Responding to renewed interest in the powerful early medieval kingdom of Northumbria, this volume uses evidence drawn from archaeology, documentary history, place-names, and artistic works to produce an unashamedly cross-disciplinary body of scholarship that addresses all aspects of Northumbria's past. Northumbria at its peak stretched from the River Humber to the Scottish highlands and westwards to the Irish Sea, producing saints, kings, and scholars with contacts across Europe, from Scandinavia, Ireland, and Francia to Rome itself. This volume unites papers on all aspects of this major European power of its day, from its origins in the fifth and sixth centuries from British and Anglo-Saxon chiefdoms, through its "Golden Age" as eighth-century Europe's intellectual powerhouse, to its role as a key element of an international Viking kingdom. Where traditional scholarship has centred on the ecclesiastical high culture of the age of Bede, this work examines the kingdom's social and economic life and its origins and decline as well. There is a stress on approaching established bodies of material from new perspectives and engaging with wider debates in the field, including monumentality, the development of kingships, and the evolution of the early Church. Areas investigated include the kingdom's political history, its economy and society, and its wider place within Europe. Its unique artistic legacy, in the form of illuminated manuscripts and a rich sculptural tradition, is also explored.
Author(s): David Petts, Sam Turner (eds.)
Series: Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 24
Publisher: Brepols
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: XIV+334
List of Contributors vii
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction: Northumbrian Communities / DAVID PETTS AND SAM TURNER 1
Part 1. Regions and Places
Military Communities and Transformation of the Frontier from the Fourth to the Sixth Centuries / ROB COLLINS 15
Bernician Transitions: Place-Names and Archaeology / MARK WOOD 35
Recent Research into Early Medieval York and its Hinterland / R. A. HALL 71
Northumbria in the West: Considering Interaction Through Monumentality / NICOLA J. TOOP 85
Thinking about Western Northumbria / FELICITY H. CLARK 113
Settlement, Landscape, and Economy in Early Medieval Northumbria: The Contribution of Portable Antiquities / JULIAN D. RICHARDS AND JOHN NAYLOR 129
Local Churches and the Conquest of the North: Elite Patronage and Identity in Saxo-Norman Northumbria / ALEKSANDRA McCLAIN 151
Plates 179
Part 2. Identities and Material Culture
Intellectual Communities in Early Northumbria / MARTIN CARVER 185
Yeavering and Bernician Kingship: A Review of Debate on the Hybrid Culture Thesis / COLM O’BRIEN 207
The Recursive Structuring of Space: Socio-political and Religious Performance in the Hall / JENNY WALKER 221
Social and Biological Status in the Bowl Hole Early Medieval Burial Ground, Bamburgh, Northumberland / SARAH GROVES 241
"Excavating" Northumbrian Manuscripts: Reappraising Regionalism in Insular Manuscript Production / MICHELLE P. BROWN 267
Re-evaluating Early Medieval Northumbrian Contacts and the "Coastal Highway" / CHRISTOPHER FERGUSON 283
A Study in Regionality: Hair Combs and Bone/Antler Craft in North-east England c. AD 800–1100 / STEVEN P. ASHBY 303
Index 321
