief account of the charter given in his second letter, is that he was writing from memory and simply made a mistake: the word used might perhaps have been neptis (or later Latin nepta), or

  For the medieval method of computing degrees of relationship, see Bouchard 1981: 269-71 and fig. 1, with further references. 29   Plummer 1892: i, 113 (s.a. 958D); cf. Plummer 1899: ii, 151. For Eadwig, see now ODNB (Simon Keynes) and BEASE (Sean Miller), and for Ælfgifu, ODNB (Pauline Stafford). 30   Whitelock 1930: 118-9. Professor Whitelock implied that their common ancestor was King Æthelred I, elder brother of Alfred, but their great-greatgrandfather was surely King Æthelwulf, father of Æthelred and Alfred: see Stafford 1981: 15. 31   Bouchard 1981: 269-71. 32   From the genealogies as currently understood it is difficult to see how Ælfgifu could in a strict sense be either the ‘niece’ or the ‘cousin’ of Eadwig: Stafford 1981: 8-9, 11. Robertson (1872: 201, n. 1) suggested that if Ælfgifu’s mother Æthelgifu had been Eadwig’s foster-mother, a marriage between her daughter and her foster-son would have been considered inadmissible (cf. ODNB, s.n. Ælfgifu). This may be so, but Edgar’s description of Ælfgifu as mihi affinitali mundialis cruoris conjuncta (CS 1176, Sawyer 738) implies consanguinity. A printer’s error in Stafford (1981: 9) should be noted: it was Eadwig not Ælfgifu who was Edmund’s child. 33   Whitelock 1930: 119,145. For Æthelweard, see now ODNB (Patrick Wormald), and BEASE (Sean Miller). 34   Campbell 1962: 1-2, cf. pp. xii-xvi. 28

  Whitelock 1930: 118, with reference to CS 1176 and CS 1189 (Sawyer 738 and 737, respectively). 23   See above, and note 16. 24   CS 865 (Sawyer 532). The bounds show that this is Alverstoke, although in the charter the estate is described simply as æt Stoce. 25   Ekwall 1960, s.n. I am grateful to Dr von Feilitzen for his comments on this name. Note that the Winchester street-name Alwarnestret must contain Æðelwaru, as shown by the form Aylwarestret 1279 (Biddle 1976: 233). 26   Smith 1956: ii, 154-5. 27   I owe this point to Professor Peter Sawyer. 22

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Table 1: The descent of Kings Eadwig and Edgar, Æthelweard the chronicler,* and Matilda, abbess of Essen,† from King Æthelwulf of Wessex Relationship to King Æthelwulf (d. 958)

Eadwig and Edgar’s line

Æthelweard’s line

Matilda’s line

Son

Alfred (d. 899)

Æthelred I (d. 871)

Alfred

Grandson

Edward the Elder (d .924)

?Æthelwold (d. 902)

Edward the Elder

Great Grandson/daughter

Edmund (d. 946)

?

Eadgyth (d. 946)

Great-great grandson

Eadwig (d. 959) ? Edgar (d.975)

Liudolf (d. 957) duke of Schwaben

Great-great-great grandson/daughter

Edward the Martyr (978) Æthelred II (d. 1016)

Matilda (d. 1011)

Æthelweard (d. c.1002)

*For the descent of Æthelweard from Æthelwulf and Æthelred, see Campbell 1962: 1-2 (Prologue) and 38 (Bk. iv, Ch. 2). The possibility that Æthelweard’s great grandfather was Æthelwold, King Æthelred’s younger son, was originally suggested by Stevenson 1854: ii. 2, pp. viii, xi; cf. Whitbread 1959: 586, n. 7. Æthelwold was killed at the battle of the Holme late in 902: Whitelock 1961: s.a. 903, p. 59, n. 11. † For the descent of Matilda, see Leyser 1979, genealogical table following p. 91.

OS Facs.

This is further than the evidence can safely go. Alwara/ Ælfwaru of the Exton charter cannot be securely identified with Ælfwaru sister of Ælfgifu, Eadwig’s queen. Bailey’s confused description of Alwara/Ælfwaru as either ‘niece’ or ‘cousin’ of Edgar, perhaps over-translating inconsistently what was actually a much vaguer expression, adds further uncertainty. Yet this discussion does perhaps emphasise the value of tracking down and identifying even the skimpiest references to a lost Anglo-Saxon charter. An antiquarian transcript or at least further details of the Exton charter may yet be found. In 1740 Bailey offered to send the charter to Browne Willis. Whether or not he did so, some copy may have been made which will eventually emerge.

Sawyer

Bibliography BIDDLE, M. (ed.) 1976: Winchester in the Early Middle Ages: An Edition and Discussion of the Winton Domesday, Winchester Studies 1 (Oxford). BIDDLE, M. and KJØLBYE-BIDDLE, B. 2007: Winchester: From Venta to Wintancæstir. In L. Gilmour (ed.), Pagans and Christians: Antiquity to the Middle Ages: Essays for Martin Henig (Oxford), 189-214. BOUCHARD, C.B. 1981: Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. Speculum 56, 268-87. CAMPBELL, A. (ed.) 1962: The Chronicle of Æthelweard (London). CHAPLAIS, P. 1965: The Origin and Authenticity of the Royal Anglo-Saxon Diploma. Journal of the Society of Archivists 3.2, 48-61. DEEDES, C. (ed.) 1924: Registrum Johannis de Pontissara episcopi Wyntoniensis (Oxford).

Abbreviations BEASE BM Facs. CS



Finberg ODNB

W. Basevi Sanders (ed.), Facsimiles of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts Photozincographed ... by the Ordnance Survey (Southampton, 1878-84) P.H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters. An Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968); revised edn. by S.E. Kelly, preprint, July 1994

M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes and D. Scragg (eds), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1999) E.A. Bond (ed.), Facsimiles of Ancient Charters in the British Museum. 4 Volumes (London, 1873-8) W. de G. Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum (London, 1893) H.P.R. Finberg, The Early Charters of Wessex (Leicester, 1964) C. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 60 Volumes (Oxford, 2004) 78

Martin Biddle : Edgar’s Lost Grant of Exton, Hants

EKWALL, E. 1960: Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. 4th edition (Oxford). GOODMAN, F.R. (ed.) 1928: The Diary of John Young S.T.P. (London). GRUNDY, G.B. 1924: The Saxon Land Charters of Hampshire with Notes on Place and Field Names. Archaeological Journal 81, 31-126. HAWKES, S.C. with GRAINGER, G. 2003: The AngloSaxon Cemetery at Worthy Park, Kingsworthy, near Winchester, Hampshire (Oxford). LELAND, J. 1770: De rebus britannicis collectanea, i, part 2. Edited by Th. Hearne. 2nd edition (Oxford). LELAND, J. 1907: Itinerary. Edited by L. Toulmin Smith. 5 Volumes (London). LEYSER, K.J. 1979: Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society (Bloomington and London). PLUMMER, Ch. (ed.) 1892: Two of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles Parallel. I. Text (Oxford, 1892). PLUMMER, Ch. (ed.) 1899: Two of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles Parallel. II. Introduction, Notes, and Index (Oxford). ROBERTSON, E.W. 1872: Historical Essays in Connexion with the Land, the Church, etc. (Edinburgh).

SEARLE, W.G. 1897: Onomasticon anglo-saxonicum: A List of Anglo-Saxon Proper Names from the Time of Beda to that of King John (Cambridge). SMITH, A.H. 1956: English Place-Name Elements. 2 Volumes (Cambridge). STAFFORD, P. 1981: The King’s Wife in Wessex 8001066. Past and Present 91, 3-27. STEPHENS, W.R.W. and Madge, F.T. (eds) 1897: Documents Relating to the History of the Cathedral Church of Winchester in the Seventeenth Century (London/Winchester). STEVENSON, J. 1854: The Church Historians of England. 2 Volumes (London). WHITBREAD, L.1959: Æthelweard and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. English Historical Review 74, 577-89. WHITELOCK, D. (ed.) 1930: Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge). WHITELOCK, D. (ed.) 1961: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation (London). WHITELOCK, D. 1973: The Appointment of Dunstan as Archbishop of Canterbury. In F. Sandgren (ed.), Otium et Negotium: Studies in Onomatology and Library Science Presented to Olof von Feilitzen (Stockholm), 232-47.

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The ‘Altar’ of Sulis Minerva at Bath: Rethinking the Choice of Deities Stacey McGowen

Roman polytheism, although not completely tolerant of all foreign religions, did allow for the incorporation of new divinities. As part of the process of absorption, local gods and goddesses were either replaced by or combined with their nearest Roman counterparts. Sometimes the new deities were given combined names made up of a Roman and an indigenous one, for example, Lenus Mars at Trier and Apollo Grannus at Grand. At other times the iconography of the two deities was conflated, and sometimes both occurred simultaneously. In each instance, conscious choices were made concerning what elements from the two cultures were appropriate to represent and symbolise the deity. The sanctuary at Bath was dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva, a combination of the Celtic deity Sulis with the Roman Minerva. In the Roman pantheon, Minerva was considered to be the goddess of war and wisdom. In addition, Minerva appeared as the patron deity of springs and as a goddess of healing in not only Britain but also Gaul and Italy. In fact, she sometimes even took the epithet Medica. Therefore, it seems clear that Roman Minerva maintained some healing powers, and she was thus a fitting deity to preside over what was presumably a sacred healing spring.

construction of the temple was veneration of the sacred spring, Sulis was perhaps a water deity; but it has also been proposed that in Celtic mythology Sulis was associated with the sun. In fact, it seems possible that through an incorrect etymological connection or a pun on the name Sulis, the Romans understood the name as solis and therefore considered the figure to be a sun deity. It has also been suggested that the name is derived from the Celtic word for eyes,10 and that it may have associations with the Welsh word syllu, meaning “to gaze,” and thus, the deity would keep watch over all.11 Regardless of the precise nature of Sulis, Sulis Minerva seemingly functioned as a deity of wisdom and healing, who also had certain martial qualities associated with her.12 Perhaps related to her healing capacities and based on the iconographic evidence from the sanctuary itself, it appears as though Sulis Minerva also had certain fertility associations. The remains of a sculpted screen, known as the Façade of the Four Seasons, were found in the sanctuary.13 Although badly damaged, the screen seems to have consisted of six fluted Tuscan pilasters, which divided the wall into five units – four sculpted panels and a central door. The four panels all contained a similar decorative scheme – a large female figure seated underneath a shell canopy below a small niche containing a cupid. Although the four female figures are badly damaged, making their precise identification uncertain, the four cupids are remarkably well preserved. It is clear that each holds a symbol of one of the four seasons, hence the name, giving the screen ties to growth, abundance, fertility and the harvest. In addition, several gems found in the spring, perhaps dedicated by a local gem-cutter and/or intended for wear by votaries, display well-known fertility iconography.14 For example, Fortuna occurs on two gems, once with a cornucopia and rudder and a second time with an ear of corn and a poppy. Furthermore, two objects from

Very little is known, however, about the Celtic deity Sulis. Although it has been suggested that Sulis was a male deity, who was partnered with Minerva reflecting a Celtic partiality for the pairing of opposing forces, most accept that Sulis was female because of the pairing with the goddess Minerva. Furthermore, that she was understood as female during the Roman period is confirmed by the use of the feminine title dea when addressing Sulis alone in inscriptions in stone and on pewter vessels as well as on curse tablets. Because the whole purpose for the   Zoll 1994: 32-44; Woolf 1998: 215-29.   Derks 1991: 243-4; Zoll 1994: 32-44.    Aldhouse-Green 2004: 146 and 149.    Cunliffe 1986a: 21-2. On the Roman Minerva, see Latte 1960: 163-6. On her nature and worship specifically during the Imperial period, see Girard 1981: 233-45.    Sauer 1996: 63-93    Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum VI.10133 and XI.1306.    Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 177; Aldhouse-Green 1995: 94.    For examples in stone, see Roman Inscriptions in Britain 141, 143, 144, 145, 147; on pewter cups, see Tomlin 1988b: no. 32; on curse tablets, see Tomlin 1988a: nos. 10, 20, 45, 50, 63, and 108.  

  Cunliffe 1986a: 71; Aldhouse-Green 1995: 96; Henig 2000: 125.   Sauer 1996: 73 11   de la Bédoyère 2002: 72. 12   As evidence for her capacities in war, Cunliffe (2000: 66) cites a bronze catapult washer found in the spring. On this washer, see also Baatz 1988: 8-9. 13   Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 123-4 and 126; Cunliffe 2000: 66. 14   Henig 1988: 27-33. 

10

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one blocks of local Bath stone, of which only seven have been recovered.24 It contains a circular imitation metallic shield bordered by a wreath, in the middle of which is a sculpted oak wreath crown surrounding the head of a male, mustached gorgon with wings and snaky hair.25 The shield is held by two Victories standing on globes, and below each are helmets, one shaped like a dolphin and one topped by an owl. Finally, based on a fragment on the edge of the far right block of the bottom row, it appears as though in each corner is a Triton blowing a conch shell.26 While some of the iconography of this pediment is unusual if not unique, for instance the male gorgon, most of it is well known to Roman art and derives from official Roman imperial imagery.27 For example, the oak wreath crown or the corona civica, made from the tree sacred to Jupiter, began as an honour conferred upon soldiers who had rescued a fallen fellow soldier in battle.28 From the time of Augustus on, however, the corona civica came to be one of the official insignia of imperial power.

Bath have lunar subject matter, and, as such, are associated with both fertility and procreation. A small pediment was found during the excavations and, although its precise placement within the sanctuary is unknown, it almost certainly came from a structure inside the precinct.15 In the middle of the pediment is situated a roundel containing the head and torso of a draped female with an elaborate hairstyle, who holds a riding crop. Behind her head is a crescent moon in low relief, and thus the female figure has been identified as a moon goddess, likely Luna. It has been proposed that this structure formed the central pediment over the Façade of the Four Seasons, further strengthening the ties of the screen to growth and fertility.16 A second find with lunar associations comes in the form of a silvergilt lunate pendant, found in the sacred spring, which was perhaps once affixed to a staff as part of the priest’s regalia.17 From such evidence, it seems likely that the worship of Sulis Minerva had a fertility component to it. That Minerva had such a character in Italy, particularly with regard to women and childbirth, is established by the finds from the oldest known Latin cult of Minerva – that of Lavinium, or modern-day Practica di Mare.18 Among other votive offerings found at Practica di Mare were terracotta figurines of unarmed Minerva holding children and anatomical votives in the form of breasts and wombs.19 At Bath, the only votive body parts recovered from the sacred spring were a set of ivory breasts and a single bronze breast.20 Also found in the spring were several objects associated with mundus muliebris, including brooches, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, combs, and spindle whorls, which would seem to attest the popularity of the goddess among women.21 Taken together, it seems that there is significantly more evidence for fertility as a major component of worship at Bath than there is for healing, the term generally used to describe the nature of cult activity at the sanctuary.

Inside the temple stood the cult statue of the goddess, and although it remains a tentative supposition, it seems that a bronze-gilt head of Minerva, one of the earliest finds from Bath, belongs to this statue.29 While certain features of this work, such as the proportions of the face or the heavy eyelids, suggest that it was fashioned by a Gallic or British artist, it clearly belongs among other traditional Graeco-Roman representations of deities.30 The sizeable bronze sculpture with its gilding must have been a work of substantial value, and was, if not the cult statue, certainly a lavish and costly votive offering. During the 1965 excavations in the sanctuary, a sculpted limestone corner was found on top of a large limestone platform, located some 15 metres in front of the temple on axis with both the temple and the entrance to the sacred spring.31 Two other previously known sculpted corners, similar in material, size, and decorative scheme, were shortly thereafter recognised as belonging to the same monument. Just to the west of the limestone platform was found in situ a statue base with an inscribed dedication. In this inscription, the dedicant, Lucius Marcius Memor, is called a haruspex, a priest who interpreted portents, including the examination of the entrails of sacrificial animals. 32 Based on the location of the platform and its proximity to this inscription, it is likely that the platform once served as the base for the sanctuary’s main altar.33

The first monumentalisation of the sacred spring at Bath occurred around AD 65-75, when a magnificent temple complex adjacent to a large set of baths was constructed.22 The two structures were centred around and linked by the sacred spring, the focus of ritual activity. The temple stood on a high podium and had four Corinthian columns across the front, each standing about 8 metres tall.23 The temple’s pediment measured approximately 8 metres in length and 2.5 metres in height and was made up of twenty-

  Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 115.   LIMC II.1, no. 447 and IV.1, no. 163. See also Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 29; Henig 2000: 124. 26   Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 115. 27   Henig 1999: 415-25. 28   Zanker 1988, 93-4. 29   LIMC II.1, no. 87. See also Toynbee 1962: 79-80; Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 114; Cunliffe 2000: 24-5. 30   Toynbee 1962: 80; Henig 1995: 97. 31   Cunliffe and Fulford 1982: 10; Cunliffe 2000: 46 32   Cunliffe 2000: 50-1; de la Bédoyère 2002: 74 33   de la Bédoyère 2002: 74 24

  Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 6, 9, and 126-7; Cunliffe 2000: 67-8; de la Bédoyère 2001: 173. 16   Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 126. 17   Cunliffe and Tomlin 1988: 6; Cunliffe 2000: caption of pl. 16. 18   Castagnoli 1979: 3-14; Zadoks-Josephus Jitta 1984: 70; Graf 2001: 133-4. 19   Castagnoli 1979: figs. 1-3 20   Henig 1984: 151 and fig. 174; Henig et al. 1988: 5-6; Cunliffe 2000: 66. 21   Henig et al. 1988: 5 and 21-7. 22   On the baths, see Cunliffe 1986a: 25-6; Cunliffe 2000: 82-105. 23   Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 25-35; Cunliffe 2000: 40-6. 15

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Stacey McGowen : The ‘Altar’ of Sulis Minerva at Bath

Because the only corner recovered in an archaeological context was found on this platform, it has been proposed that the three sculpted corners belong to the structure that once stood on it. Furthermore, a large limestone block with cornice mouldings complementary to those of the corner stones seems to have formed the upper part of this monument.34 The block is smooth on top and slightly concave, which would have been particularly useful for sacrifices and the examination of entrails. That such activities took place at Bath is confirmed by the presence of a haruspex, attested in the aforementioned inscription. While none of this guarantees that the sculpted corners belong to the altar, this seems likely, and regardless, they were undoubtedly part of a grand votive monument that adorned the sanctuary of Sulis Minerva.  Each corner consists of two sculpted panels, and each panel contains a single figure of a deity, standing frontally and holding various attributes and/or accompanied by animals. It has been proposed that the eight deities from the corners of the altar plus a hypothetical four additional ones from the sides would produce a total of twelve gods, which could possibly have been the twelve Olympian deities.35 Since one of the figures is easily recognised as Hercules, this seems unlikely. Although the choice of deities for the altar was presumably dictated by whoever funded the construction of the monument, each of the five identifiable ones does seem to have specific connections with various aspects of worship at Bath.

Fig. 1. Nude male deity. Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford.

Unfortunately, damage and weathering sustained by one of the panels has left the figure virtually unrecognisable, except to say that it was a nude male (Fig. 1). Because of the prevalence of his worship in the northwest provinces, it has been tentatively proposed that the figure represents Mercury, but there is no way to confirm this identification.36 In Roman Gaul, Mercury sometimes appears as a bearded older man wearing a hooded Gallic garment, for example in the statue from Lezoux.37 But, if the figure from the Bath altar is indeed Mercury, he is represented in the traditional Graeco-Roman manner of a youthful nude male, and such a traditional GraecoRoman presentation is consistent with the depictions of the other identifiable gods from the Bath corner stones. On the panel adjacent to the hypothetical Mercury is Apollo, a god well-known at other Romano-Celtic healing and thermal sanctuaries in the northwest Roman provinces (Fig. 2). In the panel from Bath, a draped Apollo, holding his lyre, stands with one of his feet propped up on a rock –

  Cunliffe 2000: 49.   Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 183; Henig 1986: 162. 36   Cunliffe 1986b: 8. On Mercury in Gaul, see Deyts 1992: 114-7. 37   MacKendrick 1971: 159; Nerzic 1989: 48. 34

Fig. 2. Apollo with his foot on a rock and holding a lyre. Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford.

35

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a typical Graeco-Roman representation of the god.38 In the northwest provinces, Apollo is paired with several Celtic deities including Grannus, Belenus, and Bormo, the Gallic deity most often connected with hot springs.39 Even when syncretised, he often assumes a traditional Graeco-Roman presentation. At the spring sanctuary of Apollo Grannus at Hochscheid in Germany, for example, Apollo Grannus is depicted twice in a traditionally Graeco-Roman way – he stands next to a griffin, holding a lyre, and wearing a laurel wreath.40 Apollo Grannus is connected with healing waters at other sanctuaries in Germany as well as in Brittany, northeast Gaul, and the Danube Basin.41 Moreover, at the sanctuary of Apollo Grannus at Hochscheid in Germany and at Brigetio in Hungary, the god occurs with a female companion, Sirona. At Hochscheid, the goddess Sirona is depicted with the traditional iconography of the Graeco-Roman goddess, Hygeia, thus bolstering Apollo’s associations with healing in the northwest provinces. Somewhat problematic for this interpretation, however, is the absence of evidence connecting Apollo and Celtic healing water deities in Britain. But Apollo, simply in his guise as the Roman god of healing, is certainly an appropriate deity for the sanctuary at Bath. Apollo was the father of Asclepius, the Roman god of medicine, and the grandfather of Hygeia, the personification of health. In fact he, like Minerva, could sometimes take the epithet Medicus.42 In addition, in his associations with the sun, Apollo was a god especially suitable for this sanctuary, particularly because the water from the springs was hot. As previously mentioned, it has been suggested that the deity Sulis had some solar associations, or at least was understood by the Romans to have had such connections. That the sun had an important place at Bath is supported by iconography on a quadrifrons in front of the entrance to the hot spring itself.43 The arch on the front of the quadrifrons was set into a triangular pediment and decorated with relief sculpture. While only a few blocks of the pediment survive, the composition of its sculptural decoration is legible – two draped females, presumably water nymphs or spring goddesses, hold a roundel over a rock, out of which water gushes. The two surviving blocks from the upper edge of the roundel show rays of the sun, and therefore the roundel is almost certainly decorated with a sun or the head of Sol, the sun god. Therefore, Apollo, with both his curative capacities and his solar associations, is a fitting figure for inclusion within the sanctuary at Bath.

Fig. 3. Bacchus holding a thyrsus and feeding a panther from a cup. Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford. On the second corner, Bacchus offers a panther a drink from a cup (Fig. 3).44 Bacchus, particularly in his association with Liber Pater, functioned as a god of fertility and germination, and in addition, at Bath he holds the thyrsus, a symbol of fertility. 45 Furthermore, particularly in reference to his rescue of Ariadne after Theseus abandoned her on the shores of Naxos, Bacchus was apparently considered ‘a savior god’.46 In fact, this very scene can be seen on a smaller altar from Bath.47 These are not, however, the only sources of specifically Bacchic iconography found at this site. References to Bacchus/Dionysus appear on several of the gems recovered from the sacred spring.48 The decoration on the gems includes a maenad, a panther, Methe, an amphora perched on a column, and Cupid seated on a goat in front of a kantharos. It seems, then, that Bacchus, as both fertility and rescuer deity, is a figure suitable for the Bath sanctuary, particularly as a reflection of the healing and fertility aspects of worship there.

  Henig 1984: 117; Cunliffe 2000: 48. Cunliffe (2000: 47) supposes that the Bath figure could also be Orpheus, but based on probability his presence seems far less likely than Apollo’s. When images of Orpheus occur in northwest Europe, they are almost always in mosaic, and images of the bard in stone are very rare. 39   Aldhouse-Green 2004: 148-50. 40   Weisgerber 1975: 57-9 and 62-3; Woolf 2003: 146-7. 41   Woolf 2003: 140-1; Aldhouse-Green 2004: 148-9. 42   Scheid 2003: 105. 43   Cunliffe and Davenport 1985: 43-5 and 49-52; Cunliffe 2000: 55-6. 38

  Cunliffe 2000: 46-7. For images of Bacchus/Dionysus with the panther, see LIMC III.1, nos. 430-4. 45   MacMullen 1981: 52; Scheid 2003: 156. 46   Dalby 2003: 92-102. 47   Henig 1984: 117. 48   Henig 1988: 29. 44

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Cunliffe supposes the nude male figure to be Mercury. The nude male figure may in fact be Mercury, but the identification of this female figure as Rosmerta is tenuous at best, since, although she does sometimes hold a cornucopia, Rosmerta most often carries a fruit basket or Mercury’s money-bag. It has also been suggested that a female figure holding a vessel, who can also sometimes be a consort of Mercury, was the goddess of the Dobunni, a pre-Roman tribe to the east and north of Bath; thus it is possible that the goddess from the Bath corner stone might represent this figure.52 As each of the other recognisable deities on the altar is clearly Roman and is depicted in a typically Graeco-Roman manner, it seems less likely that a Celtic deity would occur alongside them. More importantly perhaps, it should be noted that the vessel carried by the Bath goddess is overturned. Based on this feature, it seems most likely that female figure from the Bath corner stone represents a spring goddess. At Roman spring sanctuaries in both Gaul and Germany, several examples of female deities with overturned vessels appear in the stone sculptures. For example, at the spring sanctuary dedicated to Hercules at Deneuvre, two stone reliefs show goddesses with overturned vases.53 These figures have been identified as goddesses of the spring, particularly because of the overturned vessels and their proximity to the sacred water sources. Since the figure from Bath also meets both of these criteria, it seems most likely that she too is a spring goddess, a figure certainly suitable for a spring sanctuary. Fig. 4. Spring goddess holding a cornucopia and overturned vase. Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford.

On the third corner is Hercules, nude except for the lion skin tied around his shoulders and resting his arm on his club (Fig. 5). He holds a large vessel, and hence he is sometimes given the epithet Bibax. Hercules presence in the sanctuary of Sulis Minerva is appropriate for several reasons. Minerva, in her association with the Greek goddess Athena, protected and aided the hero during his great labours. In fact, in a relief found at Corbridge in Britain, a female figure, presumably Minerva, stands behind Hercules, who brandishes his club.54 It has been convincingly demonstrated that in the Greek world strong connections existed between Hercules/Herakles, healing, and water.55 In addition, in the northwest Roman provinces, he is worshipped at numerous spring sanctuaries – in Gaul, for example, at Mont-Dore, at Pelm, at Dombourg, at SaintRémy-de-Provence, at Chaligny, at Sources de la Seine, at Fontaines Salées, at Vichy, at Entrains, at Bolards, at Aix-les-Bains and at Trouhans, and in Germany at both Nettersheim and Cologne.56 Furthermore, at the spring sanctuary of Hercules at Deneuvre, in one badly damaged relief, the hero holds what seems to be a vase, which is also held by the spring goddesses there, something which conceivably ties him directly to the veneration of the

On the other side of the corner containing the image of Bacchus is a goddess holding a cornucopia and an overturned vessel, two symbols of fertility and abundance well-known in Roman art (Fig. 4).49 A similar female figure, who has been variously identified as Venus, Tellus, Pax and Terra Mater, appears on the Ara Pacis at Rome.50 Regardless of her precise identification, from the children on her lap and the abundant vegetation around her, it is clear that the Ara Pacis goddess has strong connections with growth and fertility. More importantly, in the lower left corner, an overturned jug pours forth a never-ending supply of water, and a plentiful supply of water is undoubtedly needed for growth and abundance. Thus, it seems certain that the female figure from the Bath corner stone has ties to fertility. As for the precise identification of the Bath figure, Cunliffe has suggested that the woman may be the Celtic goddess Rosmerta, a goddess of fertility and prosperity, who most often appears as a companion of Mercury.51 It is based on the identification of this female figure as Rosmerta that

  Yeates 2006: 86-9.   Moitrieux 1986: 228-9; Moitrieux 1992: 70-1 and 209. 54   LIMC V.1, no. 2069. See also Henig 1984: 93. 55   Salowey 1994: 77-94; Salowey 2002: 171-7. 56   Moitrieux 1986: 230. 52 53

  Cunliffe 2000: 47.   Zanker 1988: 172-5 and fig. 135-6; Kleiner 1992: 96 and fig. 80. 51   Cunliffe 1986b: 8. On Rosmerta, see also Webster 1986: 57-61; Aldhouse-Green 2004: 89-90. 49 50

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Fig. 6. Jupiter with his staff and an eagle. Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford.

Fig. 5. Hercules holding a vase and resting on his club. Courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford. springs.57 Perhaps the vase held by Hercules in the panel from Bath should not be understood solely as a means of designating him as Bibax, but instead the vessel, like that held by the supposed spring goddess, could give him a specific connection with the spring, which was, after all, the focus of worship at the sanctuary. In any case, it seems clear that Hercules is quite at home in a spring sanctuary.

Furthermore, through her association with the Greek goddess Athena, the daughter of Zeus, Minerva is the daughter of Jupiter. In fact, in the Metamorphoses (5.297) Ovid calls her ‘Iove nata’, and likewise in the Fasti (III.845) he speaks of her leaping fully formed from the head of Jupiter. Thus, as Minerva’s sole parent, Jupiter’s presence is even more fitting for the sanctuary at Bath.

The sixth and final god from the three sculpted corners is Jupiter, shown in a typical Graeco-Roman manner – he holds a staff and an eagle sits at his feet (Fig. 6).58 Jupiter is also presented in this manner on one of the gems found in the spring, and two other gems depict eagles alone.59 Certainly, Jupiter, as sovereign god, first among Roman deities, would be appropriate for almost any traditional Roman sanctuary. Jupiter and Minerva appear together in sanctuaries throughout the Roman world as part of the Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.60

As has been demonstrated, the gods from the stone corners individually have strong ties to both Minerva and cult activity at Bath. As a group, the choice of deities seems also to be related to the choice of deities for so-called Viergöttersteine, or four-god stones, which were particularly prevalent in eastern Gaul and the areas along the Rhine. Four-god stones formed the bases for monuments often referred to as Jupiter-columns or Jupiter-Giant-columns, socalled because of the large statue of the god perched atop a Corinthian column.61 These bases share several features in common – both in design and in choice of gods – with the corners from Bath.62 On both, the panels are rectangular in

  Moitrieux 1986: 231.   LIMC VIII.1, 1.3, no. 54. Cunliffe 2000: 48. 59   Henig 1988: 30. 60   Girard 1981: 223-4. 57 58

  Bauchhenss and Noelke 1981: 5-46; Aldhouse-Green 2004: 59-62.   On what follows, see Bauchenss and Noelke 1981: 47-55.

61 62

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shape, taller than they are wide, and the figures themselves are usually set within an undecorated border. The figures generally stand frontally and hold various attributes or are accompanied by animals ­– features almost always deriving from Graeco-Roman mythology. Furthermore, like the panels from Bath, those on the four-god stones generally contain only a single figure, but very rarely two or three figures may occur together. When the panels of the fourgod stones do contain more than one figure, they almost always have a relationship to Roman religion or myth. For example, on a stone from Hausener, Venus and Vulcan appear together and on a stone from Sinsheimer, Venus appears with Mars and Amor.63 Therefore, it would seem that the mythological connotations of these figures were understood by those who designed the columns bases. In terms of layout and design, it is clear that the four-god stones share similar features with the sculpted corners from Bath.

stones have been found in Britain.66 In any case, it does not appear that the sculpted corners from Bath were actually part of such a monument. The surviving block from what seems to have been the top of the monument is smooth and there is no indication that it was topped by a column. Furthermore, the structure was almost certainly dedicated to Sulis Minerva, the presiding deity of the sanctuary, and, by definition, was not part of a Jupiter-column. What the choice of gods for the four-god stones does reveal, however, is that these gods, particularly Minerva, Jupiter, Hercules, Apollo, Mercury(?), and to a lesser extent Bacchus, used in combination were considered a suitable artistic program, especially in the northwest Roman provinces. Thus, it seems that the gods on the Bath corners had not only individual ties to worship in the sanctuary but also established mythological and artistic ties to each other and to Sulis Minerva. Stylistically the sculpture from the Bath corner stones is strikingly similar to that of the pediment with both sharing, for example, a particular fondness for patterning. It seems that the pediment and structure with the sculpted corners were made as part of an overarching plan, strengthening the notion that these corners belong to the primary altar of the sanctuary.67 It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the gods chosen for such an altar would have such strong ties to Sulis Minerva and cult activity at Bath. While the altar was important as the location of sacrificial ritual, the small scale of the deities would make them, including Jupiter, the king of the gods, patently subordinate to the most important deity of the sanctuary.68 Undoubtedly, when viewing the stone monument, whether altar or not, faced by the awesome gorgon surrounded by symbols of Minerva and watched over by the goddess herself, no one would doubt her power and superiority in the impressive sanctuary. Through their connections to numerous facets of cult activity at Bath, however, the gods from the altar could certainly be understood as supporting and reinforcing the power of the mighty goddess, Sulis Minerva.

More importantly, the four-god stones also seem to share a choice of deities with the Bath corner stones. The canonical four-god stones portray images of Juno, Minerva, Hercules and Mercury. Juno almost always appears on the front face of such monuments, and Minerva usually takes a position adjacent to her, usually to the left. It would seem that this arrangement – Juno and Minerva together on the base with Jupiter on top of the column – was chosen in large part because of the connection between the three gods as part of the Capitoline Triad. Based on this evidence, it seems possible that one of the figures from the missing corner was Juno, although the goddess occurs only occasionally in sculpture or epigraphy in Britain. Hercules and Mercury also seem to have had a relationship with the Capitoline Triad in Roman state religion. On the arch of Trajan at Benevento, in the left attic relief, Jupiter, Juno and Minerva stand in the foreground and are flanked by Mercury and Hercules.64 Interestingly, in the same panel, in the background behind these five gods are Ceres and Liber Pater. This single panel ties together not only the gods so often found together on the four-god stones but also most of the deities from the Bath corners – Minerva with Jupiter, Hercules, Bacchus, and even the hypothetical Mercury and possible Juno. On four-god stones, Bacchus is rare but does occur occasionally. Apollo, although he is not in the panel from the Arch of Trajan, does appear frequently on fourgod stones, and in fact, in Germania Superior, he occurs only one occasion fewer than Mercury.65 Finally, Jupiter appears relatively rarely on the four-god stones, but this is not at all surprising since he takes centre stage at the very top of the column.

