Session 1. Perceptions of landscape

In her paper Personal pasts: individualised and localised identities in Sussex in the early medieval period, Sarah Semple explored the re-use of prehistoric monuments in 5^th-7^th Sussex. 50-68% of early medieval burials in West Sussex were associated with ancient remains. Semple drew an important distinction between intrusive burial practices, where graves cut directly into the mounds of prehistoric barrows, as was the case often in Wiltshire, and the associative practices found more commonly in West Sussex, where graves clustered around, or adjacent to, a landscape feature. Using a number of case studies, she emphasised the diversity of landscape features with which such associations occurred, not just barrows but also hill forts, field boundaries and lynchets. These were often located in visually prominent locations, such as the escarpments and crests of hills, so that they marked territories. The site of Thunderbarrow, for example, containing both pre-medieval and early medieval burials, straddled a boundary, marking and legitimising it.  Contemporary sources. Such as the Life of St. Wilfrid, and place names both described and commemorated these ritual uses of landscape features. She argued that these choices and strategies relied on local knowledge of the landscape, so that those entering and moving through such areas would recognised the markers which symbolised the possession of territory. In this way, she suggested, the pattern both structured and reflected the large numbers of petty kingdoms and fragmented political structures of the period.

Sarah’s paper was followed by another concerned with antecedent landscapes, but in Medieval landscapes and the modern mind, Jon Finch explored the legacy of medieval landscapes in post-medieval estate landscapes, making a link between POMLAS and  another AHRC landscape and environment workshop on ‘Empire & landscape in the long 18^th century’. Finch compared and contrasted 18^th century depiction of landscapes in the West Indies, which showed idealised states with functional buildings and high status dwellings grouped below forests and hills, with contemporary paintings of English landed estates. He argued that

18^th-century towards the middle ages were complex: open fields were regarded as rather primitive and barbaric, evidence of the mindless repetition of practice in the face of a contemporary discourse of improvement and enclosure; however in the wake of the picturesque movement, contemporaries also sought to incorporate ‘ancient’ landscape features, such as ruins or deer parks, as elements of ‘Antiquity’ (rather than medieval features per se) within their estate landscapes. Using the example of Castle Howard (whose name evoked the previous settlement of Henderskelfe), Finch explore the 18^th-century visitors’ landscape experience of a number of medieval features, including ridge and furrow open fields, mock-Gothic battlements, the deer park and Ray Wood, a major survival of ancient woodland. He noted that woods were symbolic of a tamed, ordered, controlled landscape., which the 18^th century observers admired.  So antecedent landscapes might be kept, but with a changed meaning.

In the discussion, Mark Edmonds emphasised the importance of movement in and through the landscape as a significant way of thinking through issues of perception. David Austin questioned whether it was possible to recover the intention as well as the design which lay behind the manipulation of landscapes in these very different periods.

Session 2. Identity: cultural, regional and local

David Austin’s paper Representing perception and identity made explicit references to the AHRC Landscapes & Environment initiative, raising importance questions about the issues of perception and performance, and highlighting the ways in which academic constraints of discipline and discourse often prevented or discouraged more creative approaches to these topics. In order to grapple with medieval perceptions, he argued, it was necessary to consider the competing influences of Aristoteleian and Platonic thought, the latter of which proved more useful as a way of thinking through the plurality of meanings which past landscapes and their inhabitants might have experienced. Austin drew on recently-published work on Barnard Castle, which is a development of earlier attempts to communicate, not just verbally, but also graphically, the very different perceptions of the castle and its landscape of the lord, household servants, and peasants. He also explored the changing meanings of the castle over time, as it descended in significance through familial and dynastic change. Similarly, he used graphics to demonstrate how archaeologists might conceive of the peasants’ world view (houses, anuimals, artefacts, poaching) at Okehampton Park, a marginal settlement in Devon. IN both, Austin emphasised how issues of representation, rather than communication, often hampered attempts to engage fully with the range of perceptions and experiences of medieval communities. Finally, he ended with the case study of Strata Florida, Wales, where he explored first, how Welsh scholars were now beginning to acknowledge the diversity of past and present meanings of the locus of the Welsh language through the burial place of Dafydd, one of the greatest Welsh poets, whose memory was sustained not through inscription on a plaque, but rather through ‘inscribing practices’, and cultural memories. He showed slides of an artistic collaboration with Iwan Bala, a sculptor, whose art sought to explore the rhetorical power of illusion, and use artistic representation to convey complexity in the meanings of the site, both past and present.

