scholarly journals A Later prehistoric house and Early Medieval buildings in Northern Scotland: excavations at Loch Shurrery and Lambsdale Leans, Caithness, 1955, with a note on Lower Dounreay

2003 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alastair MacLaren ◽  
Ewan Campbell ◽  
Gordon Cook ◽  
Janet Hooper ◽  
L Wells ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
The North ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Northern Edge

Two rescue excavations at the northern edge of a rather sparsely occupied part of the interior of Caithness are reported here, lying near to one of the largest clusters of archaeological sites in the modern county. In the event, the monuments were not threatened, and survive.Because of the limited nature of the excavation at Loch Shurrery (NGR ND 043568),the main value of the evidence about the hut circle relates to its structure and dating. The excavated remains represented a medium-sized oval house with a west-facing entrance. It had an off-centre hearth of rectangular construction. It was rather different in structure to the majority of the small group of such sites which have been excavated in the northern part of the Scottish mainland, as it did not appear to have an internal ring of post holes. In addition, its western entrance is not matched at the other sites, where entrance orientations are to the south, east or south-east. The wall of the Loch Shurrery house was fairly thick and the excavation suggested that it was complex, while the entrance passageway was quite long. The existence of door checks is also an unusual feature and may relate to the entrance structures of brochs and other substantial roundhouses. Two samples of charcoal from the hearth inside the hut circle were submitted for radiocarbon dating: the determinations produce calibrated ranges (at 2-sigma) of 346-4 cal BC and 341 cal BC-1 cal AD. It is likely that most of the excavated, undecorated pottery is also Iron Age, part of a broad tradition of very coarsely tempered pottery. Not-withstanding evidence of extended occupation, the whole period of construction and occupation may have occurred within the Iron Age.The mound of Lambsdale Leans (NGR ND 051548)lies in Reay parish, situated on low-lying ground at the head of Loch Shurrery and close to where its main tributary (the Torran Water) enters the loch from the south. The main characteristics of the this partially-excavated site are the presence of what appeared to be two extended inhumations and the remnants of possible structures associated with several layers of burnt material. Lambsdale Leans itself was a natural mound, of elongated shape and composed largely of sand, into which were set the burials and structural remains. The burials (one certainly female, the other probably so) were not in cists. The structural remains, while not fully excavated, accord well with the general tenor of the available evidence of later first millennium AD buildings in the north of Scotland. Both structures at Lambsdale Leans had floors comprising roughly laid paving, edged with upright slabs, and with an outer kerb of stones. The earliest-dated pottery sherds, unstratified, are from a single grass- tempered handmade vessel whose form cannot be determined. Overall,on one interpretation the Lambsdale Leans evidence favours a context within the Early Medieval period in Caithness. The pottery however, being mostly C12-C13 oxidised wheel-thrown vessels, can be seen to support the suggestion that occupation on the site may have begun in the Medieval period.

Shifting perspectives on 1st-millennia Scotland

2021 ◽  
Vol 150 ◽  
pp. 247-278
Author(s):  
Ronan Toolis
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
South West ◽  
Cultural Traits

Underlying much research on Iron Age Scotland is a pervasive regionalism. This has led to the underplaying of cultural traits that are evident across the country. The examination of south-west Scotland, a region that does not have a distinctive later prehistoric character and which is often viewed as somewhat peripheral to understanding Iron Age Scotland, however, reveals underlying patterns of settlement and culture that are embedded across Scotland but markedly different to Iron Age societies to the south. Moreover, cultural traits apparent across Scotland but absent south of the border continued into the early medieval period, suggesting significant cultural divergences between 400 BC and AD 650.

Horse Burial in First Millennium AD Britain: Issues of Interpretation

2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 190-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela J. Cross
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
High Status ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Northwest Europe ◽  
First Millennium

Burial of horses and horse-elements occurred throughout Europe during the first millennium AD. These burials are prevalent in northwest Europe and are perhaps more significant in Britain than previously realised. This article explores the position and value of the horse within Britain during this period and why the burials are likely to represent ritual deposition. Both horse and human-horse burials, are linked to non-Christian burial and sacrificial practices of the Iron Age and Early Medieval period and are particularly associated with Anglo- Saxon and Viking Britain. Some of the traditions appear to reflect the culture described in the Icelandic Sagas, Beowulf, and other legends and chronicles. Archaeologically, the human-horse burials are also linked with high status individuals and ‘warrior graves’, while complete-horse and horse-element burials may represent ritual feasting and/or sacrificial rites which are probably linked with fertility, luck, and the ancestors.

