Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204743
A. Pluskowski
the support of the Abbot General of the Order, going in search of the bones of Otto de Freising, abbot of Morimond and later Bishop of Freising, removing 1.5m of demolition deposits in the crossing and presbytery, with the loan of a bulldozer and drivers from a local American air-force base; this followed an earlier excavation, and reminds us that these sites are not simply the province of archaeologists and art historians. Next comes an update on the recording of the standing remains of the abbey church and its architectural detail, followed by coverage of continuing excavation of the constantly evolving guest-house complex, which was converted to more utilitarian uses from the late 16th century. Morimond was, of course, the burial place of abbots, senior monks and donor families, but we are told that ‘all the grave-stones of Morimond Abbey have disappeared for certain before the time of its reconstruction at the end of the 17th c, but equally at the time of the general destruction of the abbey at the beginning of the 19th c’. Only three stones have been recovered, though the burial lists for 68 individuals in the church, chapter house and cloister have been reconstructed, many with their inscriptions, from manuscript sources. Finally, there is a survey of paintings, drawings and photographs of the abbey ruins, recording those parts lost since 1816. The second part outlines the development of the community of Morimond and her abbots through good times and bad, the struggle between France and Lorraine during the Wars of Religion, the evolution of her estate up to the 16th century, the struggle between France and Lorraine during the Wars of Religion and the reconstruction of damaged granges after the Thirty Years War. It also addresses the abbey’s holdings in the towns of Langres – where much of the church furnishings, choir stalls, screens and grills were taken after the abbey was suppressed – and Dijon – where Auberive’s mid-12th-century house survives in a city that also had townhouses of Ĉıteaux, Clairvaux, Fontenay and Pontigny. The third part looks at the family of Morimond in France and in Europe with a m elange of papers looking beyond Morimond to medieval daughter houses in the Auvergne and VillersBettnach in Lorraine, a house largely rebuilt from 1724 but retaining what must be the finest surviving Cistercian gate chapel of the late 12th century anywhere. The next paper examines the management of Cistercian monks in Central Europe, with the movement of abbots within the filiation of Morimond as the order moved into new territory, and the curricula vitae of individual Bohemian abbots. Following this are a study of granges within the extended family of Morimond in Italy, which picks up on the pioneering work of Maria Righetti Tosti Croce, looking at the granges of Morimondo, named for the mother house; and a chapter on the role of Morimond in the spiritual responsibility for the military order of Calatrava active in Portugal and Spain, wis
{"title":"Agricultural Landscapes of Al-Andalus, and the Aftermath of the Feudal Conquest","authors":"A. Pluskowski","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204743","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204743","url":null,"abstract":"the support of the Abbot General of the Order, going in search of the bones of Otto de Freising, abbot of Morimond and later Bishop of Freising, removing 1.5m of demolition deposits in the crossing and presbytery, with the loan of a bulldozer and drivers from a local American air-force base; this followed an earlier excavation, and reminds us that these sites are not simply the province of archaeologists and art historians. Next comes an update on the recording of the standing remains of the abbey church and its architectural detail, followed by coverage of continuing excavation of the constantly evolving guest-house complex, which was converted to more utilitarian uses from the late 16th century. Morimond was, of course, the burial place of abbots, senior monks and donor families, but we are told that ‘all the grave-stones of Morimond Abbey have disappeared for certain before the time of its reconstruction at the end of the 17th c, but equally at the time of the general destruction of the abbey at the beginning of the 19th c’. Only three stones have been recovered, though the burial lists for 68 individuals in the church, chapter house and cloister have been reconstructed, many with their inscriptions, from manuscript sources. Finally, there is a survey of paintings, drawings and photographs of the abbey ruins, recording those parts lost since 1816. The second part outlines the development of the community of Morimond and her abbots through good times and bad, the struggle between France and Lorraine during the Wars of Religion, the evolution of her estate up to the 16th century, the struggle between France and Lorraine during the Wars of Religion and the reconstruction of damaged granges after the Thirty Years War. It also addresses the abbey’s holdings in the towns of Langres – where much of the church furnishings, choir stalls, screens and grills were taken after the abbey was suppressed – and Dijon – where Auberive’s mid-12th-century house survives in a city that also had townhouses of Ĉıteaux, Clairvaux, Fontenay and Pontigny. The third part looks at the family