Acknowledgements I should like to thank Tyler Jo Smith and Martin Henig for their helpful comments on various aspects of this essay. I am also grateful to Barry Cunliffe and Ian Cartwright for their assistance with the images. Abbreviation LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae

While some fragments from what seem to be Jupitercolumns do survive at Chichester, Cirencester, Wroxeter, and Catterick Bridge, thus far no traditional four-god

  On the fragments from Chichester, see Cunliffe and Fulford 1982: no. 107; from Cirencester, see Henig et al. 1993: no. 197 and no. 213; from Wroxeter, see Henig et al. 2004: no. 138 and no. 165; from Catterick Bridge, see Rinaldi Tufi 1983: no. 128. 67   Henig 1980: 97. 68   Cunliffe 1986b: 8. 66

  Bauchhenss and Noelke 1981: 142 and 221.   On the arch of Trajan at Benevento, see Kleiner 1992: 224-9, and fig. 192. 65   Bauchhenss and Noelke 1981: 51. 63 64

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and Snodgrass, A.M. (eds), 2000: Periplous: Papers on Classical Art and Archaeology Presented to Sir John Boardman (London), 124-35. HENIG, M., BLAGG, T.F.C. and WEBSTER, G. 1993: Roman Sculpture from the Cotswold Region with Devon and Cornwall (Oxford). HENIG, M., BLAGG, T.F.C. and WEBSTER, G. 2004: Roman Sculpture from the North West Midlands (Oxford). HENIG, M., BROWN, D., SUNTER, N., ALLASONJONES, L. and BAATZ, D. 1988: The Small Objects. In Cunliffe and Tomlin 1988, 5-54. HENIG, M. and KING, A. (eds) 1986: Pagan Gods and Shrines of the Roman Empire (Oxford). KLEINER, D.E.E. 1992: Roman Sculpture (New Haven). LATTE, K. 1960: Römische Religionsgeschichte (München). MACKENDRICK, P. 1971: Roman France (London). MACMULLEN, R. 1981: Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven). MOITRIEUX, G. 1986: Hercule au serpent au sanctuaire de Deneuvre (Meruthe-et-Moselle). Archéologie et médecine (Juan-les-Pins), 225-39. MOITRIEUX, G. 1992: Hercules Salutaris: Hercules au sanctuaire de Deneuvre (Meurthe-et-Moselle) (Nancy). NERZIC, C. 1989: La sculpture en Gaule romaine (Paris). RINALDI TUFI, S. 1983: Yorkshire (Oxford). SALOWEY, C. 1994: Herakles and the Water Works. Mycenaean Dams, Classical Foundations, Roman Aqueducts. In Sheedy, K.A. (ed.), Archaeology in the Peloponnese (Oxford), 77-94. SALOWEY, C. 2002: Herakles and Healing: Cult in the Peloponnesos. In Hägg, R. (ed.), Peloponnesian Sanctuaries and Cults: Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium at the Swedish Institute in Athens, 11-13 June 1994 (Stockholm), 171-7. SAUER, E. 1996: An Inscription from Northern Italy, The Roman Temple Complex in Bath, and Minerva as a Healing Goddess in Gallo-Roman Religions. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 15, 63-93. SCHEID, J. 2003: An Introduction to Roman Religion (Edinburgh). TOMLIN, R.S.O. 1988a: The Curse Tablets. In Cunliffe and Tomlin 1988, 59-277. TOMLIN, R.S.O. 1988b: Inscriptions on Metal Vessels. In Cunliffe and Tomlin 1988, 55-7. TOYNBEE, J.M.C. 1962: Art in Roman Britain (London). WEBSTER, G. 1986: The British Celts and Their Gods under Rome (London). WEISGERBER, G. 1975: Das Pilgerheiligtum des Apollo und Sirona von Hochscheid in Hunsrück (Bonn). WOOLF, G. 1998: Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge). WOOLF, G. 2003: Seeing Apollo in Roman Gaul and Germany. In Scott, S. and Webster, J. (eds), Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art (Cambridge), 13952.

ALDHOUSE-GREEN, M.J. 1995: Celtic Goddesses: Warriors, Virgins, and Mothers (London). ALDHOUSE-GREEN, M.J. 2004: The Gods of the Celts (Gloucester). BAATZ, D. 1988: Bronze Catapult Washer. In Cunliffe and Tomlin 1988, 8-9. BAUCHHENSS, G. and NOELKE, P. 1981: Die Iupitersäulen in den germanischen Provinzen (Köln). CASTAGNOLI, F. 1979: Il Culto di Minerva a Lavinium (Roma). CUNLIFFE, B.W. 1986a: The City of Bath (Gloucester). CUNLIFFE, B.W. 1986b: The Sanctuary of Sulis Minerva at Bath: A Brief Review. In Henig and King 1986, 1-14. CUNLIFFE, B.W. 2000: Roman Bath Discovered (Stroud). CUNLIFFE, B.W. and DAVENPORT, P. 1985: The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath: The Site (Oxford). CUNLIFFE, B.W. and FULFORD, M.G. 1982: Bath and the Rest of Wessex (Oxford). CUNLIFFE, B.W. and TOMLIN, R.S.O. 1988: The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath: The Finds from the Sacred Spring (Oxford). DALBY, A. 2003: Bacchus: A Biography (London). DE LA BÉDOYÈRE, G. 2001: The Buildings of Roman Britain (Stroud). DE LA BÉDOYÈRE, G. 2002: Gods with Thunderbolts: Religion in Roman Britain (Charleston). DERKS, T. 1991: The Perception of the Roman Pantheon by a Native Elite: The Example of Votive Inscriptions from Lower Germany. In Roymans, N. and Theuws, F. (eds), Images of the Past: Studies on Ancient Societies in Northwestern Europe (Amsterdam), 235-57. DEYTS, S. 1992: Images des dieux de la Gaule (Paris). GIRARD, J.-L. 1981: La Place de Minerva dans la religion au temps du principat. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II.17.1, 233-45. GRAF, F. 2001: Athena and Minerva: Two Faces of One Goddess? In Deacy, S. and Villing, A. (eds), Athena in the Classical World (Leiden), 127-39. HENIG, M. 1980: Art and Cult in the Temples of Roman Britain. In Rodwell, W. (ed.), Temples, Churches, and Religion: Recent Research in Roman Britain, Part 1 (Oxford), 91-114. HENIG, M. 1984: Religion in Roman Britain (London). HENIG, M. 1986: Ita Intellexit Numine Inductus Tuo: Some Personal Interpretations of Deity in Roman Religion. In Henig and King 1986, 159-69. HENIG, M. 1988: The Gemstones. In Cunliffe and Tomlin 1988, 27-33. HENIG, M. 1995: The Art of Roman Britain (Ann Arbor). HENIG, M. 1999: A New Star Shining Over Bath. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 18, 419-25. HENIG, M. 2000: From Classical Greece to Roman Britain: Some Hellenic Themes in Provincial Art and Glyptics. In Tsetskhladze G.R., Prag, A.J.N.W. 88

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ZANKER, P. 1988: The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor). ZOLL, A. 1994: Patterns of Worship in Roman Britain: Double-Named Deities in Context. In Cottam, S. (ed.), Theoretical Roman Archaeology: First Conference Proceedings (Oxford), 32-44.

YEATES, S.J. 2006: Religion, Community, and Territory: Defining Religion in the Severn Valley and Adjacent Hills from the Iron Age to the Early Medieval Period (Oxford). ZADOKS-JOSEPHUS JITTA, A.N. 1984: Athena and Minerva: Two Identifications. Babesch, 59, 69-71.

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Swords, Seaxes and Saxons: Pattern-Welding and Edged Weapon Technology from Late Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England Brian Gilmour

The archaeology of weapons and warfare in Anglo-Saxon England was a particular interest of Sonia Hawkes as is made clear from her enthusiastic introduction to her (1989) book of that name, this being the proceedings of a successful conference which she hosted at Regents Park College, Oxford in January 1987. Many of us who attended will remember the displays of Anglo-Saxon combat given by the Dark Age Society in the Garden of St Cross College (across the road). My own contribution to the conference was a short presentation on the basics of the technology used by Anglo-Saxon sword-smiths for the principal weapon of the day on which the best available technology was lavished, consisting of a summary of the recently published results of my own radiographic survey combined with a detailed metallographic study of various swords, together with some seaxes and spearheads. The next stage in this work – detailed compositional analysis and elemental mapping of a number of sections from swords and other weapons which formed part of my own PhD research – was completed too late to be included in the conference proceedings and this paper is intended as a (somewhat delayed) follow-up to the conference.

society as well as the manner in which they were used, and how they were made and why? Before we can even begin to attempt to answer these questions we need to ask the nature of the evidence, and ascertain whether it has it been adequately assessed? At the time of the conference I was sure that much of the available evidence – mostly the swords themselves – had either been overlooked completely or not adequately examined. Having surveyed the problem of ironwork in general, and swords in particular, since the time of the conference I am more convinced than ever that the technological and cultural history or development of this material tends to have been viewed as two virtually unrelated disciplines or interests by metallurgists (and other scientists) on the one hand, and by archaeologists and historians on the other. Perhaps the problem stems from the tendency nowadays for iron, particularly when it comes from the ground, to be viewed as a rusty unattractive, utilitarian, mass produced metal (therefore not valuable in financial terms), and therefore maybe not very useful in the study of artistic, cultural and economic developments within past societies. Also because of the unique way in which it was produced (until about the 15th century in this country, and probably not much earlier in much of Europe) – by direct reduction to the solid state (the bloomery process) it is not homogeneous and consequently more difficult to study. Also the metallurgy of iron alloys, individually and in combination, is quite complex, especially in the case of steel where a variety of heat-treatments can radically alter its physical properties, and it is clear that the consequences of this were recognised from early in the Iron Age. Additionally the production of iron as a solid mass or ‘bloom’ means that iron needs to be welded together to make bigger or more complex objects, and this has had consequences which are just as important from a cultural standpoint as from a technological point of view. Not least of these is the development of the very complex construction and intricate pattern-welded decoration of the (archetypal) long sword of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ England. It is clear from their prominence in written sources of various kinds, particularly epic poetry, that these weapons were very highly regarded, with achieving virtually iconic status, for a very long time.

Both before and after the event I had various discussions with Sonia on the technology and interpretation of AngloSaxon swords and their role or use in the society of the day. As she stated at the beginning of her introduction to the proceedings, she felt that the conference ‘seemed from its very inception to be breaking new ground’ in a field that had been undeservedly neglected. She was certainly keen to promote any new research that would shed light on these weapons although, as she makes clear in the book, she largely accepted the usual, and most obvious, interpretation that swords were made for fighting and that was the raison d’être for their manufacture. It is a small step from such an interpretation to ‘re-create’ their usage in much the way as was attempted by the Dark-Age Society at the conference. However, as with many interpretations in archaeology, there is a danger that, without hard evidence to back them up, viewpoints like these represent no more than a kind of back-extrapolation of modern ideas or myths, in this case explaining how and why swords were made. Are we really so confident about what swords meant in Anglo-Saxon   Tylecote and Gilmour 1986: 109-254. A seax is a large single-edged form of knife or dagger.



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swords, and many more with spearheads mean that many remain to be examined. Few seaxes from this first phase survive, the reason being that this form of weapon only appears to have been introduced (or become popular) in this country in the late 6th or early 7th century. Few weapons of any kind survive from the second (roughly mid-7th to mid-9th century) phase once weapons ceased to be placed in burials. Fortunately (from the point of view of studying the artefacts) the ancient custom of the votive deposition of weapons in watery places – rivers, pools and the like – made a comeback during the final phase (roughly mid9th to mid-11th century) and many swords, spearheads and seaxes (by now a common weapon here) deposited in this way have been found, either during, but far more commonly after, dredging work.

However before drawing well founded conclusions, as with any other aspect of archaeological investigation, there is a need to examine this material in sufficient detail to obtain all available information to allow its interpretation in its appropriate cultural and chronological context. With this in mind the main aim here is to take a brief look at how composite manufacture, especially pattern-welding, was used for sword making in Europe during the first millennium AD, the period when (in northwest Europe at least) this decorative welding technique dominated the manufacture first of long swords, and later of other weapons as well. It is only possible here to present a summary of the main developments in the technique, discovered by recent research, to give a few examples, and to show how these compare to early written sources which mention composite construction and refer to patterns on iron swords of this era.

It is clear from the proportion of artefacts from this source to survive in museum collections that the practice of the votive deposition of swords and other weapons does continue after this time, but on a smaller scale than before. More of a puzzle perhaps is what happens before the mid-5th century? According to the ‘conventional’ view of this period this is no problem in that the mid5th century is the period when Saxons invade, settle and establish pagan burial rites and start burying swords and other weapons, which initially would have been brought with them. But does this convenient view of events stand up to scrutiny?

Survival of the Artefacts It should be borne in mind that nearly all of the many swords of the Anglo-Saxon period found in Britain can been classified as ‘long swords’, measuring between 75 and 95 cm (usually 85-90 cm or approximately three feet/ one yard) in length. For the Roman period in Britain the situation is different with both ‘short swords’ and ‘long swords’ attested amongst archaeological finds. The ‘short sword’ or gladius is the classic standard thrusting weapon of the Roman army and most examples have been found to be between approximately 25 and 60 cm in length, including the hilt, although the most practical combat length has been suggested as falling approximately within the range 35-45 cm, with the longer examples generally being much more elaborate and therefore, as has plausibly been suggested, being officers swords, with perhaps a more ceremonial use. A few Roman ‘short swords’ have been examined technologically and the results suggest that the quality varied and that steel and related heat-treatments were often used, but that overall they were relatively simple in their methods of construction. Longer swords, generally referred to as spathae are also found in Roman contexts in Britain and these include a category of ‘long swords’ which would appear to be ancestral to the AngloSaxon (or more generally north European) form of sword.

In much the same way that events relating to the ‘coming of the Saxons’, or even their identity, is now being questioned, the position of what weapons particularly swords might already have been have been present in England perhaps in significant numbers before the mid-5th century is not quite as clear-cut as might seem to be the case. If we have to think in terms of a period when significant, and perhaps large, numbers of people (mostly men?) of Germanic origin came to be live in this country (for however long), then there is increasing evidence – mainly from the study of inscriptions – that this is a process that may have begun with the Roman army stationed along the northern frontier following the construction of Hadrian’s Wall. In this light it may be highly significant that examples of the earliest pattern-welded swords to have been found in this country – swords whose parallels come from the ‘Germanic’ barbarian region north of the Roman empire – were part of a group of several swords, perhaps five in all, found in 1875, together with a series of elaborate and intricately decorated enamelled belt fittings, buried under the base of a secondary phase of rampart (dated AD 197205) at the fort at South Shields, the supply base at the eastern end of this 2nd-century defensive system. One of the larger sword fragments was also inlaid (see below) and the group as a whole seems far more likely to have been an intentional foundation deposit, another form of votive

However, we would most probably know little of the actual character of swords or other weapons of the AngloSaxon (or any other period) were it not for certain burial and votive practices which have resulted in many of these objects having survived (however poorly preserved) to the present day. The fashion or otherwise for the deposition of weapons means that the Anglo-Saxon period (which for convenience is here taken to run approximately from the mid-5th to the mid-11th century AD) divides into three roughly even phases of about 200 years each. From the first phase the accompaniment of many male burials with

  Clay (2007).   Richmond 1953; Allason-Jones and Miket 1984: 94-6, 296-8, and pls. 6 and 8. 

  Hazell 1981: 81.    Lang 1988: 199-216, and pls. 5-10. 



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offering, rather than a stray group of finds simply lost here, as was assumed at the time of excavation.

early Europe and elsewhere. Less clear, however, certainly until recently, has been how these weapons were actually made or the extent to which they were actually used as fighting weapons. Fortunately, we can investigate the large number of surviving early swords and other weapons with their excellent potential for recovering evidence of manufacturing history by technological study: using a combination of radiography, detailed metallographic study together with compositional analysis and elemental mapping. Research of this kind is now beginning to reveal the full extent of the skills of early smiths: the range of iron alloys they were exploiting, as well as the ways in which these were used either alone or in combination.

However, occasionally swords must have been lost, either because they were concealed somewhere with the intention of recovering them – such as an early 5th-century sword found in 1962 in the disused hypocaust of the tepidarium (the central room) in the bathhouse of the Roman villa at Little Oulsham Drove, Feltwell, or in those cases where there was no particular interest in recovering them and where concealment was not part of a burial or votive rite as in the case of two probable murder victims tipped into and hurriedly concealed, together with much of their equipment, in a burial pit dug into the edge of the city ditch at Canterbury and found during excavations in 1980. This equipment included two pattern-welded long swords and, based on the style of some of the fittings, can be dated to about the late 2nd or early 3rd century AD, and therefore these swords are very similar in date to those found at the fort at South Shields.

The recovery (either by archaeological excavation or accidental discovery) and dating of groups of objects has shown that swords became a common form of weapon – however they might or might not have been used – during the Bronze Age. More recently the scientific examination of the metallurgy of weapons has shown that it was not until the Iron Age that a great diversity of different methods of different sword construction began to be used. It also seems clear that during the later Iron Age a distinctive form of long bladed sword became common in northern Europe and that in this region outside the Roman Empire welded construction techniques which leave a decorative surface on the blades were exploited for some of these sword blades.

Overall the survival of swords, as with other weapons, is extremely uneven through the Roman, sub-Roman/ post-Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods largely because of variations in burial or votive practices, in different areas at different times. This means that the dataset of material available for analysis is also very uneven. Added to this, the detailed study of this type of artefact has only begun recently and only some of the material has been looked at in detail. In consequence our knowledge of this kind of high status iron artefact is at best patchy and certainly very incomplete.

Welding – in this case the joining of two pieces of iron by hammering them together when sufficiently hot to allow this to happen – is inherent to the successful production of a lump or bar of iron by the bloomery process, the method by which as far as we know all early iron, including steel, is likely to have been made in Europe until the later Middle Ages. For this reason welding is likely to have developed into a specialised skill early during the transitional Bronze Age/Iron Age phase when many of the main developments in iron-working are likely to have occurred. It is also likely that the bloomery process itself soon became specialised for the production of different types of iron, the most important of these being steel and, although very little material has yet been examined in detail, already we can see the production of specialised composite welded iron/steel objects, such as knives and swords, in southeast Europe and the Middle East by about the late 2nd millennium BC.10

Iron Alloys, Welding, Composite Construction and its Decorative Potential Early iron alloys, particularly steel, are still poorly understood both in terms of how they were exploited, viewed and to some extent – particularly in the case of steel – even how they were made. On top of this, swords are perhaps the least well-understood class of iron artefact. Swords made of iron or steel have long been known to have been important symbols of rank and cultural icons in   Hawkes 1986, 32-7; Gurney 1986, 11-4. The sword appears to have been wrapped in a bundle when hidden against the south west wall of the tepidarium, out of sight behind a row of pilae (floor supports), in a final phase of use (possibly when partially derelict) after the building went out of use as a bathhouse. Nearby at this same level were found a number of small finds, including a penannular brooch of much the same date as the sword, possibly all, including the sword, hidden here (perhaps not all at exactly the same time) for safe keeping by the villa owner/ occupier or retainer/family member etc before being finally lost through being covered up by debris from the subsequent demolition and robbing of the bath-house. In my view all the finds from this context, and others from nearby which may be contemporary (such as a steelyard) need to be assessed together and may all belong to a late (5th century) phase of occupation of the villa, and the sword should not necessarily be seen as relating to raiding or invading or even settling by English newcomers as suggested by Sonia Hawkes.    Bennett 1982: 44-6, and fig. 10.    Webster 1982:185-7, and fig. 99. 

Not only must the welding together of pieces of iron have become a specialised skill early in the Iron Age, but the marks left by the welding must soon have been noticed and, perhaps not long after, to have begun to be exploited for their decorative potential. Once this process started then   Stead 2006: 46-7.   For instance a dirk from Cyprus made of an iron core around which was welded a outer layer of steel to form the blade (Lang 1991: 95, and fig. 4) and a sword blade from Luristan in western Iran, in which the blade was made as a sandwich with a piece of steel between two pieces of iron (Maxwell-Hyslop and Hodges 1966: 168-9; Allan and Gilmour 2000: 41-3). 

10

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Fig. 1. The blade of a very well preserved late Iron Age sword from Orton Meadows, Cambridgeshire, with visible stamps and a typologically early or ‘prototype’ form of pattern-welded blade.

it inevitably led to specific decorative welded styles – that is early forms of pattern-welding – which were influenced by the culture of the time. Thus by this time (whenever it was) composite construction would have been used not only simply for utilitarian purposes, say the welding of a steel edge onto a softer iron core for the blade of a knife to give a more durable sharp edge, but also exploited for its decorative potential.

recent times the technique of pattern-welding has been most popular in Indonesia, Malaysia and the surrounding areas of southeast Asia although it was used to a lesser extent in some other areas including the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic parts of southern and western Asia. Most surviving pattern-welded weapons from these parts of the world date from the 16th century although the development of the technique in these areas before this time is not yet known. Recent research has shown that, in northern Europe at least, pattern-welding had developed into a more formal decorative technique, (seemingly) used almost entirely for swords, by sometime in the early 1st millennium AD.

Pattern-Welding At present the earliest evidence for decorative techniques such as pattern-welding in Europe would appear to date from about the mid-1st millennium BC and, although the database of examined material is still small, this technique appears to have been developed primarily for long swords, possibly specifically the archetypal ‘Celtic’ long swords of northern and central Europe.11

Iron Age Pattern-Welding in Britain The origins of pattern-welding are likely to lie in the early Iron Age with the consolidation of the spongy and often fragmentary lumps produced by the early direct reduction or bloomery furnaces. It may have developed from the observation of weld lines on the corroded surface of blades made from several small pieces of bloom iron welded together. Recent research suggests that, in the West at least, pattern-welding began to be exploited in central Europe during the last half of the first millennium BC.15 As yet it is not known exactly how it developed from the early accidentally visible weld patterns to the range of formal patterns which were being used for a large proportion of swords in Europe during the mid to late first millennium AD.

Pattern-welding is the name given in 1948 to define the technique used to create the decorative patterns first noticed on the blades of early swords and other weapons found in Europe in the first half of the 19th century.12 The name pattern-welding was given as a way of identifying swords or other weapons with surface patterns originating from welding techniques.13 This identification was introduced to differentiate between swords whose surface patterns derived from the forge welding together of a variable number of different parts, and those steel weapons whose surface patterns resulted from the structure of the cast steel ingots from which they were made. Previously all these iron or steel weapons tended to be misleadingly referred to as damask or damascene by (late medieval and) later Western observers and these terms are still ingrained in many peoples minds. The mistaken links with Damascus have tended to confuse the study of pattern-welded weapons with those made of watered crucible steel, which also has been mistakenly linked to Damascus as a principal manufacturing source.14 Many pattern-welded weapons of different dates during the past 2000 years or so have been found in parts of the world as far afield as Ireland and Indonesia although they have been popular at different times in different areas. In

In Britain the best evidence so far for a prototype form of pattern-welding is on an exceptionally well preserved late Iron Age (1st century BC-1st century AD) sword found in 1980 during gravel extraction in a former bed of the River Nene at Orton Longueville, near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire (Fig. 1).16 Unlike later European patternwelded swords with a more formal composite construction, which almost always includes separately welded-on cutting edges, X-ray study showed this sword to have the same structure right across the blade. This sword blade had been very heavily etched down its centre so as to leave the distorted fibrous pattern that is still almost as clearly visible as the day it was put in the river (Fig. 2). This pattern did not extend to the edges of the blade, the margins of which must have been protected from the etching liquid by wax or grease acting as a resist agent.

  Pleiner 1993: 117-8, 122-3, 146-7.   Maryon 1948: 73-6. 13   See also Anstee and Biek 1961: 71. 14   This problem having been discussed elsewhere; see Allan and Gilmour 2000: 76-9. 11

12

  Pleiner 1993: 117, no. 68.   Stead 2006: no. 97.

15 16

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Fig. 2a-b. Orton Meadows sword: detailed views of both sides of the blade showing the resist protected margins along the edges, and the heavily etched, ‘free-form’ pattern welded detail along the centre, this strongly resembling flowing water, plus the distinctive ‘dumb-bell’ shaped maker’s punch-mark visible near one edge.

Were it not for the exceptional preservation of this sword this form of pattern-welding with its use of resist protection, to bring out and emphasise the pattern inherent in the carefully welded structure along the central part, leaving plain margins along each cutting edge, would be much less certain. It is the earliest known example where we can be certain that patterns like this were intended to be seen. This long sword was clearly not a one-off example, and this early less formal form of pattern-welding seems likely to have been both common and widespread for this kind of high status object by this time. A similar but slightly less well preserved late Iron Age long sword, with much the same surface patterned effect – where the flowing fibrous pattern along the middle is just still visible, as are the raised protected margins along the edges – was found nearby at the same site.17 Traces of a similar central pattern with a fibrous appearance is also still just visible on another late Iron Age long sword found in 1987 at Shepperton, Surrey, in another former river channel exposed by gravel quarrying.18

late Iron Age date recovered from the River Thames at Little Wittenham in Oxfordshire.19 Similar fibrous patterns seen on other X-radiographs of long swords also of late Iron Age date – for instance a totally corroded example from Guernsey where a distinctive fibrous was still clearly visible on X-ray – suggest that this early, less formal form of pattern-welding was more widespread, at least in Britain in the late Iron Age.20 An approximately contemporary example of a more formal but relatively simple type of composite and probably pattern-welded sword construction can be seen in one of five swords found in a ritual deposit at Llyn Cerrig Bach in Anglesey, northwest Wales.21 In this example several iron rods, each occupying the full thickness of the sword, were found to have been welded side-by side (Fig. 3). The carbon contents of the rods varied across the width of the blade although none of the rods seems to have consisted of much more than a low carbon iron (much like modern mild steel). Structurally this would not have been a particularly effective weapon but would have given a very effective banded or striped visual appearance when polished and etched and this seems the most likely intention.

Hints of this form of composite construction, involving the welding together of a bundle of iron rods to give a similar appearance on X-ray, has been examined in a section from the surviving fragment of another sword blade of suspected

  Tylecote and Gilmour 1986: 162-4, and fig. 66.   Gilmour 1996: 112-3. 21   McGrath 1968: 263-5. 19

  Stead 2006: 46-7, no. 122, and pl. 6. 18   Stead 2006: 46-7, no. 127, and pl. 6. 17

20

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the late Iron Age sword (no. 4) from Llyn Cerrig Bach, have been identified from the Nydam deposit,24 and have been reported on other roughly contemporary European sword blades from further east.25 Other swords from this large votive deposit include forms of straight and simple chevron type twist patterns very similar to those found on the two long swords from Canterbury and the roughly contemporary pattern-welded swords of c. AD 200 found at the South Shields Roman fort, the supply base at the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall. The two long swords from Canterbury have now been both X-rayed and metallographically examined and both found to be of complex pattern-welded construction.26 One of these blades would have had a single chevron or herringbone pattern running down the centre on either side of the blade, while the other would have been visible as a series of laminated bands running down the central part of the blade (Fig. 4). Both these forms of decorative construction have a series of parallels from Nydam and other sites in northern and eastern Europe. There are also two shallow grooves or narrow fullers – so called from the forging process used to form the grooves which also results in the groves being in opposing pairs on either side of the blade – running down the central pattern-welded part on both sides of each of these swords.

Fig. 3. Simplified diagrammatic three-dimensional view of the structure of one of the late Iron Age sword blades from Llyn Cerrig Bach with its simple, slightly sinuous banded structure made of plain iron rods

(shown here as white) welded between those made of low carbon iron, shown cross-hatched in section but shaded grey in plan to give an impression of the possible

finished appearance. After

McGrath 1968: 78, fig. 2, no. 4; and Tylecote 1986: 150, fig. 93 (d).

Composite Sword Construction and Pattern-Welding in Later Roman Britain: Indigenous Production or Barbarian Import?

Although the surface patterns on these two swords are different, in section the two blades are similar in appearance and structure (Fig. 5). In both cases separate steel edges have been welded on to a composite patternwelded central part, in each case the patterned central part having been accentuated and slightly distorted by the forging of the grooves. Also clear in section is that the finely banded patterned parts of each sword are made of alternate laminations of phosphoritic and low carbon iron, a feature which is typically found in swords of the Anglo-Saxon period, but which is clearly already present in Britain and well developed as a decorative technique by c. AD 200.

By the 2nd century AD in Europe (if not earlier), simple forms of composite construction were giving way to more complex and formal varieties of pattern-welding usually with welded-on cutting edges. Weld patterns were first noted on iron swords from archaeological contexts when examples from waterlogged sites in northern Germany and Scandinavia were examined in the mid-19th century, in particular those from the great votive peat bog (or pool) deposits of Jutland. In the 3-4th century AD votive deposit at Nydam alone, out of 106 swords found 93 are recorded as being pattern-welded.22 The acid water of the peat bog had deeply etched the surface leaving the patterns clearly visible.23 This is typical of anaerobic waterlogged burial conditions whereas burial in drier ground leaves patternwelded weapons badly corroded and the patterns virtually impossible to see. Because of this the great popularity of these weapons during the latter half of the first millennium AD has begun to be fully appreciated only during the last 50 years with the application of X-ray techniques to archaeological iron objects.

The group of (?five) swords of this date from the Roman fort at South Shields have not yet been studied in detail although preliminary examination, mainly by X-radiography, would suggest that at least two of these swords were pattern-welded and that one at least of these pattern-welded swords was also decorated with a copper alloy inlay near the hilt.27 One side the copper alloy inlay – suspected to be of brass – shows a figure of Mars with a

Although there has been little detailed technological research on surviving European pattern-welded swords of the 2nd to 4th centuries AD, it is clear from what is visible on the surface of the swords from Nydam alone, that this was a great period of experimentation in different forms of pattern-welded sword construction. Swords with a banded construction, similar to that already described for

  Gilmour and Sim (report in preparation).   Rosenquist 1970: 188, fig. 22. 26   Not as was reported in the initial assessment of these sword blades. 27   Allason-Jones and Miket 1984: 296-8; Tylecote 1986: 171-2, figs 112 and 114. Tylecote includes a radiograph (fig. 112) from one sword which shows both copper alloy inlay and complex pattern-welding, but also illustrates (fig. 114) photographs of a different sword (apparently from this site) which has very similar copper alloy inlays on both sides near the hilt, plus slight hints of patter-welding along the four parallel, centrally placed fullered grooves on both sides. This remains to be clarified. 24 25

  Todd 1975: 192-4.   Engelhardt 1866: pls. 6 and 7 (Nydam).

22 23

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Fig. 5a-b. Simplified diagrammatic three-dimensional view of the structure of the same two late 2nd/ early 3rd century long swords from Canterbury reconstructed to show both the composite patternwelded construction in section and to give a general idea of the form of the main weld patterns the would

have been visible on the surface of each. In both cases

the welded on cutting-edges are made of heat-treated medium to high carbon steel (shown black here), with narrow pattern-welded bands made of a low carbon iron/phosphoritic iron laminate plus (for the first

sword) additional low carbon iron rods (shown crosshatched in section)

spear held upright in one hand with the other hand holding a shield propped up on the ground, while on the other side the inlay shows an eagle flanked by two standards (Fig. 6). The radiograph of this sword (as yet the only one published) shows a double chevron or herringbone pattern running down the blade, which from its initial appearance seems likely to be very similar in structure, although more complex, compared to the herringbone patterned sword from Canterbury. The black lines picking out the details on the two inlays have been identified as niello; the almost cartoon-like character of the figures has been described as ‘amateurish and uninspired’,28 and also (for Mars) ‘crude and very native’,29 and is totally at odds with the quality of the blade which (even from X-ray) can be seen to be excellent.

Fig. 4a-b. Radiographs of two late 2nd/early 3rd Canterbury found with

century long swords from

their owners in a hastily dug burial pit next to the town ditch; showing (on the left) a longitudinal

banded structure to the central part of one sword, and a coarse herringbone or chevron pattern along

A series of very similar swords, probably also of much the same date, have been found in several places in northeastern Europe, all with excellent quality pattern-welded (or similarly composite) blades, together with varyingly crude

the central part of the other sword (on the right). Traces of the welds between the cutting edges and the composite cores of each sword are visible in places as narrow dark shadows.

  Allason-Jones and Miket 1984: 296.   Toynbee 1964: 300, pl. 67a (Mars), and pl. 67b (eagle and standards).

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Fig. 6b

Fig. 6a

Fig. 6a-c. Radiograph of one of five swords buried Roman fort at South Shields when it was rebuilt in c. AD 200, showing a

under part of the rampart of the

double herringbone patterned structure running along the central part of the blade plus the overlapping

images of two copper alloy (probably brass) inlays

near the hilt on either side.

These were found to be Mars on one side and an eagle (aquila) between two standards (signa) as also shown enlarged here. Photograph courtesy of the British Museum; drawings from Rosenquist 1971. representations of

Fig. 6c

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examples of copper alloy inlays copying the same general design of the figure of Mars on one side and the eagle and standards on the other. In some examples the figures are barely recognisable, which for such a clearly high status and well made sword blade, would seem inconceivable for a Roman military workshop. These symbols are relevant to the Roman army but their crude appearance would suggest copying by craftsmen unfamiliar with the symbolism, and indicates a non-Roman (i.e. barbarian) origin for the swords and the inlays. If the recently considered evidence of military tombstones does indicate a large (and perhaps continuing) Germanic element to the Roman army units posted to Hadrian’s Wall then one might see these swords as having been in the possession of regular army officers, of Germanic origin, rather that being associated with federate or auxiliary units. Much the same could be said of the swords from Canterbury. These examples are simply the chance finds that have come to light so far but they suggest that a great many more once existed, some of which may yet be found. Yet more complex examples of herringbone and other twist patterns were also found among the Nydam swords as were other pattern-welded forms such as the rare lattice pattern found in the sword fragment until recently on display in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Fig. 7). This sword fragment, the find site of which is not recorded in the inventory for this part of the museum collection, is unlike any known later pattern-welded types but is so closely similar to another sword fragment from Nydam that it most probably originates from the same votive deposit, if not from the same sword, and again should probably be dated to approximately AD 200.30 The variety of pattern-welded designs found on long swords in the late Roman period, and the (few) technical studies so far completed on these, suggests that this was a period of great experimentation in this kind of design and construction for sword-making, but also when skills had reached their peak. If the example of Nydam was typical then we can expect some 90% of long swords to have been pattern-welded, and at present it seems reasonable to conclude that they were of north European barbarian origin, and that because of Roman recruitment policy along with much other military equipment, these weapons found their way into the later Roman army, but that essentially they belong to a non-Roman culture. The examples noted here come from chance discoveries at either end of eastern Roman Britain but one wonders (in the absence of cemeteries with accompanied burials) how many more await discovery in the regions in between. By using important Roman military symbolism in this way the inlaid copper alloy figures seen on some of these swords may have been applied as a way of imparting good luck to the owner, as has been suggested for the South Shields sword.31 Where swords like this were pattern-welded they would already reflect (perhaps literally) whatever barbarian symbolism of power and (possibly) magic that this form

Fig. 7a-b. A corroded sword blade fragment (in Museum, Oxford – unprovenanced but probably from the Nydam pool/bog deposit, Jutland, 3rd/4th century AD) plus the collection of the Ashmolean

a reconstruction of its very unusual and complex

lattice form of composite pattern-welded structure

occupying the full width of the blade.