The Britons in Southern Scotland

Antiquity ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 29 (114) ◽  
pp. 77-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
The North ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The People ◽  
Northern Portion

The archaeological background of the people of what is now Scotland south of the Forth and Clyde in the Roman period was a La Téne one, and specifically chiefly Iron Age B. This links them intimately with the Britons of southern Britain in the conglomeration of Celtic tribes who called themselves Brittones and spoke what we call the Brittonic or Ancient British form of Celtic, from which are descended the three modern languages of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. To the north of the Forth was a different people, the Picts. They too were Celts or partly Celts; probably not Brittones however, but a different branch of the Celtic race, though more closely related to the Brittones than to the Goidels of Ireland and (in later times) of the west of Scotland. Not being Brittonic, the Picts may be ignored here. Our southern Scottish Brittones are nothing but the northern portion of a common Brittonic population, from the southern portion of which come the people of Wales and Cornwall. Some historians speak of the northern Brittones as Welsh, following good Anglo-Saxon precedent, but this is apt to lead to confusion. The best term for them, in the Dark Ages and early Medieval period, as long as they survived, is ‘Cumbrians’, and for their language, ‘Cumbric’. They called themselves in Latin Cumbri and Cumbrenses, which is a Latinization of the native word Cymry, meaning ‘fellow-countrymen’, which both they and the Welsh used of themselves in common, and is still the Welsh name for the Welsh to the present day. The centre of their power was Strathclyde, the Clyde valley, with their capital at Dumbarton.

Kingdoms and regiones: The documentary evidence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
East Anglia ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
East Midlands

During the early medieval period eastern England was occupied by two major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms—the East Saxons and East Angles—alongside a region that Bede referred to as ‘Middle Anglia’. There has been a widespread assumption that Essex (‘the East Saxons’) and Suffolk and Norfolk (the ‘South Folk’ and ‘North Folk’ of East Anglia) were direct successors to these Anglo-Saxon kingdoms (e.g. Carver 1989, fig. 10.1; 2005, 498; Yorke 1990, 46, 61; Warner 1996, 4, plate 1; Pestell 2004, 12; Chester-Kadwell 2009, 46; Kemble 2012, 8; Gascoyne and Radford 2013, 176; Reynolds 2013, fig. 4), which would imply a strong degree of territorial continuity from at least the early medieval period through to the present day. There is, however, a recognition in the Regional Research Framework that regional differences within early medieval society across eastern England have seen little investigation (Medlycott 2011b, 58), something that the following chapters hope to address. This chapter will explore the documentary evidence for these early medieval kingdoms and their relationship to later counties, before turning to the archaeological evidence for Anglo- Saxon immigrants and their relationship to the native British population in Chapters 8–10. The clear differences between the Northern Thames Basin, East Anglia, and the South East Midlands that are still evident during the seventh to ninth centuries are outlined in Chapter 11. Finally, Chapter 12 explores the boundaries of the early medieval kingdoms, and in particular the series of dykes constructed in south-eastern Cambridgeshire.Table 7.1 provides a timeline of key historical dates for early medieval England, and key developments within the archaeological record. The earliest list of territorial entities is the Tribal Hidage. The original document has been lost—it only survives in a variety of later forms—but it is thought to have been written between the mid seventh and the ninth centuries (Hart 1970; 1977; Davies and Vierck 1974, 224–7; Yorke 1990, 10; Blair 1991, 8; 1999; Harrington and Welch 2014, 1). The Tribal Hidage lists at least thirteen peoples in and around eastern England, some of whom clearly occupied quite extensive areas, such as the East Angles (assessed as 30,000 hides), East Saxons (7,000 hides), and the Cilternsætna (4,000 hides).

scholarly journals Bronze Age “pristinity”, Iron Age anthropization and Medieval intensification of human impact around Lake Montcortès (southern-central Pyrenees): a possible mid-elevation pattern and its significance for the definition of the Anthropocene