In Identity in a Danelaw Village, Dawn Hadley  considered the sense of identity of the villagers of West Halton in Lincolnshire, between 700-1100. The village was sited on the edge of the wetlands south of the Humber, and near the edge of the wolds. She emphasised that its siting, and the panoramic views of the hills and the estuary, must have given the inhabitants a sense of living in a special place. Hadley explored the 7^th century origins of the estate, emphasising that rather than a neat parcelling up of the landscape, West Halton and its 7 neighbouring settlements were the result of complex processes of alienation, resulting in equally complex systems of lordship. Peasant obligations and interests therefore extended beyond the settlement itself, and Hadley questioned whether perceptions of the landscape would have varied with the social and legal status of the villagers – did sokemen have wider horizons than unfree peasants, for example?  Hadley also explore the complex archaeology of the site itself, noting at present that there was only equivocal evidence for a supposed early monastic foundation in the area, but that early medieval settlement features were, once again, associated with prehistoric barrows at the site. She concluded by emphasising the need to look carefully at both issues of continuity in occupation, but also at the ways in which earlier settlements and landscape features were re-worked by medieval communities, and at the different ritual practices, as well as socio-economic strategies, which archaeologists could recover.

The discussion was chaired by Tania Dickinson, during which Stephen Daniels asked about the wider landscape context of Lincolnshire, with interesting responses from Dawn Hadley, David Stocker and Richard Morris about the distinctiveness of the coastline and escarpments for the inhabitants of, and visitors to, the area.

Session 3. Inhabitation: buildings and artefacts

After lunch, David Stocker’s paper  'This Blessed Plot ... Churches in the landscape and the expression of Community’ focused on the ‘village moment’ within medieval settlement studies, arguing that although previous studies have placed emphasis on the social and economic context of this revolution in settlement patterns, it should also be considered in terms of ideology and power. He emphasized the ways in which landscapes of settlement were also religious landscapes, overlain with networks of religious foundations, especially parish churches. As an example of how this ‘landscape archaeology of religion’ could be studies, Stocker presented the work of a study (‘The common steeple’, Anglo-Norman Studies 2006), where he and Paul Everson (also a delegate at the conference) had carried out plan form analysis on 60 Lincolnshire churches in formerly nucleated settlements. This type of analysis (drawing on the work of C Taylor, after Conzen), identified 4 different types of component of villages: roads, holdings, open spaces and manorial curia and sought to explore the chronology and pattern of foundation. The results were surprising. They challenged traditional assumptions that churches were always founded by manors: only in 42% of cases were churches directly associated with manorial enclosures, and only in a minority of cases were they part of the curia or court itself.  13 of the 60 churches occupied a position at the gates of manorial centres, between peasant holdings and the manor court (and in 5 of these, the church seemed to have been founded prior to the manor). In 31% of cases the church was not associated with the manor, but rather with the open space or green in the centre of settlements; spaces associated with the location of other communal facilities such as the pound, pond and dunghill. Importantly, Stocker argued that in these examples, research also revealed a large number of sokemen at Domesday, suggesting that perhaps these groups of influential peasants were the key players in the founding of churches. Rectories were often also established alongside these churches, and in later periods the rectors themselves often claimed ownership of the church. Finally, Stocker emphasized the significance of burial rites as one of the significant factors in the foundation of settlements and churches. He reminded delegates that the communal dead were considered part of the community in canon law, and cited examples of burials being moved with settlements as evidence for the central role played by such communities in the ritual aspects of the ‘village moment’.

