Sarah Semple

A fear of the past: the place of the prehistoric burial mound in the ideology of middle and later Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract Archaeological investigation is revealing a consistent tradition of Anglo‐Saxon secondary activity, occurring at Bronze Age burial mounds and Neolithic long barrows. Through a discussion of archaeological, historical, literary and linguistic sources relating to barrows and other types of prehistoric monument, this paper seeks to illustrate the distinctive place of the barrow in Anglo‐Saxon society and ideology. It is intended to demonstrate that the written material of the period contains vital evidence of the Anglo‐Saxon peoples’ perception of their surrounding landscape.

Perceptions of the prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England : religion, ritual and rulership in the landscape.

Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England represents an unparalleled exploration of the place of prehistoric monuments in the Anglo-Saxon psyche, and examines how Anglo-Saxon communities perceived and used these monuments during the period AD 400-1100. Sarah Semple employs archaeological, historical, art historical, and literary sources to study the variety of ways in which the early medieval population of England used the prehistoric legacy in the landscape, exploring it from temporal and geographic perspectives. Key to the arguments and ideas presented is the premise that populations used these remains, intentionally and knowingly, in the articulation and manipulation of their identities: local, regional, political, and religious. They recognized them as ancient features, as human creations from a distant past. They used them as landmarks, battle sites, and estate markers, giving them new Old English names. Before, and even during, the conversion to Christianity, communities buried their dead in and around these monuments. After the conversion, several churches were built in and on these monuments, great assemblies and meetings were held at them, and felons executed and buried within their surrounds. This volume covers the early to late Anglo-Saxon world, touching on funerary ritual, domestic and settlement evidence, ecclesiastical sites, place-names, written sources, and administrative and judicial geographies. Through a thematic and chronologically-structured examination of Anglo-Saxon uses and perceptions of the prehistoric, Semple demonstrates that populations were not only concerned with Romanitas (or Roman-ness), but that a similar curiosity and conscious reference to and use of the prehistoric existed within all strata of society.

Assembly in North West Europe: Collective Concerns for Early Societies?

AbstractThe archaeological study of assembly practices in the medieval west is often met with scepticism. The reliance on late documentary records and place-names, and the difficulties inherent in defining what actually constituted an ‘assembly’, are just some of the issues that face researchers. This paper brings together some of the first collated and excavated evidence by the HERA TAP project, and offers a cross-European perspective, drawing attention to the great variety of systems and types of structure created for the purpose of assembly in the late prehistoric and medieval eras. Selected case studies emphasize the chronological variations in the inception and life-span of assembly places and underline the diverse relationships of designated assembly sites to pre-existing landscapes, resource patterns, and social structures. Connections between the ‘architecture’ and location of these sites, and their role in the creation, maintenance, and signalling of collective identities are suggested.

Illustrations of damnation in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

‘Many tribulations and hardships shall arise in this world before its end, and they are heralds of the eternal perdition to evil men, who shall afterwards suffer eternally in the black hell for their sins.’ These words, composed by Ælfric in the last decade of the tenth century, reflect a preoccupation in the late Anglo-Saxon Church with perdition and the infernal punishments that awaited sinners and heathens. Perhaps stimulated in part by anxiety at the approach of the millennium, both Ælfric and Wulfstan (archbishop of York, 1002–23) show an overt concern with the continuation of paganism and the evil deeds of mankind in their sermons and homilies. Their works stress the terrible judgement that awaited sinners and heathens and the infernal torment to follow. The Viking raids and incursions, during the late eighth to ninth and late tenth centuries, partially inspired the great anxiety apparent in the late Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical leadership. Not only were these events perceived as divine punishment for a lack of religious devotion and fervour in the English people, but the arrival of Scandinavian settlers in the late ninth century may have reintroduced pagan practice and belief into England.

B.I.E.A. Excavations at Aksum, Northern Ethiopia, 1995

This paper describes the results of the first two seasons of fieldwork at Aksum, Northern Ethiopia, particularly the excavation of a middle rank settlement of the Aksumite period.

Assembly Mounds in the Danelaw: Place-name and Archaeological Evidence in the Historic Landscape

Abstract The mound as a focus for early medieval assembly is found widely throughout Northern Europe in the first millennium AD. Some have argued such features are evidence of early practices situated around places of ancestral importance, others that an elite need for legitimate power drove such adoptions. Elsewhere evidence for purpose-built mounds suggests they were intrinsic to the staging of events at an assembly and could be manufactured if needed. This paper builds on the results presented in the Ph.D. thesis of the first author. Here we take up the issue of meeting mounds, focusing on their role as sites of assembly in the Danelaw. This region of northern and eastern England was first documented in the early 11th century as an area subject to conquest and colonization from Scandinavia in the 9th century and beyond. The county of Yorkshire forms a case study within which we explore the use of the mound for assembly purposes, the types of monuments selected, the origins of these monuments and the activity at them, and finally the possible Scandinavian influences on assembly practices in the region.