of Morimond in France and in Europe with a m elange of papers looking beyond Morimond to medieval daughter houses in the Auvergne and VillersBettnach in Lorraine, a house largely rebuilt from 1724 but retaining what must be the finest surviving Cistercian gate chapel of the late 12th century anywhere. The next paper examines the management of Cistercian monks in Central Europe, with the movement of abbots within the filiation of Morimond as the order moved into new territory, and the curricula vitae of individual Bohemian abbots. Following this are a study of granges within the extended family of Morimond in Italy, which picks up on the pioneering work of Maria Righetti Tosti Croce, looking at the granges of Morimondo, named for the mother house; and a chapter on the role of Morimond in the spiritual responsibility for the military order of Calatrava active in Portugal and Spain, wis","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"67 1","pages":"233 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41863083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204729
Trent M Trombley, Caroline Goodson, S. Agarwal
THIS PAPER EXAMINES THE CULTURAL FRAMEWORK and material evidence for teeth and oral health in later medieval Europe, using as a case study the bioarchaeological analysis of an excavated cemetery in central Italy (Villamagna). It proffers an alternative approach to the study of human skeletal material by reframing the questions that bioarchaeologists normally ask about mouths. Instead of stopping at, ‘how much disease?’ or ‘what state of health?’, here, ‘how did the mouth relate to individuals’ experiences of their world, and how might scientific information about health and disease provide insight into wider aspects of life, society and economy?’ is asked. This paper points to a range of cultural understandings around the mouth which were changing in the High and Later Middle Ages (c 1000–1400), namely: the Bible and changing explanations for the relationships between mouth, heart, confession and experience of the divine; an evolving understanding of medicine and medical principles; and new forms of saintly intervention involved in healthcare. Detailed osteobiographies of two adults from Villamagna illustrate shaped individual experiences and the ways in which oral condition reflects and use-patterns and lifeways common to such communities.
{"title":"Medieval Mouths in Context: Biocultural and Multi-Scalar Considerations of the Mouth and the Case of Late-Medieval Villamagna, Italy","authors":"Trent M Trombley, Caroline Goodson, S. Agarwal","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204729","url":null,"abstract":"THIS PAPER EXAMINES THE CULTURAL FRAMEWORK and material evidence for teeth and oral health in later medieval Europe, using as a case study the bioarchaeological analysis of an excavated cemetery in central Italy (Villamagna). It proffers an alternative approach to the study of human skeletal material by reframing the questions that bioarchaeologists normally ask about mouths. Instead of stopping at, ‘how much disease?’ or ‘what state of health?’, here, ‘how did the mouth relate to individuals’ experiences of their world, and how might scientific information about health and disease provide insight into wider aspects of life, society and economy?’ is asked. This paper points to a range of cultural understandings around the mouth which were changing in the High and Later Middle Ages (c 1000–1400), namely: the Bible and changing explanations for the relationships between mouth, heart, confession and experience of the divine; an evolving understanding of medicine and medical principles; and new forms of saintly intervention involved in healthcare. Detailed osteobiographies of two adults from Villamagna illustrate shaped individual experiences and the ways in which oral condition reflects and use-patterns and lifeways common to such communities.","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"67 1","pages":"187 - 220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49014821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204666
Solange Bohling, K. Croucher, J. Buckberry
THIS PAPER INVESTIGATES physical impairment and disability in the c 5th to 6th centuries ad in England through a combination of osteological and funerary analyses. A total of 1,261 individuals, 33 of whom had osteologically identifiable physical impairment, from nine early medieval cemeteries were included. The funerary data for all individuals in each cemetery was collected, and the individuals with physical impairment were analysed palaeopathologically. The burial treatment of individuals with and without physical impairment was compared both quantitatively and qualitatively, and patterns within and between cemeteries were explored to investigate contemporary perceptions and understandings of impairment and disability. The results suggest that some people with physical impairment and potential disability were buried with treatment that was arguably positive, while others were buried with treatment that was either normative or potentially negative. This suggests that, in the same way as the rest of the community, individuals with physical impairment and potential disability had a variety of identities (that may or may not have been influenced by their impairment or disability) and could occupy different social spaces/statuses.
