API tools faq
paste
Advertisement
jonstond2

Pre-Conquest England (Medieval Studies)

jonstond2
Feb 13th, 2017
193
0
Never
Add comment
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 92.40 KB | None | 0 0
raw download clone embed print report
  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. Before 1990, historians of Anglo-Saxon England generally concerned themselves with the descendants of Germanic peoples who settled in lowland Britain from the early 5th century until the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. In the last two decades, however, scholars have extended their period of inquiry back into the 4th century—that is, to the period before Rome’s fall—which allows them to better calibrate levels of continuity and change between the ancient and early medieval periods. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England are increasingly interested in how English identity came to be formed in this period, and they have become more curious about the role native British people played in the creation of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as in how England’s neighbors helped the English define their differentness. Scholars in the field also accept as a given that we must study developments in England in the context of developments in other parts of the British Isles, Ireland, and the Continent. The focus on high politics and the church continues to dominate study in the field, but a number of scholars in recent years have also investigated crucial economic transformations, including the remaking of the landscape and the development of trade and urban communities. Work is also being done on farming and the peasantry, consumption and the powers, networks, and alliances of landholders in England. Many multiauthored volumes––either companion volumes or books on specific individuals or topics––appear in this bibliography. It is important to understand the role that such volumes play in this field: they allow scholars from different disciplines to contribute to focused discussions on pressing historiographical problems and are highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate students as well as for scholars working in the field.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
  6.  
  7. A number of excellent syntheses and companion volumes are available that reflect the full range of extant evidence on the history of England––ecclesiastical and legal texts, works of literature and high art, linguistics, paleography, and archaeology. Some, such as Campbell, et al. 1991; McKitterick 1995; James 2001; Charles-Edwards 2003; Davies 2003; and Fleming 2010, provide readers with narrative histories covering many centuries in England and will help students and professional historians alike to put developments currently taking place in the country into broader historical contexts. Stafford 2009 and Crick and van Houts 2011 contain excellent syntheses of recent scholarship on a number of crucial topics on the early Middle Ages and, like Fleming 2010, have up-to-date bibliographies. All works in this section have chapters relevant to most other sections in this bibliography and are, therefore, good places to begin when exploring the period.
  8.  
  9. Campbell, James, Eric John, and Patrick Wormald. The Anglo-Saxons. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1991.
  10. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  11. Comprehensive, magisterial, and beautifully illustrated, although its archaeological evidence and interpretations are out of date.
  12. Find this resource:
  13. Charles-Edwards, Thomas Mowbray, ed. After Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  14. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  15. Offers six outstanding essays on the first centuries after Rome’s fall, which investigate the construction of local and broader identities as well as the creation of Insular art objects, manuscripts, and texts produced in the new style of the period. The essays also provide readers with a British and Irish context in which to situate early Anglo-Saxon England.
  16. Find this resource:
  17. Crick, Julia C., and Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, eds. A Social History of England 900–1200. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  18. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  19. This volume sets the period’s invasions, migrations, and regime changes against a background sketched out by more than two dozen readable and individually authored chapters. Written by experts in history, literature, and archaeology, it focuses on everything from towns to violence, health and disease, and esoteric knowledge. Each essay includes a concise, thoughtful bibliography.
  20. Find this resource:
  21. Davies, Wendy, ed. From the Vikings to the Normans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  22. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  23. Offers thematic chapters on the political, economic, intellectual, and religious history of 9th- through 11th-century England, by leading scholars in the field. Each chapter explores developments not only in England but also elsewhere in the British Isles and Ireland.
  24. Find this resource:
  25. Fleming, Robin. Britain after Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400–1070. London: Penguin, 2010.
  26. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  27. A narrative history of the entire Anglo-Saxon period, based as much on archaeological as on written evidence. The book emphasizes economic and social history and the history of everyday life. It also provides a model for how material culture can be used to write Anglo-Saxon history.
  28. Find this resource:
  29. James, Edward. Britain in the First Millennium. London: Arnold, 2001.
  30. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  31. A complete history of Britain, beginning with the Roman Conquest and ending with the Norman Conquest, with writing based both on texts and archaeology. Investigates the ways in which developments in Britain both mirrored and differed from those elsewhere in Europe. Especially strong on the 4th through the 7th centuries.
  32. Find this resource:
  33. McKitterick, Rosamond, ed. The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. 2, c. 700–c. 900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  34. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  35. Includes a riveting article by Simon Keynes on the political history of Anglo-Saxon England from 700 to 900, alongside a series of histories of other contemporary kingdoms in Europe. See also The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 3, c. 900–c. 1024, by Timothy Reuter (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), which offers a judicious political narrative of England in the 10th and 11th centuries as well as essays on developments in contemporary kingdoms.
  36. Find this resource:
  37. Stafford, Pauline, ed. A Companion to the Early Middle Ages: Britain and Ireland c. 500–1100. Chichester, UK, and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
  38. DOI: 10.1002/9781444311020Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  39. Comprises interesting, readable, thought-provoking essays by leading experts on everything from Christianity to lordship to kingship. Each chapter provides an entry into the debate and the most recent scholarship for the topic at hand.
  40. Find this resource:
  41. Reference Works
  42.  
  43. A number of reference works are indispensable to scholars and students alike. The Bibliography of British and Irish History page on the Institute of Historical Research Digital website is an excellent online resource that is continually updated. Lapidge, et al. 2000 provides readers with alphabetically organized entries on various Anglo-Saxon topics, objects, people, and places and serves as a basic reference work. The Kemble: Anglo-Saxon Charters page on the Trinity College Cambridge website offers fundamental tools for those interested in these charters. Pryde, et al. 1996 and the PASE: Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England website are helpful for people researching the lives of named individuals who lived in England before the Norman Conquest or for researchers who are concerned with the problems of dating and chronology. The Fitzwilliam Museum’s Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds / Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles web page and the Portable Antiquities Scheme website offer searchable databases and large numbers of illustrated objects.
  44.  
  45. Bibliography of British and Irish History. Institute of Historical Research.
  46. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  47. Offers the best continually updated, comprehensive online bibliography on all of British history. It also contains large numbers of entries related to early medieval British and Irish archaeology. It is not open access, but many libraries have subscriptions.
  48. Find this resource:
  49. Corpus of Early Medieval Coin Finds / Sylloge of Coins of the British Isles. Fitzwilliam Museum.
  50. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  51. A searchable database of several thousand single-coin finds in the British Isles that were minted between 410 and 1180.
  52. Find this resource:
  53. Kemble: Anglo-Saxon Charters. Trinity College Cambridge.
  54. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  55. A web page devoted to Anglo-Saxon charters, which includes high-quality photographs of many originals as well as an online and updated version of Peter H. Sawyer’s book Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968), which provides basic information about the contents of every surviving charter, an assessment of its authenticity, a list of places where it has been published, and the location of the manuscript(s) from which the charter has been taken.
  56. Find this resource:
  57. Lapidge, Michael, John Blair, Simon Keynes, and Donald Scragg, eds. The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000.
  58. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  59. Reference work containing alphabetically organized entries on everything in Anglo-Saxon England, from famous individuals and texts to brooches and excavations. Each entry offers a pithy synthesis of the state of our knowledge. As useful to novices as it is indispensable to professional historians.
  60. Find this resource:
  61. PASE: Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England.
  62. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  63. A web-based database with information on thousands of named individuals who lived in England before the Norman Conquest, culled from a wide variety of texts.
  64. Find this resource:
  65. Portable Antiquities Scheme.
  66. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  67. A vast online database of metalwork finds reported by operators of metal detectors; many thousands of the finds date back to the Anglo-Saxon period.
  68. Find this resource:
  69. Pryde, Edmund Boleslaw, Diana E. Greenway, Stephen Porter, and Ian Roy, eds. Handbook of British Chronology. 3d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  70. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  71. Lists (with dates) of all major officeholders, both secular and ecclesiastical, for the whole of the British Isles.
  72. Find this resource:
  73. Important Works in the Historiography of the Period
  74.  
  75. The historiography of pre-Conquest England has a long and distinguished history of its own, one difficult to represent with a handful of titles. Works found in this section stand in as representatives of a large body of crucial scholarship, and they serve to give some sense of the problems and contributions of people researching history in earlier generations. Some, such as Whitelock 2002 and Sisam 1953, allow readers to see the efforts put into the production of primary texts and source criticism. Others, such as the relevant volumes of University of London Institute of Historical Research 1901–, Chadwick 1907, and Stenton 1971, include the pioneering efforts of scholars who constructed coherent narratives of “what happened” in the pre-Conquest period. Loyn 1962 and John 1966 are examples of historians attempting to broaden the questions examined by previous generations of historians. Levinson 1946 is an excellent and early example of efforts to convince historians that the history of early medieval England should be placed in broader historical contexts.
  76.  
  77. Chadwick, H. Munro. The Origin of the English Nation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1907.
  78. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  79. An example of the ways in which historians pieced together a picture of the settlement of England according to the Venerable Bede’s notion of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes as forming one nation, which should be read by anyone interested in the historiography of ethnicity and identity. Chadwick was also a pioneer of the interdisciplinary approach still so important to scholars in the field.