The framework

of the lattice is made of rectangular section rods of laminated construction into which diamond-shaped lozenges have been hammer-welded, each of these

having been cut from a composite pattern-welded bar with a herringbone pattern showing on the surface.

Photograph: Jeremy Hall.

of decoration or structure was supposed to represent or impart to the blade, so that the swords like this or their owners were perhaps being provided with an additional ‘good luck charm’ (see also below). Long Swords and Pattern-Welding from Early AngloSaxon Contexts (mid-5th to mid-7th centuries) Given their survival in archaeological contexts we have a much better idea about the occurrence, variety and technology of long swords in Britain between the mid-5th and the mid-7th century, at least in the more eastern ‘AngloSaxon’ areas where pagan burial rites predominated and where these tended to include the interment of material such as this, which is by no means even in its distribution. By far the greatest concentration of swords of this period from burial contexts is from Kent, although a scattering of finds from throughout the period comes from elsewhere although still mainly from eastern and central England. The vast majority of the detailed technological identification

  Engelhardt 1866: pl. 6, no. 10; Maryon 1960: 32, fig. 7.   Toynbee 1964: 300.

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Fig. 8. A possible regional Anglo-Saxon variant of a pattern-welded design on a sword (length 90.2 cm) of c. AD 600 from a grave at Acklam Wold, North Yorkshire, shown here both as found and reconstructed (from X-ray) to show its original, very unusual six-banded form of pattern-welding arranged in panels on both sides alternating between triple herringbone and straight-grain elements to the pattern.

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of this kind of material consequently has also been on swords and related ironwork from Kent.32 Much of this material came from early excavations where contexts and dating were not as precise as we might now expect, but the generally accepted view has been that most of it should be assigned to the 6th and earlier 7th centuries. These aspects require reassessment but this will have to wait for further research. In the meantime some of the main aspects of the design and technology of long swords of this period can be interpreted and considered, together with other aspects of the material culture.

looped form of pattern-welding which is almost never seen in an early Anglo-Saxon context but which can be seen on a fragment of possibly Frankish sword blade in the Ashmolean Museum.37 During this period pattern-welding seems to have become more formal and standardised in terms of both the designs of pattern which had become popular and the types of composite construction used to make the blades. The great majority of patterns found in northwest Europe during this time seem to be variations on a herringbone pattern achieved by welding up to six twisted composite rods next to one another to make the central portion of the sword blade, and this is also true of swords Anglo-Saxon swords (Fig. 8). What is particularly noticeable about the herringbone patterns found on swords from this country is that the patterns are hardly distorted at all suggesting that this was seen as a particular mark of excellence here whereas different criteria seem to have applied in Frankish areas if the probable imported sword found in the Saltwood Tunnel cemetery is anything to go by. In this blade not only were the patterns distorted giving a looped effect but this had been done very carefully so that the loops on adjacent twisted rods would match thereby creating a more dramatic overall looped pattern, which would have looked quite unlike the undistorted herringbone patterns which were very popular in England, although the starting point, the welding together of adjacent twisted rods was the same.

Long swords are virtually the only weapon of this type to turn up in pagan burials of this period in England, and it would appear also that – much as was the case in the earlier votive deposit at Nydam in Jutland – about 90% of the swords in these burials were pattern-welded. We know33 that not only did long swords predominate in burials in Frankish areas but that pattern-welding was also a popular technique in Merovingian France during this same (5th-7th century) period, although there has been little detailed research there. One particular problem that has troubled previous researchers is where these patternwelded swords were made. Hilda Ellis-Davidson, in one of the best surveys of swords of the Anglo-Saxon period so far to appear, stated that ‘as yet there is no evidence that they were ever produced in England or Scandinavia’.34 Other scholars have simply avoided the issue although the general assumption seems also to have been that they were probably imported.

In the case of the looped pattern this was achieved by welding together two or more composite rods side by side then grinding away part of the surface so that the internal structure of the twisted bars was revealed. A completely looped pattern could be achieved if half the thickness was ground away and (given that the pattern would appear on both sides of a sword blade) was only possible if two sets of composite rods were welded back to back to give a double thickness. In the case of the probable Frankish blade from Saltwood about a quarter of the thickness of the composite rods on each side of the sword blade had been ground away to give a partial looped pattern. This would have been quite laborious and wasteful as much iron had to be ground away, although the welding would have involved some experimentation and a great deal of care so as to get the half loops (inherent in the half thickness of each twisted composite rod) to match up. With comparable Anglo-Saxon patterned blades the intention appears to have been precisely the opposite, with the skill and precision lying in the ability to achieve a really good, undistorted herringbone effect, which could only be achieved if no metal was ground away at all, and this was not easy either. Thus we are beginning to see the kind of criteria which

However there has been no seemingly definitive evidence one way or the other, although we might expect the development of an indigenous industry in the production of high status material to develop as soon as was practical. In reality this seems to be a classic archaeological problem with regard to lack of evidence – in this case a combination of unevenly distributed high status material (i.e. long swords) which have been studied in far too little detail (for whatever reason) to achieve any reliable conclusion. Recent work on the prolific (in terms of swords and other ironwork) cemetery at Saltwood Tunnel, Kent has given us a useful and predictable clue, and may well indicate that much of what we have is indeed of indigenous production, as we might expect.35 The work of Barry Ager36 on the fittings of one sword would suggest these to be Frankish in origin, suggesting that these at least were imported. Although there was no detectable metal left in this sword so it was not suitable for metallographic analysis an Xray of the blade revealed a very distinctive distorted or   For much of the material from early excavations see Tylecote and Gilmour 1986: 156-7. 33   From the work of France-Lanord, Salin and others. 34   1962: 34. 35   Gilmour (forthcoming): Technology, Analysis and Assessment of the Ironwork from the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Saltwood Tunnel. 36   Personal communication; see also his forthcoming report on the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Saltwood Tunnel. 32

  This seems to be one of a several fragments of sword blades of probable European origin acquired earlier in the 20th century (by Arthur Evans) but whose provenances are not recorded in the relevant museum inventory. One fragment, probably from Nydam, is discussed above, while two very well preserved fragments (one upper and one lower, from two different swords) would seem to fit best with a northern European, probable Frankish origin from the overall proportions of the blades. 37

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widespread adoption of Christianity from about the mid-7th century. The ending of the custom of accompanied burial is a more obvious consequence of this but the changing of weapon technology less so and needs examining to see if there is a case for making this link. This change is also marked, at least in this country, by the much greater use of steel for swords, although not for the pattern-welded parts. A sword, dating to c. AD 750-800, recovered from the River Thames at Brentford in Essex shows this clearly with its central high carbon steel spine (Fig. 9).40

may mark out the particular skills of indigenous AngloSaxon sword-smiths as opposed to their counterparts in the Frankish areas. In both cases the patrons who commissioned these high status weapons would presumably have thought the workmanship and patterns from their areas were the best. Overall we can also see that by this period there is likely to have been considerable specialisation in styles of manufacture, as well as varieties of pattern which might have been most popular, in Anglo-Saxon England as against continental northern Europe. In early Anglo-Saxon England a variety of patterned forms appear to have been used with variations of the chevron or herringbone design being by far the most popular. These can vary in complexity with between two and six twisted composite rods being welded side by side, with adjacent rods with their twists running in opposite directions so that an eventual herringbone effect was created on the finished sword blade. Sometimes parts of these rods were selectively left untwisted so as to give variations in the pattern as seen in a 6th-century sword found at Acklam Wold in Yorkshire.38 Almost invariably separate cutting edges, also usually of composite construction, were welded on to produce the blade which after final forging, polishing and etching would have revealed its patterned surface (as in Fig. 8). Pattern-welding appears not to have been used in this country for spearheads or seaxes much before about the mid-7th century with very few examples coming from cemeteries or single burials before the custom of accompanied burial ceases. In any case seaxes are uncommon here in this period and appear only to have been introduced from mainland Europe in the latter half of the 6th century.

Fig. 9. Simplified diagrammatic three-dimensional

reconstruction showing the structure of a pattern-

River Thames at Brentford, Essex, and dated (by pommel style) to approximately AD 750-800. The twin herringbone pattern is very unusual, but the wide shallow fuller (concave part in section) plus the greater proportion of steel used in the blade, as well as the overall construction here marks a change from earlier Anglo-Saxon sword blades to that seen later. welded sword found in the

Pattern-Welding and Weapon Technology in the Late Anglo-Saxon Period (mid-9th to mid-11th centuries)

Change in Weapon Survival and Technology (mid-7th to mid-9th centuries)

Although pattern-welding was still used for swords, the blades were usually made of fewer parts and hence the patterns were correspondingly less complicated with a simple herringbone or chevron pattern being most common. By contrast the more complex forms of patternwelded construction became common for the other main edged weapons of the time, the seax and the spearhead. As well as becoming simpler in construction the overall proportion of swords in which pattern-welding was used also declined. Recent research would suggest that in late Anglo-Saxon England the overall proportion of patternwelded swords was down to approximately 50% and the European manufacture of pattern-welded swords seems to have more-or-less ceased altogether sometime during the 11th century.41

In Britain before the mid-7th century, as in much of northwest Europe, few weapons apart from swords were pattern-welded, but by the mid-9th century the use of pattern-welding had changed completely. Unfortunately, a progressive change in burial customs during the 7th century means that very few weapons from this period survive and examining the changes in detail is difficult. By about the mid-9th century however we see the re-emergence, in this country at least,39 of the earlier votive custom of the deposition of artefacts, particularly weapons, in rivers and other watery places, which means we get many more of these artefacts surviving. The cessation of the accompaniment of (male) inhumation burials with weapons and big changes in weapon technology appear to happen at about the same time and may both be associated in some way with the more

During this time a far greater proportion of steel was used for non pattern-welded swords, in some cases for the whole blade, although evidence so far would suggest that an ironsteel composite blade was more common. Although this

  Ager and Gilmour 1988: 13-23.   Votive deposition in water may never have ceased but it seems to have become more popular again for about the next two centuries after the mid-9th century before becoming less common again. When it might have ceased is a matter of debate; see discussion in Stocker and Everson 2003: 282-4. 38 39

  See also Tylecote and Gilmour 1986.   Tylecote and Gilmour 1986: 253

40 41

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might at first be taken to suggest an increasing use of steel during this period, research on other early weapons, as well as knives edged tools and so, indicates this not to be the case. In fact one of the few non pattern-welded early Anglo-Saxon weapons yet examined, a seax (of the 6th to 7th century from Barham Down in Kent) was found to have an iron core around which had been welded a thick, high carbon steel outer layer.42 This would suggest that steel was already in more widespread use in early AngloSaxon England if not earlier. There is a need to examine the technology of a wide variety of artefacts from the early Iron Age onwards before more general statements can be made concerning the exploitation of any kind of iron, steel or otherwise.

In one way or another all these descriptions can be identified as variations in the herringbone patterns which form the vast majority of surviving pattern-welded designs of this period.46 Even the ‘tiny snakes’ mentioned by Cassiodorus, in the early 6th century, can be compared to each individual twist in one of these pattern weldedsword designs. While this interpretation of ‘tiny snakes’ is probably correct this is not the only early reference to snake patterns on sword blades. There are several references to a larger snake-like effect the clearest of which occurs in the Norwegian Thiðricks Saga (compiled in the 13th century but containing much earlier material). In this the sword Ekkisax is said to have been made by the dwarf Albrich: He hid it down in the earth before it was completed. He searched also through nine kings realms before he found the water in which he could harden it. ....The blade is well polished and marked with gold, and if you set the point down on the earth, it seems as if a snake runs from the point and up to the hilt, gleaming like gold. But if instead you hold it upwards, then it seems as if the same snake runs from the hilt and up [to] the point, and it moves as if it were alive.47

Interpretation of Early Written Evidence for PatternWelding When studying reconstructions of the variations of herringbone and other patterns found on early European swords the obvious conclusion is that the patterns must have been visible to the owners or other people familiar with the weapons, but how is it possible to show this? The Orton Meadows sword (Fig. 2) provides a clear indication that intentional patterns were visible on swords from at least the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. Historical accounts, and other written sources such as epic poems, from the 6th century AD onwards, also mention patterns on sword blades. In AD 507 Cassiodorus, secretary to the Ostrogothic king, Theodoric the Great, sent a letter to the king of another German tribe, the Warnii, thanking him for his gift to Theodoric of several swords:

Before any further evidence had been noted it was suggested that this might also refer to a common form of (herringbone) twist pattern such are found on the majority of north European swords of the last half of the 1st millennium AD.48 The recent discovery of a 6th-century sword in the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at West Heslerton in Yorkshire shows that references to ‘a snake’ are, in fact, often likely to mean a rarer form of pattern which really did look like a snake running along the centre of a sword blade.49 Careful examination of an X-radiograph of this sword enabled a reconstruction of the snake pattern to be made and metallographic examination of two transverse wedge-shaped sections (taken from different parts of the blade) provided the evidence needed to work out the complex construction of this sword (Fig. 10).

The central part of their blades, cunningly hollowed out, appears to be grained with tiny snakes and here such varied shadows play that you would believe that the shining metal to be interwoven with many colours.43

In the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf the sword Hrunting, said to be among the foremost of ancient treasures, is described as being made of iron ‘gleaming with twigs of venom’. The term malswurd, perhaps best translated as ‘patterned sword’, appears in an Anglo-Saxon will and Beowulf contains several words referring to weld patterns although it is difficult to be certain of the exact meanings of these.44 The descriptions include, branching (woven) patterns (sceadenmael), curving patterns (hringmael) and woven patterns (brodenmael or brogdenmael). Brogdenmael also appears in another Anglo-Saxon poem, Elene, in the passage:

The central part of the West Heslerton sword was found to consist of three layers, with two surface snake-patterned pieces each welded to a plain iron core piece. The snake pattern appears to have been achieved, in each case, by twisting and counter twisting (that is twisting in opposite directions at regular intervals) a laminated bar made of alternate layers of iron with an even but low carbon content (but without phosphorus) – shown stippled in Fig. 10b – and iron high in phosphorus (but with no carbon). The edges of this sword were also laminated and consisted of a layer of medium carbon steel welded between two pieces of

The hard edged blade with its woven patterns quivers and trembles; grasped with terrible sureness, it flashes into changing hues.45   Tylecote and Gilmour 1986: 124 and 126, fig. 52.   Davidson 1962: 106. 44   Klaeber 1941. 45   Davidson 1962: 123.

  Gilmour 1991: 235-74; Lang and Ager 1989: 85-122.   Davidson 1962: 162 and 166. 48   Davidson 1962: 166. 49   Gilmour 1999.

42

46

43

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a

b

c

Fig. 10a-c. A simplified view of the original form of the very unusual snake pattern found on both sides of a sword from a 6th-century grave (74) from the Anglian cemetery at West Heslerton, North Yorkshire. Two versions of the diagrammatic three dimensional view of the structure of the sword in section are shown here, one (to the left) shows the main parts of the blade while the other (to the right) is intended to give an impression of the effect of final polishing and etching of the sword blade, the white central bands being made of pale etching phosphoritic iron, the stippled areas being grey etching low carbon iron, and the black central edge parts being steel.

plain iron (very low in both carbon and phosphorus). After final forging this blade appears to have been quenched in a slack (slow) quenching liquid such as oil, a variation in the quenching process described for the sword Ekkisax in Thiðrik’s Saga. This resulted in an intermediate bainitic micro-structure with a Vickers microhardness of up to 488 (HV 0.1). The reconstructions of this sword show that, after final forging, polishing and etching, the effect visible on the surface would closely resemble a snake moving from hilt to tip. So far, the few comparable examples yet found of snake pattern swords (although others may lie unrecognised) have come from Holland, north Germany and Scandinavia.50 These are dated to approximately the 9th century AD and are therefore much later than the West Heslerton sword, the design of which is especially fine. Although the snake pattern on this sword is one of several rarer forms of pattern-welded design, the choice of iron alloys and the overall construction are very typical of the period ca. AD 500-1000.

as a method of combining the conflicting properties of the hardness of steel with those of the softness of iron to give a more resilient product. Scientific examination of surviving swords, especially those of Anglo-Saxon England (5th 11th centuries AD), however, indicates that it was actually developed for reasons of display rather than for any structural purpose. A combination of metallographic and scanning electron probe micro-analysis (EPMA) suggests that the majority of the pattern-welded central parts of swords and other weapons of this period actually consist of a simple alternating or laminated structure which includes nearly all the different designs which are found.52 This is a banded structure consisting of pieces of iron high in phosphorus (approximately 0.5-1.0 %) and pieces of iron with a low but even carbon content (up to approximately 0.2% but generally less). This is especially well illustrated in the twisted pattern found in a seax from Dorset dating approximately to the 10th century. In this example the alternate high phosphorus and low carbon iron construction of the composite patternwelded strip welded into the blade, running parallel to the back, shows up exceptionally well both under optical microscopy (Fig. 11a) and in an elemental map (Fig. 11b) done by EPMA and set up to show the distribution of phosphorus (as different grey tones) between zero (black) and 1% (white). In the phosphorus map, the low carbon iron of the pattern-welded parts shows up as black areas nearer the middle of this section. The larger rectangular black areas on either end of the section represent the medium to high carbon steel edge and back parts of the blade between which the patterned strip was welded. This example shows very clearly (in section) the optical contrast that is the result of making the pattern-welded parts of a weapon in this way. Much the same very clearly

The best (and almost only) written source for down-toearth information about how iron and steel were made and used in Europe for swords in this (9th to 11th century) period comes not from Europe but from the Middle East in the form of Ya’cūb al-Kindī’s treatise on sword making written for Mu’tasim the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad (AD 832-841). He differentiates swords from northern Europe from those made elsewhere, and describes them as being composite weapons made from (welding together) directly smelted iron and steel and describes their pattern-welded central parts.51 Technology and Purpose of Pattern-Welding It has been suggested that pattern-welding was developed   Leppäaho 1964; Ypey 1982.   Hoyland and Gilmour 2006: 43 and 77-9.

50

  Gilmour 1991.

51

52

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a

b

c

d Fig. 11a-d. Structure of a pattern-welded seax from Dorset (stylistic date approximately 10th century but findsite not known). Upper left in this view is a photomacrograph of a section (length approximately 20 mm) from the blade, showing its appearance after polishing and etching with 2% nital. Upper right shows an EPMA elemental map set up to show phosphorus distribution in the sample, palest areas containing approximately 1% phosphorus, and the darkest areas approximately zero. Lower left is a diagrammatic version of the photomacrograph showing the Vickers micro-hardness values (HV 0.1) measured for the different parts, hardest being the quenched structure of the steel edge and back, especially the martensitic (pale speckled) parts. Lastly the overall structure of the blade is shown.

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Fig. 12. Reconstruction of the four swords the from the 6/7th century cemetery excavated recently at Park Lane, Croydon, showing the very complex pattern-welded structures found. Especially noticeable is how different the structure of each sword is in section, and also how little steel has been used (none in two cases) and how the overall final patterns involve the full width of the blade in three out of four cases. Also show next to the key are the equivalent terms as discussed by Ya’cūb al-Kindī in his sword treatise (AD 832-841) for the manufacture of composite European sword blades. 106

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contrasting pale and dark bands would have been visible after this seax was originally polished and etched. The high phosphorus content of the pale-etched patternwelded parts of weapons such as this also had the effect of preventing carbon diffusion across the welds during manufacture thereby ensuring that the patterns were clearly visible as contrasting pale and dark areas with sharp edges. The edges of pattern-welded swords are also usually composite in construction, but in contrast to the patternwelded central parts, the edges tend to consist of a combination of plain iron (with hardly any carbon or phosphorus in it) and medium to high carbon steel (with approximately 0.5 to 0.8% carbon) which is welded in such a way that it forms the tip of the cutting edges, although even here steel is often found not to have been used. The great complexity in construction with the very sparing use of steel is well illustrated in the case of four swords from a 6th-century cemetery at Croydon, Surrey. The diagrammatic reconstruction of these included here illustrates how Kindī’s description of types of iron in use in northern Europe can be applied to earlier material as well (Fig. 12).

Thus pattern-welding can be seen, at least in its most developed and exploited form, as being linked to the importance of water in peoples minds at that time. In this way pattern-welded swords might literally have been seen as belonging, in some way – perhaps as the death dealers of epic fame – to a liminal zone between this world and the next. Possibly the decorated watery surface and (unnecessary and impractical) great length of these weapons may have had as much or more to do with their talismanic value and supposedly almost supernatural or magical properties, as alluded to in epic verse as well as claims such as blade being capable of being bent back, point to tip, and then springing back again (in the hands of a leader of exceptional strength). That such claims seem not to be challenged in the way that they should is perhaps symptomatic of the way that early long swords and their maker are still held in a kind of awe, and without being studied in the detailed way that will help us to understand what they are and what they represented. If the cultures behind pattern-welding and long sword manufacture are interlinked in this way it may help explain why pattern-welding seems only to have been used for swords until about the mid-7th century. If the nature and importance of pattern-welding as a decorative device, particularly for swords, was connected to pagan beliefs, and particularly the association with water, in this light the increasing dominance of Christian ideas and beliefs in this period could be expected to have led to a weakening of these beliefs. However, it seems equally clear that by the early Anglo-Saxon period, and probably already by the 2nd century AD, pattern-welded swords were also seen as virtuoso expressions of what could be done with iron by selecting the best alloys and combining them in the most skilful way possible, and in a way that could be judged by any observer. Possibly it was a combination of factors like these that led to the apparently quite sudden change in the way patternwelding was used – with some of the best materials and techniques being used for a great many seaxes and spearheads of the period from the mid-9th to the mid11th centuries. Already simple forms of pattern-welding were being used for some spearheads, especially larger examples, from the mid-7th century, and much more work detailed analytical work needs to be done on material like this if it is to be better understood.

Detailed analysis of swords and other weapons from AngloSaxon contexts has shown that four distinct iron alloys, including plain iron, were used quite specifically in the manufacture of the different main parts of these weapons. This in turn means that sword-smiths of this period were skilled in using a variety of iron alloys and also means the iron and steel industry was actually very well developed and organised in terms of the metals produced, traded and so on, during what has traditionally been thought of as the Dark Ages in Europe. Middle Eastern written sources, particularly Kindī’s 9thcentury sword treatise, describe swords with a visible patterned surface as being ‘watered.’ The use of low carbon iron in combination with phosphoritic iron to produce the pattern welded parts of swords had already been developed by the end of the 2nd century – as is well illustrated by the structure of the long swords from Canterbury (see above) – and this technique must have been very well established by the mid-5th century and is found repeatedly to have been used for swords over the following two centuries. When etched the darker grey tones (resulting from the fine grain structure of low carbon iron) would have contrasted well with the pale or whitish appearance of the phosphoritic iron (resulting from its very large grain structure), and the effect of (faster) flowing water would have been emphasised with a herringbone or chevron pattern. The effect of water flowing between two banks is an obvious interpretation for the effect seen on the well preserved late Iron Age sword from Orton Meadows; this effect may have been intended for pattern-welded swords, at least in a more stylised form, for the great majority of the most complex later patternwelded swords, those made before about the mid- (and possibly later) 7th century.

Interest in pattern-welding in Europe waned later in this period and, although pattern-welding for swords seems to have more or less disappeared before the 12th century, the technique seems to have persisted for a time in the making of knives but seems to have disappeared altogether in this region before the end of the 14th century AD. It must have continued in use in the Islamic areas to the east as well as further afield. It would appear that, up to a point, patternwelding was reintroduced to Europe in the later 18th century following contacts with the technique then being used by arms makers in the Ottoman Empire of the eastern Mediterranean area. Between the late 18th and early 20th 107

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Fig. 13. Coarse and slightly uneven pattern-welded structure seen on a single-edged Neapolitan sword made in 1892. Note the use of a resist agent to protect a narrow margin along the cutting edge from the effects of the acid used to bring out the heavily etched pattern along the rest of the blade – curiously similar to the use of resist protection on the edges of the late Iron Age sword from Orton Meadows where the edges are in marked contrast to the heavily etched central part of the sword (Fig. 2), a decorative device possibly abandoned soon after only to be re-used much later.

Wall, in Gilmour L. (ed.): Pagans and Christians – from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, 47-63. DAVIDSON, H.R.E. 1962: The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford). ENGELHARDT, C. 1866: Denmark in the Early Iron Age (London). FRANCE-LANORD, A. 1949: La technique du damas soude dans les épées Merovengiennes et Carolingiennes. Revue Historique de la Lorraine 86, 26-33. GILMOUR, B. 1991: The Technology of Anglo-Saxon Edged Weapons (unpublished PhD thesis, University College, London) GILMOUR, B. 1996: Note on the Technology of the Swords Based on a Radiographic Study. In Burns, R.B., Cunliffe, B. and Sebire, H. (eds). Guernsey: An Island Community of the Atlantic Iron Age (Oxford), 112-3. GILMOUR, B. 1999: A Sword from Grave G74. In Haughton, C. and Powlesland, D., West Heslerton: The Anglian Cemetery, Volume 1, The Excavation and Discussion of the Evidence (Yedingham, North Yorkshire), 120-3. GILMOUR, L. 2007: Pagans and Christians – from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Oxford). GURNEY, D.A. 1986: Settlement, Religion and Industry on the Roman Fen-Edge, Norfolk. (Gressenhall, Norfolk). HAWKES, S.C. 1986: The Sword, Comparanda and Dating. In Gurney 1986, 32-7. HAWKES, S.C. 1989: Weapons and Warfare in AngloSaxon England (Oxford). HAZELL, P. 1981: The Pedite Gladius. Antiquaries Journal 61, 73-82. HOYLAND, R. and GILMOUR, B. 2006: Medieval Islamic Swords and Swordmaking: Kindi’s Treatise ‘On Swords and Their Kinds’ (Oxford).

centuries in Europe, pattern-welding was used for swords to only a very limited extent, a striking example being a sword made in Italy at Naples by the Neapolitan Royal Arms Factory (Fig. 13). It bears the monogram PL and was made in c. 1790 probably for Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who briefly became Emperor of Austria, before he died in 1792.53 However, all the techniques and materials (different iron alloys) used by sword-smiths of the Anglo-Saxon era were no longer understood and this sword is crude by comparison, however striking it might look. Bibliography AGER, B. and GILMOUR, B. 1988: A Pattern-Welded Anglo-Saxon Sword from Acklam Wold, North Yorkshire. Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 60, 13-23. ALLAN, J. and GILMOUR, B. 2000: Persian Steel: The Tanavoli Collection (Oxford). ALLASON-JONES, L. and MIKET, R. 1984: The Catalogue of Small Finds from South Shields Roman Fort (Newcastle-upon-Tyne). ANSTEE, J.W. and BIEK, L. 1961: A Study in PatternWelding. Medieval Archaeology 5, 71-93. BENNETT, P. 1982: Excavations in the Rosemary Lane Car Park. In Bennett, Frere and Stow 1982, 2159. BENNETT, P., FRERE S.S., and STOW, S. 1982: Excavations at Canterbury Castle (Maidstone). CLAY, C. (2007): Before There Were Angles, Saxons and Jutes: An Epigraphic Study of the Germanic Social, Religious and Linguistic Relations on Hadrian’s   Information from the Royal Armouries inventory.

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KLAEBER , F. (ed.) 1941: Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg (New York/London). LANG, J. 1991: A Dirk from Cyprus. Materiały Archaeologiczne 26, 93-6. LANG, J. 1988: Study of the Metallography of Some Roman Swords. Britannia 19, 199-216. LANG, J. and AGER, B. 1989: Swords of the AngloSaxon and Viking periods in the British Museum: A Radiographic Study. In Hawkes 1989, 85-122. LEPPÄAHO, J. 1964: Spateisenzeitliche waffen aus Finnland: schwertinschriften und waffenverzierungen des 9-12 jahrhunderts (Helsinki). MARYON, H. 1960: Pattern-Welding and Damascening. Studies in Conservation 5, 25-36. MAXWELL-HYSLOP, K.R. and HODGES, H. 1966: Three iron swords from Luristan. Iraq 28, 164-76. MCGRATH, J. 1968: A Preliminary Report on the Metallographic Examination of Four Fragmentary Early Iron Age Swords from Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey. Bulletin of the Historical Metallurgy Society 2(2), 78-80. PLEINER, R. 1993: The Celtic Sword (Oxford). ROSENQUIST, A.1970: Sverd med klinger ornert met figurer i kopperlegeringer fra elder jernalder i Universitetets Oldsaksamling. Universitetets Oldsaksamling Årbok 1967-1968, 143-200.

RICHMOND, I.A. 1953: The Roman Fort at South Shields: A Guide (South Shields). SALIN, E. 1957: La Civilisation Merovingienne: Part 3, The Techniques. (Paris) STEAD, I. 2006: British Iron Age Swords and Scabbards (London). STOCKER, D. and EVERSON, P. 2003: The Straight and Narrow Way, Fenland Causeways and the Conversion of the Landscape in the Witham Valley, Lincolnshire. In Carver, M. (ed.) The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, 300-1300 (Woodbridge), 271-88. TODD, M. 1975: The Northern Barbarians (London). TOYNBEE, J.M.C. 1964: Art in Britain under the Romans (Oxford). TYLECOTE, R. 1986: The Prehistory of Metallurgy in the British Isles (London). TYLECOTE, R. and GILMOUR, B. 1986: The Ferrous Metallography of Early Tools and Weapons (Oxford). WEBSTER, G. 1982: The Swords and Pieces of Equipment from the Grave. In Bennett, Frere and Stow 1982, 185-8. YPEY, J. 1982: Europaische Waffen mit Damaszierung. Archaeolologisches Korrespondenzblatt, 12, 381-8 (ROB 176).

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The Anglo‑Saxon Cemetery at Old Park, near Dover, Revisited Keith Parfitt and Tania M. Dickinson

In her overview of early Anglo-Saxon Kent, the wellspring of her life’s research and teaching, Sonia Hawkes made two proposals which have coloured understanding of the development of this earliest English kingdom. From the density and distribution of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, especially along valleys such as the Little Stour, she proposed that burial sites could be taken as indicators of the (still) unobservable contemporary settlements: hillside cemeteries probably correlated with valley-bottom settlements, which had endured to this day. The Dour valley behind Dover in southeast Kent may be a good example of this pattern (Figs 1 and 2), but its only extensively excavated burial site is the renowned Buckland cemetery on the slopes of Long Hill. Sonia Hawkes’ second proposal, that the apparently very high ratio of sword-burials at Buckland, matched only at Sarre, represented the military backing to a royal port at Dover itself, can be questioned on theoretical and, with the excavation of the southern part of the cemetery, substantive grounds, though the ratio for 7th-century sword-graves still seems significant. Nonetheless, it remains a question of importance for understanding the Dour valley itself and Kent more generally whether Buckland, now one of the largest Anglo-Saxon burial sites known in the county, is exceptional, as it has seemed, or merely a more fully documented indicator of the socio-economic level and cultural complexion of the area.

undertaken during the 18th and 19th centuries went largely unrecorded, and knowledge of the exact position of the cemetery site became lost. As part of a recent major study of the Old Park estate, conducted by Canterbury Archaeological Trust on behalf of the new owners, Dover Harbour Board, the available evidence concerning the cemetery has been reviewed, and it is now possible to give a precise location for it. The scattered references, which provide the primary data, are presented here.

In this paper we attempt to widen perspectives by drawing on results of recent ‘rescue’ interventions and by reevaluating in particular the antiquarian discoveries made at Old Park, 1.5 km northwest of Buckland and the next Anglo-Saxon burial ground apparently along the valleyside.

28th January: Wonderful Dream: Thomas Page, a carpenter residing at Ewell, near Dover, having dreamed there was a large sum of money buried on the hill opposite River, above the lime‑kiln which belongs to Old Park and is the property of [.....] Every, Esq., Page applied for and obtained liberty to dig for the hidden property and set out on Monday last the 20th January with several other persons under his direction: the spot being pointed out by Page, they commenced their labour, and after being at work a short time they found a scull and a canteen which were nearly decayed, when Page directed the people to dig a little more to the right and they would find a pot, which was done, and also another with a belt and breastplate; the two vessels have the appearance of large copper boilers, and are of very

William Stukeley, writing of the general topography of the Dour valley around Dover, noted ‘many barrows on the sides of those hills’, but the first specific reference to Old Park appears to be that provided by Edward Hasted under the parish of River: Upon the hill, on the left side of the London Road, near the lime kiln, are several tumuli, some of which were lately opened, and in each of them was found a skeleton, a sword of about three feet long and two inches broad, and the head of a spear.

Two newspaper articles in the Kentish Chronicle for 1817 provide a more colourful account of subsequent interventions:

Old Park: Discovery and Location The existence of an Anglo‑Saxon cemetery somewhere within the grounds of the Old Park estate, between Whitfield and River on the outskirts of Dover, has long been known, but details of the various casual excavations   Hawkes 1982: 74.   Evison 1987; Parfitt 1994; 1995.    Evison 1987: 173; Parfitt 1995: 461-2.    Stoodley 2002: 324.    Meaney 1964: 117; Evison 1987: 176.  

  Cross and Parfitt 1999.   Stukeley 1776: Iter V, 128 note.    Hasted 1797-1801: 438.  

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Fig. 1. Map of the Dour valley and adjacent downland showing distribution of cemeteries and other Anglo-Saxon discoveries (with inset location maps). Drawing: B. Corke.

Fig. 2. Terrain model of the Dour valley showing positioning of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries on projecting spurs. A, Buckland; B, Old Park; C, Lousyberry Wood; D, Watersend. Created by K. Parfitt. 112

K. Parfitt and T.M. Dickinson : The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Old Park, Near Dover, Revisited

ancient make, they contained a quantity of old coins of gold, copper and other metals, some of them dated 117. This is supposed to be a miracle by the people residing in that neighbourhood, as Page could not have obtained any information from history, he being unable to read or write’.

are possible contexts for the discovery of some of the artefacts which survive in public collections but for which circumstances of recovery are not known (see below). There are numerous examples across Kent of 19th-century quarrymen finding antiquities during hand‑digging chalk or other building materials.

