Anglo-Saxon women and the law

Scholarly investigations of Anglo-Saxon social history have usually drawn the conclusion that women during that period enjoyed a favourable position in comparison with their successors in post-Conquest England. The following study aims to qualify this view, by demonstrating that the position of women was more complicated than is usually acknowledged. An examination of the Anglo-Saxon legal documents shows that the position of women varied according to circumstances such as rank, marital status, and geographical location. However, an overall improvement between the early and late period is clear. In fact, this improvement is so considerable that there is a much closer resemblance between the situation obtaining in late Anglo-Saxon England and post-Conquest England than there is between the early and late Anglo-Saxon period. Thus, to describe Anglo-Saxon E England as a time when women enjoyed an independence which they lost as a result of the changes introduced by the Norman Conquest is misleading.     

Sceattas in Anglo-Saxon Graves

ANGLO-SAXON SILVER PENNIES (sceattas) are rare as gravegoods, but their provision was a regular element of burial practice in a small minority of later 7th-century-furnished inhumations and later burials. Although the number both of coins and burials is very small, they show patterns of deposition and treatment that have both a cultural and a broader chronological significance. This sample provides a window on social and symbolic attitudes to the coinages as elements of the broader material culture of contemporary society, and constitutes important corroborating evidence that the Primary Phase issues embodied a new degree of monetisation in 7th-century England.     

Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids

GOLD threads have been found in many Anglo-Saxon and continental Germanic graves of the period from the 5th to the 8th century A.D. (see catalogue, pp. 66 ff.). Early recognized as the remains of costly woven decorations to headdresses and the borders of garments, during the 19th century particularly they attracted much interest and discussion, some of it very pertinent.¹ Technical attention, however, of the kind required by their fragmentary state, was not then available, and it is only comparatively lately that the discovery of fresh examples in some newly excavated Frankish graves has caused a revival of interest in the subject, with the hopeful prospect of detailed technical studies to come from the continent in the future.     

Hospitality in pre-viking Anglo-Saxon England

This article studies the question of Anglo-Saxon hospitality, that is, in the first place, the gift (from a host to a guest) of food, fodder, roof and bed for a night or for a longer term. Contrary to Romantic visions, it was nothing like a spontaneous and free practice: Marcel Mauss and other anthropologists after him have shown that giving and receiving were obligations, compulsory acts in pre-market societies. In Anglo-Saxon England, hospitality was always a duty, strictly limited and framed by custom. It may have been provided to a single traveller, to a member of a formal or informal network (particularly ecclesiastical), to a king or to his agents in the form of a pastus or feorm: a kind of 'guesting' or compulsory hospitality which was progressively given up by kings as they booked lands to religious institutions. The forms and beneficiaries may vary, but the opposition between 'spontaneous' feasting and 'compulsory' guesting must not be stressed too much: hospitality was always a kind of binding exchange, even when it assumed the shape, the aspect, and even the values of a free and open practice .     

Some Neglected Late Anglo-Saxon Swords

THE ALFRED JEWEL'S covering panel of rock crystal is anomalous in the context of Anglo-Saxon art. Typology indicates that it was probably not imported from a contemporary Continental workshop. Markings on the stone's surfaces show that it was, however, used in another context before being set in its present mount. Roman comparanda (crystal panels in Rome and opus sectile elements from Kenchreai) best parallel the crystal's size and shape. The Oxford panel was probably a Roman decorative inset, possibly salvaged from a wall or piece of furniture. It must have determined the unusual shape of the Alfred Jewel.     

Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies and Germanic oral tradition

The object of this study is to examine the possibility that, although the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies are in their extant from products of ecclesiastical scholarship, the keeping of royal genealogies in early England was not an innovation brought about by Christian literacy, but was rather a native, originally pre-Christian institution which the church adopted. The discussion is divided into two parts. The first argues that the genealogical lists derive at least in part from the sort of historical record which the Anglo-Saxons, in common with other early Germanic peoples, maintained in the form of orally transmitted narrative traditions. The second tries to show that these traditions were cultivated by a court poet known to the Anglo-Saxons as the scop. The conclusion is that the extant royal genealogies are ultimately dependent on orally transmitted royal dynastic histories the keeping of which was an established part of native, originally pre-Christian traditional culture in England.     

Foxes and Badgers in Anglo-Saxon Life and Landscape

Anglo-Saxon England (c. AD 410–1066) had a diversity of wild animals, yet the majority of studies to date have focused on a select group of species. These include those considered edible, such as roe and red deer (cervids), and those now extinct in England, such as wolves and beavers. Accordingly, the roles and relations of many other wild mammal species have rarely been studied and are poorly understood. This paper explores human perceptions of, and interactions with, two native species: the fox and the badger. By drawing upon archaeological, iconographic, documentary and place-name evidence from the period, the extent to which these animals occupied the minds and lives of people is explored.     

The Vita Gregorii and Ethnogenesis in Anglo-Saxon Britain

Abstract

'The Vita Gregorii and Ethnogenesis in Anglo-Saxon Britain'. During the Migration Period, ethnic and political identities emerged amongst the barbarians in the West. In Britain, the barbarian newcomers came to see themselves as a single gens — the English people. Although this has usually been seen as a smooth and almost inevitable process of ethnogenesis, an analysis of an oft overlooked hagiography, the Vita Gregorii, will demonstrate that ideas of ethnicity carried political currency, at least in early-eighth-century Northumbria. Moreover, the notion that all the barbarian newcomers belonged to a single gens found dissenters, evidenced in part by the Vita Wilfridi, which regarded a local, Northumbrian identity as primary. This interpretation places the Anglo-Saxons alongside their Continental counterparts, allowing events in Britain to be understood in a manner harmonious with the broader experiences of the West.     

The Anglo-Saxon Cotton Map in Context

Advanced doctoral students whose dissertations are substantially concerned with the history of cartography are invited to contact the editor of this section (Dr Elizabeth Baigent, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford OX2 6PW, UK; elizabeth.baigent@wycliffe.ox.ac.uk) to discuss the submission of a short article. For a list of doctoral theses in progress see http://www.maphistory.info/futurephd.html.     

Cranial weapon injuries from Anglo-Saxon dover

Two adult male skeletons from Buckland Dover, dated to the pagan Anglo-Saxon period, displayed evidence of cranial weapon injury. In one case (SK 348) the injury, probably inflicted by a sword, showed no evidence of healing. The other (SK 303b), possibly an axe injury, appears to have been survived. The nature of the traumata, blade injuries, suggest that they were inflicted in battle rather than the result of a street brawl. However, neither skeleton was buried with weapons, suggesting that they may have been seized by the attackers on the battlefield.     

Secondary cancer in an Anglo-Saxon female

A mature/elderly female skeleton from the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Eccles, Kent, is described. A diagnosis of Paget's disease of the left tibia is made. The macroscopic radiological features of perforating and non-perforating osteolytic lesions in the cranium and femora are described. The differential diagnosis is discussed. The lesions are considered to be due to metastatic carcinoma, possibly from a primary carcinoma of the breast. There is a brief resumé of other recorded examples of metastatic carcinoma in early skeletons.