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The integration of archaeology into the study of the Middle Ages has long encouraged historians to think about the materiality of the past and, in some cases, to consider the spatial contexts in wh...

In April 2016, the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology held its inaugural congress in Sheffield, UK, creating a new opportunity for post-medieval archaeologists to gather yearly and discuss excit...

This broad-ranging set of papers is a substantial contribution to British later medieval studies, in more ways than one. Weighing in at 2.4 kg and just under 1000 pages with 60 contributions ordere...

An archaeological survey of the Viking Age settlement pattern in the Langholt region of North Iceland suggests that being early in this sequence conferred tremendous advantages to the settlers of this previously uninhabited landscape. Many of the farms established during the settlement of Iceland (which began about a.d. 870) are in use today. However, accessing the Viking Age landscape is difficult. In Langholt the earliest layers of most farmsteads are buried under a thousand years of occupational debris, while the abandoned sites have been covered by extensive soil deposition. Here we report on our coring and test excavation results that outline Viking Age farmstead location, establishment date, and maximum size by the end of the Viking Age. There is a strong correlation between farmstead size and establishment date. This correlation suggests that during the rapid settlement of Iceland, the farmsteads established by earlier settlers were wealthier and that wealth endured.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE to be a teenager in medieval England? Despite the fact that medieval society often singled young apprentices and workers out for comment, their study has been largely neglected in medieval archaeology. The skeletal remains of 4940 children and adolescents (6.6–25 years) from 151 sites in medieval England were compiled from a combination of primary data collection and secondary data from published and unpublished skeletal reports and online databases. The aim was to explore whether apprentices could be identified in the archaeological record and, if so, at what age they started work and what impact occupation had on their health. The data were divided into urban and rural groups, dating from before and after the Black Death of ad 1348–49, and before the Industrial Revolution. A shift in the demographic pattern of urban and rural adolescents was identified after the Black Death, with a greater number of young females residing in urban contexts after 14 years. The average age of males in urb...

This massive volume serves as a textbook for those British universities that teach “later medieval” archaeology, from 1066 to c.1550. It is skillfully edited by Prof Chris Gerrard, assisted by his ...

THIS PAPER PRESENTS AN OVERVIEW of the archaeology of al-Andalus (the Arabic name for Islamic Spain and Portugal), from its beginnings in the late 1970s to the present day. Innovative approaches and challenging theoretical stances made the archaeology of al-Andalus the spearhead of medieval archaeology in Iberia between the 1980s and 1990s. A problematic, and often conflicting, relationship between archaeology and history has characterised medieval archaeology in Spain since its inception, however, and a new awareness of these problems is emerging. This paper reviews past and current attitudes to such challenges and reflects on the future needs of the discipline. It also reflects on the politics of archaeology and on the role of medieval archaeology in revealing social change, which has until now been underrated.

THIS REPORT PRESENTS the results of analyses carried out following the discovery and excavation of a medieval pottery kiln in Pontefract, a discovery which featured in the ‘Fieldwork Highlights’ section of Medieval Archaeology 53 (2009). The kiln is remarkable for having produced vessels previously only associated with the Stamford ware industry of the late 11th and 12th centuries and demonstrates the existence of at least one northern production site, the likely existence of which was first mooted in the 1950s. As both radiocarbon and archaeomagnetic dating methods indicate a last firing of the Pontefract kiln in the late pre-Conquest period, the discovery also poses questions about the chronology of Stamford ware production.

WITH THE GROWING popularity of theoretical approaches within medieval archaeology, identity has become a central area of research. Although such studies frequently expound upon the role of the material world in negotiations between individuals and society, there is a tendency to overlook what were fundamen- tal agents within this process: animals. This is especially true of Anglo-Saxon England, where farming determined the daily experiences of most people and the exchange of animals was fundamental to the struc- turing of social relations. Adopting an integrated approach, this paper explores the ways in which differing interactions with animals, in their assorted forms, affected human identities. Particular emphasis is placed on gender perceptions, but the mutual linkages between varying forms of identity necessitate the contextu- alisation of gender against other aspects of social personas. In doing so, the need to adopt a holistic approach to the study of interactions amongst people, and between...