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentí Rull ◽  
Teresa Vegas-Vilarrúbia ◽  
Juan Pablo Corella ◽  
Blas Valero-Garcé
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Human Impact ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Human Pressure ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Central Pyrenees

Abstract The varved sediments of Lake Montcortès (central Pyrenees) have provided a continuous and well-dated high-resolution record of the last ca. 3000 years. Previous chronological and sedimentological studies of this record have furnished detailed paleoenvironmental reconstructions. However, palynological studies are only available for the last millennium, and the vegetation and the landscape around the lake had already been transformed by humans by this time. Therefore, the primeval vegetation of Montcortès and the history of its anthropogenic transformations remains unknown. This paper presents a palynological analysis of the interval between the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1100 BCE) and the Early Medieval period (820 CE), aimed at recording the preanthropic conditions, the anthropization onset and the further landscape transformations. During the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1100 BCE to 770 BCE), the vegetation did not show any evidence of human impact. The decisive anthropogenic transformation of the Montcortès catchment vegetation and landscape started at the beginning of the Iron Age (770 BCE) and continued during Roman and Medieval times in the form of recurrent burning, grazing, cultivation, silviculture, hemp retting and other human activities. Some intervals of lower human pressure were recorded, but the original vegetation never returned. The anthropization that took place during the Iron Age did not cause relevant changes in the sediment yield to the lake, but a significant limnological shift occurred, as manifested in the initiation of varve formation, a process that has been continuous until today. Climatic shifts seem to have played a secondary role in influencing catchment vegetation and landscape changes from the Iron Age onwards. These results contrast with previous inferences of low anthropogenic impact until the Medieval Period, at a regional level (central Pyrenees). The intensification of human pressure in Early Medieval times (580 CE onwards) has also been observed in Lake Montcortès, but the overall anthropization of its watershed had already commenced a couple of millennia before, at the beginning of the Iron Age. It could be interesting to verify whether the same pattern – i.e., Late Bronze “pristinity”, Iron Age anthropization and Early Medieval intensification of human pressure – may be a recurrent pattern for mid-elevation Pyrenean landscapes below the tree line. This pattern complicates the definition of the “Anthropocene”, as it adds a new dimension, i.e., elevational diachronism, to the anthropization of mountain ranges, in general.

VI. The Pilgrims' Hall, Winchester. Hammerbeams, Base Crucks and Aisle-Derivative Roof Structures

Archaeologia ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 109 ◽  
pp. 129-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Crook
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Original Structure ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Masonry Walls ◽  
The South ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The North ◽  
Roof Structure ◽  
Roof Truss ◽  
Central Base

The roof of the so called ‘Pilgrims’ Hall’, Winchester, now dated to c. 1308, has long been recognized as one of the earliest surviving examples of hammerbeam construction. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that the complete medieval structure, of which the Pilgrims’ Hall forms rather less than half, has not previously been investigated in detail. In its original form it was a six bay building covered by a single roof, which, though of one constructional phase, employed a variety of principal truss types (fig. 1). The three bays at the north end of the complex have masonry walls: they comprise the actual Pilgrims’ Hall, whose most impressive feature is its pair of hammerbeam trusses (pl. XLa). The other three bays had timber framed walls, and were subdivided into a second, two bay hall with a central base cruck truss, and a single bay at the south end of the building. In this paper the term ‘Pilgrims’ Hall’ is used to denote only the three bay hammerbeam hall, while the entire original structure is referred to as the ‘Pilgrims’ range’.The roof and timber framing of the complex must surely rank with those few structures that, in the words of the late R. T. Mason, ‘stand out for their contribution to overall knowledge’. The outstanding significance of the Pilgrims' range in the study of early medieval carpentry is that it included four major ‘aisle-derivative’ roof truss types in a single building: a true aisled truss, a base cruck truss, two hammerbeam trusses, and at least one raised aisle truss. The existence of continuous longitudinal members (arcade plates, cornice plates and a central purlin) and the uniform upper roof structure throughout the length of the range show that the entire roof was erected in a single campaign.