4th February: The account we gave on Tuesday last of Thomas Page, a carpenter at Ewell near Dover having found a quantity of old coins in consequence of his having dreamed that some treasure was hid on the hill opposite River, has induced a correspondent to furnish us with an account of the same man having had a similar dream nearly two years ago, when he searched at the same spot and found several silver ornaments, apparently Roman, and which it seems probably belonged to the belt of some warrior. We have seen these ornaments which are in fine preservation and they are inlaid with thin gold and some stones are set in one of them. The following memorandum was made by the Lady who now has the ornaments, at the time they came into her possession, which was shortly after they were found:

The location is confirmed by modern discoveries. In 1989 a local dog-walker spotted a single human bone exposed in the roots of a tree, which had been blown down in the great storm of October 1987. As a result, Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit excavated the substantially complete skeleton of a man buried in a deep chalk‑dug grave with two iron spears, which they dated to c. 600 AD.11 About the same time more human bones were discovered here by local children.12 Pits left by fallen trees were inspected again in 1997, 1998 and 1999 by Canterbury Archaeological Trust’s staff, who recovered further human bone from two of them, two metres apart and only a few metres from the 1989 discovery.13 The tree roots had thoroughly disturbed the bone, but although no grave‑cuts were identified or grave‑goods recovered, it seemed that two separate burials were represented. These recent burials were situated at the southwestern end of Old Park Wood, just within the boundary of the grounds of ‘Woodside’.14 Based on the early descriptions (see above), this seems to be close to the site of the original grave finds. A careful search of the entire area has failed to reveal evidence of any remaining barrows, such as had apparently existed there in the 18th century. Possibly these were destroyed when the woodland was first planted. Perhaps significantly, the old boundary between the parish of River and the Borough of Dover crosses the site.

Page, a journeyman carpenter, living at Ewell, near Dover, dreamed that if he dug up the ground at a certain place exactly pointed out in his dream, he should find great treasure, he accordingly in the morning proceeded to the spot, and with his knife only dug up these ornaments. The place at which they were found is on the side of a hill a little to the left of the turnpike road leading from Canterbury to Dover, about two miles from the latter place and just by the corner of the road leading to Sandwich. It is reported that other persons in digging afterwards, in hopes of finding further treasures, discovered some human bones.

If its general location is now reasonably clear, the extent of the cemetery at Old Park must remain uncertain, but the absolute minimum of eight graves revealed by the mainly casual investigations undertaken to date is almost certainly an inadequate indication of its true size; it might one day prove to be as extensive as Buckland. Indeed, the positioning of the cemetery is remarkably similar to that at Buckland (Fig. 2),15 being situated at an elevation of around 80 metres OD on the middle slopes of a narrow chalk spur formed at the junction of the main valley of the River Dour with a side valley (Whitfield Valley, formerly known as Kearsney Bottom).

Despite their vagueness (and improbability in the case of Thomas Page’s miraculous powers of discovery), these records give important clues about the location of what appears to be a well-endowed cemetery (Fig. 2). It lay within the parish of River, on the Old Park estate, near a limekiln, and close to the junction of the main London Road (= Roman Watling Street) with the road to Sandwich (Whitfield Hill). Reference to the 25 inch Ordnance Survey map for 1862 confirms a number of these details (Fig. 3). A chalk pit containing a limekiln did once lie on the eastern side of this road junction, with a second pit and kiln immediately to the southeast. Both pits lay at the southwestern end of woodland then known as Kearsney Hill Plantation (but now Old Park Wood). Subsequently the quarries appear to have been enlarged before a new mansion, named ‘Woodside’ was built in about 1870 on the adjacent hillside for Sir William Crundall.10 The old chalk pits seem to have been landscaped to form the gardens of the new house. Chalk quarrying and landscaping

Old Park: The Grave-Goods It is impossible to establish a definitive list of the gravegoods found at Old Park or to relate the little material which entered the public domain, and the even less that survives today, to records of discoveries. Yet what remains or can   Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit 1989.   Alan Avann (personal communication). 13   Barry Corke (personal communication). 14   NGR TR 2941 4374. 15   Evison 1987: 11. 11

12

  Cited from Gough 1987.   Roy 1990: 79.



10

113

Fig. 3. Extract from 25 inch Ordnance Survey map (1862) showing position of chalk pits and lime kilns near the junction of the Canterbury to Dover turnpike road with the Sandwich road.

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Fig. 4. The Old Park silver rim-fitting. Scale 1:1. Photograph: T.M. Dickinson. be reconstructed indicates a quite unsuspected importance for the site. Most spectacular is the evidence for prestige vessels, in particular a cup with an animal-ornamented silver rim and one or more hanging bowls.

taken by Mike Halliwell; the rim-fitting is presented as a roll-out, with the extant fragments re-positioned in their correct relationship (Fig. 5). The gilded silver sheet-metal strip consists of: (i) a contiguous piece, broken at both ends and along its length: upper edge length c. 162 mm, lower edge length c. 180 mm, max. width 21 mm; (ii) a short fragment representing the right-hand end of the die-impression, which must be the right-hand terminal of (i), but which has been wrongly attached to its left-hand end: upper edge length 25 mm, lower edge length c. 27 mm. Reconstructed, the extant pieces represent an upper edge length of c. 230 mm and a lower edge length of c. 255 mm, and account for three decorated panels and the end of a fourth, impressed from a slightly curved trapezoidal die. Four rivet holes in the unstamped lower edge (marked by black arrows on Fig. 5) indicate that the mount was fastened to the vessel by a rivet at each die-junction and by three or four rivets in between. A fluted rim-clip, length 21 mm, width 5 mm, which originally would have held a u-shaped binding over the rim-edge, survives at the midpoint of one of the dieimpressions, its in situ silver disc-headed pin piercing the decorated panel. Three other rivet holes survive at this level (marked by greyscale arrows on Fig. 5), suggesting that rim-clips were originally placed at the four die-junctions and, rather clumsily, at the midpoints of the four dieimpressions (unless the latter were a secondary measure).

Silver Rim-Fitting for a Cup (Dover Museum DOVRM 0.1446) There is no information about when the silver rimfitting was found, but knowledge of it can be traced in the scholarly literature throughout the 20th century.16 Its history has been chequered, however. In the 1930s it was conserved in the British Museum Laboratory,17 but overzealous chemical cleaning, probably with vinegar or the like, followed by fairly harsh brushing with a metal polish or mild abrasive, removed much of the original gilding; broken portions were poorly soldered back together at two points, and one fragment was incorrectly attached at the left-hand end.18 The fitting was then mounted as a complete ring on a hessian-backed cylinder and displayed until 1967, when it was removed to store: thus Katherine East studied and photographed it, but was not permitted to remove it from its mounting.19 Dover Museum, however, lost knowledge of its existence until 2002, when the new curator, Jon Iveson, began a thorough stocktaking of material in store, and brought it to our attention. Description: Ornament

Overall

Construction

and

Animal

The decorative panel (Fig. 6a) measures externally c. 75.5 mm along the upper edge, c. 83 mm along the lower edge, and is 16-17 mm wide. It was produced by a positive die with a billeted border and a row of eight bosses along the lateral edges, but not all the latter are fully represented because of uneven abutment of the die-impressions. The animal decoration does not form a fully coherent design, but all the individual motifs are perfectly legible. They are mostly executed in parallel-line versions of Salin’s Style I.20 There are four anthropomorphic profile heads. If the mount is viewed upside down, two appear facing left (Fig. 6b, black font): (1) at the left-hand upper corner of the panel has a head-surround terminating in a hair-coil and

The fragile fitting is currently mounted loosely by pins on to a cone of thick paper (Fig. 4), which, combined with its curvature, makes precise measurement and graphical presentation difficult. Here drawings, checked against the original, have been based on overlapping photographs   Smith 1908: 384; Baldwin Brown 1915: 342, pl. 68,1; Kendrick 1937a; Holmqvist 1951: 55; Hawkes et al. 1979: 388-9, pl. 6, 23; East 1983: 389, fig. 282b; Evison 1987: 171; Jean Cook recorded the fitting in the 1950s during her research on buckets: Birte Brugmann (personal communication). 17   Kendrick 1937a: 76. 18   Mike Halliwell (personal communication); cf. fig. 5 with Kendrick 1937a: 77, where it is laid out ‘flat’. 19   Hawkes et al. 1979: note 36 and pl. 6, 23; East 1983: fig. 282b. 16

  For Style Phases C and D, see Haseloff 1981: 196-216.

20

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Fig. 5. The Old Park silver rim-fitting, with extant fragments reconstructed in correct relationship. Scale 1:1. Drawing: T.M. Dickinson.

two bars representing a headdress or animal-ear; (2) just right of the midpoint of the panel has a bold nasal and striated cap or hair. When the mount is viewed the correct way up, the other two heads appear (Fig. 6c, black font): (3) faces right, a little in from the upper right corner of the panel, and is rather compact, whereas (4) faces left, about a third of the way in from the left side of the panel, and has slightly sinuous hair. In front of (4) is motif (5): a confidently executed, bent human arm with triple-bar

shoulder, braceleted wrist, and three-fingered hand with prominently out-stretched thumb (Fig. 6c, dark grey font). The hand lies over motif (6), a headless quadruped with a two-strand neck, body of cross-ribs between contours,21 a short two-toed front limb, and a multi-clawed rear limb with hip-scroll and triple-strand hip-arch (Fig. 6c, light grey font). There are fifteen other animal legs with multiple-bar   For Style Phase B, see Haseloff 1981: 180-96.

21

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Fig. 6. Reconstructed and interpretative drawings of the Style I in a complete panel (die-impression) of the Old Park silver rim-fitting. Scale 2:1. Drawing: T.M. Dickinson. hip-arches, two of which (near the centre) have braceleted ankles, and there are six surplus hip-arches: the legs cannot be assigned to the heads to make coherently individual creatures. Finally, there are three miscellaneous elements: (7) a hook in the bottom left-hand corner (Fig. 6c); (8) a y-shape with scrolled ‘tail’ in front of head (1) (Fig. 6b, dark grey font); and (9) a volute-shape below the hair-coil of head (1) (Fig. 6b, light grey font).

neat overlap at the ends, it would have fitted a vessel with a rim-diameter of c. 96 mm, sloping outwards to c. 105 mm. Although this matches the dimensions of large drinkinghorns, such as those from Sutton Hoo and Taplow, and as implied by the original die for the horn from Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight,22 the tapered shape shows that it belonged to a cup, presumably of wood, with slightly inward-sloping rim and probably a shouldered or bulbous body. Such cups are best known from rich 7th-century burials, and are implied by surviving dies; any animal

Interpretation: Context and Iconography If the rim-fitting originally consisted of four dieimpressions round its circumference, then, assuming a

  Morris and Dickinson 1999: 90-2.

22

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ornament is normally in Salin’s Style II.23 With its Salin’s Style I decoration, the Old Park cup is exceptional. Indeed, it is only the fourth vessel so ornamented from England, all the others being drinking-horns: the aforementioned examples from Carisbrooke Castle and Taplow, and a close replica of the latter implied by rimvandykes recently found at Holton le Moor, Lincs., and now in North Lincolnshire Museum.24 Moreover, contrary to Kendrick’s dismissal of the Old Park ornament as ‘a close chaotic assembly without organization or flowing rhythm’,25 it can be related to later 5th- and early 6thcentury south Scandinavian animal art, which provided the artistic context for the Kentish production of the Taplow and original Carisbrooke Castle horns.26

Kent probably during the first quarter of the 6th century.33 The acrobatic animal-men in the broad rim-mounts and vandykes are well-known, but even more pertinent are the triangular panels of the terminals which depict, in Style Phase C, variously intertwined open-jawed monsters, in one case in precisely symmetrical mirror-image and in two others ‘in combat’ with an animal-man. A premier Kentish ‘workshop’ might thus have been the conduit through which awareness of the Scandinavian tradition, however diluted, reached the maker of the Old Park die. Whilst the ornamental programmes and artistry of the Scandinavian pressblech series are outstanding, their anthropomorphic motifs recur in Style I throughout the North Sea and Baltic region, including, as Holmqvist first observed, on the Old Park rim.34 Its Heads (1)-(4), with their variously striated or coiled hair, ‘helmet’ or headdress, are particularly well paralleled among the animal-men cultivated in Anglo-Saxon Style I,35 but are also typical of latest Danish Style I.36 Less common, but most distinctive, is Motif (5) – a human arm and hand with outstretched thumb. Both the head- and the hand-motifs, like the cognate forms which typify the figures on the Scandinavian A-C gold bracteates (Fig. 7), were ultimately derived from images of the Roman emperor, but they were translated and transformed in Scandinavian art to represent mythological figures.37

The position of heads (1) and (2) in the decorative panel (Fig. 6b) might seem consistent with an intention simply to present two chasing creatures, an arrangement often found in Anglo-Saxon Style I. But their position, upsidedown in relation to heads (3) and (4) and the other way round in relation to head (4) and motifs (5)-(6), echoes, albeit distantly, the diagonal mirror-image symmetry that characterises a series of luxury pressblech fittings produced in later 5th- and earliest 6th-century Scandinavia. Executed in the primary version of Style I (Style Phase A), these depict variously intertwined anthropomorphs, animalmen, horses and open-jawed monsters.27 In some cases, the motifs also occur in simple mirror-image symmetry, with ‘tumbling’, ‘dancing’ or ‘ecstatic’ human figures in single-line procession. The gilt-silver panels on the swordhilt from Snartemo V, Vest-Agder, Norway, are archetypal, with diagonal symmetry on the front and slightly less complex arrangements on the back.28 Pertinently for the present context, however, other examples are all on prestige vessels: drinking-horns from Söderby-Karl, Uppland, Sweden;29 the metal beaker from the Uppåkra ‘cult-house’, Skåne, Sweden;30 and rim-repairs for glass-vessels from Lille Børke, Hedmark,31 Rimestad and Vestly, Rogaland, and Snartemo V, all in Norway.32 Aside from the broad, rectangular, gilt copper-alloy rim-mounts of SöderbyKarl, these all consist of narrow, gold or gilt-silver foils (c. 9-20 mm wide), similar in size to the Carisbrooke Castle horn-rim and Old Park cup-rim. Close links exist between these Scandinavian prestige vessels and the cast giltsilver fittings on the Taplow horns, which were made in

The Style I of the Old Park mount has a special link with the iconography of Scandinavian bracteates, however, for head (4) and arm (5) are combined with headless quadruped (6) in a remarkable evocation of the central motif of C-bracteates: a large human (divine) head and a horse. The choice of Style Phase B for the body of motif (6) may even reflect the frequently pelleted or banded body of the bracteate horse.38 At least twenty C-bracteates (twelve dies) are known which show the human’s hand with outstretched thumb resting on the horse, usually on its neck (IK 58, 75,1-3, 94,1-2, 96,1-4, 142, 147, 154,1-3, 300 and 597), but in one case on its belly (IK 33 British Museum) and in two cases, just as on Old Park, over its flank: IK 50 Esrom Sø district, Sjælland, Denmark, and IK 173 Sletner, Østfold, Norway (the latter, unusually, with the man riding the horse).39 Apart from the last-named example, known find-spots are concentrated in Sjælland, Fyn, Jutland and Skåne, and all belong to Axboe’s Group H2, dated by him to the last quarter of the 5th century.40

  Speake in Hawkes et al. 1979: 387-90; East 1983.   Adams 2002, but misidentified; Kevin Leahy (personal communication). 25   Kendrick 1937a. 26   Morris and Dickinson 1992; East and Webster (in preparation). 27   Holmqvist 1951; Haseloff 1981:160-3, 174-80 and 276; cf. Kristoffersen 2000. 28   Hougen 1935: pl. 1-2; Evison 1967: pl. 10; Kristoffersen 2000: 27881; Magnus 2003: 40-6. 29   Holmqvist 1951: esp. 46-7. 30   Hårdh 2004. 31   Jacobsen 2004. 32   Straume 1987: 48-53, pls. 58, 6-7, 61, 3 and 73, 26; cf. Haseloff 1981: 122-4. 23 24

  Speake 1980: pl. 1; East and Webster (in preparation).   Holmqvist 1951: esp. 55. 35   Haseloff 1981: 273-80; Leigh 1984: esp. fig. 3; Dickinson 2002: esp. fig. 4h; Dickinson 2005: figs 2b-d and 5-7; cf. the trapezoidal terminalpanel on one Taplow horn: Speake 1980: pl.1. 36   Karen Høilund Nielsen (personal communication); cf. Haseloff 1981: pl. 36, 1. 37 Kendrick 1938: 75-81; Holmqvist 1951: 47-59; Hauck et al. 1985-9: 1,1, esp. 74-7; Axboe and Kromann 1992. 38   Haseloff 1981:180-96; Hauck et al. 1985-89: Volume 1,1, 99-130. 39   Hauck et al. 1985-9: Volumes 1,2-3 and 2,2-3; Axboe 2003: 20-2. 40   Axboe 2003: 21. 33 34

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to after c. 575.44 Maybe in Kent C-bracteate iconography was deemed appropriate for men’s prestige drinking vessels, but not for women’s jewellery. Interpreting the meaning behind bracteate iconography and Style I is necessarily problematic and controversial, but that the two are intimately connected is beyond doubt. In Karl Hauck’s oft-expounded exegeses, the bracteates relate to a cult of Woden/Ođinn, the C-bracteates specifically depicting his healing of Baldr’s lame foal and hence his own powers as a healer and victor over death.45 Bente Magnus applies a related reading to the Scandinavian Style I pressblech series, seeing in them a shape-changing Ođinn fighting with or being swallowed by monsters and Ođinn’s sons as horse-associated divine ‘twins’.46 She emphasises how an ornament embodying claimed divine ancestry and displayed on luxury items that were central to ritual and social practice would have sustained networks of power between overlords and leading warrior retainers. Probably bracteates worked in a similar way, but they could also be mediated through women. In Kent their distribution seems to mark centres of emergent elites, who claimed superior status through affiliations with southern Scandinavia.47 The four D-bracteates from Buckland Dover, among other indices, point to such a centre in the Dour valley. Although the Old Park cup deploys only elements of the Scandinavian ritual imagery, they could have been quite sufficient to convey comparable cultic and social meanings; it testifies to a Dour valley ‘elite centre’ encompassing more than Buckland itself.

Fig. 7. IK Raum Esrom Sø, Sjælland, C-bracteate. Scale 2:1. After Hauck et al. 1985–89: 1,3, fig. 50b.

Parallels between IK 50 Esrom Sø (Fig. 7) and Old Park are particularly suggestive. On the former, the central figure’s arms are braceleted. He is accompanied by a smaller figure holding a staff and a disc, who is flanked by two symbols, a spiral and a volute, which also appear in the field of IK 33 British Museum. A volute is one form used for the human ear on bracteates,41 which can also occur, disembodied, in the field of D-bracteates. Old Park motif (9) (Fig. 6b) may therefore represent a disembodied human ear. Further, on either side of the central head on IK 50 are two mirror-image symbols, shaped like a ‘y’ with a spiral tail, which are similar to Old Park motif (8). Hauck identifies the former as miniature snakes and Aesculapian attributes of healing power.42 Although very similar shapes often represent hip-joints in Anglo-Saxon Style I, as in motif (6), they often have a more pronounced ‘reversed-s’ curve, whilst the position of motif (8) – in front of head (1) – would be odd for a hip-joint, but equivalent to the placement of the snake-motifs on IK 50. A similar motif also projecting from the front of an animal-man’s head occurs on a shield apex-disc from Alveston, Warwks.43 No analogy for Old Park motif (7) is forthcoming, however, unless it is meant to be a staff.

When the Old Park rim-mount was made is less certain, but suggested dates for manufacture of the precursor Cbracteates and of the Taplow horns, on the one side, and the deposition of Bradstow School 71, on the other side, probably indicate sometime between the third and seventh decade of the 6th century, that is equivalent to late in the absolute date range assigned to Brugmann’s Kentish phase II (500-530/40) or early in the range assigned to Kentish phase III (530/40-560/70),48 though later deposition of such a luxury item cannot be excluded altogether. Hanging Bowl(s) A substantial assemblage of tinned copper-alloy fittings from one or more hanging bowls are known from Old Park. The majority (items A–H2 below) were found in 1861 and donated to Dover Museum by William Clayton, but a small fragment (H3), which conjoins fragments H1-2 to form a complete basal ring, had been donated to the British Museum sometime in the first half of the 19th century by Samuel Lysons. Unfortunately, all but one of the pieces

It would seem that the Old Park die-maker had made extensive use of the symbolism of C-bracteates in his work. Yet in England C-bracteates are known only in Anglian areas and mostly as poor copies, whereas Kentish bracteates were almost exclusively locally-made versions of the Dtype. A crude C-bracteate die (IK 224) was used, however, to ornament a silver repair-mount for a wooden drinking vessel in grave 71 at Bradstow School, Broadstairs, Kent, the well-endowed burial of an adolescent male, coin-dated

  Hauck et al. 1985-9: Volume 2,2-3; Wicker 1992: 154-7.   Hauck 1983: 518-26; Hauck et al. 1985-9: Volume1,1, 99-130; but contra: Starkey 1999. 46   Magnus 2003. 47   Behr 2001 48   Brugmann 1999. 44 45

  Axboe 2004: 89.   Hauck et al. 1985-9: Volume1,1, 77-9. 43   Dickinson 2005: fig. 5c. 41 42

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of the outermost field has fine-line running scroll reserved against enamel, unevenly laid out and incomplete. The lower quadrant carries a symmetrical reserved pattern of two sets of three scrolls linking the median and outer fields and the rim. Diameter: approx. 52-54 mm; total length: approx. 68-76 mm.

in Dover Museum went missing at about the same time as the silver rim-mount above, but unlike that they have not since been located. Fortunately, however, they were recorded at various times by scholars with specialist knowledge of hanging bowls. Reginald Smith exhibited them in February 1908 to the Society of Antiquaries of London, and his subsequent report was supported by drawings by Praetorius (Fig. 8).49 They were discussed later by Françoise Henry, who added some photographs.50 Photographs and records made sometime in or after the later 1950s by Gabrielle Keiller underpin the entries in Rupert Bruce-Mitford’s recently published corpus, though it would seem he never saw the objects himself, and there are some minor discrepancies between measurements given in the corpus and those indicated by photographs and line drawings printed there and elsewhere. 51

B. Hooked disc (Dover Museum, not extant).54 Disc with knob-like, faceted hook, its neck decorated with an enamel-inlaid slashed oval. The decoration is carried in two main fields: red-enamel inlaid dots and lentoids/leaves with reserved-metal diagonal bars form an inner swirl (‘swastika’) of crescents and an outer running chevron; a band of inlaid pseudo-cable and a plain ring separate these two fields, and another pseudo-cable band makes an outermost border. Diameter: 49-50 mm; total length: approx. 75-80 mm.

The relationship between Clayton’s material in Dover Museum and Lysons’ at the British Museum is problematic, though Bruce-Mitford’s doubts that H1-3 were from Old Park at all seem unfounded (see further below under metalbound wooden bucket). Smith surmised that Clayton’s material came from a grave re-excavated ‘after an interval of half a century’.52 This reckoning would take us back approximately to Thomas Page’s discovery of two vessels, likened to large copper boilers and which allegedly contained a collection of coins of diverse metals, some improbably bearing the date ‘117’. Possibly these were detached hanging-bowl mounts, their simple lentoid motifs being mistaken as arabic numerals. If so, then at least one of Page’s vessels was a hanging bowl and corresponds, in part or total, with that or those represented by the Lysons/ Clayton assemblage.

C. Unframed (hooked?) disc (Dover Museum DOVRM 0.1440/41).55 Convex-concave cast copper-alloy, missing one portion of the outer edge, which may indicate a lost hook. The decoration is the same as on B, except the median plain ring and the outermost pseudo-cable border are absent. Diameter: 49 mm; thickness 2 mm. D. Unframed (basal?) disc (Dover Museum, not extant).56 Similar to C, but there are no reserved diagonal bars in the median border and those in the lentoids are indistinct. Four lentoids are added to the central pattern, and those in the outer field are arranged in pairs like leaf-sprays. Diameter: 45 mm. E. Unframed (hooked?) disc (Dover Museum, not extant).57 Similar to C, including broken rim indicative of probable lost hook. Diameter: 49-50 mm.

Description of Known Fittings The following descriptions and discussion of the material depend extensively on comments and suggestions made by Susan Youngs.

F. Small disc with projection (Dover Museum, not extant).58 Although Henry and Bruce-Mitford use the term ‘hook’ for the moulded projection, Smith expressly says it was not hooked, and Bruce-Mitford’s discussion implies the same.59 The two inlaid dots and faceting give the projection a zoomorphic appearance. Decoration of the disc is similar to the central field of D. Diameter: 20 mm; total length: 35 mm.

A. Hooked disc (Dover Museum, not extant).53 Disc with bird-headed hook, the stylised head with a right-angled, recessed lower jaw and with two decorative vertical enamelled grooves on the squat neck. The disc has three interlinked fields of decoration carrying a mixture of inlaid and reserved ornament. Two fields have enamel inlaid into a broad metal background: an innermost hexafoil around a central ring is defined by six concave-sided triangles with inlaid dots and extends into a vertical projection framing a reserved backward ‘s-scroll’. The ‘s’ divides a middle field inlaid with two lines of zigzag with dots. Three-quarters

G. Small disc. (Dover Museum, not extant).60 Similar to F; the longer of two breaks at the edge probably indicates a lost moulded projection. Diameter: 19 mm.   Smith 1907-9: fig. 10; Henry 1936: pl. 26, 5; Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: figs 133, 134 and 136 top. 55   Brenan 1991: 205, 327, Catalogue No. 19; Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: fig. 136 left. 56   Smith 1907-9: fig. 11; Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: figs 135 and 136 bottom. 57   Smith 1907-9: 77-8; Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: fig. 136 right. 58   Smith 1907-9: 78, fig. 12; Henry 1936: 226, pl. 27, 3; Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: 426-7, fig. 659 right. 59   Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: 427. 60   Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: 426-7, fig. 659 left. 54

  Smith 1907-09; also Smith 1908: 379.   Henry 1936. 51   Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: cat. nos. 34 and 35 and Doubtful Items Group 1, no. 7, 159-63 and 426-7. 52   Smith 1907-9. 53   Smith 1907-9: fig. 9; Henry 1936: 226, pl. 26, 1; Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: figs 138 and 139. 49 50

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Fig. 8. Hanging-bowl fittings. A–F: Scale 1:1; H: Scale 1:2. A, B, D, F and H after Smith 1907–9: figs 9–13; C after Brenan 1991: 205.

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H1-3. Basal ring (Dover Museum, not extant, and British Museum OA 4855).61 H3 is a small, rectangular-section, cast copper‑alloy fragment, which still survives, on the mount that Smith had made for it, set over a photograph of it conjoined with the two larger fragments in Dover Museum, H1-2. Together they comprise a complete ring with a band of cast and incised ornament of alternating slanted lentoids and dots now partly inlaid with red enamel. On H3 one dot corresponds with a rivet on the back, and one is now an empty hole; at least four other rivet holes in H1-2 can be detected from the photograph. Diameter: 135137 mm; width: 5.5 mm; thickness: 1.5 mm.

This leaves F and the presumptively originally identical G. Arguably, these represent further embellishments of the bowl exterior. Indeed, if the dots on the projecting part of F are taken as eyes and the whole piece as zoomorphic, then a parallel might be suggested with the boar-heads which were fitted under the hooked discs on the Sutton Hoo hanging bowl 1,66 a bowl which had additional square mounts too.67 Extra decorative mounts were also used, for example, on two, more modest, bowls from Lincolnshire: St Paul-in-the-Bail, Lincoln68 and a recent find from High Toynton.69 If F and G were used in this way, however, for symmetry’s sake one might have to assume a further matching but lost piece or pieces.

Interpretation: Ornament, Reconstruction and Context

This leaves the association of A to be debated. Unmatched mounts on hanging bowls are not unknown, but usually it is a difference between hooked discs and basal discs or a case of a secondary replacement,70 which is not evidenced here. The problem can be resolved only art-historically. In Youngs’ opinion, the style of ornament on fittings B-H is boldly classical and quite distinctive within the corpus of hanging bowls. The paired leaves on disc D form a wreath in classical mode, as commentators have noted, whereas the use of three ‘leaves’ to form a concave-sided triangular field is an ancient La Tène motif. Comparisons for the ‘leaf and dot’ and pseudo-cable can be made, for example, with late Roman plate, whilst swirls of crescents occur in the 4th-century Cirencester mosaic school. Youngs suspects that B-H are 5th-century products of a provincial craftsman, a view supported by her reading of the ornament of disc A, but readily concedes that they might be later work by someone with a classicising bent, which accords with the late 6th- to 7th-century deposition dates for most enamelled bowls.71

Hanging bowls are deeply problematic for archaeologists. They are mostly known from Anglo-Saxon graves of the 7th and early 8th centuries,62 yet on both technical and arthistorical grounds their source of production lies within a British milieu and their date of manufacture might be considerably earlier. The Old Park mounts are particularly problematic, because, with the exception of hooked mount A, they are all decorated in the same style, a closely interrelated set of designs based on red-enamel lentoids and dots; yet there are far more fittings than are normally needed or found on one bowl. They also include two pieces with unique features: the knobbed hook of hooked mount B and piece F with its straight projection. Henry assumed that the fittings represented ‘at least three vases designed as a set’, presumably separating out fitting A with its scroll decoration from fittings B-E and from the small discs F-G, which she compared with discs on bowls from Faversham and Kingston Downs grave 205, Kent.63 Bruce-Mitford followed Henry, except he was doubtful that F-G were from bowls, despite the closeness of their decoration to the other fittings, and he explained B-E and A as the contemporary products of two craftsman with widely different skill-levels.64 Sets of bowls with coordinated decoration, however, would be unparalleled in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, even in the lavish context of the Sutton Hoo mound 1 ship-burial. Arguably, then, BH, at least, belonged to a single, lavishly and unusually decorated bowl, which, from the diameter of the basal ring H in comparison with basal rings on other bowls, was large. B is the only certain survivor from the original hooked escutcheons, but discs C and E are of similar size and, whilst not identical to B, their damaged edges probably result from broken-off hooks, thus making a minimal set of three suspension hooks.65 D is an interior or exterior basal disc.

Hooked disc A is the odd one out. It utilises motifs, notably the running scrolls, which are easier to parallel among the main corpus of over a hundred hanging bowls, while the central hexafoil is known in both classical and native insular metalwork of the post-Roman period and later, such simple compass patterns seemingly never falling out of the decorative repertoire. Both running scroll and hexafoil are among the classical motifs of other bowls which reached early 7th-century Kent.72 Yet even allowing that most bowl mounts or sets have unique features, this mount not only has an odd combination of designs, but also combines the fields in a distinctive manner. The crude inlaid zigzag with alternating dots is at odds with the reserved ornament of the rest of the disc, but set beside the other hooked discs (B, C and E), it can be seen to mimic their main border pattern. Similarly

  Smith 1907-9: fig. 13; Henry 1936: pl. 27, 4; Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: 159-61, fig. 132. 62   Geake 1999. 63   Henry 1936: 226-7. 64   Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: 159-63 and 426-7. 65   But, pace Bruce-Mitford with Raven 2005: 159 and 161, they cannot be from the same mould or their dimensional and decorative differences the result of post-casting handwork. 61

  Bruce-Mitford 1983: 217-9, fig. 167 and pl. 5.   Bruce-Mitford 1983: 206-21. 68   Gilmour 1979. 69   Unpublished, Lincoln City and County Museum 70   Brenan 1991: 113. 71   cf. Youngs 2001: 218-20. 72   cf. Henry 1936: 230-1. 66 67

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the central hexafoil, crudely composed from lentoids and dots and with its upper projecting panel, seems to make a conscious reference to the shape of the smaller fitting F. Youngs therefore speculates that A, rather than being evidence for a later 6th- to 7th-century dating of the main bowl and of the mounts carrying lentoid-and-dot patterns, or for the existence of a second hanging bowl, might have been a replacement for a fourth suspension hook, made for a treasured heirloom while it was still in its cultural (British) homeland: in the curious and rather clumsy central motifs of the disc, a craftsman versed in making hooked mounts deliberately incorporated existing ornamentation of the bowl. It is also evident, from the presence of a rivet through an empty dot which ought originally to have been enamelled, that the basal ring H had been re-attached at some time, either before or after the bowl came into an Anglo-Saxon cultural context (the mount cannot have been enamelled after attachment to the bowl). Although there are several examples of hanging bowls with repairs or replacement mounts, these were made by metalworkers who, like the smith who repaired the largest bowl in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, worked in an Anglo-Saxon tradition and who would not or could not work in the original style of the bowls.

stippling and pseudo-peltas might have ornamented the centre of the lid and perhaps the back, while a fragment with an internal openwork lozenge is plausibly suggested as the frame for a keyhole, so presumably was on the front. Although Kendrick ascribed the fittings to the late 4th/early 5th centuries on the grounds of a parallel from Vermand, such caskets are better known from 6th-century contexts on the Continent and late 6th- and 7th-century graves in England, where they are generally a possession of women.75 A Metal-Bound Wooden Bucket The other possibility for Page’s ‘canteen’ might be a wooden bucket. Sometime before 1851 a bucket-vandyke (British Museum OA 4854)76 was exhibited by Wollaston Franks to the Royal Archaeological Institution, along with other ‘disjecta membra’ from the British Museum.77 Donated by Samuel Lysons, its association with the fragment of hanging-bowl basal ring (H3), also gifted by Lysons, had been retained by Reginald Smith when he had both re-mounted on a new board early in the 20th century. The bucket-vandyke was said, however, to have been ‘found between Sandgate and Dover’, implying a provenance somewhere along the coastline between Dover and Folkestone. Unfortunately there is no further registration record in the British Museum (the OA numbers were assigned in the late 1970s and 1980s), but given the strength of the association with the hangingbowl ring, it is possible that the find-spot should have read ‘between Sandwich and Dover’, that is at Old Park, on the junction of the Dover and Sandwich roads.