  80. Find this resource:
  81. John, Eric. Orbis Britanniae and Other Studies. Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1966.
  82. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  83. A collection of essays centered on issues revolving around land tenure, which presents England as a land of private lordships and military retainers that is downright feudal. Much in this book challenged the orthodoxy of its day, and although many of its arguments failed in the end to persuade, they were hugely important in stirring debate.
  84. Find this resource:
  85. Levinson, Wilhelm. England and the Continent in the Eighth Century: The Ford Lectures Delivered in the Univ. of Oxford in the Hilary Term, 1943. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946.
  86. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  87. An erudite work reminding Anglo-Saxon scholars in the post–World War II period that it was essential to study the history of England in broader historical contexts.
  88. Find this resource:
  89. Loyn, Henry Royston. Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest. London: Longmans, 1962.
  90. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  91. An early work of synthesis that sought to give social and economic history a place in the history of Anglo-Saxon England, framed by older paradigms of English colonization and conquest as well as the now-discounted notion that Anglo-Saxon peasants cleared England of primeval forests.
  92. Find this resource:
  93. Sisam, Kenneth. “Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies.” Proceedings of the British Academy 39 (1953): 287–348.
  94. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  95. A magisterial study of an important class of sources that includes a method for reading early texts not as repositories of fact but rather as repositories of contemporary arguments and ideologies.
  96. Find this resource:
  97. Stenton, Frank M. Anglo-Saxon England. 3d ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971.
  98. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  99. A pathbreaking work that presented, for the first time, a stirring narrative history of the whole of the pre-Conquest period, written from a wide variety of sources; some narrative, others not. The focus, as with so much of the history written in the mid-20th century, is on kings and leading churchmen.
  100. Find this resource:
  101. Whitelock, Dorothy, ed. English Historical Documents. Vol. 1. 2d ed. New York and London: Routledge, 2002.
  102. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  103. Considered by Whitelock to be a companion volume to Stenton’s Anglo-Saxon England (Stenton 1971), this volume offers a large and varied collection of sources in English translation to students of the period. The first edition, published in 1955, was thoughtfully expanded in 1979. In many ways, this volume has set the standard for texts on the period, as well as for historians’ agendas.
  104. Find this resource:
  105. University of London Institute of Historical Research. The Victoria History of the Counties of England. London Oxford University Press, 1901–.
  106. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  107. Begun in 1899 and still ongoing, multivolume histories of many English counties have been produced for this project. The volumes dealing with religious houses and the Domesday Book remain useful to this day but also make interesting reading for those interested in discerning which questions were foremost in historians’ minds in the decades in which individual volumes were written.
  108. Find this resource:
  109. Basic Readings in Ancillary Disciplines
  110.  
  111. Historians of Anglo-Saxon England not only write history based on traditional “historical” sources but also use evidence more typically studied by scholars in other disciplines. Fortunately, numismatists (Cook, et al. 2006), place-name experts (Gelling 1997), archaeologists (Hamerow 2002; Hamerow, et al. 2011; Hinton 2005; Lucy 2000), and literary and manuscript scholars (Donoghue 2004, Richards 2001) have produced volumes helpful both to historians and students.
  112.  
  113. Cook, Barrie, Gareth Williams, and Marion Archibald. Coinage and History in the North Sea World, c. AD 500–1250: Essays in Honour of Marion Archibald. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2006.
  114. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  115. A collection of essays illustrating the many ways coins can be used to write Anglo-Saxon history.
  116. Find this resource:
  117. Donoghue, Daniel. Old English Literature: A Short Introduction. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004.
  118. DOI: 10.1002/9780470776025Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  119. Not only introduces readers to the different genres of Old English literature but also provides them with a model for how to analyze literary texts without losing sight of their historical contexts.
  120. Find this resource:
  121. Gelling, Margret. Signposts to the Past: Place-Names and the History of England. 3d ed. Chichester, UK: Phillimore, 1997.
  122. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  123. A series of remarkable essays, written with a clarity rare in place-name studies, which uncovers the history of early Britain while explaining how place names can be used by historians.
  124. Find this resource:
  125. Hamerow, Helena. Early Medieval Settlements: The Archaeology of Rural Communities in Northwest Europe, 400–900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
  126. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  127. A concise treatment of the archaeology of early medieval settlements and buildings, as well as the people who made them. The volume ends with a useful chapter comparing English settlements with those on the Continent.
  128. Find this resource:
  129. Hamerow, Helena, Sally Crawford, and David Alban Hinton, eds. A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  130. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  131. A welcome, up-to-date replacement of David Mackenzie Wilson’s classic volume on Anglo-Saxon archaeology, The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England (London: Methuen, 1976), with chapters authored by a number of the United Kingdom’s most distinguished archaeologists.
  132. Find this resource:
  133. Hinton, David Alban. Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins: Possessions and People in Medieval Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
  134. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  135. A meditation on some compelling medieval objects and the ways in which historians can use them to reconstruct the societies and economies that produced them.
  136. Find this resource:
  137. Lucy, Sam. The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 2000.
  138. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  139. The best short introduction to the wealth of evidence excavated from Anglo-Saxon cemeteries.
  140. Find this resource:
  141. Richards, Mary P., ed. Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings. New York: Routledge, 2001.
  142. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  143. Essays by leading experts on how the period’s manuscripts were produced and the ways we should––and should not—use them.
  144. Find this resource:
  145. Readings about Authors and Sources
  146.  
  147. It is important to know something about the early medieval authors and sources we depend on before we use them to write our own histories. Gransden 1974 remains the starting place. Lapidge 2006 presents what is known about the manuscripts and authors to which Anglo-Saxon writers had access. A number of recent collections of essays––DeGregorio 2010; Foys, et al. 2009; and Magennis and Swan 2009—provide helpful background and insights into important individual authors or sources. Thacker 1983, Keynes 1978, and Keynes 1992 not only alert readers to the shortcomings of particular sources but also provide models for how to use them.
  148.  
  149. DeGregorio, Scott, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Bede. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
  150. DOI: 10.1017/CCOL9780521514958Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  151. The Venerable Bede, the most influential historian and intellectual in 8th-century England, is the focus of this volume. Chapters on his times, learning, education, understanding of the Bible, and ideas about the wider world will help readers of the Venerable Bede better understand his work.
  152. Find this resource:
  153. Foys, Martin K., Karen Eileen Overby, and Dan Terkla, eds. The Bayeux Tapestry: New Interpretations. Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2009.
  154. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  155. A collection of interesting interpretations of the Bayeaux Tapestry, an important testimony of the Norman Conquest; the most useful for historians are those about the making and patronage of the tapestry.
  156. Find this resource:
  157. Gransden, Antonia. Historical Writing in England. Vol. 1, c. 550 to c. 1307. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974.
  158. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  159. Although written in the mid-1970s, this remains an indispensible work on the historians and historical works from which we write our histories.
  160. Find this resource:
  161. Keynes, Simon. “The Declining Reputation of King Æthelred the Unready.” In Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference. Edited by David Hill, 227–253. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1978.
  162. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  163. Although the author offers a critique of the account in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation (edited by Dorothy Whitelock, David Charles Douglas, and Susie I. Tucker; Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986) only of King Æthelred’s reign (978–1016), the way he reads the Chronicle can be applied to many other periods of Anglo-Saxon history.
  164. Find this resource:
  165. Keynes, Simon. “The Fonthill Letter.” In Words, Texts and Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture; Presented to Helmut Gneuss on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Edited by Michael Korhammer, Karl Reichl, and Hans Sauer, 53–97. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
  166. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  167. An edition, translation, and commentary of a single text describing a lawsuit that took place in Edward the Elder’s reign in England (899–924). Not only does it explore the legal practices of the period but it also teaches readers how to read charters.
  168. Find this resource:
  169. Lapidge, Michael. The Anglo-Saxon Library. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
  170. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  171. A magisterial book that pieces together what we know about book collections in the Anglo-Saxon period and the manuscripts they contained. The volume also includes editions of Anglo-Saxon book inventories as well as a compendium of all classical and patristic works known to have been used by Anglo-Saxon authors, English manuscripts known to have traveled to the Continent, and Continental manuscripts known to have come to England.
  172. Find this resource:
  173. Magennis, Hugh, and Mary Swan, eds. A Companion to Ælfric. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009.
  174. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  175. Essays by leading scholars on the life, works, patrons, thought, and teachings of the author of an important body of late Anglo-Saxon vernacular literature.
  176. Find this resource:
  177. Thacker, Alan. “Bede’s Idea of Reform.” In Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill. Edited by Patrick Wormald, Donald Bullough, and Roger Collins, 130–153. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.
  178. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  179. A path-breaking piece that helps the reader see the ways the Venerable Bede’s own particular concerns affected his history. A model for thinking not only about Bede but also about other authors living in the early Middle Ages.
  180. Find this resource:
  181. Transition from Roman Britain to the Early Middle Ages
  182.  
  183. The period between the early 4th century, when Roman Britain was thriving, and the mid-6th century, when England’s first kingdoms came into being, is a critical one but is difficult to study because of the fragmentary nature of our evidence. Some are convinced that Roman Britain fell completely, while others contend that much of Rome was able to persevere in Britain. Considerable work in recent years has been done on the nature and size of Germanic migrations from the Continent, although opinions vary widely on the scale of population movement. Archaeologists and historians have also been investigating identity, the development of social and economic inequalities, and the origins of kingship and kingdoms during this period.