Feeding Infants from the Iron Age to the Early Medieval Period in Britain

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Redfern
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Developmental Processes ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Early Medieval Period

The feeding and rearing of infants are sociocultural and developmental processes, each with their own timetables that can either unite or diverge, depending on the wellbeing and physiological growth of the infant, and the needs of the mother or carer and the society in which they live. They are highly emotive and complex topics, which go to the heart of human relationships and behaviours, because they are regarded as important steps to achieving personhood and a social identity. Furthermore, because these processes begin during pregnancy, they rely on the intimate connections between a mother and foetus, and carer and baby. This chapter will examine these processes from pregnancy through to childhood, providing a framework to understand the practices and choices made by the Iron Age, Roman and Saxon communities in Britain and Europe.

Reply to Jones

2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-99
Author(s):  
MARTIN CONWAY
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
The Other ◽  
Striking Feature ◽  
Good Thing ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
The Way

Historians are from Mars and political scientists are from Venus (or was it the other way round?). The most striking feature of Erik Jones's stimulating and generous response to my article is the way in which it highlights the divergent approaches to the postwar era adopted by historians and political scientists. In many respects, this is a very good thing. We need the stimuli provided by those rooted in different traditions bringing their distinctive approaches to the same subject matter, just as, for the early medieval period, historians, archaeologists and literary scholars confront the fragmentary evidence of post-Roman Europe in contrasting but often mutually enriching ways.

scholarly journals Exploring Linear Earthworks across Time and Space – Introducing the ‘Monumentality and Landscape: Linear Earthworks in Britain’ Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Nicky Garland ◽  
Barney Harris ◽  
Tom Moore ◽  
Andrew Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
First Year ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
Landscape Research

Linear earthworks of a monumental character are an enigmatic part of the British landscape. Research in Britain suggests that such features range in date from the early 1st millennium BC to the Early Middle Ages. While the  roles of these monuments in past societies cannot be understated, they remain a relatively under-researched phenomenon. This article introduces the Leverhulme Trust-funded ‘Monumentality and Landscape: Linear Earthworks in Britain’ project, which aims to provide a comparative study of linear earthworks focusing on those dating to the Iron Age and early medieval period. This contribution reviews our approach and shares preliminary results from the project’s first year, identifying wider implications for the study of linear earthworks.

An archaeological theory of the sea

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Van de Noort
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
North Sea ◽  
Archaeological Theory ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
The North Sea

Despite the wealth of information available on the North Sea, surprisingly few archaeologists have set out to study how people related to and connected to this sea, and other seas, in the past. In fact, we can distinguish four established traditions in archaeological research of the sea, all of which originated in the 20th century. First, many (or most) land-locked archaeologists working on any side of the North Sea have simply disregarded the sea itself, seeing it merely as the natural boundary of their study areas rather than considering its role in any significant way. At best, they are seeing the sea from the land, without genuinely engaging with it (cf. Cooney 2003: 323), although the panorama is slowly changing (e.g. cf. Bradley 1984 with Bradley 2007). Second, there are those archaeologists with an interest in long-distance exchange and exotic objects, who focused initially on the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods but have also been concerned, in more recent decades, with the early medieval period. Although these archaeologists have recognized the seas as conduits of long-distance exchange, they have rarely questioned how the practice of travel across the sea impacted on the social products of such exchange (e.g. Butler 1963, O’Connor 1980, Bradley 1984, Clarke, Cowie, and Foxon 1985, for the Neolithic and early Bronze Age; Hodges 1982, Loveluck and Tys 2006, for the early medieval period). Third, a group of archaeologists have studied the exploitation of the sea, especially for fish and salt, and the occupation and the reclamation of the edges of the sea in the Roman period and afterwards; but these studies have generally not strayed beyond the functional utilization of the sea and coast both for food and for land for food production (e.g. Clark 1961; Van den Broeke 1985; Andersen 1995, 2007; Rippon 2000; Smart 2003; Milner et al. 2004; De Kraker and Borger 2007). And fourth, maritime archaeologists’ focus has been on ships and waterside structures directly relating to shipping activities, but the development of a fuller appreciation of the significance of the sea and seafaring to past societies remains something of a distant aspiration (e.g. Ellmers 1972; McGrail 2003: 1).

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