{"title":"Understanding Disability and Physical Impairment in Early Medieval England: an Integration of Osteoarchaeological and Funerary Evidence","authors":"Solange Bohling, K. Croucher, J. Buckberry","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204666","url":null,"abstract":"THIS PAPER INVESTIGATES physical impairment and disability in the c 5th to 6th centuries ad in England through a combination of osteological and funerary analyses. A total of 1,261 individuals, 33 of whom had osteologically identifiable physical impairment, from nine early medieval cemeteries were included. The funerary data for all individuals in each cemetery was collected, and the individuals with physical impairment were analysed palaeopathologically. The burial treatment of individuals with and without physical impairment was compared both quantitatively and qualitatively, and patterns within and between cemeteries were explored to investigate contemporary perceptions and understandings of impairment and disability. The results suggest that some people with physical impairment and potential disability were buried with treatment that was arguably positive, while others were buried with treatment that was either normative or potentially negative. This suggests that, in the same way as the rest of the community, individuals with physical impairment and potential disability had a variety of identities (that may or may not have been influenced by their impairment or disability) and could occupy different social spaces/statuses.","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"67 1","pages":"73 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42830412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204757
Neil Christie
{"title":"Trasformazioni dell’habitat periurbano di Firenze nel Medioevo","authors":"Neil Christie","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204757","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204757","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"67 1","pages":"242 - 242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42889646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204744
T. Martin
This monograph, being the revised publication of Harland’s doctoral thesis, exposes and vigorously contests the ethnic paradigm in early Anglo-Saxon archaeology, argued here to be the principal logos in archaeological interpretations of the 5th and 6th centuries AD, used at once to explain and describe material behavioural phenomena at a fundamental level. Much of the book consists of historiographical critique, but substantial space also goes to re-imagining the material record outside readings of ethnic difference, as well as presenting a poststructuralist framework for the evaluation and restructuring of interpretation. Following an introductory chapter describing the fraught present-day political context of the early medieval past, Chapter 2 presents an historiographical critique of how archaeologists working with the 5th and 6th centuries have invoked ethnicity. Harland argues that archaeology has been insufficiently influenced by developments in the anthropology and sociology of ethnicity, giving rise to his key contention that the material record alone will never be sufficient to empirically determine a phenomenon that has no necessary physical component. In seeking to help remedy such deficiency Harland’s view of interpretative areas being ‘out of bounds’ for archaeology will certainly raise the hackles of historic and prehistoric archaeologists alike (particularly where the archaeology of identity is concerned) – though Harland is unbending on this point. Chapter 3 presents a poststructuralist framework for evaluating existing work, largely using Derrida as a de-constructive force and, later, Deleuze and Guattari as the re-constructive remedies. The philosophical framing is inventive and most welcome, presenting explicitly Harland’s reasoning, which is indeed followed to the letter and with clarity. Chapter 4 rigorously applies this method to an historiographical sample of work from the 1980s onwards, plainly demonstrating the prevalence of the ethnic paradigm, as well as exposing its empirical shortcomings. Chapters 5 and 6 reconsider the material evidence on Harland’s terms (sans the ethnic logos), presenting case studies of ceramics, brooches and furnished inhumation, to refresh this canonical material. A final chapter summarises the argument and looks ahead rather more optimistically to the future of the discipline. This book pursues an unswerving argument, highly attentive to the epistemological detail, but not always balanced, and with a tendency to overstate exceptional cases in the archaeological record and weaknesses in existing work. Accordingly, it does not always do justice to the subtler aspects of the historiography, and a critique of this book as unforgiving as Harland’s own would reveal minor slips when it comes to the archaeological detail. However, once past this, the principal critique is both compelling and invigorating. Harland never disputes the impact migration may have had on material behaviours, nor does he deny