  184.  
  185. The End of Roman Britain
  186.  
  187. An understanding of Rome’s fall is crucially important for those interested in the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon society, and historians have to be able to critically assess what evidence still exists regarding the late Roman period. Esmonde Cleary 2000 and Millett 2003 present readable and compelling backgrounds on the 4th century. Faulkner and Reece 2002 provides an introduction to the debate between those who believe in Rome’s continuance after 400 CE and those who believe in its collapse. Wilmott and Wilson 2000 and Collins and Gerrard 2004 include a range of studies, mostly by Roman archaeologists, that will familiarize readers with surviving evidence and highlight the different conclusions people studying the period have reached about the levels of Rome’s continuity and change.
  188.  
  189. Collins, Rob, and James Gerrard, eds. Debating Late Antiquity in Britain AD 300–700. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004.
  190. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  191. The discussion of what happened between 300 and 700 centers, in this volume, on southern England and Wales and revolves around questions concerning what happened to Roman Britain’s British population, the nature and size of Germanic migration, and how life differed in Britain between the early 4th century and the 5th and 6th centuries.
  192. Find this resource:
  193. Esmonde Cleary, A. S. The Ending of Roman Britain. London: Routledge, 2000.
  194. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  195. A book both about the end of the Roman Empire in Britain and about the proper methodology to use when studying it. The author argues that archaeology rather than texts offers the key to understanding the period.
  196. Find this resource:
  197. Faulkner, Neil, and Richard Reece. “The Debate about the End: A Review of Evidence and Methods.” Archaeological Journal 159 (2002): 59–76.
  198. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  199. Lays out the debate and then argues eloquently for the rapid and catastrophic fall of Roman Britain.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. Millett, Martin. The Romanization of Britain: An Essay in Archaeological Interpretation. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
  202. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  203. A book about cultural change and interaction during the Roman period. The chapters on late Roman Britain are especially valuable for medievalists who wish to understand what came after the fall.
  204. Find this resource:
  205. Wilmott, Tony, and Pete Wilson, eds. The Late Roman Transition in the North: Papers from the Roman Archaeology Conference, Durham, 1999. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2000.
  206. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  207. A collection in which Roman historians and archaeologists think hard about the very late 4th and early 5th centuries in the north of England. Both those who believe that there was a catastrophe in Rome and those who suggest its continuity are represented in this volume.
  208. Find this resource:
  209. Migrations and Immigrants in the 5th and 6th Centuries
  210.  
  211. The coming of the Anglo-Saxons to England used to be characterized as an “invasion” or as a “colonization and conquest.” An important early critique of the evidence used to argue this position is found in Sims-Williams 1983. In recent years, many have come to believe that although considerable numbers of immigrants came to England, many natives of lowland Britain continued to live there. The various debates on this are well covered in Hills 2003. A variety of work attempts to characterize the populations of immigrants and what kinds of people they were, considering, as well, the British communities that these immigrants encountered (Budd, et al. 2004; Ward-Perkins 2000; Welch 1993). Anthony 1997 introduces readers to the ways anthropologists think about migration.
  212.  
  213. Anthony, David W. “Prehistoric Migration as Social Process.” In Migrations and Invasions in Archaeological Explanation. Edited by John Chapman and Helena Hamerow, 21–32. Oxford: Archaeopress, 1997.
  214. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  215. Useful suggestions by an anthropology professor about how early medieval historians might fruitfully think about migration.
  216. Find this resource:
  217. Budd, Paul, Andrew Millard, Carolyn Chernery, Sam Lucy, and Charlotte Roberts. “Investigating Population Movement by Stable Isotope Analysis: A Report from Britain.” Antiquity 78.299 (2004): 127–141.
  218. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  219. An investigation into the variety of isotopes trapped in the bones and teeth of excavated skeletons and how they can help us determine which skeletons in England belong to natives and which to immigrants. Available online by subscription.
  220. Find this resource:
  221. Hills, Catherine. The Origins of the English. Duckworth Debates in Archaeology. London: Duckworth, 2003.
  222. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  223. A succinct and balanced presentation of the linguistic, textual, and, especially, archaeological evidence on early Anglo-Saxon migration, by an excavator of Spong Hill, one of the largest and most important cemeteries of the period.
  224. Find this resource:
  225. Sims-Williams, Patrick. “The Settlement of England in Bede and the Chronicle.” Anglo-Saxon England 12 (1983): 1–41.
  226. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  227. A brilliant deconstruction of the textual sources we have for the Anglo-Saxon settlement. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  228. Find this resource:
  229. Ward-Perkins, Brian. “Why Did the Anglo-Saxons Not Become More British?” English Historical Review 115.462 (2000): 513–533.
  230. DOI: 10.1093/ehr/115.462.513Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  231. Rethinks the relationship between the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons and the ways in which these ethnicities were both constructed and operated.
  232. Find this resource:
  233. Welch, Martin. “The Archaeological Evidence for Federate Settlement in Britain within the Fifth Century.” In L’armée romaine et les barbares: Du IIIe au VIIe siècle. Edited by Françoise Vallet and Michel Kazanski, 269–278. Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France: Musée des Antiquités Nationales, 1993.
  234. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  235. Argues that some migrants had close connections to the Roman army and state, a notion that used to play a much more central role in our understanding of the period’s migrations.
  236. Find this resource:
  237. 5th and 6th Century Communities
  238.  
  239. A number of recent books, primarily those written by archaeologists, provide us with glimpses of communities whose members lived in Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries. Some communities, such as those described in Barker, et al. 1997; Campbell 2007; Wilmott and Hird 1997; and Dark 1994, were rooted in England’s Romano-British past, and others, such as the one described in Hamerow 1993, were settlements founded by newcomers. There were also people living in hybrid communities (Carver, et al. 2009).
  240.  
  241. Barker, Philip, Roger H. White, Kate Pretty, Heather Bird, and Mike Corbishley, eds. The Baths Basilica Wroxeter: Excavations 1966–90. London: English Heritage, 1997.
  242. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  243. The excavation report of a post-Roman community and its controlling household, which made a home in the ruins of a Roman town. The site is crucial to our understanding of life for people who initially maintained their Romano-British identity in Britain after the Roman collapse.
  244. Find this resource:
  245. Campbell, Ewan. Continental and Mediterranean Imports to Atlantic Britain and Ireland, AD 400–800. York, UK: Council for British Archaeology, 2007.
  246. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  247. Evidence from western Britain for the resumption of trade between British elites and merchants from the Mediterranean after Rome’s fall.
  248. Find this resource:
  249. Carver, Martin O. H., Catherine Hills, and Jonathan Scheschkewitz. Wasperton: A Roman, British and Anglo-Saxon Community in Central England. Edited by Martin Carver. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2009.
  250. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  251. An exceptionally important excavation report of a cemetery shared by people of British and Germanic ancestry in the first two centuries of the Middle Ages.
  252. Find this resource:
  253. Dark, Ken R. Civitas to Kingdom: Power and Politics in Britain, 300–800. Leicester, UK: Leicester University Press, 1994.
  254. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  255. A study of the Celtic regions of Britain, which argues that there was considerable continuity in Britain between the late Roman period and the early Middle Ages.
  256. Find this resource:
  257. Hamerow, Helena. Excavations at Mucking. Vol. 2, The Anglo-Saxon Settlement. London: English Heritage, 1993.
  258. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  259. The excavation report of a settlement founded in the 5th century by new immigrants from the Continent, which is key to our understanding of the new-style communities springing up in eastern England in the 5th and 6th centuries.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Wilmott, Tony, and Louise Hird. Birdoswald: Excavations of a Roman Fort on Hadrian’s Wall and Its Successor Settlements, 1987–92. London: English Heritage, 1997.
  262. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  263. The excavation report of a post-Roman community, probably consisting of former Roman soldiers and their descendants, who lived in and modified a Roman military fort on Hadrian’s Wall in England.
  264. Find this resource:
  265. Identities and Ethnicities
  266.  
  267. Much work in recent decades has been devoted to exploring what people in the early Anglo-Saxon period envisioned themselves as. Important introductions are found in Reynolds 1985 and Pohl and Reimitz 1998. It was once believed that immigrants coming to England arrived with a fully developed sense of Anglo-Saxon identity. It is now, however, generally held that an English identity was created both by the descendants of the Romano-British and the descendants of immigrants. Thoughtful discussions of this can be found in Gelling 1993, Charles-Edwards 2004, and some of the essays in Frazer and Tyrrell 2000. Many authors, such as in Hines 1994, also now believe that Anglo-Saxon identities developed when elites began to emerge and consolidate their power, and that the two occurrences are linked.
  268.  
  269. Charles-Edwards, Thomas M. “The Making of Nations in Britain and Ireland in the Early Middle Ages.” In Lordship and Learning: Studies in Memory of Trevor Aston. Edited by Ralph Evans, 11–32. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2004.
  270. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  271. Thoughtful study of the relationship among politics, language, and power in the early Middle Ages, with especially interesting comparisons between the English and the Irish.
