Stuart Brookes

Outside the gate: sub-urban legal practices in early medieval England

Many aspects of English early medieval (Anglo-Saxon) legal landscapes can be discerned in archaeological and toponymic evidence, ranging from the locations of legislative councils and judicial assemblies to sites of capital punishment. Among the corpus of such sites a striking group can be detected at the periphery of urban spaces. Gates into a number of towns appear to have functioned as legislative meeting-places, and even gave their names to some legally constituted communities, while suburban locations also feature prominently as sites of gallows and public punishment. In this paper historical, archaeological and toponymic evidence is used to examine this phenomenon of suburban legal practices and to pose questions about the wider dimensions of the early medieval legal landscape.

Identifying outdoor assembly sites in early medieval England

Abstract Venues of outdoor assembly are an important type of archaeological site. Using the example of early medieval (Anglo-Saxon; 5th–11th centuries a.d.) meeting places in England we describe a new multidisciplinary method for identifying and characterizing such sites. This method employs place name studies, field survey, and phenomenological approaches such as viewshed, sound-mark, and landscape character recording. While each site may comprise a unique combination of landscape features, it is argued that by applying criteria of accessibility, distinctiveness, functionality, and location, important patterns in the characteristics of outdoor assembly places emerge. Our observations relating to Anglo-Saxon meeting places have relevance to other ephemeral sites. Archaeological fieldwork can benefit greatly by a rigorous application of evidence from place name studies and folklore/oral history to the question of outdoor assembly sites. Also, phenomenological approaches are important in assessing the choice of assembly places by past peoples.

Governance at the Anglo-Scandinavian Interface: Hundredal Organization in the Southern Danelaw

Abstract It is a commonplace notion of Anglo-Saxon studies that by the 11th century, and perhaps very much earlier, English shires were subdivided into administrative territories known as “hundreds” or “wapentakes”. These units consisted of groups of vills brought together for fiscal, judicial, and other purposes, and were commonly named after their meeting-places—“moots”. Both these meeting-places and the administrative territories to which they belonged are the subject of a three-year interdisciplinary research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust—“Landscapes of Governance: Assembly Sites in England, 5th–11th Centuries”. Landscape analysis carried out by this project suggests that the hundredal pattern of eastern England as it existed in 1086 preserves a complex palimpsest of older and newer elements, reflecting its convoluted evolution. This paper describes evidence for the hundredal patterns of the southern Danelaw in order to consider the West Saxon, Mercian, and Scandinavian influences on the administrative landscape of this region.

Landscapes of defence in early medieval Europe

This volume is the result of a conference at University College London in 2007 which addressed the scale and form of civil defences in early medieval Europe, c. 800-1000.

Explaining Anglo-Saxon military efficiency: the landscape of mobilization

Abstract The importance of warfare in Anglo-Saxon England is widely accepted, but the processes by which armies were put in the field are only partially understood, with most discussion focusing on the economic logistics rather than the spatial practicalities of mobilization. Yet such a system underpinned recorded military actions and must have evolved in response to changing military organization in the late Anglo-Saxon period. Through an assessment of documentary references to sites of muster, and by using a multidisciplinary landscape-focused approach, this article examines possible traces of that system – especially those preserved in place-names – and relates them to later Anglo-Saxon administrative geography.

Fulham 878–79: a new consideration of Viking manoeuvres

This paper uses evidence from a variety of disciplines in order to re-evaluate an apparently enigmatic event reported in several early sources – the landing of a Viking force at Fulham in 878. It examines the vocabulary of written accounts of their activities, sets archaeological evidence for a military camp at the site within a wider context, and gives further consideration to the strategic background of that location within a military landscape. These combined approaches, it is argued, allow a more detailed picture of this Viking war-band and its military significance to emerge.