If just one hanging bowl was found at Old Park, then its final owner in the 7th century undoubtedly had a spectacular piece. If there were two bowls, then the second still seems to have shared some intimate biography with the lavish and venerable first. Ivory-Inlaid Casket (Dover Museum DOVRM 0.1450)

The single, triangular, copper‑alloy pressblech mount is relief-decorated with an anthropomorphic mask: length 47 mm, width 30.5 mm. It is identifiable as a vandyke from the bottom edge of the top hoop of a late 5th- or 6th-century continental type of wooden bucket. A bucket of this type is known from Howletts, Kent, and similar vandykes are recorded from two other sites in Kent and two in Essex.78

The casket-fittings were also part of William Clayton’s 1861 donation to Dover Museum,73 but lack any record of the circumstances of discovery, unless they can be linked to Thomas Page’s finding of a ‘canteen’: according to the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition), in the late 18th and 19th centuries, the term could be used for a tin or wooden water-container or for a box containing eating utensils. Certainly, Anglo-Saxon wooden caskets sometimes contain small items or tools.74

Other Grave-Goods The antiquarian reports indicate that among the finds there were several swords as well as spears (two more spears being found in 1989) and possibly a shield boss (Thomas Page’s ‘breastplate’?). Page’s silver belt ornaments inlaid with thin gold and stones sound most like a late 6th-/early 7th-century triangular-plated buckle and belt-mounts with pressblech and cloisonné garnet inlay.79 There was also other belt equipment.

The thirteen rectilinear pieces are said to be of ivory, although no scientific analysis is known to have been undertaken and comparable fittings for wooden boxes are normally identified as bone or antler. The pieces are stained green from contact with copper alloy. Their variety and incompleteness makes a reconstruction impossible, but nine narrow strips, 8-10 mm in width, are decorated in six different designs based on intersecting circles and ring-and-dot (three pairings and three individual) and might have bordered the lid and faces, the length of which could be indicated by the only fully extant strip (164 mm). Two broader pieces (120 x 31 mm and 80 x 16 mm) with more complex patterns involving additional pin-pricked

  Granger and Henig 1983: 136-8; Evison 1987: 106; Geake 1997: 812. 76   Cook 2004: cat. no. 114. 77   Way 1851: 177. 78   Parfitt and Brugmann 1997: 79-82 and note 42; cf. Cook 2004: cat. nos. 46, 53, 101, 110-1. 79 cf. Speake 1980: 52-9. 75

  Baldwin Brown 1915: 305, pl. 53, 4; Kendrick 1937b.   Speake 1989: 30; Geake 1997: 82.

73 74

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Old Park: Summary

shells have come from an Anglo-Saxon grave on Priory Hill, Dover.84 Given the relatively close proximity of the coastline, the discovery of shell-fish remains at Temple Ewell is perhaps no great surprise. Indeed, the rocky foreshore below the cliffs on either side of the Dour estuary, some 4.5 km to the southeast, would have readily provided such items. There seems little doubt that more graves await discovery at Lousyberry Wood and the presence of yet another significant cemetery site along the Dour valley is implied. In terms of spacing, this fairly certainly represents the next cemetery inland from Old Park (Figs 1 and 2).

The accumulated evidence indicates that the cemetery at Old Park could have been substantial in size, and that it included several burials with high-status accoutrements, such as swords and luxury vessels. Most of the material – the hanging bowl(s), ‘ivory’ casket, the 1989 spearheads and the presumptive belt-suite – are consistent with late 6thor 7th-century burials under barrows. The silver rim-fitting and the bucket-mount indicate, however, that rich burials were probably already present earlier in the 6th century. The silver rim-fitting in particular, although not artistically in the first rank, was clearly loaded with meanings which linked its owner, socially and ideologically, with the leading families of Kent. Arguably it is only the circumstances of discovery which make Old Park seem different from its immediate neighbour along the valley-side, Buckland. Nor is Old Park the only such site.

Conclusion: Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries along the Dour Valley It now seems quite clear that early Anglo‑Saxon cemeteries were strung out along the hills above the 7 km length of the Dour valley (Fig. 1). Travelling up the valley from the river-mouth at Dover, there is at least limited evidence from seven sites: on Durham Hill, Priory Hill and High Meadow on the southwest side, and then at Buckland, Old Park, Lousyberry Wood and Watersend on the northeast side.85 The latter four sites all lie on chalk spurs which jut out from the main valley side, each one placed on a promontory and roughly midway down the valley side. Their location is striking and almost predictable in its regularity (Fig. 2).

A New Anglo-Saxon Burial Site at Lousyberry Wood, Temple Ewell One reason for previous uncertainty about the location of the Old Park cemetery was that the Ordnance Survey’s Archaeology Division confused Hasted’s original description of ‘several tumuli’ with the three round barrows that still survive on the hillside at Lousyberry Wood in the neighbouring parish of Temple Ewell, some 700 metres northwest of the Old Park site (Fig. 1).80 Removing this erroneous link allows the mounds preserved within Lousyberry Wood to be reassigned to the Bronze Age with some reasonable degree of confidence.81 Quite by chance, however, the erection of a new fence during the spring of 2004 close to the most southerly (downhill) of these barrows led to the discovery of part of a human skull. Subsequent investigation of the area by the Dover Archaeological Group established that this was not from a prehistoric satellite but derived from a double grave of Anglo-Saxon date (grave 1).82 Three other graves of this period (graves 2-4) were located immediately adjacent, and there can be little doubt that these relate to a larger AngloSaxon cemetery, focused upon the Bronze Age barrow in a way that is becoming increasingly familiar in east Kent and beyond.83

There can be little doubt that each of these burial sites was originally associated with a settlement, most probably located in the bottom of the valley, adjacent to the River Dour and the old Roman road (Watling Street) leading to Canterbury and London. It seems unlikely to be coincidence that the present-day villages of Temple Ewell, River and Buckland, each with evidence for a Norman parish church, also lie directly below an early Anglo-Saxon hillside cemetery (Figs 1 and 2), implying that these are ancient settlement sites. Other settlements must have occupied the high ground above the valley, however, such as that on the downs at Church Whitfield, 2.75 km to the northeast of Old Park, which comprised at least two timbers halls and four sunken huts of the late 6th to 7th century.86 Such a density and regularity of burials, and implied local settlement, must now qualify the relative significance of Buckland. Also the close spacing and wealth of the cemeteries along the Dour valley is probably not a simple outcome of control over agricultural resources and trade, but a product of the need of people in these communities to negotiate their socio-economic identities and rivalries through cultural practices.

All four Anglo-Saxon graves in Lousyberry Wood were aligned roughly east-west and the two fully examined contained few grave-goods, details which may be taken as providing some reasonable evidence that they belong to the late 6th or 7th century. A series of stake-holes located around the base of grave 1 suggested that it had originally been lined with hurdle work. Also of note in grave 1 was the provision of several limpet shells with skeleton A, presumably as a food offering. More limpet   Phillips 1964; Evison 1987: 171 and 176.   Grinsell 1992: Temple Ewell 1-3. 82   Parfitt 2004. 83   As at Buckland; Evison 1987: 13-5. 80

  Payne 1889: 205.   Evison 1987: 176-7; Parfitt 1998. 86   Parfitt, Allen and Rady 1997.

81

84 85

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Acknowledgements

BRUCE-MITFORD, R.L.S. with RAVEN, S. 2005: A Corpus of Late Celtic Hanging-Bowls, with an Account of the Bowls Found in Scandinavia (Oxford). BRUGMANN, B. 1999: The Role of Continental ArtefactTypes in Sixth-Century Kentish Chronology. In Hines, J., Høilund Nielsen, K. and Siegmund, F. (eds), The Pace of Change: Studies in EarlyMedieval Chronology (Oxford), 37-64. COOK, J. 2004: Early Anglo-Saxon Buckets: A Corpus of Alloy and Iron-Bound, Stave-Built Vessels, ed. B. Brugmann (Oxford). CROSS, R. and PARFITT, K. 1999: Former Old Park Barracks, Whitfield, Dover, Proposed Redevelopment. Archaeological Desk Study and Impact Assessment (Canterbury Archaeological Trust Archive Report for Dover Harbour Board, May 1999). DICKINSON, T.M. 2002: Translating Animal Art: Salin’s Style I and Anglo-Saxon Cast Saucer Brooches. Hikuin 29, 163-86. DICKINSON, T.M. 2005: Symbols of Protection: The Significance of Animal-Ornamented Shields in Early Anglo-Saxon England. MA 49, 109-63. EAST, K. 1983: Review of the Evidence for Drinking Horns and Wooden Cups from Anglo-Saxon Sites. In Bruce-Mitford 1983: 385-95. EAST, K. and WEBSTER, L.E. (in preparation): The Anglo-Saxon Burials from Taplow, Broomfield and Colney. EVISON, V.I. 1967: The Dover Ring-Sword and Other Sword-Rings and Beads. Archaeologia 101, 63-118. EVISON, V.I. 1987: Dover: The Buckland Anglo‑Saxon Cemetery (London). GEAKE, H. 1997: The Use of Grave-Goods in ConversionPeriod England, c.600-c.850. (Oxford). GEAKE, H. 1999: When Were Hanging Bowls Deposited in Anglo-Saxon Graves? MA 43, 1-18. GILMOUR, B. 1979: The Anglo-Saxon Church at St Paulin-the-Bail, Lincoln. MA 23, 214-7. GOUGH, H. 1987: Extracts from the Kentish Chronicle, 1817. Kent Archaeological Review 89, 196. GRANGER, G. and HENIG, M. 1983: A Bone Casket and Relief Plaque from Mound 3 at Sutton Hoo. MA 27, 136-41. GRINSELL, L.V. 1992: The Bronze Age Round Barrows of Kent. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 58, 355-84. HÅRDH, B. 2004: The Metal Beaker with Embossed Foil Bands. In Larsson, L. (ed.), Continuity for Centuries: A Ceremonial Building and its Context at Uppåkra, Southern Sweden (Stockholm), 49-91. HASELOFF, G. 1981: Die germanische Tierornamentik der Völkerwanderungszeit (Berlin). HASTED, E. 1797-1801: The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent. 2nd edition (Canterbury). HAUCK, K. 1983: Text und Bild in einer oralen Kultur. Antworten auf zeugniskritische Frage nach der

We are indebted to the following: Dover Harbour Board for financing the Old Park project and giving access to the site; Jon Iveson and Mark Frost for readily providing details of and access to the surviving material held at Dover Museum (visits by TMD in May 2002 and July 2004); Leslie Webster for access to and information about material in the British Museum, particularly her and Katherine East’s unpublished preliminary work on the Taplow horns; Andrew Richardson for comment on the provenance of the bucket-vandyke; Sue Youngs for her enthusiastic and generous discussions of the hanging-bowl fittings. Bruce-Mitford’s A Corpus of Late Celtic Hanging-Bowls appeared after this paper was submitted to the editors, but Sheila Raven provided information that allowed us to make judicious emendations to our text. Kieron Niven digitised figs 5-8. Birte Brugmann and Karen Høilund Nielsen kindly read and commented on earlier drafts. Abbreviations AJ MA

Antiquaries Journal Medieval Archaeology

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Erreichbarkeit mündlicher Überlieferung im frühen Mittelalter. Zur Ikonologie der Goldbrakteaten XXV. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 17, 510-99. HAUCK, K. et al. 1985-9: Die Goldbrakteaten der Völkerwanderungszeit. Volumes 1-3 (Munich). HAWKES, S.C. 1982: Anglo-Saxon Kent c. 425-725. In Leach, P.E. (ed.), Archaeology in Kent to AD 1500 (London), 64-78. HAWKES, S.C., SPEAKE, G. and NORTHOVER, P. 1979: A Seventh-Century Bronze Metalworker’s Die from Rochester, Kent. Frühmittelalterliche Studien 13, 382-92. HENRY, F. 1936: Hanging Bowls. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 66, 209-46. HOUGEN, B. 1935: Snartemofunnene: Studier i Folkevandringstidene Ornamentik og Tekstilhistorie (Oslo). HOLMQVIST, W. 1951: Dryckeshornen från SöderbyKarl. Fornvannen 46, 33-65. JACOBSEN, T. 2004: Sensajonelt gullfunn. Hamar Dagblad, 6 August 2004, online at http://www. ostlendingen.no/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?SearchID= 73112762121108&Avis=OL&Dato=20020814&K ategori=HNYHETER&Lopenr=108142001&Ref= AR , consulted August 2004. KENDRICK, T.D. 1937a: A Jutish Fragment from Kent. AJ 17, 76-7. KENDRICK, T.D. 1937b: Ivory Mounts from a Casket. AJ 17, 448. KENDRICK, T.D. 1938: Anglo-Saxon Art to 900 AD (London). KENT ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESCUE UNIT 1989: Important Saxon Discovery on Whitfield Hill, Dover. Kent Archaeological Review 96, 121. KRISTOFFERSEN, S. 2000: Sverd og Spenne: Dyreornamentikk og Sosial Kontekst (Bergen). LEIGH, D. 1984: Ambiguity in Anglo-Saxon Style I Art. AJ 44, 34-42. MAGNUS, B. 2003: Krigerens insignier: en parafrase over gravene II og V fra Snartemo i VestAgder. In Rolfsen, P. and Stylegar, F.-A. (eds), Snartemofunnene i Nytt Lys (Oslo), 33-52. MEANEY, A. 1964: A Gazetteer of Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites (London). MORRIS, E. and DICKINSON, T.M. 1999: Early Saxon Graves and Grave-Goods. In Young, C.J., Excavations at Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight, 1921–1996 (Salisbury), 87-97. PARFITT, K. 1994: Buckland Anglo‑Saxon Cemetery, Dover: An Interim Report. Archaeologia Cantiana 114, 454-6. PARFITT, K. 1995: The Buckland Saxon Cemetery. Current Archaeology 144, 459-64. PARFITT, K. 1998: An Unrecorded ?Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Water’s End, near Dover. Kent Archaeological Review 134, 89-90.

PARFITT, K. 2004: Anglo-Saxon Graves at Lousyberry Wood, Temple Ewell, near Dover. Unpublished archive report (Dover Archaeological Group). PARFITT, K., ALLEN, T. and RADY, J. 1997: Whitfield– Eastry By-Pass. Canterbury’s Archaeology 1995– 1996 (Canterbury Archaeological Trust 20th Annual Report), 28-33. PARFITT, K. and BRUGMANN, B. 1997: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery on Mill Hill, Deal, Kent (London). PAYNE, G. 1889: On a Roman Statue and Other Remains in the Dover Museum. Archaeologia Cantiana 18, 202-5. PHILLIPS, A.S.1964: Ordnance Survey Record Card TR 24 SE14. ROY, J. 1990: The Nostalgia of River in the County of Kent (River, Dover). SMITH, R.A. 1908: Anglo‑Saxon Remains. In Page, W. (ed.), The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Kent. Volume 1 (London), 339-87. SMITH, R.A. 1907-9: Notes. In Read, C.H., Proceedings of the Meeting of Thurs. 6th Feb. 1908. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 2nd series, 22, 62-88, at 76-8. SPEAKE, G. 1980: Anglo-Saxon Animal Art (Oxford). SPEAKE, G. 1989: A Saxon Bed Burial on Swallowcliffe Down. Excavations by F de M Vatcher (London). STARKEY, K. 1999: Imagining an Early Odin: Gold Bracteates as Visual Evidence. Scandinavian Studies 71, 373-92. STOODLEY, N. 2002: The Origins of Hamwic and its Central Role in the Seventh Century as Revealed by Recent Archaeological Discoveries. In Hårdh, B. and Larsson, L. (eds), Central Places in the Migration and Merovingian Periods: Papers from the 52nd Sacchsensymposium, Lund, August 2001 (Stockholm), 317-31. STRAUME, E. 1987: Gläser mit Facettenschliff aus skandinavischen Gräbern des 4. bis 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (Oslo). STUKELEY, W. 1776: Itinerarium Curiosum; or An Account of the Antiquitys and Remarkable Curiositys in Nature or Art, Observ’d in Travels thro’ Great Brittan. Centuria I. 2nd edition (London). WAY, A. 1851: Note Relating to the Remains Found at Little Wilbraham. Archaeological Journal 8, 1758. WICKER, N.L.H. 1992: Swedish-Anglian Contacts Antedating Sutton Hoo: The Testimony of the Scandinavian Gold Bracteates. In Farrell, R. and Neuman de Vegvar, C. (eds), Sutton Hoo: Fifty Years After (Oxford, Ohio), 149-71. YOUNGS, S. 2001: Insular Metalwork from Flixborough, Lincolnshire. MA 45, 210-20.

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Interlace – Thoughts and Observations George Speake

Interlace can be defined as a feature or pattern of decoration in which a number of lines, strands or bands are inter-crossed or woven together on the principle that these elements pass over and under each other alternately. The paths followed by the bands may be either straight or curved. Interlacing patterns are found in many different styles and periods, occurring in ceramics, textiles, stone-carving, wood carving, metal-work, leatherwork, manuscript decoration and have extensive uses in architecture. The use of interlace patterns is particularly characteristic of European ornament, pagan and Christian, from about the 5th to the 12th centuries AD.

became dynamic; what had been clear and ordered became more complicated, asymmetrical and sometimes confused. The transformation and metamorphosis of the interlace theme by Germanic and Celtic craftsmen was determined, to some extent, by the nature of the techniques and craft processes employed. Recognition should be given to the range and variety of interlace patterns in medieval art, resulting from differing cultural contexts and influences in addition to stylistic features determined by technique and process. In Celtic and Germanic ornament, schemes of knot-work and plaiting co-exist with the interlacing of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic elements. The origins, development and chronology of this interlace cannot be charted with precision, but it is clear that whilst zoomorphic and nonzoomorphic is used amongst pagan Germanic tribes on metalwork, personal jewellery, belt-fittings, brooches, pendants, weapons and items such as drinking-horns and cups, of the 6th and 7th centuries, its most elaborate manifestations are specifically Christian, in the manuscripts, stone sculpture and metalwork of Christian Britain and Ireland, of the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries. Germanic animal ornament is only one influential component in the Christian art of Ireland and the Celtic kingdoms of Britain. Eastern and western Mediterranean influences are detectable in the non-zoomorphic vocabulary of Hiberno-Saxon manuscript art. All were quickly assimilated and fused with native Celtic invention to produce the masterful designs of the carpet pages of Durrow, Lindisfarne and Kells.

The origins of interlacing in medieval art, particularly in northern European Germanic and Celtic ornament, where we find some of its most spectacular manifestations, have been the subject of much speculation and debate. It has been argued that the formative influences for the development of interlacing were the imitation of the three dimensional arts of plaiting, weaving and basketry. Influences from the Mediterranean world, from late antique, Byzantine, Oriental and Coptic art have been detected by a number of scholars. Other scholars have pointed out, that in spite of the developed forms of interlace in Coptic art, the claim for a Coptic origin for interlace is not a decisive argument. Similar trends are evident in Byzantine and Italian art. Yet the principles involved in the structuring of interlace, though they may lead to the creation of astonishingly complex designs, are very simple. Consideration must be given to the view that these principles were known in many places within the Mediterranean world, or were discovered at several different times and places.

Some scholars have argued that zoomorphic interlace of so-called Germanic Style II was created by the addition of heads and tails to interlaced ribbons. Nils Åberg wrote:

Various forms of interlace – regular, symmetrical, cruciform and others – are to be found in late Roman mosaics and in Coptic art. These forms were used again, for example by the Lombards. In this case, a form belonging to one art passed directly into another art. In comparing the Mediterranean and Roman treatment of this theme with its Germanic equivalent, the incompatibility of spirit which separates these two peoples stands out clearly. What had been static

During the course of the sixth century, Nordic animal ornament had become widely spread within mainland Germanic art, and towards the south had reached Lombard Italy, towards the west Anglo-Saxon England. The mainland Germanic Style I became one component in the development and had to meet Mediterranean interlace coming from the south. Style II certainly presupposes Nordic Style I, but did not necessarily originate from it. The new style was not an animal ornament which had

  Allen 1903: 142; Bain 1951: 25.   Lexow 1923: Holmqvist 1939: 16ff.    Nordenfalk 1977: 14.    Guilmain 1993: 92.  

  Bober 1967: 40-9; Stevenson 1982: 12-15s.



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is decorated with both zoomorphic and non-zoomorphic interlacing. A pair of rectangular mounts is decorated with simple panels of cable twist interlacing, executed in the technique of gold and garnet cloisonné. Elaborate borders of zoomorphic interlace, also in garnet and cloisonné, enhance the shoulder clasps, and together with the rectangular panel of geometrically stepped cloisons, anticipate the ‘carpet-like’ pages of decoration in Insular manuscript art. The border panels of the clasps reveal two different schemes of animal interlacing. The panel beneath the stylised interlinked boars, shows a symmetrical design of two mirror-image creatures linked together by a single twist of their ribbon bodies, which terminate in an extended hind leg. Each creature turns its head backwards and bites its own body. The panels on the three remaining sides all have identical arrangements; the design of each shows a procession of three interlocked, backward-gazing, body-biting creatures without any limbs, whose elongated jaws and bodies link together. Common to all the border creatures are semi-circular eyes of opaque, pale-blue glass, set into the top of the creatures’ heads, giving them an ever-watchful appearance.

been influenced by interlace, but a Mediterranean style of interlace, which retaining its whole pattern scheme, was enriched with zoomorphous elements. 

Nils Åberg believed that the pre-condition for the northern development of Style II was the Lombard invasion of Italy in AD 568. Mediterranean interlace was essential to the formation of Style II, creating Style II interlacing sometime between 568 and 600, which to Åberg’s reasoning made Style II, outside Italy, a phenomenon essentially of the 7th century. Yet an examination of the Scandinavian archaeological material shows the existence of interlace schemes earlier than the 6th century, decorating both metalwork and wooden artefacts. Holmqvist clearly demonstrates the existence in the North Sea region of a form broken interlace of ring-loops, which could clearly have evolved into animal interlace characteristic of Style II. He draws attention, in particular, to the ornament on the repoussé horn mounts from SöderbyKärl, Uppland, Sweden, which he suggests indicates a continuous craft in Uppland from the 4th century well into the late Vendel period. Consideration should also be given to the decorated spear shafts from the votive bog deposit at Kragehul, Fyn, Denmark.

The design of the cable-twist on the rectangular mounts is classically inspired and has been likened to the floor-mosaic borders of late Roman art,11 but the more complicated animal interlace of the shoulder clasps and the zoomorphic purse lid plaque, indicate a Scandinavian ancestry. Indeed we should remind ourselves that certain items of the regalia, the helmet and shield are Swedish imports into an Anglo-Saxon milieu. Furthermore, whilst there is no doubt that the purse was made by the same master-jeweller-goldsmith who made the shoulder clasps and the pyramidal studs (they all bear insets of blue and white millefiori) the figural and animal themes on the purse are suggestively paralleled in the Vendel art of Sweden. For example, the top central plaque of the purse, which consists of two pairs of confronted cloisonné animals, whose extended jaws and limbs interlink together, has been considered by Bruce-Mitford to be ‘a translation into the more stylised, less naturalistic medium of jewellery of the theme of pairs of erect and interlinked horses on the flange of the shield boss’.12

The Kragehul spear shafts, which for a long time have been a unique and debated phenomenon can now be paralleled by further spear shafts decorated with interlace designs, excavated in 1991 from the votive deposit Nydam III. These more recent discoveries, which also include interlace designs on sword scabbards (as yet awaiting full publication) confirm that both plait designs and zoomorphic interlace were in use in western Scandinavia in the late 5th century AD. Yet this interlace is unlike the regular Mediterranean schemes which Åberg argued were the formative influence on Germanic ornament. The tendency towards interlacing schemes is also manifest in the ornament on the Scandinavian gold scabbard mounts with their elaborate filigree decoration and in many of the gold D-bracteates. The nature of filigree is to coil, and it lends itself admirably to the convolutions and sinuous Sshapes seen on the scabbard mounts. On the mount from Hou, Langeland, Denmark, we find a filigree creature with an S-looped body turning backwards to allow its jaws to enclose its sinuous body.10

Contrasting with the polychrome ornament of the shoulder clasps and purse mounts is the zoomorphic interlace on the great gold buckle, cast in ‘chip-carving’ manner and embellished with niello. It consists of a complex, seething mesh of interlaced quadrupeds, snakes and bird heads, making a total of thirteen creatures, all cunningly coordinated and organised within the surface design. The panels of the buckle loop, on either side of the tongue, each contain a snake-like creature, whose looped and knotted body terminates at either end in tail and biting head. The

A more precise chronology for interlace is provided in an Anglo-Saxon context by the rich material from the Sutton Hoo Ship-burial, dated to c. AD 625, where the regalia   Åberg 1947: 38.   Holmqvist 1951: 33f.    Engelhardt 1867: pl. 2, fig. 9: Salin 1904: figs 559-60.    Rieck et al. 1999: figs 12, 20. An initial report on the work was published in Nationalsmuseets Arbejdsmark 1991. Re-excavation of Engelhardt’s old excavation pits at Nydam have revealed much new material. The boats at Nydam extend over the period 250-475 AD, but it is important to note that weapon deposits continued into the Migration Period. 10   Speake 1980: 53, fig. 4p.  

  Kendrick 1940: 36-7. Kendrick’s discussion of the gold and garnet interlace emphasises the distinctive un-Kentish character of the Sutton Hoo style. 12   Bruce-Mitford 1978: fig. 384. 11

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circular base to the buckle tongue contains two snakes of unequal length, compactly knotted together. The shorter snake bites the body of its partner, whilst the larger snake bites its own tail. From the shoulders of the buckle, above the two plain bosses, hang two bird heads, characterised by curved predatory beaks and angled eye surrounds. Surging down each side of the buckle are four biting beasts, whose bodies are perforated behind the forelegs and in front of the hips to allow the penetration of jaws, elongated forelimbs, and bodies, which weave in and out of the perforated slits in symmetrical orderliness. The creatures can be differentiated from each other by their distinctive heads. The heads of the upper beasts have the upper and lower jaws fused together, creating a continuous loop, whereas the heads of the lower beasts have more prominent angled eye-surrounds, pointed chins and pitch-fork jaws. Nestling upside down, and held between the open jaws of the lower beasts, is a small frog-like creature, whose foreleg is clasped in the fused and enclosing jaws of its small head. The central infill of the buckle shows two snakes with their heads symmetrically placed above the lower boss, but whose bodies, again of differing lengths, are knotted and linked together in a skilful asymmetrical arrangement. With the exception of the creatures in the buckle-loop panels and the small biting beast at the toe of the buckle, all the animal forms bear niello decoration. Two niello patterns are employed. The central infill of the buckle is distinguished by a ladder-like pattern on the snake bodies, created by nielloed longitudinal grooves containing a central row of small nielloed rectangles. By contrast, the heads, limbs and bodies of the remaining creatures are picked out by a band of small gold circles reserved against a background of niello. The style of the main interlace on the buckle is strikingly close to ornamental schemes in the Vendel graves of east Sweden, although the buckle-type is unknown in Sweden. The interlinked animals which appear to surge down the sides of the buckle are comparable with the wave-like procession of animal heads and bodies on the shield strip from Vendel 12 and the harness mounts from the same grave. The animals’ limbs and eye surrounds bear the same niello pattern as do the border creatures on the Sutton Hoo buckle.

loop round their own bodies, whereas in Durrow they are looped with the legs and bodies of their neighbours. The Sutton Hoo regalia demonstrate the co-existence of both zoomorphic and non-zoomorphic interlacing. Equally, the polychrome ‘carpet-like’ rectangular panels of the shoulder clasps, with their surrounding panels of zoomorphic cloisonné anticipate certain pages of decoration in Insular manuscript art. Both in the Book of Durrow and at Sutton Hoo there is the same clarity of design. In spite of differences of technique and material an artistic continuity is clearly traceable. A parallel trend within the Anglo-Saxon material is the tendency to make the animal forms more schematised and ribbon-like with limbs and anatomical details subordinated within a tightly woven mesh of interlacing. The phenomenon is readily apparent on the cast gilt-bronze disc from Mound 2 at Sutton Hoo,14 and on the two gilt-bronze roundels from the Caenby barrow, Lincs. The zoomorphic nature of the interlace scheme on the Caenby mounts is not immediately obvious.15 Here is a tightly interwoven design of eleven snakes, all of different lengths. Each snake has a triplestrand body terminating at one end in prong-like jaws and at the other, a pointed tail. The extremities of the eleven snakes are arranged around the outer edge. Each snake is shown biting the tail of another snake. Comparison can be made with the serpents on the circular base to the tongue of the Sutton Hoo gold buckle. 16 The asymmetry of this interlace, with its camouflaged zoomorphic details, does differ from the schemes of regular interlace in the decoration of Insular manuscripts, which utilise a grid structure as a background aid to the design. The first appearance of interlace on an Insular manuscript is on the colophon page, at the end of St Matthew in the remains of a Gospel Book in Durham Cathedral Library (A II, 10, folio 3v). It appears primarily as a filler ornament, in the middle groove of a border. Ranged down the right hand side of the page are three D-shaped fields joined by a frame. The spaces between the frame are filled with ribbon interlace in yellow, blue and red. The D-frames are filled with varying forms of interlace in yellow. Each ribbon carries a double line of dots and each pattern is different, although superficially they look the same. Although the designs are non-zoomorphic, Wilson has observed that ‘the interlace is akin to that which appears on the Sutton Hoo buckle loop and it is not without interest that, like other parts of the Sutton Hoo buckle the ribbons are dotted’.17 Possibly the designs are based on 7th century nielloed gold, but equally they could imitate filigree interlace. The transmission of designs from one art form to another, from metalwork to manuscripts, or from manuscripts to sculpture has been keenly debated.

Of particular relevance, however, in connection with later style developments, is the analogy with the animal interlace in the upper and lower horizontal panels of the Book of Durrow, (fol. 192 verso).13 The animal ornament on fol. 192v is a calligraphic translation of Anglo-Saxon Style II where there is no concept of space, only a two-dimensional woven continuum of animal forms, but it is to be noted that the distinctive angled eye surround of Germanic Style II is not to be found in Durrow nor anywhere else in Insular manuscript illumination. What are common to the Durrow interlacing animals and the Sutton Hoo creatures, not only on the border of the buckle but also on the rim mounts to the maple-wood drinking-cups are: the sinuous bodies, the double contours, the pear-shaped hips, the relatively short hind legs and the elongated forelegs, which at Sutton Hoo

  Bruce-Mitford, 1975: fig. 71.   Speake 1980: fig. 10g. 16   See also discussion by Haseloff 1958: 72ff. 17   Wilson 1984: 33. 14 15

  Speake 1980: figs 14a, 1f.

13

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Allen in his pioneering analysis of interlace schemes on the sculptured stone monuments of Scotland, maintained that the sculptor may have obtained the ideas for interlace or plait-work from early manuscript art and developed this form of ornament with the geometric background aids such as would have been used for the production of curvilinear art. 18 Allen described Insular interlace patterns as being formed from diagonal grids whose lines were fleshed out by the artist to form ribbons. In Allen’s scheme the primary guiding system is not established by lines of the grid, but by the points at the crossings. Allen noted that if two horizontal breaks and two vertical breaks are made next to each other in a plait, a space in the form of a cross is produced. ‘A large number of the interlace patterns used in Celtic decorative art are derived from a plait by making cruciform breaks at regular intervals… It is not unlikely that symbolism had something to do with the frequent use of cruciform break’.19 Stevenson has suggested that the creation of negative crosses in the interlace schemes of several ‘carpet-pages’ in the Book of Durrow would appear to be both intentional and significant, speculating that the ‘carpet-pages’ were all intended as cross-pages, or multiple cross-pages. 20

neither eastern nor western Mediterranean in origin, but Celtic. 25

Yet the Durrow pages are relatively simple in design compared with those of the Lindisfarne Gospels, possibly thirty years later in date and probably before AD 698. In his study of the decoration of the Lindisfarne Gospels, Bruce-Mitford observed that on the reverse of folios 26v, 139r and 210v a square grid had been drawn out. On the reverse of folio 2v, a grid structure of sixteen squares had been plotted and drawn out in dry-point, providing the constructional ‘scaffolding’ for the design of the circular double-ribbon knot pattern.26 Distinctive also to the Lindisfarne Gospels are the schemes of animal interlacing of birds and quadrupeds, which differ markedly from the Style II menagerie of Sutton Hoo. In folio 26v, we find that within the arms of the cross quadrupeds are meshed together, and all around the cross birds and quadrupeds are tightly interwoven.27 Complementary colours give a vibrancy to the design. Yet in spite of the intricacy and complexity of the broad and narrow interlinking strands, the animals are grouped together into a carefully co-ordinated structure of symmetrical units, and balance and cohesion are maintained. The influence of this design can be seen in the only surviving carpet page with animal interlace, in the Gospels of St Chad.28 Nordenfalk’s succinct description highlights the similarities and differences:

In a short but useful analysis of ornamental patterns in Hiberno-Saxon manuscript illumination Guilmain has drawn attention to the distinctive and varied character of the interlace schemes in the Book of Durrow.21 In discussing the first cross-carpet page (folio 1 verso) Guilmain states that ‘the layout and interlace patterning are organised according to a simple grid of squarish rectangles, whose crossings provide the guiding posts for the interlace movement’.22 The antecedents for this are seen to be ‘typically Insular’23 with the overall design having suggestive similarity to the layout of Romano-British mosaics, an observation first made by Kendrick.24 Guilmain’s observations on the interlace schemes used by the Durrow artist in the top and bottom panels of this carpet page are of particular interest:

The purple-red fillets outlining the cross turn at right angles to form six interconnected squares. As in Lindisfarne, they run directly into the inner band of the border, dividing the panel outside the cross into four separate compartments. In these surrounding areas, as well as within the cross, we find tightly packed patterns of animal interlace – again in close resemblance to the Lindisfarne page, with the difference that the motifs along the top and bottom are now reversed, and that the cross has a filling of birds instead of quadrupeds. Of greater significance are the differences in proportions and structure. The animal bodies detach themselves more clearly from their interlaced necks and tails, the peltashaped quadrupeds being confined to the four in the angles between the cross arms. Because the simplified colour scheme is common to all areas, the cross does not appear superimposed on the space around it, as it does on the Lindisfarne page.