  272. Find this resource:
  273. Frazer, William O., and Andrew Tyrrell, eds. Social Identity in Early Medieval Britain. London: Leicester University Press, 2000.
  274. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  275. An uneven collection of essays, but a number that are well worth reading because they look at specific types of evidence from the period, with which they characterize the kinds of complex and multiple identities many people had in the early Middle Ages.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Gelling, Margaret. “Why Aren’t We Speaking Welsh?” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 6 (1993): 51–56.
  278. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  279. Uses the survival of British place names to challenge long-held ideas that linguistic arguments “prove” that native British people were put to the sword or driven out by the Anglo-Saxons.
  280. Find this resource:
  281. Hines, John. “The Becoming of the English: Identity, Material Culture, and Language in Early Anglo-Saxon England.” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 7 (1994): 49–59.
  282. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  283. A carefully articulated argument about the ways Anglo-Saxon material culture and language were transformed by immigrants once they settled in England.
  284. Find this resource:
  285. Pohl, Walter, and Helmut Reimitz, eds. Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of Ethnic Communities, 300–800. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1998.
  286. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  287. A seminal collection on the ways people across Europe in the early Middle Ages expressed who they were and marked themselves as different from others. An indispensible work for those interested in ethnicity and identity.
  288. Find this resource:
  289. Reynolds, Susan. “What Do We Mean by ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘Anglo-Saxons’?” Journal of British Studies 24.4 (1985): 395–414.
  290. DOI: 10.1086/385844Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  291. A pioneering discussion of ethnicity and its limitations both in early medieval Britain and in the writing of the early history of England. Available online for purchase or subscription.
  292. Find this resource:
  293. The Rise of Elites and Social Differentiation
  294.  
  295. Until the 1990s, historians believed that the kings and aristocrats of 7th-century England were the descendants of kings and war bands who had conquered territory in England in the early 5th century. It is now, however, thought that the elite class in England developed only in the later 5th and early 6th centuries. A number of studies examine the ways emerging elites used their settlement sites (Millett and James 1983, Scull 1991) and the graves of their dead (Härke 1990, Härke 1997, Williams 1997) to assert and augment their power.
  296.  
  297. Härke, Heinrich. “Warrior Graves? The Background of the Anglo-Saxon Weapon Burial Rite.” Past and Present 126.1 (1990): 22–43.
  298. DOI: 10.1093/past/126.1.22Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  299. Demolishes the idea that excavated weapons burials are the remnants of the burials of warriors, showing, instead, that these were the graves of wealthy, high-status men. The author also argues that this rite changed dramatically over time and that by the 7th century, it was evidence of a highly socially stratified society. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  300. Find this resource:
  301. Härke, Heinrich. “Material Culture as Myth: Weapons in Anglo-Saxon Graves.” In Burial and Society: The Chronological and Social Analysis of Archaeological Burial Data. Edited by Claus Kjeld Jensen and Karen Hølund Nielsen, 119–127. Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1997.
  302. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  303. Argues that elite burials both betray and bolster what people believed to be true about their ancestors, peoples, and myths of origin.
  304. Find this resource:
  305. Millett, Martin, and Simon James. “Excavations at Cowdery’s Down, Basingstoke, Hampshire 1978–81.” Archaeological Journal 140 (1983): 151–279.
  306. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  307. An article on Cowdery’s Down, one of the earliest high-status sites excavated. It included fancy domestic structures and a ritual building/deposit and dates back to the later 6th century.
  308. Find this resource:
  309. Scull, Chris. “Post-Roman Phase I at Yeavering: A Reconsideration.” Medieval Archaeology 35 (1991): 51–63.
  310. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  311. A crucial reinterpretation of an important, early, high-status Anglo-Saxon settlement site, Yeavering, which not only has been excavated but is also the subject of a long passage in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (edited by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) and the site of King Edwin’s conversion to Christianity.
  312. Find this resource:
  313. Williams, Howard M. R. “Ancient Landscapes and the Dead: The Reuse of Prehistoric and Roman Monuments as Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites.” Medieval Archaeology 41 (1997): 1–31.
  314. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  315. A discussion of the ways people in the early Middle Ages appropriated very ancient sites for burial in order to make assertions about their own rights to land.
  316. Find this resource:
  317. Politics and Power from the 7th to the 11th Centuries
  318.  
  319. Studies of politics and power dominate the historiography of the pre-Conquest period. The origin of kingdoms in England; the development over time of the institutions that bolstered them; the reasons that lie behind the transformation of many kingdoms into a single, unified state; and the two 11th-century conquests remain important topics for those working in the field.
  320.  
  321. The Earliest Kings and Kingdoms
  322.  
  323. Kings, kingship, and kingdoms were key institutions in the 7th and 8th centuries, and their origins and the ways they operated in the earliest generations of their development are the central concerns of much of the history written about this period. Useful and accessible political narratives of the period can be found in Yorke 2005 and Kirby 2000. In Bassett 1989 and Dickinson and Griffiths 1999, historians and archaeologists not only piece together the early histories of many kingdoms but also expose readers to the wide variety of evidence that can be used to support these histories. Dumville 1977 assesses problems with some of the early texts written about kingship. The best discussion of the archaeology of kingship is seen in Carver and Evans 2005. For information on the recent excavation of another potential early king, see Museum of London Archaeology Service 2004.
  324.  
  325. Bassett, Steven, ed. The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. London: Leicester University Press, 1989.
  326. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. A seminal collection of essays that rethink the early histories of many of England’s kingdoms. Authors tackle individual kingdoms and attempt to discover when each one first emerged, and how the evidence, from a variety of disciplines, allows us to reconstruct this history.
  328. Find this resource:
  329. Carver, Martin O. H., and Angela Care Evans. Sutton Hoo: A Seventh-Century Princely Burial Ground and Its Context. London: British Museum, 2005.
  330. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. Discusses the reexcavation and reevaluation of the most important and iconic of princely burials, which is assumed to be that of a king of the East Angles; one that illuminates the early history of kingship in England as well as its material and ritual expressions.
  332. Find this resource:
  333. Dickinson, Tania Marguerite, and David Griffiths, eds. The Making of Kingdoms: Papers from the 47th Sachsensymposium, York, September 1996. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1999.
  334. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  335. This volume’s essays offer a number of useful frameworks for thinking about early kingdoms. Some of the contributions describe the ways in which kingdoms can be identified archaeologically. Others discuss how material culture was used to bolster early kingship.
  336. Find this resource:
  337. Dumville, David. “Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists.” In Early Medieval Kingship. Edited by Peter H. Sawyer and Ian N. Wood, 72–104. Leeds, UK: University of Leeds, 1977.
  338. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  339. A brilliant dissection of the early genealogies and regnal lists of kingship, and an exposition of how these texts are not repositories of “facts” but are, rather, ideologically charged arguments being made about a number of early medieval royal households.
  340. Find this resource:
  341. Kirby, David P. The Earliest English Kings. Rev. ed. London: Routledge, 2000.
  342. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  343. A detailed and thoughtful exposition of textual evidence of kingship, organized by kingdom. The book reconstructs a political narrative for each kingdom, especially for the later 6th and 7th centuries, but it also includes chapters on the politics of the 8th and 9th centuries.
  344. Find this resource:
  345. Museum of London Archaeology Service. The Prittlewell Prince: The Discovery of a Rich Anglo-Saxon Burial in Essex. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2004.
  346. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  347. A short introduction, with illustrations, to a recently excavated “princely burial.”
  348. Find this resource:
  349. Yorke, Barbara. Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London: Routledge, 2005.
  350. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. An accessible history of the early Anglo-Saxon period, one that also describes early English society more broadly.
  352. Find this resource:
  353. Kingdoms in the 7th, 8th, and Early 9th Centuries
  354.  
  355. Kings and kingdoms from c. 600 AD onward are easier to study, because of England’s Conversion to Christianity, which brought with it literacy and historical writing. The catalogue Backhouse and Webster 1991 includes explications of many of the important objects and manuscripts created in this period’s most successful kingdoms, and Sims-Williams 1990 explores the learning and literature of two early kingdoms. Yorke 2009 investigates the nature of the power of early kings. The period witnessed the consolidation of a number of kingdoms, none more important than that of Mercia, the history of which is explored in Brown and Farr 2001, Hill and Worthington 2005, and Tyler 2005. For pictures, background, and analysis of the recently discovered Staffordshire Hoard, see Leahy and Bland 2009. At the heart of such kingship lay central places where people could render tribute to their kings, one of which is investigated in detail in Hardy, et al. 2007.
  356.  
  357. Backhouse, Janet L., and Leslie Webster, eds. The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, 600–900 AD. London: British Museum Press, 1991.
  358. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  359. A lavishly illustrated catalogue of an important British Museum exhibition, which includes hundreds of explications by experts on some of the period’s most important artifacts and manuscripts. Most of them were produced for kings or their relatives by the ecclesiastical communities who were patronized by them.
  360. Find this resource:
  361. Brown, Michelle P., and Carol Ann Farr, eds. Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe. London: Leicester University Press, 2001.
  362. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. A collection of essays that explains the rise, success, and significance of this important kingdom.