{"title":"Ethnic Identity and the Archaeology of the Aduentus Saxonum. A Modern Framework and its Problems","authors":"T. Martin","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204744","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204744","url":null,"abstract":"This monograph, being the revised publication of Harland’s doctoral thesis, exposes and vigorously contests the ethnic paradigm in early Anglo-Saxon archaeology, argued here to be the principal logos in archaeological interpretations of the 5th and 6th centuries AD, used at once to explain and describe material behavioural phenomena at a fundamental level. Much of the book consists of historiographical critique, but substantial space also goes to re-imagining the material record outside readings of ethnic difference, as well as presenting a poststructuralist framework for the evaluation and restructuring of interpretation. Following an introductory chapter describing the fraught present-day political context of the early medieval past, Chapter 2 presents an historiographical critique of how archaeologists working with the 5th and 6th centuries have invoked ethnicity. Harland argues that archaeology has been insufficiently influenced by developments in the anthropology and sociology of ethnicity, giving rise to his key contention that the material record alone will never be sufficient to empirically determine a phenomenon that has no necessary physical component. In seeking to help remedy such deficiency Harland’s view of interpretative areas being ‘out of bounds’ for archaeology will certainly raise the hackles of historic and prehistoric archaeologists alike (particularly where the archaeology of identity is concerned) – though Harland is unbending on this point. Chapter 3 presents a poststructuralist framework for evaluating existing work, largely using Derrida as a de-constructive force and, later, Deleuze and Guattari as the re-constructive remedies. The philosophical framing is inventive and most welcome, presenting explicitly Harland’s reasoning, which is indeed followed to the letter and with clarity. Chapter 4 rigorously applies this method to an historiographical sample of work from the 1980s onwards, plainly demonstrating the prevalence of the ethnic paradigm, as well as exposing its empirical shortcomings. Chapters 5 and 6 reconsider the material evidence on Harland’s terms (sans the ethnic logos), presenting case studies of ceramics, brooches and furnished inhumation, to refresh this canonical material. A final chapter summarises the argument and looks ahead rather more optimistically to the future of the discipline. This book pursues an unswerving argument, highly attentive to the epistemological detail, but not always balanced, and with a tendency to overstate exceptional cases in the archaeological record and weaknesses in existing work. Accordingly, it does not always do justice to the subtler aspects of the historiography, and a critique of this book as unforgiving as Harland’s own would reveal minor slips when it comes to the archaeological detail. However, once past this, the principal critique is both compelling and invigorating. Harland never disputes the impact migration may have had on material behaviours, nor does he deny ","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"67 1","pages":"235 - 235"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42301950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204761
Glyn Coppack
{"title":"Strata Florida: the History and Landscape of a Welsh Monastery","authors":"Glyn Coppack","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204761","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204761","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"67 1","pages":"244 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49028117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204737
E. T. Dailey
{"title":"Neighbours and Strangers. Local Societies in Early Medieval Europe","authors":"E. T. Dailey","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204737","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204737","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"67 1","pages":"227 - 228"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47555598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204739
T. Penn
{"title":"Games and Visual Culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance","authors":"T. Penn","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204739","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204739","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"67 1","pages":"228 - 229"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43087425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204740
Alexandra Sanmark
{"title":"The Pre-Christian Religions of the North. History and Structures, Volume I: Basic Premises and Consideration of Sources; Volume II: Social, Geographical, and Historical Contexts, and Communication between Worlds; Volume III: Conceptual Frameworks: The Cosmos and Collective Supernatural Beings; Volume IV: The Christianization Process, Bibliography, and Index","authors":"Alexandra Sanmark","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204740","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204740","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135799855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/00766097.2023.2204747