In each panel, within diagonal grids (rather than ‘typically’ perpendicular ones) he constructed circles and transformed them into figure-of-eight knots, which he combined with X-shaped plaits. He used the system of shifting colours within the same ribbon, and avoided simple geometric forms and loose ends. Otherwise there are striking similarities between this patterning and the Constantinian interlace of the pattern book page, Paris BN lat 12190, folio Av. One major difference is that the Durrow artist transformed his circles into partial spirals, thus opening up the figures of eight and complicating the ribbon movement. This dynamic use of the spiral is

Nordenfalk also aptly refers to the properties of interlace as used by the Hiberno-Saxon scribes as being ‘like liquid in a container… Never at rest it has an elasticity for expansion or contraction,…so that it is able to adapt itself to the passages it must fill, if necessary changing shape from one design to the next’. 29

  Allen 1903: 142-3.   Allen 1904: 265. 20   Stevenson 1982:15. 21   Guilmain 1993: 93-4. 22   Guilmain 1993: 93. 23   Roth 1979:123-4. 24   Kendrick 1938: 98-9, pl. 20, fig. 21. 18 19

  Roth 1979: pls. 1-4; Guilmain 1993: 93-4.   Bruce-Mitford 1960: 221-31. 27   Nordenfalk 1977: 69, pl. 19. 28   Nordenfalk 1977: 83, pl. 26. 29   Nordenfalk 1977: 19. 25 26

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The complexity of the interlace designs and their construction on the manuscript carpet-pages is never matched, yet it is evident that a systematic organisation of the interlace schemes is apparent in Anglo-Saxon and Viking sculpture.30 Adcock has proposed that the sculptors utilised constructional aids, patterns in leather or woven strands, which could have included templates, to help in the laying out of the designs. The patterns and interlaced schemes classified by Adcock have been adopted by Cramp. A grammar of interlace patterns establishes with great clarity the elements and rules of the pattern units and their variations.31 Six complete pattern lists have been identified32 with variations being produced by manipulating the complete patterns. Complexity and enrichment can be provided for a pattern by the use of double strands.

BOBER, H. 1967: On the Illumination of the Glazier Codex: A Contribution to Early Coptic Art and its Relation to Hiberno-Saxon Interlace. Essays on Manuscripts, Books and Printing Written for Hans P. Kraus on his 60th Birthday (Berlin), 31-49. BRUCE-MITFORD, R.L.S. 1960: Decoration and Miniatures. Part IV. In Kendrick, T.D. et al., Evangeliorum Quattor Codex Lindisfarnensis. Volume 2 (Olten-Lausanne). BRUCE-MITFORD, R.L.S. 1975: The Sutton Hoo ShipBurial. Volume 1 (London). BRUCE-MITFORD, R.L.S. 1978: The Sutton Hoo ShipBurial. Volume 2 (London). CRAMP, R. 1984: Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture: General Introduction (Oxford). ENGELHARDT, C. 1867: Kragehul Mosefund (Copenhagen). GUILMAIN, J. 1993: An Analysis of Some Ornamental Problems in Hiberno-Saxon Manuscript Illumination in Relation to their Mediterranean Origins. In Spearman. R.M. and Higgitt, J. (eds), The Age of Migrating Ideas (Edinburgh), 92-103. HASELOFF, G. 1958: Fragments of a Hanging-Bowl from Bekesbourne, Kent, and Some Ornamental Problems. Medieval Archaeology 2, 72-103. HOLMQVIST, W. 1939: Kunstprobleme der Merowingerzeit (Stockholm). HOLMQVIST, W. 1951: Dryckeshornen från Söderby Kärl. Fornvännen 46, 33-65 KENDRICK, T.D. 1938: Anglo-Saxon Art to AD 900 (London). KENDRICK, T.D. 1940: The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial. The Archaeology of the Jewellery. Antiquity 14, 28-39. LEXOW, E. 1923: Hovedliniere i entrelacornamentikens historie. Bergens museums Årbok for 1921-2, 1-92. NORDENFALK, C. 1977: Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Painting (London). O’MEADHRA, U. 1979: Early Christian, Viking and Romanesque Art: Motif-Pieces from Ireland (Stockholm). RIECK, F. et al. 1999: Som samlede Ofre fra en talrig Krigerflok. Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark 1999, 1-34. Roth, U. 1979: Studien zur Ornamentik frühchristlicher Handschriften des insularen Bereiches, Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 60, 5-225. SALIN, B. 1904: Die altgermanische Thierornamentik (Stockholm). SPEAKE, G. 1980: Anglo-Saxon Animal Art and its Germanic Background (Oxford). STEVENSON, R.B.K. 1982: Aspects of Ambiguity in Crosses and Interlace. Ulster Journal of Archaeology 44, 1-27. WILSON, D.M. 1984: Anglo-Saxon Art (London). ZARNECKI, G. 1990: Germanic Animal Motifs in Romanesque Sculpture. Artibus et Historiae 22, 189-203.

The development of interlace and its continued use into the Romanesque period should be stressed. Zarnecki has ably demonstrated the assimilation of the interlinked animal motifs of Germanic origin, with only slight metamorphosis, into 12th century sculpture and manuscript decoration.33 The dissemination, through missionary activity of metalwork and manuscripts to the Continent, can explain how Anglo-Saxon and Insular style motifs were transmitted and adopted in continental scriptoria. The legacy of animal interlace continues in an almost unbroken chain in Scandinavia, with distinctive stylistic manifestations and developments in the Viking period, where it is combined with other motifs emanating from Carolingian Europe. Cultural exchange across the North Sea during the Viking Age also explains the transference of stylistic motifs and mutual influences between Scandinavia and England. Bibliography ÅBERG, N. 1943-7: The Occident and the Orient in the Art of the Seventh Century. Parts I-III. I: The British Isles; II: Lombard Italy; III: The Merovingian Empire. (Stockholm). ÅBERG, N. 1945: Spjutskaften från Kragehul mose. Fornvännen 40, 251-9. ADCOCK, G. 1978: The Theory of Interlace and Interlace Types in Anglian Sculpture. British Archaeological Report 49, 33-46. ALLEN, J.R. 1903: The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland (Edinburgh). ALLEN, J.R. 1904: Celtic Art in Pagan and Christian Times (London). BAIN, G. 1951: The Methods of Construction of Celtic Art (Glasgow).   Adcock 1978: 33-6; Cramp 1984: xxviiiff.   Cramp 1984: figs 14-26. 32   Cramp 1984: fig. 14. 33   Zarnecki 1990. 30 31

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Soldiers and Settlers in Britain, Fourth to Fifth Century – Revisited Kevin Leahy

(with an appendix by Barry Ager)

Unlike most of the other contributors to this volume I never had the privilege of meeting Sonia Hawkes although our interests overlapped in a number of areas. Like me, Sonia Chadwick (as she was then) started her professional career at Scunthorpe Museum before moving on to greater things in Oxford. We have also both worked on the AngloSaxon period in Lincolnshire, in particular, Mrs Hawkes catalogued the finds from the Fonaby cemetery, work which was completed by Alison Cook. In the 28 years I have been in Lincolnshire I have been able to continue the work on Anglo-Saxon cemeteries with the excavation of the Cleatham and Sheffield’s Hill cemeteries. The Cleatham report is in press and will be published by the Council for British Archaeology in 2007. A further link between us is provided by the late Roman belt fittings which provided the basis for the seminal paper ‘Soldiers and Settlers in Britain, Fourth to Fifth Centuries’ which Mrs Hawkes published with Gerald Dunning. While it was not apparent in 1961, there is, ironically, a concentration of these fittings in Lincolnshire and I would, with respect, like to look again at this material in the light of recent discoveries.

some reservations. In this paper I will consider these belt fittings in light of some of the many recent finds, made in the main, by metal detector users. This research has been greatly aided by the Portable Antiquities Scheme’s on-line database (www.finds.org.uk) and by the assistance of Stuart Laycock, whose tenacious research brought to light many additional examples. We have not been alone in recording this material and a very large number of examples have been recorded by Mark Corney and Nick Griffiths. At present, work commitments prevent them from contributing to this paper but they have kindly discussed their work with me. In this paper it is my intention to look at the overall distribution of belt fittings in Britain and, in more detail, at the distribution in one study area – Lincolnshire. The most important questions relating to these belts still remain; are they military and what was the ethnic origin of the men who wore them? A number of factors support a military interpretation. On the Continent the distribution of these fittings appears to follow the Rhine-Danube limes, a pattern one would expect if they were being used by foederati. It is, however, possible that the continental distribution has been distorted by a concentration of fieldwork on the archaeologically attractive frontier sites, in particular the work of the German Limes Kommission during the late 19th and early 20th centuries which produced considerable quantities of metalwork.

In their 1961 paper Hawkes and Dunning drew attention to a series of belt fittings which could be paralleled on the Continent, where their distribution and associations had led to them being interpreted as the accoutrements of Germanic foederati. Foederati were barbarian tribes which had a treaty or foedus with the Imperial Government allowing them to settle in depopulated frontier areas of the Empire, bringing land back into cultivation and acting as guards against their less favoured brethren. Evidence for the presence of Germanic mercenaries in Britain during the later years of the Roman province would have important implications, both for the date of the adventus, and the mechanism by which it occurred. Since the publication of ‘Soldiers and Settlers’ the foederati interpretation of this material has, in some quarters, become accepted as a fact although others, including Mrs Hawkes herself, expressed

A second important piece of evidence is the discovery of these belt fittings in continental graves which also contained weapons, suggesting that these were military burials. As the inclusion of weapons in graves was a Germanic, not a late Roman burial rite it might further be inferred that these were the graves of Germanic soldiers. It would, however, be wrong to place too much emphasis on this as, of the 320 pieces of metalwork listed by Simpson, only 27 were found in graves that also included arms. The rite is, however, sufficiently unusual to make even this small number significant. There are no unequivocal Waffengräber from Britain. The burial found at Dyke Hills, Dorchester-on-Thames has been cited as a possible example. It is thought to have been associated with a very

  Cook: 1981.   Leahy 1998: 94-5; Leahy and Williams: 2001, 310-3.    Hawkes and Dunning 1961: 1-70.    Leahy 1984: 23-32; Leahy 1993: 29-44.    Böhme 1986: 468-574.  

  Hawkes 1974: 390.   Böhme1986: 481, fig. 11.    Simpson 1971: 127.  

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early Anglo-Saxon woman’s grave but the case is far from certain. The graves were found during the 19th century when earth was being moved and their association cannot be proved. Iron objects were said to have been found at the same time but we cannot assume that these were weapons or that they came from the grave. At the Lank Hills, Winchester cemetery zoomorphic buckles of Type IIa were found in four graves, two of which also included heavy knives.10 While these could hardly be described as Waffengräber, their presence in late Roman graves is significant. The widespread use of belts is, in itself, unusual as belts did not form part of civilian dress in the Roman world. These belt fittings were based on those used on the cingulem, the heavy belt designed to support a sword in its scabbard, but we cannot assume that everyone wearing a belt was a soldier. In the late Roman world, the wearing of ornate belts was not the sole prerogative of the military; they were also worn by civil servants as a badge of rank.11 The suggestion that this material has a ‘barbaric feeling’ with a ‘move away from classical naturalism towards a more abstract interpretation of ornament’12 must be viewed with some circumspection. Most of the fittings are, in form and inspiration, late classical and have nothing barbaric about them. Much of the material is poorly made but we should not confuse poor workmanship with barbarian taste. It has been suggested that the depiction of human heads and birds may be Celtic in inspiration and mark a resurgence of Celtic taste (Figs 8 and 10.11).13 The most ‘Germanic’ aspect of any of these buckles is the discovery of 31 examples in Anglo-Saxon graves.14 Of these 16 were found with females and 11 with males (the remainder were undetermined). The buckles found with women are small, being mostly Type IB (Fig. 10.9). These may have been worn to show the status of the group from which the women came. Roman material other than coins is rare in Anglo-Saxon graves and for 31 of these comparatively rare objects to have been included in burials suggests that they were being inherited, or selected, by a special process.

Fig. 1. The distribution of all late Roman belt fittings in Britain known to the writer in November, 2005. original paper have been included, the types identified by Simpson being omitted.15 These will be considered in the forthcoming full study of the topic. While, for the reasons given above, it has not been possible to include the material recorded by Corney and Griffiths the pattern depicted here is thought to be generally similar to that shown on their maps. An examination of the national distribution of late Roman belt fittings shows it to have come, overwhelmingly, from the civilian zone of Britain, to the south and east of the Fosse Way (Figs 1 and 2). There are no finds from Hadrian’s Wall and, while examples have been found at the Saxon Shore Forts of Richborough and Bradwell, the distribution cannot be said to be centred around these defensive sites. Indeed, in some areas it might be suggested that there is an inverse relationship, with the belt fittings being scarce around the forts. The general pattern is rural and widely dispersed with two, or possibly three, concentrations. These are in Lincolnshire, in the area around the Severn and perhaps in northern Kent, all areas close to vulnerable river estuaries. Eventually it will be instructive to look at each of these areas in detail but the evidence currently available makes it possible to consider only Lincolnshire, which is discussed below.

The Distribution of Late Roman Belt Fittings in Britain As with the continental material it is the distribution of the British finds that offers the best prospect of interpreting their historical context. The maps used in this paper are based on the 240 belt fittings recorded by the author and Mr Laycock, together with finds which have already been published. No gazetteer of finds is included, this would take up many pages and would be incomplete. Only those object types which appeared in Hawkes and Dunning’s   Hawkes and Dunning 1961: fig. 1   Clarke 1979: 264-91. 11   Jones 1964: 566. 12   Hawkes and Dunning 1961: 11. 13   Leahy 1996: 268-9; and see Ager below. 14   White 1990:136-7. 

10

  Simpson 1976:192-209.

15

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Fig. 2. The political geography of Britain in the fourth century.

Fig. 3. The distribution of late Roman coins and Portable Antiquities Scheme, May, 2004. Data courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. metalwork recorded by the

A major problem in considering any distribution map is determining if the pattern represents a historical reality or is merely a product of fieldwork being concentrated in some areas. It is possible that some concentrations come from areas where Roman finds are common and the discovery of belt fittings only reflects an existing trend. To check this, the distribution of belt fittings was compared with the overall pattern of late Roman finds recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (Fig. 3). Again problems exist, as Finds Liaison Officers have not been in post for similar lengths of time in all areas but, accepting the positive evidence while being cautious over the blank areas, we can still see some trends.

metal objects have been recorded in Suffolk (Area 5) there is no corresponding increase in the number of belt fittings found in the area. In view of its location to the north of the Thames Estuary and the important finds from Mucking, I would be cautious about accepting the apparent dearth of late Roman metal work from Essex (Area 6). The lack of finds from the greater London area is probably a result of modern urbanisation. A concentration of belt fittings in northern Kent (Area 7) is matched by a dense scatter of metal objects, while to the south, the Weald (Area 8) has always, and continues to appear blank on maps of Roman Britain. Hampshire (Area 9) has both belt fittings and late Roman finds but the concentration of belt fittings in Gloucestershire (Area 10) is not, at present, matched by large numbers of finds, but this may well change. The large number of metal objects recorded in the Midlands (Area 11) is unmatched by any concentration of belt fittings. It appears that, as we have areas that have produced large numbers of late Roman finds, but few belt fittings, the concentrations suggested are a historical reality.

Lincolnshire (Area 2) contains a major concentration of belt fittings together with a relatively large number of late Roman finds. This stands in stark contrast to the East Riding of Yorkshire (Area 1) where late Roman finds are common but belt fittings are few. As well as being neighbours, the two areas are topographically similar. The area around the Wash (Area 3) is devoid of both belt fittings and late Roman finds suggesting a low level of occupation. Finds of belt fittings, while not as dense as in Lincolnshire, are evenly spread over East Anglia (Areas 4 and 5) but with a possible gap in the north of Norfolk. This, and an apparent general shortage of finds of late Roman metal work in Norfolk (Area 4), is probably artificial and a result of a delay in the transfer of data. While a large number of late Roman

It is difficult on present evidence to say much about the distribution of the various types of buckles and other fittings. The simple buckles of Type IA (Fig. 10.5-6) are widespread with, perhaps, a concentration in Areas 9 and 10 (Fig. 4). There is a concentration of the small ‘horse135

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head’ buckles of Type IB (Fig. 10.9) again in Areas 9 and 10 but, oddly, there are few finds from the northern part of Lincolnshire (Area 2). In view of how common other types of buckle are in Lincolnshire, this is likely to be a true reflection of the distribution. Buckles of Type IIA (Fig. 10.2) are widespread throughout England but with a strong concentration in the northern part of Lincolnshire, (Fig. 5) which is discussed below. Type III buckles (Fig. 10.1) are particularly interesting as they are the most likely to be imported from the Continent. Their distribution (Fig. 6) is sparse, on present evidence they are concentrated on the eastern side of the country but also extending west along the Thames valley and along the south coast. Few, if any examples are known from around the Severn (Area 10) where belt fittings are otherwise common. Buckles decorated with human heads and birds are, in the main, found in eastern England (Fig. 8) but their distribution is not, on present evidence informative. These buckles are discussed in more detail by Barry Ager (see below). The strap ends (Fig. 10.3, 13-14) fail, on present evidence, to form any coherent pattern (Fig. 7). It had been suspected that it would be possible to correlate the distribution of ‘Tortworth’ type strap ends with Group IB buckles but the map failed to support this. All that can be said is that the overall distribution of the strap ends tends to follow that of the belt fittings, which is perhaps no surprise. Fig. 4. The distribution of buckles of Hawkes and Dunning Type IA and IB.

Fig. 5. The distribution of buckles of Hawkes and Dunning Type IIA, B and C.

Fig. 6. The distribution of belt fittings of Hawkes and Dunning Type IIIA and B, Type IV and VI. 136

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While a small number of late Roman belt fittings were clearly imported from the Continent, most of the British finds were locally made. This is, in itself, important as it may eventually allow us to identify regional styles and subgroups, an issue that is currently being looked at by Stuart Laycock.16 The basic designs for these fittings were copied in a bewildering range of variants and to various levels of competence. Some were finely made but others were poorly produced, strongly suggesting that they were being locally made, a suggestion supported by the discovery of mis-cast, amphora-shaped strap ends at Navenby and Cranwell (Fig. 10.14). Late Roman Belt Fittings in Lincolnshire As was suggested above it is hoped, eventually, to look in detail at the distribution of these belt fittings across Britain but, at present, detailed data is only available for Lincolnshire. It is however, thought that the Lincolnshire finds are of sufficient interest to make a discussion of them worthwhile and to review some of my earlier work on the subject. An examination of the distribution maps included in this paper (particularly Fig. 1) shows that the people of late Roman Lincolnshire seem to have had a liking for zoomorphic belt fittings that was not shared by their neighbours to the north and west. Aware that my own work in Lincolnshire could distort the distribution pattern, contact was made with metal detector users and clubs in surrounding areas. This confirmed that there were few finds from Yorkshire or Nottinghamshire and that different conditions must have prevailed in Lincolnshire leading to the common use of continental type belt fittings (Fig. 9). Most of the Lincolnshire findspots seem to lie along lines of communication, with a major concentration in the north of the county along the line of the Kirmington Gap, an important east-west route through the Wolds and across the marshes around the River Ancolme. The three Type IIIA buckles, which are likely to have been imported, occur on, or near main roads. There would appear to be some separation of the buckle types, with Type IIA being more strongly represented in the north (the area that was to become the kingdom of Lindsey) and Type IB buckles being more common to the south of Lincoln. There are concentrations of finds from some of the large open settlements such as Kirmington and Dragonby but few from, or near, the fortified sites at Lincoln, Caistor and Horncastle.

Fig. 7. The distribution of late Roman strap ends in Britain.

In a previous paper I suggested that these buckles indicated an influx of foederati from the Continent who were well placed to effect the transition from Roman to AngloSaxon.17 While the buckles represent a continental style of military/official dress I now feel that it is unsafe to interpret the Lincolnshire finds as being evidence for the presence Fig. 8. The distribution of buckles decorated with human and birds’ heads.

  Laycock: 2006   Leahy 1984; Leahy 1993.

16 17

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of foederati. Of the many Lincolnshire finds only the Type III buckles from Staniwell’s Farm, Hibaldstow and Ingham can be seen as being imported,18 and it is difficult to argue on the basis of two buckles for any great influx of foederati. There clearly must have been some incomers to stimulate the fashion but the ubiquity of the buckles and their highly varied styles suggests that the majority were being locally produced. We have some evidence for an early Germanic presence in Lincolnshire but none of the many Anglo-Saxon graves excavated in Lincolnshire has ever contained late Roman belt fittings.19 It can also be seen that the distribution of belt fittings appears unrelated to that of early Anglo-Saxon cremation cemeteries (Fig. 9). It is also necessary to explain why there is no correlation between the belt fittings and the fortified sites at Caistor and Horncastle. Although inland, these sites look like small Saxon Shore forts with 5 metre thick stone walls with bastions and backed by gravel ramparts.20 Further north the enclosure at Yarborough Camp, Croxton resembles, with mounds at its corners, an attempted earthen version of a stone fort.21 The Saxon Shore system may have originally included Lincolnshire with a lost fort at Ingoldmells, on the northern corner of the Wash, forming a counterpart to Brancaster on the Norfolk coast.22 It does seem that the later Empire was concerned about the security of Lincolnshire Fig. 9. The distribution of late Roman belt fittings in Lincolnshire. and willing to take steps to safeguard it. Multiple finds are represented by larger symbols. The low number of belt fittings found in the areas around these fortified sites suggests that they were not used by the men who garrisoned them. The suggestion that the belt fittings belt fittings are not common finds on Lincolnshire villa represent the accoutrements of soldiers detailed to man the sites. ballistae defending the walls seems, therefore, untenable. Interestingly, with the exception of a single find from the The area to the north of the Humber estuary is city, there are no finds of belt fittings from the Lincoln topographically similar to northern Lincolnshire and area. Lincoln may have been garrisoned in a different way equally at risk from sea-borne attack but, as the map (Fig. or perhaps, by the 4th century, it was so depleted that it 1) shows, few belt fittings have been found in Yorkshire. was no longer important. During the 4th century many A possible explanation is that, unlike Lincolnshire, new mosaics were installed in Lincolnshire’s villas. This Yorkshire lay within the military zone of Roman Britain may be explained by a flight of the capital from Lincoln and would have had a regular garrison. There had been as the aristocracy moved, from the declining city, to their no substantial military presence in Lincolnshire since the country estates. Interestingly, the laying of these mosaics fortress at Lincoln was abandoned in the late 70s AD. in locations that sometimes lay within sight of the Humber Although its later years are open to doubt, York remained Estuary suggests that the villa owners were not concerned an important Roman fortress supported by the fort at about the security situation. Although isolated finds exist, Malton, and a system of signal towers along the coast. We have some idea of how Malton, at least, was garrisoned 18 as the early 5th century ‘Notitia Dignitatum’ records the   Leahy 1984: nos. 4 and 6. 19 presence at Deventio of the ‘Numerus Supervenientium   Leahy 1984: 30, fig. 2, nos. 5 and 12. 20 Petueriensium’.23 This unit came under the command   Field and Hurst 1983: 47-88.   Leahy 2003: 150-2, fig. 12.7.   Whitwell, 1992: 51-2.

21

  Wenham 1974: 34-5.

22

23

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Fig. 10. Types of late Roman belt fittings from Lincolnshire: 1. Type IIIA buckle from Hibaldstow; 2. Type IIA buckle from Dragonby; 3. Tortworth type strap end from Winteringham; 4. Type IIA buckle from Dragonby; 5. Type IA buckle from Osgodby; 6. Type IA buckle from Kirmington; 7. Variant Type IIC buckle from Barrow on Humber; 8. Type IIA buckle from Lincoln; 9. Type IB buckle from Ewerby; 10. Variant Type IIA buckle from Navenby; 11. Variant Type IIA buckle from Saltersford; 12. Type IIB buckle from Sleaford; 13. Amphora-shaped strap end from Keelby; 14. Mis-cast amphora-shaped strap end from Navenby. 139

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of the Dux Britanniarum who commanded land forces, but not the garrisons of the Saxon Shore Forts. Without going into details of the nature and status of the Numerus Supervenientium Petueriensium (which was probably fluid and changing anyway) it is notable that this unit had a local name based on Petuaria (Brough on Humber) suggesting that they were either locally recruited and/or had been in the area long enough to have received a local appellation.

‘survival’ could be seen as a relic of the mechanism by which settlement occurred. The propositions put forward here are speculative and may well not stand the test of time but the fact of the existence, in Britain, of this large group of continentally derived belt fittings will remain. We are in a fluid situation with new evidence being presented at an amazing rate and we may, at last, be starting to see distribution maps that represent some historical reality. It is a tribute to the work of Sonia Hawkes that a hypothesis that she and Gerald Dunning put forward more that 40 years ago still has the power to intrigue and interest us.

If these belt fittings were not worn by any form of regular troops who was wearing them? They are perhaps best seen as being part of the equipment of a militia but there is nothing to suggest that this was Germanic. The late Roman army was divided into two broad classes of soldiers, the limitanei, who were the garrison troops stationed on the frontiers and the mobile field army, the comitatenses. The absence of these buckles from the Wall suggests that they were not issued to the limitanei and it seems unlikely that the elite field army was using belt fittings of the poor quality and highly varied designs represented by the Lincolnshire finds. Perhaps a third force was present. In the Notitia Dignitatum the insignia of the vicarius of Britannia was not the peaceful maidens used by the other vicarii, but fortified citadels suggesting that, unlike his colleagues, he had control of troops.24 Vicarius was a civil not a military post and it would have been appropriate for him to recruit, where necessary, from the population of his own Diocese.25

Acknowledgments I would like to offer my thanks to Stuart Laycock for his generosity in providing me access to the material that he had gathered, and to his stimulating ideas; and Mark Corney and Nick Griffiths for kindly discussing their work with me. I must also thank the many finders who have provided information. Digital data from the Portable Antiquities Scheme database was provided by Daniel Pett and the digital mapping was done, with great skill and speed, by Mike Hemblade. Bibliography

The belt fittings from Lincolnshire suggest militarisation of the area in the 4th century. This may have resulted in a society sufficiently robust to control Anglo-Saxon settlement in the 5th century. Unlike other Romano-British cities, including York, there are no cremation cemeteries near Lincoln (Fig. 9) suggesting that the city had been able to regulate its hinterland during the early part of the AngloSaxon settlement. Lincoln also retained its original British/ Latin name in a more or less unchanged form: Lincoln – Lindum Colonia and Lindsey, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that appeared in the 6th century, also had a British name, again suggesting that some survival occurred. St Paulinus preached in Lincoln in AD 628 showing that it was still acting as a centre, although it is unlikely that anything resembling Roman civil life still existed. Looking at some of the later material it is interesting to see how Celtic AngloSaxon Lindsey appears. Metal detecting in the north of the county has produced 6th century penannular brooches, and hanging bowls, these strange objects that bear Celtic decoration but are found in Anglo-Saxon contexts, are remarkably common in Lincolnshire.26 Aldfrith, King of Lindsey included in his genealogy the British name Caedbaed showing a link between the Anglo-Saxons and native British at the highest level of society.27 This British

BÖHME, H.W. 1986: Das Ende der Römerherrschaft in Britannien und die Angelsachsische Besiedlung Englands im 5. Jahrhundert. Jahrbuch des RömischGermanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 33, 468574. BRUCE-MITFORD, B. 1993: Late Celtic Hanging Bowls from Lincolnshire and South Humberside. In Vince 1993, 45-70. CLARKE, G. 1979: The Roman Cemetery at Lankhill (Oxford). COOK, A. M. 1981: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Fonaby, Lincolnshire (Sleaford). FIELD, F.N. and HURST, N. 1983: Roman Horncastle. Lincolnshire History and Archaeology 18, 47-88. FOOT, S. 1993: The Kingdom of Lindsey. In Vince 1993, 128-40. FRERE, S. 1978: Britannia: a History of Roman Britain. 2nd edition (London). HAWKES, S.C. 1974: Some Recent Finds of Late Roman Buckles. Britannia 5, 386-93. HAWKES, S.C. and Dunning, G. 1961: Soldiers and Settlers in Britain, Fourth to Fifth Century. Medieval Archaeology 5, 1-70. JONES, A.H.M. 1964: The Later Roman Empire (Oxford). LAYCOCK, S. 2006: Ditches, Buckles, and a Bosnian End to Roman Britain. British Archaeology, 10-5. LEAHY, K.A. 1984: Late Roman and Early Germanic Metalwork from Lincolnshire. In Field, F.N. and

  Frere 1978: 399.   Clarke 1979: 291. 26   Bruce-Mitford 1993: 45-70. 27   Foot 1993: 133. 24 25

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White, A. (eds), A Prospect of Lincolnshire: Essays in Honour E.H. Rudkin (Lincoln), 23-32. LEAHY, K.A. 1993: The Anglo-Saxon Settlement of Lindsey. In Vince 1993, 29-44. LEAHY, K.A. 1996: Late Roman Belt Buckles. In May, J., Dragonby: Report on Excavations at an Iron Age and Romano-British Settlement in North Lincolnshire 1 (Oxford), 268-9. LEAHY, K.A. 1998: Cleatham, North Lincolnshire: The ‘Kirton in Lindsey’ Cemetery. Medieval Archaeology 42, 94-5. LEAHY, K.A. 2003, Middle Saxon Lincolnshire: An Emerging Picture. In Pestell, T. and Ulnschneider, K. (eds), Markets in Early Medieval Europe: Trading and ‘Productive’ Sites (Macclesfield), 650850. LEAHY, K.A. and WILLIAMS, D.J. 2001: Sheffield’s Hill. Two Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries. Current Archaeology 175, Volume 15, 310-3. SIMPSON, C.J. 1971: Foederati and Laeti in Late Roman Frontier Defence (Unpublished DPhil Thesis, University of Nottingham). SIMPSON, C.J. 1976: Belt Buckles and Strap-ends of the Later Roman Empire: A Preliminary Survey of Several New Groups. Britannia 7, 192-209. VINCE, A. (ed.) 1993: Pre-Viking Lindsey (Lincoln). WENHAM, P. 1974: Derventio (Malton) Roman Fort and Civilian Settlement (Huddersfield). WHITE, R. 1990: Scrap or Substitute: Roman Material in Anglo-Saxon Graves. In Southworth, E. (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: A Reappraisal (Stroud), 124-52. WHITWELL, J.B. 1992: Roman Lincolnshire (Lincoln).

made by local craftsmen not closely familiar with the better products of the continental workshops, was probably introduced by the activities of the Roman armies and may have come into use as early as the mid-4th century.30 The authors noted examples from contexts of the last third of the 4th century and early years of the 5th and showed that, along with buckles of their Type I, they represented the last recognisable phase of provincial Roman metalwork in Britain. The curling tails of the dolphins on the British IIA series were sometimes converted to animal heads, distinguishing Evison’s variant a2 from her typologically earlier variant a1, which shows more realistic dolphins.31 The distribution of IIA buckles with bird figures has been considerably extended northwards to the northern lower Humber region by finds since 1961 (Fig. 8).32 In support of Leahy’s observations above it is clear that, after the reign of Valentinian (364-375), civil as well as military officials wore belts as part of a uniform, or at least as the insignia of one if they were in civilian dress.33 The distinction between roles could become quite blurred, as demonstrated by the career of the 5th century Gallic aristocrat and emperor Avitus, who had been alternately a public servant and an officer.34 How far the dual role is reflected in buckles of Type IIA, which may have been of military type though not necessarily of military use, is the subject of continuing debate.35 But it would appear that belts had even become part of late Roman civilian dress in general,36 possibly under the influence of military fashion in a society which had to some extent itself become militarised. Stylistically the picture gained from the British evidence of the Type I and II buckles differs markedly from the contemporary, late Roman chip-carved or punchdecorated belt-fittings on the Continent. There appear to be connections, nevertheless.

Appendix: A Note on the Continental Background to Late Romano-British Belt Fittings with Zoomorphic Features

Apart from the deep, chip-carved decoration, the main difference between the British and continental groups is that the loops on the latter do not have projecting human heads or birds round their sides, although they frequently have pairs of moulded animal heads either at the ends of the loops, or flanking the tongue rest, or single animal heads at the ends of the tongues.37 Instead, human heads, figures and portrait busts of the Emperor or members of the imperial family may be incised on continental buckleplates and strap-stiffeners, e.g. from Italy and Dunapentele,

Barry Ager Attention has been drawn above to a small, but expanding, sub-group of British-made buckles with moulded perching birds and human heads projecting from the loops and plates. They represent a development of Hawkes & Dunning’s Type IIA, of which only one example with both birds and heads was known to them, from Saltersford, Lincs.,28 and which may represent a resurgence of native tradition in the late Roman period.

  Hawkes 1974: 387, 390.   Evison 1987: 86-7, fig. 113. 32   A IIA plate was found at Traprain Law, but it is not known to which variant it belongs. See Hawkes 1974: 388-9. 33   Hassall 1976; Tomlin 1976; Bishop and Coulston 1993: 162; Aurrecoechea 1995-6 and 1996. 34   Martindale 1980, 196-8. 35   Swift 2000: 201; Ager (forthcoming). 36   Ager 1987: 29. 37   Böhme 1974: 55-62, fig.16; Sommer 1984: pls. 5, 1-2; 6, 1-2, and 6; 7, 5; 38, 4; and 74, 1. 30

The basic IIA type is characterised by loops decorated by a pair of confronted dolphins, with hinge lugs at the ends of involuted terminals for the attachment of openwork, arcaded belt-plates. It represents an insular version of a continental type from northern Gaul and the Danube region, which is dated c. 350-380.29 The type, some apparently

31

  Hawkes and Dunning 1961: 21-34, fig. 18k.   Sommer 1984: Sorte 2; Böhme 1986: 482.