  364. Find this resource:
  365. Hardy, Alan, Bethan Mair Charles, and Robert J. Williams. Death and Taxes: The Archaeology of a Middle Saxon Estate Centre at Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology, 2007.
  366. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  367. This excavation report of a tribute-rendering center, probably belonging to the Mercian kings. Enables us to see how such centers operated and how they related to other, lower-status settlements and their households.
  368. Find this resource:
  369. Hill, David, and Margaret Worthington, eds. Æthelbald and Offa: Two Eighth-Century Kings of Mercia; Papers from a Conference Held in Manchester in 2000, Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2005.
  370. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  371. A collection of essays exploring the policies and achievements of the Mercia Kingdom’s two greatest kings as well as those of neighboring rulers. The volume includes an article by Simon Keynes that effectively demolishes Frank Stenton’s long-held thesis on Mercian supremacy (cited under Important Works in the Historiography of the Period).
  372. Find this resource:
  373. Leahy, Kevin, and Roger Bland. The Staffordshire Hoard. London: British Museum Press, 2009.
  374. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  375. A small book that provides pictures, background, and early analysis of the Staffordshire Hoard, a recent, exceptionally important find.
  376. Find this resource:
  377. Sims-Williams, Patrick. Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
  378. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511553042Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  379. An exploration of the history and cultural production of the kingdoms of the Hwicce and Magonsæte during the 7th and 8th centuries and the relationship between the history, people, and ideas in them and in the British-speaking and Carolingian lands.
  380. Find this resource:
  381. Tyler, Damian. “An Early Mercian Hegemony: Penda and Overkingship in the Seventh Century.” Midland History 30 (2005): 1–19.
  382. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  383. An investigation of the ways early medieval kings, in particular the kings of Mercia, expanded their influence and increased their power.
  384. Find this resource:
  385. Yorke, Barbara. “The Bretwaldas and the Origins of Overlordship in Anglo-Saxon England.” In Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald. Edited by Stephen Baxter, Catherine E. Karkov, Janet L. Nelson, and David Pelteret, 81–95. London: Ashgate, 2009.
  386. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  387. A thoughtful reevaluation of the origins and powers of overlordship and the nature of kingship, which also introduces readers to the topic’s long and complicated historiography.
  388. Find this resource:
  389. The Vikings
  390.  
  391. The Norse people’s raids, territorial conquests, and colonization across Britain from the later 8th through the early 11th centuries resulted in profound changes. What exactly these changes were and what the size and impact of the migration were, however, remain matters of considerable controversy. Keynes 1986 and Brooks 1979 provide a good background to the issues, and an entry, through their footnotes, into the 20th-century literature on the subject. Hadley 2006 leads readers through the major historiographical debates surrounding the Vikings in England. A number of collections authored by scholars from different disciplines (Barrett 2003; Graham-Campbell, et al. 2001; Hadley and Richards 2000; Hines, et al. 2004) explicate the evidence on the history of the Vikings, relating not only to England but to the broader North Atlantic world. Fitzhugh and Ward 2000, a superbly illustrated museum catalogue, enables readers to familiarize themselves with Norse and Norse-colonial material culture.
  392.  
  393. Barrett, James H., ed. Contact, Continuity, and Collapse: The Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003.
  394. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  395. An important collection of essays by historians and archaeologists focused not on the Vikings in England but on the Norse colonization across the North Atlantic. These studies provide Anglo-Saxon historians with a broad context in which to think about Norse settlement in England.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Brooks, Nicholas P. “England in the Ninth Century: The Crucible of Defeat.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 29 (1979): 1–20.
  398. DOI: 10.2307/3679110Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  399. The classic essay on the difficulties facing England because of the Viking threat. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Fitzhugh, William W., and Elisabeth I. Ward, eds. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga: An Exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, April 29, 2000–September 5, 2000. Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 2000.
  402. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  403. Lavishly illustrated catalogue of a major museum exhibit, which allows readers not only to see hundreds of pictures of Viking art and objects from everyday life but also to understand the global context of England’s Viking troubles.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Graham-Campbell, James, Richard Hall, Judith Jesch, and David N. Parsons, eds. Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress, Nottingham and York, 21–30 August 1997. Oxford: Oxbow, 2001.
  406. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  407. Studies related to the invasion, conquest, and settlement of the Danelaw by Norse peoples, and the ways these things transformed English society north of Watling Street.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Hadley, Dawn M. The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society, and Culture. Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press, 2006.
  410. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  411. Offers an overview of current debates surrounding the Viking settlement, identity accommodation, and conversion to Christianity in England; especially good for students interested in learning about historical debates and historiography.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Hadley, Dawn M., and Julian D. Richards, eds. Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000.
  414. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  415. An interesting collection of articles on the ways Norse newcomers in England affected England’s language, pious practices, art, and settlements. Other pieces discuss these settlers’ own conversion to Christianity and their assimilation.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Hines, John, Alan Lane, and Mark Redknap, eds. Land, Sea and Home. Leeds, UK: Maney, 2004.
  418. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  419. The archaeology and history not only of Viking Age Britain but also of Scandinavia and the North Atlantic world. Especially good on urban and seasonal trading sites as well as on issues relating to migration and identity.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Keynes, Simon. “A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 36 (1986): 195–217.
  422. DOI: 10.2307/3679065Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  423. Useful comparison of the different problems faced by King Alfred in the 9th century and King Æthelred in the 11th century. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. The Rise of Wessex
  426.  
  427. After rival kingdoms fell victim to the Vikings, the West Saxon kings, members of the last dynasty standing, came to represent themselves as kings of all the English and to be seen as such by others. It was during their reign that a unified kingdom of England was born. The lives, achievements, and policies of members of this dynasty are explored in Keynes and Lapidge 1983, Smyth 1995, Abels 1998, Higham and Hill 2001, Reuter 2003, and Scragg 2008. Not only did England become a single, unified kingdom during this period, but important administrative developments also took place under this rule, which made the newly expanded Wessex one of the most formidable and well-governed states in Europe. These developments are best illustrated in Hill and Rumble 1996 and Blackburn and Dumville 1998. Arguments over King Alfred’s achievements and the usefulness of Asser’s biography on him (Keynes and Lapidge 1983) arose in the 1990s after the publication of Smyth 1995.
  428.  
  429. Abels, Richard Philip. Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England. London: Longman, 1998.
  430. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  431. A judicious, well-written biography of Wessex’s great king, Alfred the Great, and a study of the West Saxon kingdom’s rise against the background of a sustained Viking invasion and settlement.
  432. Find this resource:
  433. Blackburn, Mark Alistair Sinclair, and David N. Dumville, eds. Kings, Currency and Alliances: History and Coinage of Southern England in the Ninth Century. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1998.
  434. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  435. A collection of studies by historians and numismatists that rewrite the history of London and King Alfred’s reign and provide insights into the sophistication and size of the English economy.
  436. Find this resource:
  437. Higham, Nick J., and David H. Hill, eds. Edward the Elder, 899–924. London: Routledge, 2001.
  438. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  439. A series of individually authored chapters about the reign, achievements, family, and property of Edward the Elder, Alfred the Great’s son and heir.
  440. Find this resource:
  441. Hill, David, and Alexander R. Rumble, eds. The Defence of Wessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications. Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996.
  442. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  443. Includes important essays on the royal administration, military institutions, and ways in which West Saxon kings both innovated and borrowed ideas from others.
  444. Find this resource:
  445. Keynes, Simon, and Michael Lapidge. Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1983.
  446. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  447. More than a collection of contemporary texts illuminating Alfred’s reign, including Asser’s Life of King Alfred: this book includes a learned sixty-page introduction that will provide students with a stirring account of the king’s accomplishments and reign.
  448. Find this resource:
  449. Reuter, Timothy, ed. Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003.
  450. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  451. Twenty-one papers by leading scholars on everything from sources, to the learning and artistic production that Alfred encouraged, to kingship and governance. Other essays compare Alfred with contemporary rulers.
  452. Find this resource:
  453. Scragg, Donald George, ed. Edgar, King of the English, 959–975: New Interpretations. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2008.
  454. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  455. Essays by leading experts in the field on the life, times, reforms, and achievements of Edgar, the important 10th-century king, as well as discussions on the sources for his reign.
  456. Find this resource:
  457. Smyth, Alfred P. King Alfred the Great. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
  458. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198229896.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  459. Controversial but magisterial biography, at the heart of which is the belief that our chief source for Alfred’s reign, Keynes and Lapidge 1983, is a forgery.
  460. Find this resource:
  461. From the Death of Edgar to the Norman Conquest
  462.  
  463. From the death of King Edgar (b. 943–d. 975, r. 959–975) to the Norman Conquest (1066), England is characterized both by remarkable administrative developments (described and illustrated in Backhouse, et al. 1984; Campbell 2000; and Keynes 1980) and by a number of aristocratic rebellions and foreign conquests, which are reviewed in Fleming 1991, Lawson 1993, Stafford 1997, Chibnall 1999, and Baxter 2007. The conundrum of this situation has led to scholarly disagreement over the relative power of the king and his nobles. Fleming 1991 argues for there being a weak king; Baxter 2007, for there being a stronger one.
  464.  