Medieval archaeology as a discipline is usually defined in relation to written sources and history, while other kinds of sources and scholarly traditions studying the same period are overlooked. With a small group of 14th-century crescent moon pendants of bronze from Finland as its focal point, the present article analyses the way in which archaeology connects with the visual arts and the discipline specialized in studying them, art history. Instead of some shared methodology, the inquiry proceeds along the tensions between the material and the visual. After the artefact and its technical qualities are examined in the framework of medieval material culture, the object is reduced, first, to an iconographical motif and, second, into a represented object. Third, the anthropomorphic features applied on the pendant are extracted and considered against the body of medieval grotesque art. This reveals how the visual is also an effective force in the sphere of material culture and human interaction. In the interd...

THE FIELD OF late-medieval archaeology has matured significantly over the past 25 years, and its engagement with archaeological theory has increased substantially over the last decade. Yet late-medieval archaeology still has not lived up to the enormous potential of its wealth of material and documentary evidence. It has been overshadowed by early medieval archaeology in the adoption of theoretical perspectives, and its relationships with the disciplines and evidence of history and art history are still complex and uneven. The article demonstrates the close links that have always existed between archaeological theory and disciplinary attitudes in medieval archaeology, contending that in a maturing field we should now be able to engage more effectively with both social theory and other disciplines to improve the recognition and relevance of our research. The article reviews the current state of archaeological theory in both late-medieval archaeology and the discipline as a whole, and offers suggestions on ...

Identity, personhood, ritual, religion, landscape, and the materiality of social practice have inspired anthropologists to advance exiting new agendas. Many of these issues coalesce in mortuary archaeology. This article reviews the dialogue between anthropological questions and the mortuary record through examining three books on early medieval archaeology. It focuses on theoretical developments rather than methodology, discussing key issues relating both to the study of early medieval mortuary remains and to broader anthropological agendas, such as modern political ideology and cultural identity.

Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of medieval castles have transformed the subject over the last quarter of a century and taken it away from its militaristic roots. In Medieval Archaeology 51 (2007) Colin Platt published an article that reasserted defence as the primary motivation in castle building. This paper suggests that continuing 'defence vs symbolism' debates are detrimental to the subject, which needs to develop a distinctive research agenda of its own but also foster greater links with complementary fields of scholarship.

This paper draws on a long-standing area of academic debate – archaeological manifestations of social complexity – with reference to the specific case of the Tsotsebaki Hausa of Niger. Tsotsebaki dynastic lists record a bewildering array of locations for early rulers of the polity, a situation which find parallels in oral and historical records of many parts of Africa. The present discussion links observations made through archaeological and oral tradition research in Niger with European and African parallels and with recent theoretical reconsiderations of the nature of power and of urbanism.

Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World. Edited by J. H. Barrett and S. J. Gibbon. Maney Publishing, Society for Medieval Archaeology, Monograph 37 (Series Eds. C. Gerrard and G. Thomas), Leeds. 2015. ISBN 978-1-909662-79-7 (softcover U.S. $44.95), 396pp.

The evidence for prehistoric occupation in the area of the modern City of London is re-assessed. Two myths surrounding the city's prehistory are examined: a literary myth of a glorious Trojan past and a modern archaeological myth of the absence of prehistory. Having drawn a 'traditional' distribution map of prehistoric artefacts, the authors attempted to improve its reliability by quantifying the impact of Roman groundworks on the surviving prehistoric deposits. Topographic models of the area in prehistory and in the Roman period were drawn, and the methodology of the interpolation is discussed. The relative value of in situ, residual and stray finds are considered in the light of this new information. While there is good evidence for Late Bronze Age occupation in the City, the evidence for Neolithic activity is considered to be heavily skewed by Roman activity. The data are used to suggest areas of the City where there is particularly good potential for the survival of prehistoric deposits. The City provides a case study for analysing prehistoric material in a 'difficult', deeply stratified, urban context more associated with Roman and medieval archaeology.

The study of the archaeology of the Early Medieval period reached a high standard in Poland in the years immediately following the Second World War. These early investigations concentrated on problems of the formation of the Polish state and the beginnings of urbanisation. This paper gives a summary of some of the more recent trends in the study of this topic, and sets them in the context of recent social changes in the area. New ideas on the origin of the Polish state and recent investigations intended to test them are summarised.

(1999). Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1998. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 226-302.