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Hungary, Krefeld-Gellep, Germany, Asia Minor, Vermand and Landifay, France, etc.38 These busts, sometimes combined with hunt scenes, emphasise the evidence of the distribution pattern that the chip-carved fittings were produced in Roman workshops (possibly at state factories, or fabricae, or at private workshops leased to the state)39 and are not of Germanic origin, though would have been issued to Germanic warriors serving in the Roman army. The belt-sets with the imperial busts, especially, appear to have been issued to both Roman military and civilian officials of high rank. The only Germanic contribution to the decoration of the buckles appears to be the placing of animal heads at the ends of the loops, derived from early 4th-century Germanic buckles according to Sommer.40 On present evidence projecting human heads seem to occur very rarely only on other types of belt and strap fittings, e.g. between the ‘horns’ of a triangular mount from Cologne, or on the terminal of a strap-end from Bremen-Mahndorf, Germany.41

strap-ends of various forms and on combs.47 The horse-like animals that occur on continental buckle-loops are far less naturalistic, placed on the sides and very uncommon, for example the pairs of opposed animal heads on each side, and framing the end of the tongue, of an openwork silver buckle of Sommer’s Sorte 3, Typ h, from the Ehrenbürg, Germany, with matching belt-ends.48 Sommer’s type includes buckles of Koch’s Catterick type which has barely recognisable dolphins on the sides instead of the ‘horse’heads, e.g. from Kempten near Bingen.49 The buckle from Catterick, North Yorkshire, formed the single example of Hawkes and Dunning’s Type IVB, which they recognised as a continental import.50 A pair of sealions round the edge of the loop of a buckle from Freilaubersheim may also be noted here, but the projections on either side of the base of the example of Sommer’s Sorte 2, Form D, from Furfooz, Belgium, can only be suggested as possibly zoomorphic by comparison with a Hawkes and Dunning Type IIC buckle of related form from Bifrons, Kent.51

Two-dimensional animals including lions and mythical sea-creatures are commonly found on the edges of broad, chip-carved, continental buckle and belt-plates and strapends. They occur occasionally in the main fields of the plates, too, or as openwork projections on buckle-tongues, as on the double tongue of a buckle from Herbergen, Germany.42 But they do not appear on the narrow plates of British-made buckles which portray birds instead, usually peacocks as on the Type IB buckles from Tripontium, Stanwick and Harlow,43 which are, furthermore, incised and not chip-carved. Projecting animals other than horses’ heads do not feature on the loops and tongues of British buckles either, even though quite a range of creatures is employed on the continental buckles of Misery type.44

The notable differences between the late RomanoBritish and continental buckles and belt fittings suggest that British manufacturers in the late 4th and early 5th centuries operated wholly independently of the centralised state factories of arms and military/official equipment on the Continent. To what extent this situation is owed to the frequent military and political separation of Roman Britain from the Empire towards the end of the 4th and in the early 5th century, and possibly to internal conflict between opposing British political units,52 is a matter for further research.53 Although British workshops imitated continental forms of buckle, most notably the dolphin type copied in Type IIA, they soon seem to have created their own forms by adding projecting animal or human heads and bird figures. These appear to reflect varying degrees of continental Roman stylistic influence, but were generally applied in a novel way that sets the British buckles apart.

Projecting birds, as on the Saltersford buckle, are almost non-existent in the surviving continental material, apart from the pair of prominent duck-billed heads which develop from dolphins at the base of the loop of a buckle from Ténès, Algeria.45 It is possible, however, that the birds were borrowed by British craftsmen from other types of object altogether, such as those forming the heads of some late Roman-period pins.46

Bibliography AGER, B.M. 1987: Late-Roman Belt-Fittings from Canterbury. Archaeologia Cantiana 104, 25-31. AGER, B.M. (forthcoming): Catalogue of the Late Roman Copper-Alloy Belt- and Strap Fittings from Ickham and Their Significance. English Heritage Report on the Excavations at Ickham Mill, Kent. AURRECOECHEA, J. 1995-6: Las guarniciones de cinturón y atalaje de tipología militar en la Hispania

The paired horse-heads on front of the loops of Britishmanufactured buckles of Hawkes & Dunning’s Type IB again find no exact parallel on the Continent, although similar heads do occur there on late 4th/early 5th century   Forssander 1937: 219-20, fig. 19, 1 and 2d-e; Böhme 1974: pls. 81, 7-9 and 141, 11; Johansen 1994; Schmidts 2002: figs. 1-3. 39   See Dawson 1990: 10-13; James 1988. 40   1984: 70, fig. D. 41   Böhme 1974: pls. 75, 19; and 15, 14. 42   Böhme 1974: pl. 23, 1, figs 18 and 28. 43   Hawkes 1972: pl. 22; Bartlett 1987: figs 1-2. 44   Böhme 1974: 68-9, fig. 24, 1-4. 45   Heurgon 1958: pl. 3, 1. 46   Ward 1911: fig. 70; Cool 1990: 168, fig. 11, 1. 38

  Koch 1965: 109-12, fig. 3; Sommer 1984: pls. 21, 1 and 10; 22, 3-4; 51, 8; and 52, 5. 48   Koch 1965: pl. 12, 3a-b; Sommer 1984: pl. 18, 1. 49   Sommer 1984: pl. 18, 2; Böhme 1974: 64, 365, Karte 14; a fragment of another has been found more recently on the site of Barcino, displayed in the Museu d’Història, Barcelona. 50   1961: 14-5, fig. 22. 51   Sommer 1984: pls. 61, 6; and 15, 4-5. 52   Laycock 2006. 53   E.g. Laycock (forthcoming). 47

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Romana, a tenor de los bronces hallados en la Meseta Sur. Estudios de Prehistoria y Arqueología Madrileñas, 10, 49-99. AURRECOECHEA J. 1996: Chip-Carved Fittings in Late Roman Hispania. Arma 8, 1-2, 15-9. BARTLETT, R. 1987: A Late Roman Buckle from Harlow Temple, Essex. Essex Archaeology and History, 3rd Series, 18, 115-20. BISHOP, M.C. and COULSTON, J.C.N. 1993: Roman Military Equipment, from the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome (London). BÖHME, H.W. 1974: Germanische Grabfunde des 4. bis 5. Jahrhunderts zwischen unterer Elbe und Loire (Munich). BÖHME, H.W. 1985: Les découvertes du Bas-Empire à Vireux-Molhain. Considérations générales. In J.-P. Lemant, Le Cimetière et la Fortification du BasEmpire de Vireux-Molhain, dép. Ardennes (Mainz), 76-88. BÖHME, H.W. 1986: Das Ende der Römerherrschaft in Britannien und die angelsachsische Besiedlung Englands im 5. Jahrhundert. Jahrbuch des RömischGermanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 33, 469574. COOL, H.E.M. 1990: Roman Metal Hair Pins from Southern Britain. Archaeological Journal 147, 148-82. DAWSON, M. 1990: Roman Military Equipment on Civil Sites in Roman Dacia. Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 1, 7-15. EVISON, V.I. 1987: Dover: The Buckland Anglo-Saxon Cemetery (London). FORSSANDER, J.E. 1937: Provinzialrömisches und Germanisches. Stilstudien zu den schonischen Funden von Sösdala und Sjörup. Meddelanden från Lunds Universitetets Historiska Museum 1937, 11100 (183-272). GOODBURN, R. and BARTHOLOMEW, P. (eds) 1976: Aspects of the Notitia Dignitatum (Oxford). HASSALL, M.W.C., 1976: Britain in the Notitia. In Goodburn and Bartholomew 1976, 3-117. HAWKES, S.C. 1972: A Late Roman Buckle from Tripontium. Transactions of the Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society 85, 145-59.

HAWKES, S.C. 1974: Some Recent Finds of Late Roman Buckles. Britannia 5, 386-93. HAWKES, S.C. and DUNNING, G.C. 1961: Soldiers and Settlers in Britain, Fourth to Fifth Century. With a Catalogue of Animal-Ornamented Buckles and Related Belt-Fittings. Medieval Archaeology 5, 170. HEURGON, J. 1958: Le Trésor de Ténès (Paris). JAMES, S. 1988: The fabricae: State Arms Factories of the Later Roman Empire. In Coulston, J.C. (ed.), Military Equipment and the Identity of Roman Soldiers, Proceedings of the Fourth Roman Military Equipment Conference (Oxford), 257-331. JOHANSEN, I.M. 1994: Rings, Fibulae and Buckles with Imperial Portraits and Inscriptions. Journal of Roman Archaeology 7, 223-42. KOCH, R. 1965: Die spätkaiserzeitliche Gürtelgarnitur von der Ehrenbürg bei Forchheim (Oberfranken). Germania 43, 105-20. LAYCOCK, S. 2006: The Threat Within. British Archaeology, March/April 2006, 10-5. LAYCOCK, S. (forthcoming): Tribal Tension in Late and Post-Roman Britain. LEAHY, K.A. 1984: Late Roman and Early Germanic Metalwork from Lincolnshire. In Field, N. and White, A. (eds), A Prospect of Lincolnshire (Lincoln), 23-32. MARTINDALE, J.R. 1980: The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire. Volume 2, A.D. 395-527 (Cambridge). SCHMIDTS, T. 2002: Ein spätantiker Gürtelbeschlag mit figürlicher Verzierung. Archäologisches Korrespondenzblat 32.3, 427-31. SOMMER, M. 1984: Die Gürtel und Gürtelbeschläge des 4. und 5. Jahrhunderts im römischen Reich (Bonn). SWIFT, E. 2000: Regionality in Dress Accessories in the Late Roman West (Montagnac). TOMLIN, R.S.O. 1976: Notitia Dignitatum omnium, tam civilium quam militarium. In Goodburn and Bartholomew 1976, 189-209. WARD, J. 1911: Roman Britain (London).

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What We Call Home: Reflections on Ancient and Modern Settlement in Deal, East Kent, UK Christine Finn

villainous place’ as William Cobbett described it in Rural Rides.

The excavation of the cemetery at Finglesham in east Kent was a milestone in Anglo-Saxon archaeology, as one of the first cemeteries of this period to be excavated in its entirety. The present report covers the 216 inhumation graves dating from the 6th to 8th centuries excavated by Sonia Hawkes between 1959 and 1967.

My childhood excavation site was the east Kent I explored with my father, often with his metal detector as we wandered shoreline and woodland. We did not find anything significant – although a sculpture fragment of uncertain provenance is now in Deal Maritime Museum – but that constant looking, heads-down in the rough, stayed with me for years, rekindled by my excavations as an undergraduate at Oxford.

Local history website, Northbourne, Kent.

I was brought up in Sonia Hawkes’ landscape, although coming to it from Jersey in 1967, the year she concluded the excavations described above. This essay considers the relationship of excavation landscape to personal place, where the objective geography of scholarship crosses into the domain of the habitus of known, and grown into, landscape.

It is only in the past few months that I have been carrying out another type of excavation in my family home after the deaths – within a year – of both my parents. I remembered those walks with my father, crisp autumn Sundays, balmy evenings, the metal detector burping and squeaking, when I began to tackle the overgrown garden. By coincidence, the local newspaper, the East Kent Mercury, ran a feature about the Deal Museum and noted that its oldest artefacts had been found just yards from the wall of our family garden…stone tools exposed during the building of a gas works during the last years of the 19th century. I asked our neighbour if he had found anything: ‘Plenty of flint, certainly and fragments of Victorian pottery’. Such was the haul when I troweled our own garden. I found two or three flints that could have been made, the bulb of percussion obvious, the possibility of hand making tool palpable…but no more.

East Kent is a curious area. Rich in history and prehistory, it is flagged more often by its more obvious edges; ‘White Cliffs Country’, as marketed by Dover District Council, or overwhelmed by Canterbury’s renown, just 20 miles inland, or the newly resurrected Isle of Thanet, with Turner’s Margate (and Tracey Emin’s), Dickens’ Broadstairs, and Ramsgate, blooming under the promise of the high-speed rail link to London in 2009. Somewhere lost in this is Deal, where I lived as a child, and returned to in later life. It was where I cut my teeth as an archaeologist, schooled in the knowledge that Caesar had come ashore on its beaches in 55 BC and 54 BC, an event celebrated for years as ‘Caesar day’ but neglected in the 21st century. A plaque proudly marking the supposed site of Caesar’s landing – a few yards from Deal Castle – has long since gone. Its traces can be discerned on the grass underneath a seafront bench, and more obviously noted in the name of the large detached house opposite, which is named ‘SPQR’.

Sonia Chadwick’s find spots were just further inland, and ranged from Stone Age axes to evidence of Anglo Saxon habitation. The Northbourne site notes Finglesham finds made outside the traditional archaeological remit; the artefacts discovered in the act of gardening or observing whilst looking, perhaps, for something else, a clothes peg, a coin, a key, a child’s toy. An Acheulian hand-axe was discovered in the garden of ‘The Old Waggoners’ and another plus some 25 struck flints from West Street.

Deal was also the place of smugglers and felons, and those who plundered the booty of ships, which regularly foundered on the notorious Goodwin Sands. It was the haunt of Nelson and Lady Hamilton (who trysted at the Royal Hotel and, apparently, in a graveyard at St George’s Church in the High Street) but it was still ‘a vile and

Hawkes 1976c: 59. 1991 – Palaeolithic hand-axe discovered at Finglesham in the garden of ‘The Old Waggoners’, Marley Lane, TR 3336 5350. Acheulian hand-axe, 172 mm long.  

  http://freespace.virgin.net/andrew.parkinson4/arch.html



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Fig.1. The tools my father, Allan, used for digging, lined up in the shed after his death. Photograph: the author. The Anglo-Saxon finds of Chadwick’s excavations follow the groundwork of W.P.D. Stebbing, who excavated a cemetery of 38 graves at Finglesham in 1928-29. The Finglesham website lists Sonia Chadwick’s finds, from the excavations of 1959-67, an excavation which crossed with her personal history when she married fellow archaeologist, Christopher Hawkes.

The random discoveries continued: between 1981 and 1982, an assemblage of flint was recovered from the foundations of a new cow shed. And in 1929, late Iron Age pottery (dated between the 2nd century BC and 1st century AD) discovered during the digging of a cesspool was at the new White Horse Inn. In 1978, a small amount of Iron Age pottery was recovered near to the nearby village of Little Mongeham during excavations for a gas pipeline. And in 2002, Iron Age pottery was noted amongst the molehills on Almonry Meadow, south of Northbourne village hall, again in the vicinity.

In 1973, an Anglo-Saxon cemetery was discovered from the air on the east side of the Dover to Richborough Roman road, and scheduled as an ancient monument, Updown Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, in 1975.10 Three years later, Sonia Hawkes excavated the route of a water pipeline which ran across this cemetery. Thirty-six graves were located, many well spaced and enclosed by penannular ditches, 4.7 to 7 metres in diameter. Several had coffins and a variety of grave goods. All were dated to the second half of the 7th century.11

The progression of habitation over time continues into the Roman-British period, with the major excavation of a cemetery uncovered during road widening at Mount crossroads, Northbourne. Fourteen burials were excavated. Nine were inhumations, three were cremations and two others were probably inhumations. A date between AD 240 and AD 320 is suggested. 

In 1989, excavation of Updown was continued along the route of the Eastry Bypass. Of the 54 graves located, Stebbing 1929b: 115-25. Chadwick 1958; Hawkes 1976b. 10 Scheduled Ancient Monument – SAM 298. 11 Hawkes 1976a: 247-8; and see S.C. Hawkes, Medieval Archaeology 21 (1977), 209. 

Halliwell and Parfitt 1983: 29-32; and Parfitt 1983: 290.  Stebbing 1929a: 69-70.  Parfitt 1979: 110-5.  Philp 1978: 30-49. 



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13 had been previously excavated by Sonia Hawkes in 1976.12

neighbours had a sorry detritus...and a rude awakening in the early hours...my father alerted by our cat which was wailing from a window sill, its tail whisking the brine and the seaweed. (FX)

These sites and their yields hold a resonance when the names are so familiar. Unlike excavating out of one’s ken, the commonstance of place names appearing on buses, in local newspapers, favourite pub-lunch haunts, make the archaeology more personal. Not quite a violation of space, they allow a better – a deeper – understanding of habitus. Further, when one’s own home is perceived as a site, the doubling of place is even more potent.

When this happened I was a cub reporter on the local newspaper. The best story for years...and I was miles away in Harlow, Essex, on a course run by the National Council for the Training of Journalists (FX TYPEWRITERS). When I returned, with talk of carpets ruined and insurance claims all over the town (FX CHAT) ...my first thought was...at last! we can get rid of that ghastly red and yellow carpet! But of course, my mother went out and bought the very same...and here it still is. And now, at last, I can do what I have wanted to do for years...(FX RIPPING CARPET)

Earlier this year, for a BBC Radio 3 programme, I excavated my family house and garden, revealing layers known by me as a child.13 Layers of memory, but also visceral, physical, reminders of jobs my father had to do, or the potential of an interior not realised. Here is a journey through the home.

Not the only thing to remove...and how strange it feels to be able to do it. Every ceiling here is lined with white polystyrene tiles...a DIY disaster today, but in the 60s, a way to keep the heat in a large high-ceiled house. I’ll start in the back room...(FX TILES COMING DOWN)

*************** Leaving Home (draft script; the final version was improvised and then edited) “This is the house. An Edwardian semi-detached, pebbledashed, within sight of seagulls, if not the sea. (FX14 SEAGULLS)

And now I am underway...the door panels. These have covered what I can only believe to be panelled doors. The moment of truth (FX UNSCREWING HANDLES) and then a bit of force needed here (FX PANEL WRENCHED OFF) to reveal the panel (FX DESCRIPTION etc). Another 12 doors to go...

It is in Deal, 80 miles from London, 25 miles from France. A place where radio waves get scrambled (FX) where my parents moved from Jersey, even more French, in 1967... about when this house had its last overhaul.

And still in this back room, there’s more hardboard over the back boiler, which I have not seem uncovered... it’s held down with ancient Sellotape (FX PULLING HARDBOARD, RESPONSE).

FX GATE NOT CLICKING PROPERLY The gate hasn’t closed for years...its wood has warped, (FX) as has the paint crackling (FX) on the double fronted bay windows, and the porch is missing filials from sudden drops of decoration (FX WOOD FALL)...

The kitchen...it’s uncovered concrete floor suggests a memory of things (FX MILK BOTTLE SMASHING). My parents had a succession of twin tub washing machines, and when the spin dryer bit broke, they simply got a single new one…so always out of kilter, washing and spinning. (FX MACHINE) The kitchen floor was always awash… (FX WATER) over time the lino was turfed out but nothing replaced it…so this floor is a palimpsest of things dropped, swept, newspaper stuck down over years… (FX SCRAPING SOUND).

The bell doesn’t chime well either (FX RASPY BELL) and even now, a year later, I have not got used to entering the key in the lock and letting myself inside. It is a bell that won’t be answered. (FX ENTERING HOUSE) The inside porch with its familiar heave of air (FX HEAVY DOOR OPENING) and into the hall... (FX DOOR CLOSING)

The door outside (FX LOCKS AND OPENING) and just outside the loo, not quite a glory hole, but on summer days it had an odd relaxing quality, its whitewashed walls resembling, to me, the inside of a home on a Greek island (FX ).

And the first thing I notice is the carpet. A red and yellow swirl which holds the first story of this house. In 1978, the sea breached its defences in a storm (FX) and hurtled down the roads, only stopped by the banks and houses in this road. While those living next to the sea had fishing boats moored in their gardens, my parents and their

And then the garden. Once my father’s pride and joy, his creeping Parkinson’s limiting his work and enjoyment. Walking down a path revealed by the winter (FX) past the huge conifers which dominate, an apple tree, the back wall, climbing plants (DESCRIPTIONS). My dad grew tomatoes…but as much as he grew them, sunning them on the kitchen window sill, my mother bought them from her

Willson 1990: 229-31. BBC Radio 3 “Leaving Home” Twenty Minutes, 17 July, 2006 (http:// www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/twentyminutes/). Producer: Marya Burgess. 14 Broadcasting jargon for ‘sound effect’. 12 13

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But here is a monster television…in the late 60s, we were the owners of one of Deal’s first colour TVs, won by my father in a PTA raffle…when we got it home, we nearly had the Deals’ first smashed colour TV, as the old stand buckled under the weight of the new one, (FX) ,when that TV tube went, my dad kept it, and got another…with kaput sound. And so, for years, they ran this eccentric TV stereo of whopping old TVs, in the sitting room… (FX)

favourite greengrocer. A cue for many rows as the budget tightened when my father took early retirement (FX)… The small lawn, now lost to the conifers, was where I lay on the grass to revise for school exams. I’d make the time by the rising and falling of the Gasometer two houses away…(FX). The garden shed...(FX OPENING DOOR) So important when dad retired…what a glory hole! (FX VARIOUS) Unopened bottles of Queen’s Jubilee beer (FX)

Next door, my parents’ room…where dad spent so many years before hospital and care home. It still lingers with the scent of my mother’s hoard of cosmetics and scents (FX SPRAY). She loved the Avon Lady’s call…even if our bell was not up to it (FX).

Walking back to the house, what else…pieces of roof slate. The Great Hurricane of 1987, (FX ARCHIVE). When hit the south, my parents were in the Channel Islands. I’d sent them on a surprise wedding anniversary trip to Guernsey, so they could also get back to Jersey…my mother never made it because of the storm, and poor dad was worried sick about the roof here…(FX ) About a quarter of the slates came off, the hole plugged pro tem, with supermarket carrier bags …

From the window, in my memory’s eye I can still see the distant coal tip, with its surface like the moon (FX CRUNCHING SURFACE). I’d go there fossil searching with my dad, a wartime Bevin Boy at Betteshanger Pit, and a card-carrying Communist in those days. (FX) His brother and grandfather also worked down the mines until they retired.

At the side of the house the bricks tell more tales…(FX SCRAPING) this soft brittle cement shows the height of the water in the great Deal flood…

Downstairs, two more rooms….one reception room has not been used for 30 years. It became a store room, and has yet another concealed fireplace. (FX) But this a confection of brown and cream tile, with a grey brick effect wallpaper…

(FX) Back inside the under-stairs cupboard (FX CURTAIN) where my dad kept his fishing rods for a night on the shingle (FX SOUND OF CASTING AND REELING) and his golf bag – three golf clubs nearby, my dad was an artisan at Princes, scraping the bunkers neat in return for a day’s play (FX)

In here, my father’s 78s…he worked in a music store in Jersey and one of his great moments was being flown over to Abbey Road studios to hear the first recordings of a new band called…the Beatles. (FX) He loved them all his life. And Frank (FX). Here also my father’s coin collection… (FX CHINKING) pre decimal days, we’d share the hunt for a 1933 penny…

Up the stairs where the banister and the walking sticks remind of my dad’s attempts to get up and down…his workroom, with its cast iron fireplace, is still as he left it…Leeds United rosette on the wall from the Revie days (FX MATCH) we used to go together, or listen on the radio (FX ) and here he’d fix things (FX TOOLS).

And across, the sitting room, which is basically as it was when my father left it for a nursing home, and my mother left from hospital in March, 2005. Not many objects from their pasts…most of the Jersey house was sold as a job lot at auction …(FX) my army captain grandfather’s statues, vases and other African souvenirs, (FX) and the contents of the guest house he ran with my grandmother…all that cutlery (FX). There are bots I have brought back from my own travels, to China, Malaysia, India, America…(FX) a carpet that has lasted 35 years, faded velvet curtains (FX). Maybe this lack of things connected to my parent’s pasts has made me more aware of the stories of objects…that and the memory that when we left Jersey the house, chalets, and its glorious orchard and garden was razed to make a hard standing for hotel rental cars. Lost to progress, when it had been saved in 1940 when the Germans Occupied the Channel Islands. Rather than lose the house, my widowed grandmother stayed on.

The bathroom, where I’d listen to the 70s chart shows in the bath each Sunday evening…but always interrupted by those French and Belgian transmissions (FX as before). My bedroom, where I would stay even into my 40s….but this time, I can take the hardboard off another cast iron fireplace (FX RIPPING OUT). From this window, you can sense the sea, if not see it, but being woken by seagulls is a delight (FX GULLS). Into the front bedrooms…I used this huge one for a few weeks before moving back to something smaller. Another concealed fireplace (FX RIP) and boxes of books, from my days at university. (FX BOOKS BEING MOVED) Not many other books in this house…But always lots of newspapers and magazines…all three of us were dyslexic, we had two newspapers a day, four on Sundays…(FX sound of newspapers). In summer we’d go to the sand hills and the golf links a mile away, and sit with the radio, sandwiches and flask (FX RADIO/POURING).

FX (LEAVING HOUSE, DOOR CLOSING) So, that action 60 years ago has played in my mind a lifetime…the house saved in wartime used to buy this house, one which 148

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escaped the WW2 bombardment of Dover and the Kent coast. It has scars, as most houses do. But when I look at it from the road, I remember jollier things…my father’s Ford Anglia (FX) and the ritual that happened for years come election time…my parents’ house would be festooned with blue, the next door’s festooned with red. They never discussed politics, and remained the best of neighbours.

HALLIWELL, G. and PARFITT, K. 1983: A Mesolithic Site at Finglesham. KAR 72, 29-32. HAWKES, S.C.1976a: Interim Report on Excavations at Eastry. AC 92, 247-8. HAWKES, S.C. 1976b: Orientation at Finglesham: Sunrise Dating of Death and Burial in an Anglo-Saxon Cemetery in East Kent. AC 92, 33-51. HAWKES, S.C. 1976c: Palaeolithic Hand-axe from Finglesham. KAR 43, 59. PARFITT, K. 1979: Discoveries along a Pipeline through the Parishes of Sutton and Northbourne near Deal. KAR 55, 110-5. PARFITT, K. 1983: Investigations and Excavations during the Year. AC 99, 290-1. PHILP, B. 1978: A Romano-British Cemetery at Northbourne, Kent. KAR 52, 30-49. STEBBING, W.P.D. 1929a: Iron Age Hearth at Finglesham near Eastry, Kent. AC 41, 69-70. STEBBING, W.P.D. 1929b: Jutish Cemetery near Finglesham, Kent. AC 41, 115-25. WILLSON, J. 1990: Rescue Excavations on the AngloSaxon Cemetery at Eastry 1989. KAR 100, 229-31.

What new memories will be created when I let my family house go? This archaeological excavation, of sorts, reminds me that houses are memory banks, personal museums for things that mean so many, particular things. And when the removal vans pull away, what traces remain?” (FX VAN) Abbreviations AC KAR

Archaeologia Cantiana Kent Archaeological Review

Bibliography CHADWICK, S.E. 1958: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Finglesham, Kent: A Reconsideration. Medieval Archaeology 2, 1-71.

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Sonia Chadwick Hawkes1 Martin Welch

Sonia Chadwick Hawkes was a leading authority in the field of early Anglo-Saxon archaeology, especially that of Kent. Born Sonia Chadwick in Dartford in that county in 1933, she added the name Hawkes after her marriage in 1959 to Professor C.F.C. Hawkes, Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford University.

and published in a leading periodical there with some minor updating. Her own excavations at Finglesham (1959-67) and Worthy Park, Hampshire (1961-62), provided fresh data to add to earlier finds, and will give us near-complete views of communities in death. It had similarly been her wish to excavate and publish the entire cemetery at Updown, Eastry near Finglesham, but in the event this was limited to a 1976 transect containing 36 graves.

She was an only child who, after school in Dartford, went on to study English at Bedford College, London. Access to Old English literature led her to discover the contribution archaeology could make to the study of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Her research began under the supervision of Vera I. Evison (Birkbeck College), but they soon fell out and their rivalry continued for several decades before they agreed to bury the hatchet.

Another major project of the 1960s was to present the material from the 19th-century sites of Bifrons and Sarre in Kent as catalogues with British Academy funding. Sadly none of these projects was published, though most of them are so close to completion that it will take little to finalise them. Together, hopefully, with the publication of her Iron Age excavation at Longbridge Deverill, Wiltshire, these will form a fitting memorial to her archaeological career.

In those early years, her interests concentrated on the animal art styles which decorate the fine metalwork of dress and weapon fittings, recovered from graves of the fifth to seventh centuries AD. Her detailed study at museums in Maidstone, Liverpool and especially the British Museum culminated in her 1958 appointment as Curator of Scunthorpe Museum.

Of course, she provided many specialist contributions for excavation reports by others, and published several important papers presenting both synthetic and original research during the 1970s and 1980s. She was also a founding editor, in 1979, with James Campbell and David Brown, of the invaluable occasional series Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History. After her marriage to Hawkes in 1959, Sonia was based in Oxford, carrying out her research and teaching at the Oxford Institute of Archaeology. Official recognition was delayed, however, until her appointment in 1973 as an Oxford University Lecturer, but ironically she suffered terribly from ‘stage nerves’ and was never comfortable as a lecturer. Lecture courses were not infrequently cancelled

It was the appearance of three major papers in 1958 and 1961 which established her as a significant new contributor to debates with a European dimension. A reassessment of a cemetery discovered in 1928/29 at Finglesham in Kent was the first of these with its discussion of Style I animal ornament, which she renamed Jutish Style B. Another reexamined what she called Jutish Style A, which is now called Quoit Brooch Style. Although her attempt to link and rename the two styles has not been adopted, these articles still contain valuable and perceptive observations. The third paper, ‘Soldiers and Settlers’, published in Medieval Archaeology in 1961, presented a new interpretation of Late Roman belt equipment in Britain, supported by a full catalogue put together with the help of G.C. Dunning. This remains the starting point for a still active debate. So impressed were her German colleagues that this paper was translated into German

  S.C. Hawkes and G.C. Dunning 1962-3: Krieger und Siedler in Britannien während des 4. und 5. Jahrhunderts, mit einem Katalog der Schnallen und Gürtelbeschläge mit Tierornamenten. Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 43-4, 156-231.    See now E. Cameron and H. Hamerow (eds) 2000: Hawkes, S. (posthumous), The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery of Bifrons, in the Parish of Patrixbourne, East Kent, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 11, 1-94; S.C. Hawkes with G. Grainger 2003: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Worthy Park, Kingsworthy, near Winchester, Hampshire (Oxford); S.C. Hawkes and G. Grainger 2006: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Finglesham, Kent (Oxford); and Brugmann et al. in this volume. 

  Obituary reprinted, with additional references, from The Independent, 24/06/99. 

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After nursing her first husband in his declining years, Hawkes took early retirement in 1994, fell in love with and married Svetislav Petkovic. Sadly her happiness was cut short by diagnosis of terminal cancer, which she faced with enormous dignity, making careful arrangements for her career’s work to be completed.

part way through and last-minute announcements would appear that she could not attend an international conference for which she had offered a paper. Her research students knew perfectly well that this was not because she lacked expertise in her field, for indeed her knowledge was encyclopaedic. Her reputation as a teacher came particularly through her graduate students. She had a real ability to spot and develop talent and amongst those students are present-day teachers at university departments in Cardiff, London, Oxford, Reading and York. In the 1980s, she also created a splendid inter-disciplinary seminar series, though only one of these on Anglo-Saxon was actually published (Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England, 1989).

Sonia Elizabeth Chadwick, archaeologist: born, Dartford, Kent 5 November 1933; Curator, Scunthorpe Museum, 1958-59; Research Assistant, Oxford Institute Archaeology 1959-73; University Lecturer, Oxford University 197394; married 1959 Christopher Hawkes (died 1992), 1995 Svetislav Petkovic, died Oxford 30 May 1999.

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Oxford University Lectureship in European Archaeology (Early Medieval Specialism)1 Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

Background to Creation of Post in 1973

Archaeology in the early 1960s, Professor Richmond suggested that she become official Research Assistant to Professor Hawkes and begin teaching as needed. Graduate student numbers slowly increased during the 1960s, and doctoral students began to make their appearance. From the middle 1960s, and especially during Professor Hawkes’ periods of sick-leave for cataract operations, Mrs Hawkes began regularly to teach and examine for the Diploma. At that time her lecturing included Roman Iron Age and Migration Period Europe, from Scandinavia to Spain and Italy, and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as AngloSaxon and Celtic Britain. During this time she also began to attract research students and this period saw the foundations laid for the prestigious and successful graduate ‘school’ that was to develop at Oxford in the Archaeology of the Late and immediately Post-Roman period in Britain and Europe. Oxford became the major centre for research into this period of archaeology.

Professor Christopher Hawkes who retired from the Chair in European Archaeology in 1972, had been appointed in 1946 as the first post-holder. Initially he had been expected to teach European Archaeology as a whole from Palaeolithic times until the High Middle Ages, but gradually he was able to decant parts of this great burden to new colleagues appointed during the 1950s and 1960s, to the Professor of Archaeology of the Roman Empire and to the two Lecturers in Prehistoric Archaeology. By 1960 this still left him researching and teaching Bronze Age, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon and contemporary Continental Archaeology. Being the polymath he was, it was just possible under the conditions of the time, but not for long. The post-Roman period became increasingly a burden for him. In 1959 he married Sonia Chadwick, then a post-graduate student of Late Roman and Anglo-Saxon Archaeology at London University. Anglo-Saxon and related Continental archaeologies at that time were greatly under-researched and hardly taught at all in any university. Mrs Hawkes had had to read English at London University in order to take the single paper on Anglo-Saxon Archaeology offered within that degree course (and found herself the only student in the whole university taking it). However, from that beginning she was able to get a grant for research and, with the help of influential friends and such as Rupert Bruce-Mitford and David Wilson, and the inestimable advantage of being a keyholder at the British Museum, set about teaching herself the rudiments of her future trade. Her work for her thesis involved Frankish and Danish as well as Anglo-Saxon archaeology. There was very little research work in the period going on at that time in England or abroad. So she felt herself very much a lonely pioneer.

The Lecturership For political reasons this was not offered to Mrs Hawkes until after Professor Hawkes’ retirement in 1973. But there was by now an unbroken continuity in the teaching of Masters and Doctoral Students. During this period the syllabus for the Archaeology Masters degrees changed and with it the emphasis of the teaching, which shifted from general coverage of European Archaeology to more particular emphasis on the rapidly developing archaeology of Anglo-Saxons and Franks in particular. This emphasis came partly as a reflection of student interests, abilities and needs, because from 1977 there was an increasing undergraduate audience to be catered for in Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. Undergraduate Courses at Oxford (1) In 1977, the Modern English Faculty introduced the option B11. ‘The archaeology of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Britain, 5th-8th century’ into the syllabus for its Course 2. This had been instigated and designed by Mrs Hawkes, with the encouragement of colleagues such as Celia Sisam, along the model of the option

Upon coming to Oxford Mrs Hawkes continued independent research, but, with the creation of the Diploma in European    This document was written at the time of Sonia’s retirement in 1994. It was discovered amongst her papers and may have been written as a justification for the continuation of her post. It now belongs to her Archive at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford (Helena Hamerow; personal correspondence).

Ian Archibald Richmond (1902-1965) was the first Professor of Archaeology of the Roman Empire in Oxford from 1956 until his death. 

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the place at which to do research in this field. Because the subject was so undeveloped doctoral students undertook major projects, resulting in major books and seminal publications, and without a single exception these gifted young people went on the fill posts in other universities or major museums, throughout this country and in America too. Their absolute numbers are not large but their influence is immense. The success-rate of the long-term strategy has been astonishing and gratifying, and Mrs Hawkes remains intensely proud of her archaeological progeny. They are her successor generation, and she feels able to retire with honour from teaching to devote herself to her own research and writing again.

