The study of early medieval towns has frequently concentrated on urban beginnings, the search for broadly applicable definitions of urban characteristics and the chronological development of towns. Far less attention has been paid to the experience of living in towns. The thirteen chapters in this book bring together the current state of knowledge about Viking-Age towns (c. 800–1100) from both sides of the Irish Sea, focusing on everyday life in and around these emerging settlements. What was it really like to grow up, live, and die in these towns? What did people eat, what did they wear, and how did they make a living for themselves? Although historical sources are addressed, the emphasis of the volume is overwhelmingly archaeological, paying homage to the wealth of new material that has become available since the advent of urban archaeology in the 1960s.
Author(s): Dawn M. Hadley, Letty ten Harkel (eds.)
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Year: 2013
Language: English
Pages: 240
City: Oxford
Locations of places referred to in the volume drawn by Letty ten Harkel iv
Preface / D. M. Hadley and Letty ten Harkel vii
Section 1: Introductions
1. Living in Viking-Age towns / David Griffiths 1
2. Towns and identities in Viking England / Gareth Williams 14
3. Viking Dublin: enmities, alliances and the cold gleam of silver / Emer Purcell and John Sheehan 35
Section 2: Constructing and experiencing urban landscapes
4. Beyond 'longphuirt'? Life and death in early Viking-Age Ireland / Stephen H. Harrison 61
5. From country to town: social transitions in Viking-Age housing / Rebecca Boyd 73
6. Childhood in Viking and Hiberno-Scandinavian Dublin, 800–1100 / Deirdre McAlister 86
7. Whither the warrior in Viking-Age towns? / D. M. Hadley 103
8. Aristocrats, burghers and their markets: patterns in the foundation of Lincoln’s urban churches / David Stocker 119
Section 3: Urban trades and activities
9. More than just meat: animals in Viking-Age towns / Kristopher Poole 144
10. No pots please, we’re Vikings: pottery in the southern Danelaw, 850–1000 / Paul Blinkhorn 157
11. Of towns and trinkets: metalworking and metal dress-accessories in Viking-Age Lincoln / Letty ten Harkel 172
12. Making a good comb: mercantile identity in 9th- to 11th-century England / Steven P. Ashby 193
13. Craft and handiwork: wood, antler and bone as an everyday material in Viking-Age Waterford and Cork / Maurice F. Hurley 209