Rob Collins
This is a thought-providing account of swords and warfare in early medieval Britain. The book features 16 chapters separated into three parts. Part I, Evolution of Swords, has a general chapter on swords followed by three period-specific chapters (Prehistory, Iron Age and Medieval) tracing forms and development. The six chapters in Part II, Creating the Bamburgh Sword, move through the process of forging a sword, from gathering iron into the smithing process, to fashioning hilt and scabbard. Here Gething and Albert work from the seventhcentury pattern-welded blade found in 1960 excavations at Bamburgh Castle by Brian Hope-Taylor – the rare object had gone missing until rediscovered in Hope-Taylor’s garage after his death in 2001. Part III, The Sword in Action, also of six chapters, contextualises swords in early medieval British society. The book is well produced by Birlinn. There are two maps at the front of the volume, locating key sites named through the text in Britain and Ireland c 650, and showing the Northumberland coast between Bamburgh and Lindisfarne. Other illustrations in greyscale primarily depict swords or their typologies, while a section of full-colour plates look especially at the Bamburgh artefact. While the chosen illustrations are appropriate, now and then the text merited additional images, for example when discussing the Franks Casket, gold-and-garnet decoration or sword pyramids. First and foremost, The Perfect Sword is a public-facing book for general readers, utilising the Bamburgh sword as the central focus of the work. The text is highly accessible and peppered with historical episodes, explanations and comparanda that make for an engaging narrative. Due credit is given to scholarly work, and the names of those scholars or the research themes discussed can be found in the index, as no referencing system is used. Key topics and conclusions of research are brought to the attention of the reader to better understand the Bamburgh sword specifically, and swords more generally. Perhaps of greatest value to scholars are the descriptions of experimental archaeology, including smithing, and the observations offered on how swords were used and fit within early medieval Britain. Such gems are scattered throughout the text.
{"title":"The Perfect Sword. Forging the Dark Ages","authors":"Rob Collins","doi":"10.1080/00766097.2023.2204747","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.2023.2204747","url":null,"abstract":"This is a thought-providing account of swords and warfare in early medieval Britain. The book features 16 chapters separated into three parts. Part I, Evolution of Swords, has a general chapter on swords followed by three period-specific chapters (Prehistory, Iron Age and Medieval) tracing forms and development. The six chapters in Part II, Creating the Bamburgh Sword, move through the process of forging a sword, from gathering iron into the smithing process, to fashioning hilt and scabbard. Here Gething and Albert work from the seventhcentury pattern-welded blade found in 1960 excavations at Bamburgh Castle by Brian Hope-Taylor – the rare object had gone missing until rediscovered in Hope-Taylor’s garage after his death in 2001. Part III, The Sword in Action, also of six chapters, contextualises swords in early medieval British society. The book is well produced by Birlinn. There are two maps at the front of the volume, locating key sites named through the text in Britain and Ireland c 650, and showing the Northumberland coast between Bamburgh and Lindisfarne. Other illustrations in greyscale primarily depict swords or their typologies, while a section of full-colour plates look especially at the Bamburgh artefact. While the chosen illustrations are appropriate, now and then the text merited additional images, for example when discussing the Franks Casket, gold-and-garnet decoration or sword pyramids. First and foremost, The Perfect Sword is a public-facing book for general readers, utilising the Bamburgh sword as the central focus of the work. The text is highly accessible and peppered with historical episodes, explanations and comparanda that make for an engaging narrative. Due credit is given to scholarly work, and the names of those scholars or the research themes discussed can be found in the index, as no referencing system is used. Key topics and conclusions of research are brought to the attention of the reader to better understand the Bamburgh sword specifically, and swords more generally. Perhaps of greatest value to scholars are the descriptions of experimental archaeology, including smithing, and the observations offered on how swords were used and fit within early medieval Britain. Such gems are scattered throughout the text.","PeriodicalId":54160,"journal":{"name":"Medieval Archaeology","volume":"67 1","pages":"236 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48696203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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