Mrs Hawkes had taken at London. Until recently she has taught and examined the course more-orless singlehandedly. Course 2 English students are a small minority amongst the great numbers taking the mainstream Course 1, so in most years takers for the archaeology option were limited to two or three students. Recently, however, numbers have soared and this year there are at least eight. (2) Modern History’s Anglo-Saxon Archaeology option took longer to establish, and it was not up and running until 1983. Mrs Hawkes has acted as Convenor for the option since 1984 and has organised the annual seminars from the beginning. Student numbers fluctuate from year to year, and this year number twelve. (3) It is too soon to tell whether there will be much interest in Anglo-Saxon Archaeology by students taking the new degree course in Archaeology and Anthropology, which is only in its second year, but one of the first-years has expressed an interest. Understandably it might seem too parochial for people studying world-wide themes, but exciting new options within the period could be made available, for instance the impact of Nomadic peoples such as Huns, Avars and Magyars on settled societies. Mrs Hawkes used to enjoy teaching topics such as these. Altogether, then, there is a healthy undergraduate enthusiasm for Anglo-Saxon Archaeology in this University, which needs to be maintained if at all possible. The strength of Anglo-Saxon historical research in this University needs the backing of archaeology. At the moment there is a very happy balance and collaboration.

Ex-pupils now University Lecturers include Simon Burnell (Exeter), Timothy Champion (Southampton), Sally Crawford (Birmingham), Tania Dickinson and Edward James (both York), Viva Fisher (Harvard), Helena Hamerow (Durham), Heinrich Härke (Reading), John Hines (Cardiff), Ruth Mazo (Penn., USA), Susan Pearce (Leicester), George Speake (N. Oxon Poly) and Martin Welch (UCL London). Others include Kevin Brown (Newport, IOW), Daffyd Kidd (British Museum), Christopher Scull (English Heritage) and William Filmer-Sankey (Dir. Victorian Society). Most of them are now distinguished figures in the world of AngloSaxon and Merovingian Archaeology. At the moment she has just one doctoral student completing his thesis on 7th8th century glass but she has taken on one new student for next year to keep up the continuity and momentum until her successor is in place. Conferences and Anglo-Saxon Studies

Most students taking the MSt or MPhil Qualifying Examination in European Archaeology include Europe 5th-8th century AD amongst their options. There is also an Anglo-Saxon option within the MSt in Archaeology. Over the years there has been a regular trickle of takers. Numbers are never large because of the grants situation, in 1991-2–1992-3 there were just two but this year there are four under Mrs Hawkes’ supervision, two taking ‘AngloSaxon England’. To arrive at absolute numbers for the past ten years would require research in archives which are not readily to hand but should be obtainable from the Graduate Studies Office.

For the benefit of graduate students, and also for senior colleagues as it turned out, Mrs Hawkes organised a series of small weekend conferences during the 1980s, which were attended by people from all over the country. Some papers given in these appeared in the journal Anglo-Saxon Studies. This journal was originally Mrs Hawkes’ brainchild and with the help of James Campbell and David Brown she edited and published the first four volumes. Financial problems caused delays for awhile, but volumes 5 and 6 have recently appeared and 7 and 8 are on their way, now under the editorship of ex-pupil William Filmer-Sankey and with funding from the OUCA at last secure. This journal is now the leading vehicle for publication of Anglo-Saxon archaeological and topographical research. She feels that this is another highnote on which to be retiring, but that here is another initiative to be maintained by her successor. The conferences could bear reviving, too.

Doctoral Students

Lectures

It is the research record which deserves especial notice. Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian Archaeology were still fundamentally under-researched throughout Mrs Hawkes’ career at Oxford. It became deliberate policy on her part to recruit high quality graduates, many of them ex-historians, to fill in the major gaps in our knowledge. Oxford became

To list lectures given over twenty-five years would be impossible. However, they have followed a regular pattern, and in recent years have included:

Masters Degrees

  Oxford University Committee for Archaeology. The Institute is now part of the School of Archaeology.



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1) The rise of Anglo-Saxon civilisation, AD 400-750 (or something along those lines) 2) Anglo-Saxon archaeology of the early Christian period (contributions to seminar) 3) The archaeology of the Franks and their Neighbours, AD 400-700 4) European Trade and Trade routes beyond the Roman frontiers, AD 0-800 5) Economic and Social Change in Free Germany and Scandinavia AD 0-800 6) Germanic Jewellery and other Arts and Crafts 7) Interpreting cemetery evidence.

The areas and peoples within Mrs Hawkes’ scope to lecture about, given an interested audience and sufficient inducement, include all the major barbarian peoples of Europe, Huns, Avars, Goths, Gepids, Lombards, Alamanni, Thuringi, and of course Franks and Anglo-Saxons, and Celtic Ireland. She is also something of a specialist in Nordic archaeology. There is a vast slide collection illustrating all these aspects of European Archaeology which she built up during her long years of teaching. Her successor would have no excuse on practical grounds to back off from such topics.

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The Oxford Institute of Archaeology 1961-86 An Informal Retrospect1 Sonia Chadwick Hawkes

Christopher built up the Institute from nothing, when he arrived as first Professor of European Archaeology in 1946, to a large, thriving and happy research centre by the time of his retirement in 1972.

ground floor was taken over by the Department of the History of Art. This enabled us to establish a proper Lecture Room, an elegant Reading Room and to move Christopher downstairs to a bigger study and thus release his old room on the second floor for, as it turned out, me to inherit.

He had made tremendous gains before and after the formal foundation of the Institute in 1961, not least the acquisition of the major part of the three Beaumont Street houses. These had originally been built by about 1828, and the first tenants left their permanent mark on the domestic interiors, in such matters as room divisions and the quality of mantelpieces and mouldings. In no. 34 Beaumont Street, for example, was Dr Bulkeley Bandinel, Bodley’s Librarian from 1813-1860, who having no children to accommodate could afford the luxury of a really big, undivided, front bedroom (now my own study).

In 1962, as if by some piece of magic, but again of course as a result of Christopher’s very good and adroit relations with University officialdom, in this case the Registrar Sir Folliott Sandford, the Institute’s premises were suddenly enlarged yet again by the acquisition of a whole new house, no. 36 Beaumont Street, newly vacated by Barnett House. The University Surveyor’s Department had already washed, by the newly fashionable cold water treatment, the facades of our existing houses, 34-5 Beaumont Street, which were now looking very clean and freshly painted, whereas no. 36 still had a blackened facade. We own the original of a drawing by Brian Cairns, published in the Oxford Times, which illustrates our situation at that time, with two clean house-fronts and one dirty.

The first to be acquired were nos 34-35, where, already in 1957/8 the two professors, Christopher and Ian Richmond, were ensconced on what had been the original bedroom and attic floors, while all below was occupied by the then Department of Oriental Studies and its Library. When I appeared on the scene in 1959 I remember being greatly impressed by the elegance of the Regency houses, with their grand facades and decorative canopies over the first floor windows, and by the good state of preservation of internal features such as original doors, mouldings and fireplaces. More depressing was the smoke blackening of the Bath stone facades and the visual squalor created within by the Oriental Library, with its unsightly bookstacks in the originally grand reception rooms of the two houses, not to mention the uniform livery, throughout the houses, of worn but still serviceable dark brown linoleum and dirty cream walls.

The acquisition of 36 Beaumont Street was part of a deal in which we shared the premises with the Playhouse Theatre, just across the road, and for a short time theatrical costumes were stored in the attics of 36 (only got rid of on grounds of their being a ‘fire hazard’) and for a much longer time the old Squash Court behind 34-5 was used for the storage of stage scenery. Inside, a breach was opened between our new Reading Room and the new rooms in 36 Beaumont Street. The Institute thus gained a grand new Common Room, in the form of another well-preserved 1828/9 reception room with original mantelpiece and mouldings intact, complete with striped ‘Regency’ wallpaper of more recent vintage. To reach it a passage had to be made through what had been the back parlour, and this became a sort of kitchen, such as it remains today. Downstairs were handsome rooms which were allotted to the slide archivist and to the embryonic photographic department.

Then, suddenly, there was the exodus of the Oriental Department into their new Institute in Pusey Lane at the back of Ashmolean, which left the first floor rooms of 34-5 Beaumont Street for us to expand into, while the   Text reprinted, with minor corrections and notes, from A. Selkirk and S.C. Hawkes (eds) 1986: Oxford University Institute of Archaeology: Silver Jubilee Reflections, 8-23, an unpublished brochure printed for the occasion.    Charles Francis Christopher Hawkes (1905-1992). 

  The ‘Squash Court’ structure (used for sorting and washing finds) was demolished in the late 1990s, as was the Institute Garden, as part of the construction of the new Sackler Library.



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The Attics

Room, if I remember correctly, was about £100. Given the scale of the room, which had until recently been the boardroom of the Rhodes Trustees (hence the preservation of the original fireplace and mouldings, and the presence of the striped wallpaper) it seemed to us that there was no aesthetic and practical alternative but to furnish the room in period style. Luckily minor antiques were cheap in the early 1960s, so I set about bargain hunting for the Institute. The challenge was to create a drawing room such as might have existed in the 19th century, using furniture of a combination of periods.

But there were not just the grand rooms there were also the attics, always a crucial part of the Institute scene. In the heat-wave summer of 1959 I was occupying an attic in 34 Beaumont Street and suffering from temperatures which up there soared into the 90s Fahrenheit. Despite modern improvements, the attic rooms remain hot in summer and cold in winter. One sympathises with the maid-servants of the nineteenth century who had to inhabit them without benefit of modern refinements such as electric fans or space-heaters. However, I was really grateful for the use of the room, which enabled me to write up a number of research papers which had been left unfinished since my student days in London and start such new projects as the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave-Goods. Another room in the attics had been used previously by no less a personage than Charles Thomas, while a research student at Oxford, and generations of students since have been glad of those attic eyries which, until quite lately, have been reserved to them almost exclusively. Ian Richmond always claimed that it was his public insistence that the attics were ‘unfit for human habitation’ that kept other would-be users at bay, and he was very proud of this achievement, and rightly so. Major use of them by dons never became a real issue (though John Barnes [sic] inhabited one for a time in the 1960s before he became Professor of Egyptology) until recent times when pressures on space begun to erode student monopoly of them.

Some pieces of furniture and the prices paid for them remain very vivid. A large and a small late Georgian wine table for £8 and £5 respectively; a drop-leaf Regency breakfast table for £18; a pretty little Victorian writing table for £12; a pair of Regency single chairs for £12; a little Victorian nursing chair, a large winged arm-chair (known as ‘Uncle Ian’s chair’), other chairs of various periods and kinds, and for £6 an elegant day-bed which had seen service in the Playhouse as a prop, and, having been rescued by us, had to be stripped of numberless pins before it could be reupholstered in yellow silk. What else? Oh yes, an Afghan rug bought for £5, and most precious of all, perhaps, an original mahogany show-case from the Museum of the History of Science, with a grey silk lining and the inscription ‘Antique Spectacles’. The double entendre was irresistible to us, and this grand object occupied most of the back wall of the Common Room, but despite our best intentions we never really managed to create displays in it worthy of its title. Its most noteworthy exhibit was the pony’s skull picked up by Bob Kennedy on the Welsh hills after the bitter winter of 1962-3, which resides now on a bookcase in our present Reading Room.

Even now, however, students are in the majority there, and the attic rooms give them privacy to work undisturbed, often at night and at weekends, and latterly they have come to provide safe quarters for a growing colony of privatelyowned Amstrad word-processors.

With funds so very tight such things as curtains had to be most carefully budgeted for, because the three windows were really tall. The red curtains that resulted were never a happy choice, as can be seen from extant colour photographs taken in the 1960s. But the improvised firescreen used to mask the empty fireplace was a triumph: a framed embroidery of a splendid Chinese dragon, gold on green silk, filled the role and place quite perfectly. As a finishing touch, because the tea party was such an important feature of life in the old Institute of the 1960s, we shopped around for a brass tray and copper kettle, which looked most elegant. All in all, the 1960s Common Room was a success both socially and aesthetically, and became a popular place to hold sherry parties after lectures by guest speakers notably after the Committee for Archaeology’s annual ‘Circus’ lectures in Michaelmas Term. It was thus seen by non-Institute members, and one act of generosity that deserves recording was the long loan of a fine large gilt-framed late Regency mirror which for years stood above the marble mantlepiece and lent grace and space to the room. In 1970 or 1971, the University Surveyor’s Department suddenly produced money to have the room redecorated and so we had the mouldings repaired and partly gilded and the walls clad in a deep blue William

Furnishing the Institute As regards the public rooms and the European Professor’s new quarters, the University was disposed to be generous. The Surveyor’s Department allowed us money to refurnish and redecorate, and left us to order things as we wanted, thus enabling preservation of original fireplaces, notably the fine marble one in the front reception room of 34 Beaumont Street which became our Lecture Room in 1961. Choosing furniture and colour schemes was left to Jennifer and myself, with Christopher’s approval, and great fun it proved to be. When we had finished redecorating in ‘Adam’ and ‘Regency’ styles, the overall effect was light, uncluttered and elegant. But my chief memory of that time is of the job of fitting out our new Common Room. This time there was no great hand-out of cash from the University to furnish 36 Beaumont Street, and the allocation for the Common   Barns (1912-1974) was Professor of Egyptology from 1965 until his death.    Jennifer Nicholson, Secretary to the Professors (see below). 

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Morris patterned wallpaper. The choice of decorations was thrown open to democratic discussion involving even the graduate students, but Christopher held and exercised the right of veto, particularly in the case of the alternative green wallpaper which had been preferred by our Administrative Secretary of the day, Angela Welch, and myself. The red curtains of course had to go and were removed downstairs to the ground-floor offices. In their place we put up curtains of authentic white Nottingham lace, buying up nearly their whole stock of it from an old-fashioned drapers, Capes of St. Ebbes, not long before the shop was taken over and replaced by the great complex of the new Selfridges. The Nottingham lace curtains looked really rather good and they survive still in our present Common Room, the old Lecture Room in 34 Beaumont Street.

rain fell. Christopher remembers the workmen’s horrified faces as they came panting across the road to the rescue, all too late. I remember gazing aghast as a great torrent of dirty brown water pouring through the ceiling of Jennifer Nicholson’s office (she having now moved into what had been Miranda Townsend’s room next to mine on the second floor front of 35 Beaumont Street, after I had succeeded Miranda as Christopher’s research assistant in 1963). All buckets or basins we could have mustered would have been completely ineffectual this time; the volume of water was too great and its concentration quite astonishing. Because it did not spread out at all it luckily missed my own study ceiling and my bookshelf on the wall adjacent to Jennifer’s, and only her ceiling collapsed. The water roared straight down onto a small space of floor above our Reading Room, and all aghast at what we should find that the great flood was now concentrated into a small but immensely powerful jet of water that emerged from a hole in the centre of the rose in the ceiling and, again, disappeared through the floor.

The Great Flooding Disaster Perhaps the most memorable event in the structural history of the Institute was the great freeze-up of 1962-3, and its disastrous aftermath. Oxford’s mains water froze and the internal pipes also, so when we could struggle in to work (we ourselves were living in a frozen-up house at Dorchesteron-Thames) we were working under appallingly bad conditions. I particularly remember the disgusting state of the loos, which couldn’t be flushed. But we survived, as one generally does in an emergency of that kind.

Below our Reading Room was Professor Wind’s study, full of valuable books and photographic archives, and we trembled to think of the chaos that must be developing below. His room was kept locked and it took precious minutes to find the caretaker and get the key. And when we opened the room, instead of a collapsed ceiling and ruined books, there was nothing at all to see. There wasn’t even a patch of damp. All that water had simply vanished without trace. Except for Jennifer’s ruined ceiling and carpet, there was not a damp patch to be seen anywhere below, except on the carpet of the Reading Room. The mystery remains still. Those Beaumont Street houses must have been built with ducts and vents that simply carried the waters away.

What really sticks in the mind is what happened when the thaw finally came. Water began to seep through one of the second-floor ceilings in each of our three houses. It transpired that the original drains, which carried stormwater from the roof and the leads, ran from the front to the back of the houses, and took the form of open-topped rectangular lead gutters that ran under the floors of the attic rooms and above one of the rooms on the second floor. The houses face south, so that the snow thawed on that side first, while the north-facing ends of the gutters and also the down-pipes remained frozen, with predictable consequences: melt-water was overflowing into the houses and threatening our beautiful new decorations. The caretaker refusing to do so, the younger and more ablebodied members of the Institute scrambled out through the attic windows and attempted to clear the snow from the roof and leads, but we hadn’t the tools for the job, and in the end we summoned the Fire Brigade. The job surprised and amused those splendid men, but with their help all the snow was thrown down into the street (to the consternation of passers by beneath) and the only water that penetrated the houses could be contained in buckets. We escaped serious damage that time.

After the freeze-up of 1963, when we had had only a few electric heaters to warm the premises, Christopher asked for central heating to be installed. We got the most primitive kind: bulky electric storage heaters were installed in every room, and the people installing them humped them fully laden with bricks up our elegant Regency staircases. These have no vertical supports under the treads, and something like six men bumping a ton-weight of radiator from tread to tread soon began to shake the staircases most severely. The Surveyor’s Department rushed to the rescue and the three staircases were soon supported from bottom to top by steel props and scaffolding, which saved them from collapse. We all hated those radiators, which were uncontrollable, and I thought were too heavy for the floor joists. But on that score at least I need not have worried. The three houses were amazingly well constructed. Their builder, Thomas Wyatt in 1828, deserves every credit for doing a first-class job on them. I remember being greatly impressed, when Edgar Wind had the walls between the ground-floor rooms removed, to see the elaborate and

But in the summer of that same year the University Surveyor’s Department decided to replace the open lead gutters with round pipes. All went well and work had progressed until the last section of pipe in 35 was due to be put in. It was lunchtime on a hot sunny day, and the workmen had gone off to the pub, when suddenly out of a clear blue sky a great thunderstorm blew up and sheets of

  Edgar Wind (1900-1971), Professor of Art History at Oxford, 1955-67; much of his book collection now belongs to the Sackler Library.



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would allow himself to be provoked into capping Latin tag with Latin tag. When this happened, as it did occasionally, a kind of verbal duel ensued, which we all followed with glee. A competitive edge was always apparent between these two great men: Ian had a tendency to mock the ‘barbarians’, for example, and thus deliberately to provoke both Christopher and myself. However, it was all good clean fun, and those tea parties are certainly remembered with affection and nostalgia if the anecdotes of our expupils are anything to go by.

beautiful timber framework which had been constructed to support the internal partitions. And those partitions had been designed to support an immense weight, as we found out in the later 1960s. At that time problems began to develop because Sheppard Frere and his assistant Roger Goodburn had built up a great weight of books and glass slides against both sides of an internal partition wall which overlay the central beam above the Common Room in 36. That beam had been cut, and therefore weakened, because the central ceiling rose was inset into it, and under the huge weight above it began to sag. To a lesser degree the same thing was happening under the weight of my own books above the ceiling of the Reading Room in 35. The Surveyor’s Department came again to the rescue, and for weeks both houses were internally supported from basement upwards by steel joists and scaffolding, while extra wooden floor joists were put in. On that occasion it was seen that the whole space between floor and ceiling was packed with tons of sand and gravel to provide insulation. Since then I have never worried at packing forty or more people into lectures, or seeing up to a hundred people at parties. The houses were built to withstand large gatherings of people.

And then there were the parties. The first such large gathering was just before Christmas in 1963, when we held our first big Institute party. There was a tremendous turnout despite there being snow on the ground, and everyone wore full fancy dress, which they had gone to immense trouble to make. Ian Richmond came as a Roman Emperor (Christopher says it can only have been Vitellius, but Ian probably had other ideas about his identity) wearing sandals, a white tunic and a home dyed purple sheet for his toga, and of course a wreath of laurel (no problem to find in north Oxford where he lived). Christopher tried, very unsuccessfully I thought, to represent a Bead-Rim Jar. Much more successful were Dora Hazisteliou-Price, who came as an Archaic Greek bronze figurine, and Helen Hughes-Brock as a Minoan goddess (with blouse for modesty), a striking figure with cinched-in waist and flounced skirt. Thurl Wilkins, not obviously pregnant with her first child came dressed as a Classical Greek goddess. Malcolm Parkes came as a medieval monk, but most striking among the younger men were Robert Kennedy as a prehistoric hunter; Jeffrey May dressed in straw as a Shaman; David Ridgway as a Penguin and Dennis Harding as the skeleton of a Dinosaur. So long was his paper tail that it kept getting trapped in the lavatory door. There was a judging by Christopher and Ian, and Jennifer Nicholson won. She came representing Bush Barrow; wearing copies of the Early Bronze Age dagger and gold ornaments and with copies of the decorations of the staff on the handle of an umbrella (representing the barrow), which was garnished with a bush and rabbits in the style of Heywood Sumner. It was most ingenious and we have a slide of her in our archives. That party was unforgettable and unrepeatable.

Tea and Parties Tea at 4 o’clock was always a very special social occasion in the Institute and pre-Institute of those early years, provided and presided over by Jennifer Nicholson, and attended by all staff and graduate students. Thinking about the original Common Room in earlier 1960s brings back memories of a really friendly social scene; of a very important tea-time ritual, and above all of individual voices and of conversations that were amusing and valuable. There were always biscuits with the tea, and sometimes cake, and everyone, including the Professors (Hawkes, Richmond, and later Frere), made a point of attending, and a certain hierarchical decorum was always observed. Increasing student numbers were never allowed to deprive the Professors, however late their arrival, of their piece of cake. Jennifer, and later Annette, took great care that the proprieties in this respect were observed. People met to talk on these occasions. The tea party was the time of day for coming out of one’s solitary study and socialising in good company.

However, a few years later, probably in 1968, we had a party where people wore headgear, and I remember Marilyn Bruce-Mitford in a replica of the Benty Grange helmet (very appropriately in that she was to make a major publication of it later) and John Rhodes, the winner, with a Scythian gold stag on his head. The best headdresses were exhibited for months, if not years, afterwards in our ‘Antique Spectacles’ case. The Christmas party is nowadays a regular event, but none has been so memorable as those early affairs in the days of the Institute’s youth.

One remembers the interplay between the professors. Ian Richmond loved to hold forth and his distinctive style of utterance was for years imitated by us all on occasion, whether unconsciously in the case of David Wilson, or deliberately in the case of Dennis Harding, who was a gifted mimic. Probably both could reproduce it now if asked to do so. Ian also had a tendency to lard his conversation with Latin quotations, and it became a matter of great interest to the rest of us whether Christopher, a Classical scholar too, after all, but who thought that kind of thing pretentious,

Ian Richmond and Sheppard Frere The Institute would not have gained its special character without the presence of Ian Richmond, to be succeeded,

  Annette Kennedy-Cooke, slide projectionist and archivist (see below).



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following his early death, by Sheppard Frere. Ian Richmond usually did his own slide projection, talking uninterruptedly as he walked to and from the front of the Lecture Room to the back. He was indeed a remarkable lecturer, who could talk for an hour without notes without ever faltering or so much as changing construction. We sometimes asked ourselves whether he had learned his texts by heart or whether, more likely, he had perfect concentration. Christopher was totally different in style; not nearly so smooth but vigorously compelling, and one went to his lectures year after year (despite their sometimes nearly two-hour length) because one knew he was talking from the forefront of research, giving his latest views of the latest state of his subject. His enthusiasm was infectious and I have tried to model my own lectures on his.

by the generous mother of one of our postgraduate students, Joanna Close-Brooks. Christopher, as Professor-in-Charge for most of the time down to his retirement in 1972, had to devote a lot of time and energy to persuading the University to increase our budget, not always with the success he would have wished. At first, the Professors lacked even a Secretary to do their typing. Christopher had had an Assistant, Margaret Smith, who did some typing for him and kept his offprints in order, as well as doing high-calibre research of her own, but he mostly wrote in long-hand and typed his own letters when essential. Richmond, who likewise had an Assistant, David R. Wilson, also wrote everything in longhand. If I remember correctly, David did drawings for Richmond but Ian took great pride in hand-lettering his own plans and sections in elegant Roman capitals. Letraset, like so much else we now take for granted, was also a thing of the future. Ian Richmond was to design the matching brass plates for the Institute of Archaeology and Department of the History of Art, with their handsome Roman lettering, which originally flanked the doorway of the shared entrance in 35 Beaumont Street. When the Institute moved its main entrance to no. 36, our plaque of course moved with us.

Ian had few pupils that I remember. Like Edgar Wind downstairs in the Department of the History of Art, he regarded pupils as a potential threat to his own research work and thus discouraged them. So, down to the time of his death in 1965, I remember only Edith Wightman, Toby Parker and Barri Jones. Otherwise the majority of graduate students around were those in European archaeology. Students of Classical Greek and Aegean archaeology mostly kept to the Ashmolean but some certainly gravitated towards the Institute if they had friends there. A few even had attic rooms in the premises and were envied by some of their friends outside. Those rooms were seen as great perks and were hotly competed for.

The first official Secretary to the Professors, Jennifer Nicholson, was appointed very soon after my own arrival in 1959, and though her services as a chauffeur were hotly competed for by both Professors, neither of whom could drive, neither Professor really ever used her fully as a Secretary. They had never had a private secretary before in their careers and had not acquired the knack of dictating or really delegating much of their work. As a result, the efficient and tolerant Jennifer was only too glad to enter into any other tasks and projects that were going on. So she not only helped me (who had had a secretary at Scunthorpe) with my own correspondence and offprint catalogue, but helped also with my research projects and even acted as assistant on my excavations in Hampshire and Wiltshire. I have never been so well served in my life. Those were wonderful liberal times.

When Ian Richmond died in 1965 and was succeeded by Sheppard Frere, Christopher was able to create much bigger and more efficient Roman Empire quarters, with another communicating door driven through from 35-6 Beaumont Street, and a whole suite of rooms set aside for the new professor and his assistants, officially Helen Waugh and unofficially Marion Wilson. He attracted great numbers of graduates in Roman studies, so student numbers in the late 60s and 70s were large. The Great Equipment Hunt

The furniture in our original lecture room (which we still use in the new) included a lectern specially designed for us by Hugh Richmond, Ian’s son. In the early days slide projection was done either by the assistants or by the students. The slides used originally were still of the old 8 x 8 cm size, made for us by the photographers in the Ashmolean. Philip Dixon has recorded a priceless reminder of the way in which those slides got red hot during projection. The change to 5 x 5 cm slides came only gradually and was much resisted initially by Ian Richmond and the Classical archaeologists on grounds of loss of definition. Much more deleterious has been the more recent change, in the making of black-and-white slides, from printing on glass to the use of reversal film. However, the improvement in colour film and the increased use of colour slides has to be experienced to be believed during this lapse of twenty-five years.

At first, the premises were furnished, with Spartan economy, by the Ashmolean Museum. Over the years that followed, while finances were still tight, whenever the Hawkes ménage moved house or bought new furniture, surplus bookshelves, desks and carpets were donated to the Institute to help remedy the deficiencies in what the University provided. Some of those items still lurk in the students’ attics. My desk and chair in the Institute, not to mention my typewriter, had to be provided by myself when I moved into my present room in 1970. Down to that time University outlay on equipping the Institute was parsimonious. Even our first photocopier and microscope were bought from the then princely sum of £500 donated   The History of Art has recently relocated to Littlegate House in St Ebbes, and the Institute has expanded into their former downstairs space.



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able to dictate his own terms, and those included increases in ancillary staff and facilities.

When Annette Kennedy-Cooke became our projectionist she designed the special podium on which our projectors still stand. Before the days of automatic machines she sat through all our lectures, adroitly juggling with the combination of 8 x 8 and 5 x 5 cm slides which were used then. One forgets the dates exactly, but she must have been slide archivist and projectionist from about 1965 until the acquisition of the first Kodak Carousel automatic projectors enabled us to release her from duty in the lecture-room in 1975 or thereabouts. I know she missed the lectures, however, and disliked being increasingly relegated to the office until finally having to combine her photographic archive duties with that of telephonist/ receptionist. This took place after the Institute’s front door was transferred to 36 Beaumont Street during the great changes that occurred in about 1978, after Christopher’s retirement, when Barry Cunliffe had become Professorin-Charge. She took early retirement in 1982, and the two girls who have been employed to replace her since, have not had the time to keep up the great card-index of negatives and slides which Annette had compiled and administered. The loss of amenity to those of us without research assistants to maintain our archives can hardly be overstressed.

The advent of increased numbers of ancillary staff after 1972 almost inevitably introduced tensions between the newcomers and existing staff and students and it was a while before the Institute as a whole readjusted to the changes. Judy Caton has recorded in her reminiscence how strange and quiet the Institute seemed to Barry’s people who came straight from Southhampton. In what became a more professional and businesslike establishment, with ancillary staff working a 9 to 5 day, in which morning coffee became the main official break, there was for a time a period when the students felt excluded and kept to their attics. However the changes have now been fully assimilated, and recent generations of students and ancillary staff have become friends and made common cause together. Today the Institute has become a veritable yardstick of advancing technology. Like the photocopiers, which have become more sophisticated with every new model acquired by the Institute, the computers, whether the Institute’s IBMs or the student’s own Amstrads, are now regarded as essentials. Accompanying this there has been a build-up of the secretarial and technical staff, which has increased at an accelerated pace during the last fifteen years.

Bob Wilkins came to us in 1963, at first on a temporary basis, and was set up with minimal but sufficient equipment, bought from a total budget of £500, in a combined Office/ Studio on the ground floor back and Dark-Room in the basement of no. 36. Only he can describe accurately how things developed once he became established as our first full-time photographer. But if my memory serves, the basement was still damp and stone-flagged, little changed physically from the kitchen and servant’s quarters of the 1830s. Separated by a thick wall from 36 there was a resident caretaker in the basements of 34-5 Beaumont Street, except at the very back of 34, where there were some damp rooms which were used by the University Archaeological Society’s excavators for storing and washing pottery. These damp rooms were converted into a Laboratory soon after Barry Cunliffe arrived, but it took a long time to get rid of the damp, and of the caretaker (and the smell of overcooked cabbage which had permeated the 35 stairs for so many years), and only in 1986-7 has there been the breakthrough, in all senses of the word, which has allowed the creation of an intercommunicating suite of rooms at basement level, creating commodious and modern quarters for the new and modern Photographic Studio and Conservation Laboratory.

Many of the original arrangements have had to be changed. Problems with security, due to the inability of the Department of the History of Art to keep the front door of 35 under observation within, and locked outside, office hours, led to the blocking of the stairs of 35 at first-floor level by a sort of lockable cage and to the adoption of the front door of 36 as the Institute’s own main entrance. Everything followed from that, with the institution of a receptionist/telephonist monitoring and controlling entrance to the Institute. It has also been sensible to make the 36 Common Room into a lecture room. It was natural to remove the Lecture Room from 34 into 36, to eliminate the passage of so many outsiders through the Reading Room into the heart of the Institute, and to rationalise both rooms in consequence. In the new Lecture Room the old Morris wallpaper and gilded mouldings were allowed to remain, though the aesthetic qualities of the room have been sadly marred by the installation of a truly vast projection screen and a big extractor fan and fittings. However, at least the original mantelpiece has been retained.

The New Regime

Sadly, it was also rational by then to sell off the original Common Room furniture. Whereas in the early years students as well as staff liked and respected the antique furniture, the later 1960s and early 70s was a time of student increase and cultural revolution, and the furniture suffered not just from large numbers of resident students behaving carelessly, but from abuse during graduate seminars, when there might be thirty or more people crowding in. By the time the furniture was sold off in about 1978, we were

In 1972, Christopher retired and was succeeded by Barry Cunliffe. Though I was appointed Lecturer in European Archaeology in 1973, the last academic post in archaeology to be created, understandably I have been less closely involved with the running of the Institute in the last fifteen years. Barry has been able to lead the Institute forward in many new directions. He had the initial advantage of being 162

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lucky it raised the £1000 or so it did. Most of it went into the auction room but some pieces were bought by members of the Institute. I have the pair of Regency chairs and the Afghan rug in my study at home, for example, and Bob Wilkins has one of the wine tables and another two chairs; the period looking-glass was reclaimed by its owner. The money raised was spent on ‘airport lounge’ type sectional seating for the new Common Room in 34 Beaumont Street. This has survived much better. The tea-party has also been revived, though it now takes place in the kitchen in 36 Beaumont Street, with everyone standing around in this confined space, either using the vending machine, brewing a communal pot or making individual mugs with tea-bags. Though this is physically not very comfortable, on the occasions I have been present the atmosphere has seemed very jolly. But the senior academic staff don’t join in to the same extent as they did in the 1960s, which is a pity.

Speake, Sara and Timothy Champion, Tania and Oliver Dickinson, Dafydd Kidd and others, all of them in key jobs. Looking through the lists of those who studied Roman, Classical and Aegean Archaeology at Oxford, there is a similarly good record of achievement. We have had successful visiting students, too, amongst them George Eogan from Dublin and Wolfgang Czysz, Michael Mackensen and other colleagues from Germany. A minor achievement to be recorded is that Ian Blake, one of our few orientalists, became one of the best archaeological columnists, as contributor to the Irish Times. The job situation has deteriorated in recent years, but still our people seem to succeed. Of my own recent students, Heinrich Harke, John Hines, Ruth Mazo Karras and Chris Scull have secured university posts, and Genevieve Foster and Kevin Brown major museum jobs. Thus our small research establishment at Oxford has produced a biggish percentage of academic and other high-fliers.

Academic Achievements Since the 1960s the Institute has been home to relatively large numbers of graduate students in European, Roman and Aegean archaeology, and students of Classical archaeology have always been welcomed. In fact there is a positive move afoot now to make more use of the Institute’s lecture room and new seminar room for Classical archaeology teaching. The students’ own interdisciplinary seminars help foster good relations between the various branches of archaeology and are increasingly reaching out to students in Ancient History as well. Nearly all our graduates in European Archaeology during the 60s and earlier 70s went on to obtain posts in museums or universities. Amongst them one thinks of Jeffrey May, David Ridgway, Joanna Close-Brooks, Dennis Harding, Michael Avery, Susan Pearce, Edward James, Sabine Gerloff, Marilyn Bruce-Mitford, John Rhodes, George

Undergraduate Teaching The situation on this front is encouraging. Greek and Roman archaeology have been options in Lit Hum for many years past and seem to be thriving. The new development is in my own subject, Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. There are special papers in this now in both Course 2 English and Modern History, and they are popular. The option in History is very new as yet, but this year there were 11 takers in History and 3 in English and for next year already 13 in History and 5 in English. At a recent briefing session it was a pleasure to see our lecture room crowded with future Anglo-Saxon archaeologists. These must rival the numbers in many a joint or single honours archaeology course elsewhere. The future outlook is very exciting.

  Literae Humaniores (Classics).



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Contributors

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BAR S1673 2007  HENIG & SMITH (Eds)  COLLECTANEA ANTIQUA

Collectanea Antiqua: Essays in Memory of Sonia Chadwick Hawkes Edited by

Martin Henig and Tyler Jo Smith

BAR International Series 1673 9 781407 301082

B A R

2007