  465. Backhouse, Janet, D. H. Turner, and Leslie Webster, eds. The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art. London: British Museum, 1984.
  466. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  467. A beautifully illustrated catalogue from an exhibition, with discussions of hundreds of objects and manuscripts. These can serve as evidence for the growing wealth, power, and sophistication of England from the later 9th century onward.
  468. Find this resource:
  469. Baxter, Stephen. The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  470. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  471. Explores both the powers of late Anglo-Saxon earls and the limitations on their powers, providing an in-depth study of the family, friends, men, and lands of the earls of Mercia.
  472. Find this resource:
  473. Campbell, James. “The Late Anglo-Saxon State: A Maximum View.” In The Anglo-Saxon State. By James Campbell, 1–30. London: Hambledon & London, 2000.
  474. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  475. An exposition on the power, sophistication, and complexity of the English state on the eve of the Norman Conquest.
  476. Find this resource:
  477. Chibnall, Marjorie, ed. The Debate on the Norman Conquest. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1999.
  478. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  479. A useful introduction to the vast and contested historiography of the Norman Conquest, beginning with 11th-century accounts and ending with the take of 20th-century historians.
  480. Find this resource:
  481. Fleming, Robin. Kings and Lords in Conquest England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
  482. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511560224Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  483. A comparative study of the landholdings and alliances of kings and their greatest landholders both before and after King Cnut’s and King William’s conquests of England.
  484. Find this resource:
  485. Keynes, Simon. The Diplomas of King Æthelred “the Unready,” 978–1016: A Study in the Use of Historical Evidence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
  486. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511560170Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  487. Based on the charters of Æthelred’s reign, Keynes (as much as possible) rehabilitates this maligned king and along the way elucidates much about the royal household, the Witenagemot, and the late Anglo-Saxon state.
  488. Find this resource:
  489. Lawson, Michael Kenneth. Cnut: The Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century. London: Longmans, 1993.
  490. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  491. More than a biography, the book describes a Scandinavian background against which to judge Cnut, and it lists sources that can be used to reconstruct his reign. It also includes a detailed discussion of Cnut’s impact both on the English church and the English state.
  492. Find this resource:
  493. Stafford, Pauline. Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh Century England. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997.
  494. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  495. An erudite and theoretically sophisticated double biography of two of 11th-century England’s queens. It includes thoughtful discussions of the historical sources for queenship during this period, as well as an intelligent piecing together of their lives and careers.
  496. Find this resource:
  497. Economic Transformations
  498.  
  499. The ways the people of England manufactured, procured, and exchanged goods and exploited the land were transformed between 400 and 1066. Their settlement sites, trading places, and the farmed landscape were also reconfigured. During this same period, the amount of wealth people were able to extract as a result of labor on the English countryside increased dramatically, although some groups managed to gain hold of the lion’s share of what was produced and others increasingly owed goods and labor to their lords. These transformations in the English economy, society, and landscape during this period are the focus of much recent work.
  500.  
  501. The Rebirth of Seasonal and Permanent Trading Centers
  502.  
  503. When the Roman economy collapsed in Britain, urban life ceased. One of the most important stories of the early Anglo-Saxon period is the rebirth of urban communities. Who was responsible for the foundations of these communities and what they produced and traded as well as their relationship with England’s emerging kings are open questions. Their origins and early inhabitants are discussed in Hodges 1989, Anderton 1999, and Fleming 2009, although these works disagree on the role kings had in the foundation of towns and the types of goods traded in them. Both permanent and seasonal trading sites are described and analyzed in Pestell and Ulmschneider 2003 and Malcolm, et al. 2003. Kelly 1992 and Middleton 2005 consider the developing institutions in the period that encouraged towns and trade, and Maddicott 2005 shows how English kings profited from them.
  504.  
  505. Anderton, Mike, ed. Anglo-Saxon Trading Centres: Beyond the Emporia. Glasgow: Cruithne, 1999.
  506. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  507. Seven articles that critique Richard Hodges’s long-held view that early Anglo-Saxon trading communities were set up by kings so that they could dominate the trade in luxury goods.
  508. Find this resource:
  509. Fleming, Robin “Elites, Boats and Foreigners: Rethinking the Rebirth of English Towns.” In Città e campagna nei secoli altomedievali: Spoleto, 27 marzo–1 aprile 2008. 393–425. Settimane di Studio della Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo 56. Fondazione Centro italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2009.
  510. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  511. Argues that early trading communities in England were not simply the handiwork of kings, as Hodges argues (Hodges 1989), but of local landholders, traders, and foreigners as well, and that kings only co-opted these places two or three generations after their beginnings. Available online with registration.
  512. Find this resource:
  513. Hodges, Richard. Dark Age Economics: The Origins of Towns and Trade, A.D. 600–1000. 2d ed. London: Duckworth, 1989.
  514. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  515. The clearest articulation of Hodges’s thesis that kings founded towns in order to monopolize the exchange of foreign prestige goods.
  516. Find this resource:
  517. Kelly, Susan. “Trading Privileges from Eighth-Century England.” Early Medieval Europe 1.1 (1992): 3–28.
  518. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0254.1992.tb00002.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  519. A brilliant explication of 8th-century charters, which include a provision for the remissions of tolls on ships that pertains to the early trading community at London. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  520. Find this resource:
  521. Maddicott, J. R. “London and Droitwich, c. 650–750: Trade, Industry and the Rise of Mercia.” Anglo-Saxon England 34 (2005): 7–58.
  522. DOI: 10.1017/S0263675105000025Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  523. An examination of the ways in which the development of towns, trade, and the salt industry help explain the rise and success of the kingdom of Mercia. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  524. Find this resource:
  525. Malcolm, Gordon, David Bowsher, and Robert Cowie. Middle Saxon London: Excavations at the Royal Opera House 1989–99. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2003.
  526. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  527. Report on the excavation of an area that once lay in the heart of Middle Saxon London. The site is fundamental to our new understanding both of London’s early history and the economic history of England in the 7th–9th centuries.
  528. Find this resource:
  529. Middleton, Neil. “Early Medieval Port Customs, Tolls, and Controls on Foreign Trade.” Early Medieval Europe 13.4 (2005): 313–358.
  530. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0254.2005.00161.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  531. An exploration of the organization of international trade in the early Middle Ages, which argues that practices concerning tolls, trade, and foreign merchants in England were borrowed from Roman and Byzantine practices. Less convincingly, the author asserts that some of the similarities he finds have survived from Roman Britain. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  532. Find this resource:
  533. Pestell, Tim, and Katharina Ulmschneider, eds. Markets in Early Medieval Europe: Trading and “Productive” Sites 650–850. Macclesfield, UK: Windgather, 2003.
  534. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  535. Essays devoted to a relatively new site type, the “productive site,” characterized by large numbers of metal-detected coins and metalwork and likely representing inland markets or small seasonal trading sites. The book includes detailed discussions of particular sites both in England and elsewhere around the North Sea.
  536. Find this resource:
  537. Late Anglo-Saxon Towns
  538.  
  539. Many of the permanent and temporary trading settlements in England, which came into being in the 7th and 8th centuries, failed during the first century of Viking raids and settlements. But a number of fortified urban communities were revived or founded under the aegis of King Alfred and his heirs as a way of defending England from the Vikings. New towns were also established, which consisted of, at least in part, immigrants from Scandinavia. The majority of them, over the course of the 10th and 11th centuries, developed into important towns, and by 1066, more than a hundred could be found in England. A general history of towns in this period, as well as more particular urban histories, can be found in Palliser 2000. Hall 1989 provides useful background on towns in the places where the Viking settlement was heaviest. Baker and Holt 2004 and Bowsher, et al. 2007 provide detailed studies of particular towns in this period, and Astill 1991 uncovers the economic links between English towns.
  540.  
  541. Astill, Grenville G. “Towns and Town Hierarchies in Saxon England.” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 10.1 (1991): 95–117.
  542. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0092.1991.tb00008.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  543. Describes the relationship between different towns and their role in the economy. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  544. Find this resource:
  545. Baker, Nigel, and Richard Holt. Urban Growth and the Medieval Church: Gloucester and Worcester. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004.
  546. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  547. A remarkable study of the history of two towns and the role ecclesiastical communities played in their development.
  548. Find this resource:
  549. Bowsher, David, Tony Dyson, Nick Holder, and Isca Howell. The London Guildhall: An Archaeological History of a Neighbourhood from Early Medieval to Modern Times. 2 vols. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2007.
  550. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  551. An extraordinary excavation and explication of a neighborhood, c. 1000, near the site of London’s former Roman amphitheater. Shows life and death on the edge of a growing town.
  552. Find this resource:
  553. Hall, Richard A. “The Five Boroughs of the Danelaw: A Review of Present Knowledge.” Anglo-Saxon England 18 (1989): 149–206.
  554. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  555. Useful investigation of towns heavily settled by Scandinavians. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  556. Find this resource:
  557. Palliser, David M., ed. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Vol. 1, 600–1540. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  558. DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521444613Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  559. The essays in this volume authored by leading experts on towns make this a good place to start for historians and students interested the subject. It not only provides a history of towns in this period but also sets out the major debates and historiography.
