New insights into inscribed and stone monuments from across Europe in the early middle ages. Often fragmented and without context, early medieval inscribed and sculpted stone monuments of the fifth to eleventh centuries AD have been mainly studied via their shape, their decoration and the texts a fraction of them bear. This book, investigating stone monuments from Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia (including the important memorials at Iniscealtra, County Clare), advocates three relatively new, distinctive and interconnected approaches to the lithic heritage of the early Middle Ages. Building on recent theoretical trends in archaeology and material culture studies in particular, it uses the themes of materiality, biography and landscape to reveal how carved stones created senses of identity and history for early medieval communities and kingdom. An extensive introduction and eight chapters span the disciplines of history, art-history and archaeology, exploring how shaping stone in turn shaped and re-shaped early medieval societies.
Author(s): Howard Williams, Joanne Kirton, Meggen Gondek (eds.)
Series: Boydell Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, 6
Publisher: The Boydell Press
Year: 2015
Language: English
Pages: 294
City: Woodbridge
List of Illustrations ix
List of Tables xiii
Acknowledgements xiv
1. Introduction: Stones in Substance, Space and Time / Howard Williams, Joanne Kirton and Meggen Gondek 1
2. Locating the Cleulow Cross: Materiality, Place and Landscape / Joanne Kirton 35
3. Walking Down Memory Lane: Rune-Stones as Mnemonic Agents in the Landscapes of Late Viking-Age Scandinavia / Ing-Marie Back Danielsson 62
4. Building Blocks: Structural Contexts and Carved Stones in Early Medieval Northern Britain / Meggen Gondek 87
5. Memory, Belief and Identity: Remembering the Dead on Iniscealtra, Co. Clare / Clíodhna O’Leary 114
6. The Biographies and Audiences of Late Viking-Age and Medieval Stone Crosses and Cross-Decorated Stones in Western Norway / Iris Crouwers 149
7. Lifeways in Stone: Memories and Matter-Reality in Early Medieval Sculpture from Scotland / Mark A. Hall 182
8. A Stone in Time: Saving Lost Medieval Memories of Irish Stone Monuments / Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh 216
9. Hogbacks: the Materiality of Solid Spaces / Howard Williams 241
List of Contributors 269
Index 271