(1997). Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1996. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 241-328.

(1996). Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1995. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 234-318.

(1995). Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1994. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 180-293.

(1994). Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1993. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 184-293.

A EUROPEAN perspective to the current debate on the nature of archaeology and its relationship with history is given. Whilst some of the concepts are complex, it is important that medieval archaeology recognizes its importance as a field of research likely to yield valuable insights into the nature of archaeological data, the ways in which inferences about the past can be drawn, and the similarities and differences between archaeology, anthropology and history.

(1991). Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1990. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 126-238.

This volume is a collection of 12 papers presented at conferences in America; in particular the Conference on Medieval Archaeology, which took place at the State University of New York at Cortland ...

Throughout the 1980s, a visit to Leicester’s Jewry Wall Museum was incomplete without acquiring the latest of the indispensable, inexpensive, but professional, booklets on Leicestershire’s archaeol...

Founded in the 12th century, Aldingham motte sits on the precipice of a cliff along the Furness Peninsula. Erosion has much changed the landscape, since the castle would originally have been some 5...

(2008). Annual Report of the Council for the Year Ended 31 March 2008. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 511-511.

(1995). Cadbury Castle: Somerset. The Early Medieval Archaeology. By L. Alcock, with S. J. Stevenson and C. R. Musson. Archaeological Journal: Vol. 152, No. 1, pp. 470-471.

(1977). A Study of Cross-Hatched Gold Foils in Anglo-Saxon Jewellery. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 1-46.

(1985). Medieval archaeology and the landscape. Landscape History: Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 53-56.

(1977). Excavations at the Palace of Kings Langley, Hertfordshire 1974–1976. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 124-165.

THIS PAPER was delivered, by Professor Leciejewicz to the Society at its annual general meeting in 1975.

(1961). An End-Blown Flute or Flageolet from White Castle. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 176-180.

YORKSHIRE, EAST RIDING: WHARRAM PERCY (SE/8S8642). The sixth season on St. Martin's Parish church was directed by Mrs. D. G. Hurst for the Deserted Medieval Village Research Group. Inside the nave Mrs. J. E. Le Patourel excavated an area to follow the levels found in 1966. For earlier reports see relevant section in Medieval Archaeology. The bell-pit was completed and wag found to contain a complex series of deposits. It is hoped that the analysis of the samples taken will throw light on the method of construction. From the stratification there can be little doubt that this was the pit in which the surviving bell, which is now at Wharram Le Street, was cast in 1617. An imprint of part of the bell rim, where it rested at the cooling stage, was found to be identical in size with the existing bell. A large area of floor levels was examined and two of these were dated by coin evidence. The latest one before the 19th-century restoration (Level A2) had worn coins of Charles II and William III associated with it. This must therefore be the floor which was laid in 1723, as recorded in the Diocesan records. Under this (Level A4) was a worn short-cross penny which should have been lost in the early 16th century. With these floors were associated a series of post-holes of uncertain purpose.

(1961). The Kitchen Area of Northolt Manor, Middlesex. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 211-299.

(1957). Notes on Jutish Art in Kent between 450 and 575. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5-26.

(1961). White Castle in the Thirteenth Century: A Reconsideration. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 169-175.

(1960). The Anglo-Saxon Coinage and the Historian. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 1-15.

(1971). Excavations at High Street and Winetavern Street, Dublin. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 73-85.

(1969). Haberget: A Medieval Textile Conundrum. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 148-166.

(1964). The Unidentified Forts of the Burghal Hidage. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 74-90.

(1957). The Saxon House: A Review and Some Parallels. Medieval Archaeology: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 27-38.

Archaeology in the West Midlands is a comparatively new subject. The great archaeologists of the 17th to the 19th centuries concentrated their efforts on the superficially richer areas of Wessex, Kent, East Anglia and the Westand North. This was especially true of the prehistoric and Roman periods. Indeed, the prevalent concept of the West Midlands as an area of continuous damp clay, where only heavy oak forests grew and which man, especially early man, tended to shun, was questioned only as recently as 1948. In that year, extensive evidence of settled occupation was advanced and the suggestion made that more work might change the prevailing picture. The medieval period was rather better served by the traditional art-historical studies of Midland castles, abbeys and churches, which used to comprise the study of medieval archaeology.