  560. Find this resource:
  561. Remaking of the Countryside
  562.  
  563. From the 9th century on, many older rural settlements shifted their locations, and new field systems and farming practices began to take hold. Faith 1997, Fowler 2002, Williamson 2003, and Gardiner 2006 are sources to turn to for discussion of farmsteads, farming, farmers, and the environments. Sawyer 1965, Fleming 2001, Dyer 2002, and Rippon 2008 describe the social, economic, and political changes that stood behind some of these transformations.
  564.  
  565. Dyer, Christopher. Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850–1520. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
  566. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  567. The author writes about the fundamental economic developments of the Middle Ages.
  568. Find this resource:
  569. Faith, Rosamund. The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship. London: Leicester University Press, 1997.
  570. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  571. An extraordinary reconstruction of the lives of farmers, some free and others not, as well as the story of the ever-increasing demands made by these people’s lords.
  572. Find this resource:
  573. Fleming, Robin. “The New Wealth, the New Rich, and the New Political Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England.” In Anglo-Norman Studies. Vol. 23, Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2000. Edited by John Gillingham, 1–22. Rochester, NY, and Suffolk, UK: Boydell, 2001.
  574. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  575. A study of the ways in which secular landholders in the late Anglo-Saxon period exploited their estates and workers and used the wealth they generated for conspicuous consumption.
  576. Find this resource:
  577. Fowler, Peter. Farming in the First Millennium AD: British Agriculture between Julius Caesar and William the Conqueror. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  578. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  579. The fundamental study on farming practices before the year 1000.
  580. Find this resource:
  581. Gardiner, Mark F. “Implements and Utensils in Gerefa, and the Organization of Seigneurial Farmsteads in the High Middle Ages.” Medieval Archaeology 50 (2006): 260–267.
  582. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  583. A close reading of a classic estate-management text reveals the basic morphology of a typical lord’s establishment.
  584. Find this resource:
  585. Rippon, Stephen. Beyond the Medieval Village: The Diversification of Landscape Character in Southern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
  586. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  587. Interrogates the origins and development of a variety of regional landscapes in England and seriously considers the individuals and communities behind these changes.
  588. Find this resource:
  589. Sawyer, Peter. “The Wealth of England in the Eleventh Century.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 15 (1965): 145–164.
  590. DOI: 10.2307/3678820Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  591. The classic essay on the incredible wealth created by agricultural exploitation in the late Anglo-Saxon period.
  592. Find this resource:
  593. Williamson, Tom. Shaping Medieval Landscapes: Settlement, Society, Environment. Macclesfield, UK: Windgather, 2003.
  594. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  595. An illuminating examination of the ways in which people, farming practices, environmental constraints, and social relations have shaped the English landscape.
  596. Find this resource:
  597. Belief, Ritual, Piety, and the Church
  598.  
  599. The pre-Conquest period in England necessarily requires historians to know something about Paganism as well as Christianity. Conversion to Christianity and the reasons behind it, the beliefs and practices of professional religious and lay Christians, the varieties of monastic life, and the ways monasticism and pastoral care changed over time are major themes in the history written about the period. So, too, is the Cult of the Saints.
  600.  
  601. Paganism
  602.  
  603. The vast majority of the people living in England in the 5th, 6th, and early 7th centuries were pagans. Some scholars have attempted to construct a picture of English paganism from historical texts, most of which were written by Christians long after the fact. Two important articles in Hosfra, et al. 1995 and Church 2008 argue strongly against doing this. Much, however, can be learned about the ritual practices and worldview of pagans from archaeology, as Meaney 1981; Blair 1995; Wilson 1992; Williams 2006; and Carver, et al. 2010 make clear.
  604.  
  605. Blair, John. “Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines and Their Prototypes.” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 8 (1995): 1–28.
  606. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  607. An examination of a number of ancient ritual sites, co-opted and modified by England’s emerging elites in the later 6th century.
  608. Find this resource:
  609. Carver, Martin O. H., Alexandra Sanmark, and Sarah Semple, eds. Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited. Papers presented at two conferences held in 2005 and 2006 at Oxford University. Oxford and Oakville, CT: Oxbow, 2010.
  610. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  611. A collection of individually authored chapters on pre-Christian local worldviews and ways of being in the world, as signaled by material culture. The volume eschews the notion that paganism in England was an organized and/or uniform religion, and it works hard to get beyond the views and descriptions of paganism that were provided by churchmen.
  612. Find this resource:
  613. Church, Stephen D. “Paganism in Conversion-Age Anglo-Saxon England: The Evidence of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Reconsidered.” History 93.310 (2008): 162–180.
  614. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-229X.2008.00420.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  615. Argues that the descriptions of English paganism found both in the writings of the Venerable Bede and Gregory the Great are of little use to historians trying to characterize paganism. Article available online for purchase or by subscription.
  616. Find this resource:
  617. Hosfra, Tette, L. A. J. R. Houwen, and Alastair A. MacDonald, eds. Pagans and Christians: The Interplay between Christian, Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early Medieval Europe: Proceedings of the Second Germania Latina Conference Held at the University of Groningen, May 1992. Groningen, The Netherlands: Forsten, 1995.
  618. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  619. The volume contains fundamental information on what we can and cannot learn about paganism from the Venerable Bede and the historical epic poem Beowulf (Beowulf: A New Verse Translation, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2000).
  620. Find this resource:
  621. Meaney, Audrey. Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1981.
  622. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  623. A study of material found in Anglo-Saxon graves that the author argues was used for magical or amuletic purposes.
  624. Find this resource:
  625. Williams, Howard. Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  626. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511489594Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  627. A study, based on cemetery archaeology, of the ways people before Christianity buried and remembered their dead.
  628. Find this resource:
  629. Wilson, David. Anglo-Saxon Paganism. London: Routledge, 1992.
  630. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  631. The most complete and accessible study of textual and archaeological evidence pertaining to Anglo-Saxon paganism.
  632. Find this resource:
  633. Conversion
  634.  
  635. The conversion of English kings and their followers to Christianity, mostly from Paganism, is an important topic in the field. Yorke 2006 is the best and most up-to-date introduction for students. Many works, such as Campbell 1986 and Mayr-Harting 1991, attempt to characterize conversion by using historical texts. Others, such as Gameson 1999, Carver 2003, and Nobel and Smith 2008 (particularly see the Abrams chapter), use a combination of texts and archaeology. Kilbride 2000 is useful for anyone interested in thinking about the process of conversion.
  636.  
  637. Campbell, James. Essays in Anglo-Saxon History. London and Ronceverte, WV: Hambledon, 1986.
  638. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  639. A collection of articles published by Campbell, a number of which are critical for understanding the Venerable Bede, our chief written source on the English conversion as well as on the kings who embraced Christianity, and the society this conversion helped create.
  640. Find this resource:
  641. Carver, Martin O. H., ed. The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300–1300. Papers presented at a conference held in York, UK, in July 2000. Rochester, NY: Boydell, 2003.
  642. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  643. Essays, both by historians and archaeologists, that grapple with the complexities of conversion that stand behind many of our narrative sources, not only in England but also in other parts of the British Isles and Europe.
  644. Find this resource:
  645. Gameson, Richard, ed. St. Augustine and the Conversion of England. Stroud, UK: Sutton, 1999.
  646. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  647. A collection of essays by a number of authors on many aspects of St. Augustine, the papal mission he led to convert the pagan residents of England, and the conversion’s effects in England.
  648. Find this resource:
  649. Kilbride, William. “Why I Feel Cheated by the Term ‘Christianisation.’” Archaeological Review from Cambridge 17.2 (2000): 1–17.
  650. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  651. A crucial “thought piece” on the limitations of an increasingly popular term used by historians: “Christianization.”
  652. Find this resource:
  653. Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. 3d ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991.
  654. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  655. The standard work on the subject since the early 1970s (originally published in 1972), it not only provides a clear, brief outline of the events of the conversion but considers them in a broader European context. An excellent starting point for students.
  656. Find this resource:
  657. Noble, Thomas F. X., and Julia M. H. Smith, eds. The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 3, Early Medieval Christianities, c. 600–c. 1100. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
  658. DOI: 10.1017/CHOL9780521817752Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  659. An indispensible volume, both for those interested in learning about Christianity and the church in early medieval England and for those wanting to understand religious practices and institutions elsewhere in Europe. Particular attention should be paid to Lesley Abrams’s contribution “Germanic Christianities” (pp. 107–129).
  660. Find this resource:
  661. Yorke, Barbara. The Conversion of Britain: Religion, Politics and Society in Britain c. 600–800. Harlow, UK, and New York: Pearson/Longman, 2006.
  662. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  663. Readable, up-to-date account, perfect for undergraduates.
  664. Find this resource:
  665. Lay Society in the Age of Conversion
  666.  
  667. The impacts Christianity had on royal households and in the lives of more ordinary people are central themes related to the Age of Conversion. The ways in which social structures encouraged Conversion are discussed in Wormald 1978 and Charles-Edwards 2003. The advantages and disadvantages of the conversion for kings are explored in Stancliffe 1983 and Tyler 2007. Lay interest in and modification of Christian practices are explored in Thacker 1995, Geake 1997, and Cubitt 2000. Meaney 1992 investigates lay practices disliked by professional religion.
  668.  
  669. Charles-Edwards, Thomas M. “Conversion to Christianity.” In After Rome. Edited by Thomas M. Charles-Edwards, 103–139. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  670. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  671. An examination of conversion that pays very careful attention to the social structures and culture of the people being converted.
  672. Find this resource:
  673. Cubitt, Catherine. “Sites and Sanctity: Revisiting the Cult of Murdered and Martyred Anglo-Saxon Royal Saints.” Early Medieval Europe 9.1 (2000): 53–83.
  674. DOI: 10.1111/1468-0254.00059Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  675. The author examines the cults and cult sites of martyred royal saints in order to shed light on beliefs and practices of nonelite lay Christians. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  676. Find this resource:
  677. Geake, Helen. The Use of Grave Goods in Conversion-Period England, c. 600–c. 850. Oxford: Archaeopress, 1997.
  678. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  679. A study of the new repertoire of “grave goods”—that is, objects included with the dead in their graves—provided to the dead by members of elite families during the conversion period. A useful reminder for historians that many Christians during these years continued to use grave goods.
  680. Find this resource:
  681. Meaney, Audrey. “Anglo-Saxon Idolators and Ecclesiasts from Theodore to Alcuin: A Source Study.” In Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History. Vol. 5. Edited by William Filmer-Sankey and Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, 103–125. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1992.
  682. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  683. An investigation into the lay practices and beliefs disliked by religious professionals.
  684. Find this resource:
  685. Stancliffe, Clare. “Kings Who Opted Out.” In Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies Presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill. Edited by Patrick Wormald, Donald Bullough, and Roger Collins, 154–176. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983.
  686. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  687. Details the lives and careers of a number of early English kings who wished to become monks.
  688. Find this resource:
  689. Thacker, Alan. “Membra Disjecta: The Division of the Body and the Diffusion of the Cult.” In Oswald: Northumbrian King to European Saint. 2d ed. Edited by Clare Stancliffe and Eric Cambridge, 97–127. Stamford, CT: Watkins, 1995.
  690. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  691. Pieces together the history of an early cult of a Christian king and martyr and along the way uncovers the early history of the culting of body parts.
  692. Find this resource:
  693. Tyler, Damian. “Reluctant Kings and Christian Conversion in Seventh-Century England.” History 92.306 (2007): 144–161.
  694. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-229X.2007.00389.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  695. Investigates the difficulties conversion sometimes caused kings, arguing against the long-held notion that Christianity was nothing but beneficial to kings. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  696. Find this resource:
  697. Wormald, Patrick. “Bede, Beowulf and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy.” In Bede and Anglo-Saxon England: Papers in Honour of the 1300th Anniversary of the Birth of Bede, Given at Cornell University in 1973 and 1974. Edited by Robert T. Farrell, 32–95. British Archaeological Reports 46. Oxford: Archaeopress, 1978.
  698. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  699. A seminal study of culture and conversion in early English society.
  700. Find this resource:
  701. The Early Church, Monasticism, and Pastoral Care
  702.  
  703. Historians are interested in characterizing the early Anglo-Saxon church (Blair 2006), its organization and personnel (Cubitt 1995, Lapidge 1995), and the lives lived by its religious professionals (Foot 2006, Yorke 2003). The way pastoral care was delivered to laypeople has also been the topic of much work and some controversy (Blair 2006, Blair and Sharpe 1992, Cambridge and Rollason 1995). The Cult of the Saints, a central component of early medieval religion, is also of interest to historians writing pre-Conquest history (Thacker and Sharpe 2002).
  704.  
  705. Blair, John. The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
  706. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  707. The most important and comprehensive study of the English church and English Christians that covers the whole Anglo-Saxon period.
  708. Find this resource:
  709. Blair, John, and Richard Sharpe, eds. Pastoral Care before the Parish. Leicester, UK, and New York: Leicester University Press, 1992.
  710. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  711. A collection of essays that explore the ways the Christian laity was ministered to before the development of the parish.
  712. Find this resource:
  713. Cambridge, Eric, and David Rollason. “Debate: The Pastoral Organization of the Anglo-Saxon Church: A Review of the ‘Minster Hypothesis.’” Early Medieval Europe 4.1 (1995): 87–104.
  714. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0254.1995.tb00035.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  715. A skeptical take on the ideas of Blair and others regarding the way pastoral care was organized and delivered before the development of the parish in the Anglo-Saxon church. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  716. Find this resource:
  717. Cubitt, Catherine. Anglo-Saxon Church Councils c. 650–c. 850. London: Leicester University Press, 1995.
  718. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  719. A study on the church councils regularly arranged by archbishops up to the middle of the 9th century, the business they undertook, and the ways they were used to create a unified English church.
  720. Find this resource:
  721. Foot, Sarah. Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600–900. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
  722. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  723. A comprehensive, text-based study of life in early medieval monasteries before the Benedictine Reform.
  724. Find this resource:
  725. Lapidge, Michael, ed. Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on His Life and Influence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
  726. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511627453Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  727. A collections of essays detailing the career, times, and thought of this central figure in the early history of the English church.
  728. Find this resource:
  729. Thacker, Alan T., and Richard Sharpe, eds. Local Saints and Local Churches in the Early Medieval West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
  730. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  731. A number of articles in this collection describe the ways in which the Cult of the Saints operated in England and elsewhere in Britain.
  732. Find this resource:
  733. Yorke, Barbara. Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses. London: Continuum, 2003.
  734. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  735. The author explores the relationship among Christianity, gender, and power, in this study of aristocratic women who became religious professionals.
  736. Find this resource:
  737. Late Anglo-Saxon Reformed Monasticism, Bishops, and Lay Piety
  738.  
  739. A starting point for learning about the 10th-century monastic reform is Cubitt 1997. Edited volumes centered on the lives and careers of important monk reformers (Barrow and Brooks 2005; Brooks and Cubitt 1996; Ramsay, et al. 1992; Yorke 1988) also contain thoughtful contributions by leading scholars on the English church before, during, and after the reform, as well as discussions of the reform movement’s inspirations outside of England. Gameson 1995 examines the church’s artistic and intellectual production. Giandrea 2007 allows us to see late Anglo-Saxon bishops in action, and Tinti 2005 explores the ways professional churchmen in the late Anglo-Saxon period delivered pastoral care to laypeople.
  740.  
  741. Barrow, Julia S., and Nicholas P. Brooks, eds. St. Wulfstan and His World. Studies in Early Medieval Britain 4. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005.
  742. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  743. One of a number of volumes focused on a single 10th-century Benedictine Reformer, St. Wulfstan, which contains much new thinking about the reform movement and the English church.
  744. Find this resource:
  745. Brooks, Nicholas P., and Catherine Cubitt, eds. St. Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence. Studies in the Early History of Britain: The Makers of England 2. London and New York: Leicester University Press, 1996.
  746. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  747. A collection of articles on the least knowable of the triumvirate of 10th-century reformers. Reconstructs what we can know not only about St. Oswald’s life but also about the history of his community’s lands and alliances.
  748. Find this resource:
  749. Cubitt, Catherine. “Review Article: The Tenth-Century Benedictine Reform in England.” Early Medieval Europe 6.1 (1997): 77–94.
  750. DOI: 10.1111/1468-0254.00004Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  751. More than a review article, this is an erudite discussion of the state of our knowledge about this all-important monastic reform movement. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
  752. Find this resource:
  753. Gameson, Richard. The Role of Art in the Late Anglo-Saxon Church. Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.
  754. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  755. Explores the role of visual arts in the English church from Alfred’s reign to the Norman Conquest and analyzes the relationship among the texts, images, liturgies, and beliefs of that period.
  756. Find this resource:
  757. Giandrea, Mary Frances. Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Anglo-Saxon Studies 7. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2007.
  758. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  759. Restores the late Anglo-Saxon episcopate to its rightful place from its position of living (historiographically speaking) in the shadow of reformed monks. Shows the large extent to which many bishops of the period were dynamic, influential, learned, and committed to pastoral duties.
  760. Find this resource:
  761. Ramsay, Nigel, Margaret Sparks, and Tim W. T. Tatton-Brown, eds. St. Dunstan: His Life, Times, and Cult. Woodbridge, UK, and Rochester, NY: Boydell, 1992.
  762. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  763. Essays on the life and influence of an important bishop, monastic reformer, scholar, and courtier.
  764. Find this resource:
  765. Tinti, Francesca, ed. Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge, UK, and Suffolk, NY: Boydell, 2005.
  766. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  767. Seven excellent essays on the work late Anglo-Saxon priests undertook as they ministered to their lay charges in the kingdom’s growing numbers of small churches, which were built, by and large, by English landholders. Their learning and their liturgical practices are also investigated.
  768. Find this resource:
  769. Yorke, Barbara, ed. Bishop Æthelwold: His Career and Influence. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 1988.
  770. Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  771. A number of experts investigate the life, policies, and intellectual and religious achievements of this most important of 10th-century Benedictine reformers.
  772. Find this resource:
  773. back to top
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Advertisement
Public Pastes
Advertisement
We use cookies for various purposes including analytics. By continuing to use Pastebin, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookies Policy.  OK, I Understand
Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!