In his paper, Dress and identity in post-Conversion England: New Artefactual Perspectives, Gabor Thomas explored how metalwork (particlarly strap ends, buckles, brooches) was used to forge new indigenous and continental aspects of identity in 7^th – 10^th century England. Here, he was drawing both on published assemblages and the evidence now emerging from metal detector finds, through PAS. Thomas questioned whether the designs of jewellery reflected the identity of their owners or wearers, particularly whether such identities were overtly English, or Scandinavian. He explored the apparent disparity between Scandinavian place-name evidence and metalwork finds. The most ‘faithful’ Scandinavian-influenced metalwork was often associated with high status, elite identity but elsewhere, metalwork may have been used to smooth over cultural differences. This evidence mitigated against the idea of a dichotomy between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian culture. In addition, Thomas argued that the influence of Carolingian culture in these locales has been underestimated. In some cases, these Carolingian-influenced items were appropriated and worn quite differently, such as the martial sets worn in Scandinavia as female jewellery. A wide range of artefacts, including brooches, martial sets and coins, was increasingly suggesting evidence not only for trading communities but also insular production, on the east coast. He questioned what kinds of associations might have been triggered by the wearing of these items, emphasising the importance of strong regional differences in the 10^th and 11^th centuries. Thomas also concluded by emphasising the need to compare the material strategies of these communities with the apparent downturn in the use of precious metalwork, identified by Hinton for the later medieval period.

In discussion, there was a lively debate about the relationships between the communities of the living and the dead, not simply during the village moment, but also towards the end of the medieval period, post-Reformation. Discussion also revolved around the issue of the influence of Carolingian material culture and trading as well as cultural relations in north-west Europe in the period. In addition, delegates were asked to think through the issues of gender relations with regard to the appropriation and performative aspects of wearing metalwork.

Session 4. Communication and contact

In the final pair of papers, Andrew Reynolds’ Communication and contact: a landscape approach tackled the difficult issue of communication. Rather than studying this through sites and ‘dots on maps’ or the distribution of finds, he argued that archaeologists need to think about connections within the landscape; reconstructing the itineraries and movement of people through landscapes and how landscape features, such as Wansdyke (Wodin’s dyke) was  imbued with significance through its naming. In order to study medieval communication routes, Reynolds argued that we needed to appreciate the significance of smaller networks of paths and roads, and visual connections. These were not always stratightforward; using the example of Alfred’s calling together of the men from 7 shires, he showed how beacons, placed strategically on site lines between Yatesbury, Silbury and Totterdown provided a means of communication between Avebury and Marlborough, which were not connected visually themselves. These site lines gave archaeologists clues as to the location of smaller roads and herepaths, along which medieval inhabitants might have moved more regularly than the surviving Roman Roads on which scholars tend to focus. These paths often contained waymarkers imbued with associations including prehistoric monuments called ‘Wodin’s barrow’ or ‘Adam’s grave’, or sites of battles embedded in cultural memories and boundaries engrained in charters. Reynolds also emphasised the importance of places of gathering and public assembly, arguing that such meetings were themselves a way of constructing and constituting communities and society at the local level and by the local people, rather than simply the elite. Once again, the names of such sites are clues to their meaning – Swanborough Stump for example, translates as ‘barrow mound of the people’. Finally, Reynolds asked us to consider not only the processes by which places were remembered, but also how aspects of Anglo-Saxon settlements could be ‘forgotten’. The ephemerality of such meeting places could be illustrated by recent work at Saltwood in Kent. Here a cemetery on a significant landscape boundary had been used as a meeting place, the only evidence for which was a series of small pits used for the pitching of tents.

In the last paper of the workshop, Matt Townend’s 'Languages, naming and identity in eleventh-century Yorkshire' used a Trondheim poem of the sacred nail to emphasise the linguistic complexity of the 11^th century, emphasising the ways in which, for example in Yorkshire, Latin, Norse and Old English were part of a cultural mix of languages, used for different purposes at different times. In this context, he asked what scholars might deduce about the significance of a Norse surname? Townend argued that Scandinavian names were not chosen at random. Rather, personal naming was a conservative practice, where children were named after parents or grand parents, and rarely after outsiders, even kings. Therefore he argued that the use of a Scandinavian names can be taken as evidence of a direct connection with Scandinavia.  Old Norse personal names are found in considerable number in Domesday throughout the country, but they were in a minority in the SW (15% in Dorset) but in a clear majority in Yorkshire (70 %). Examples from the York Gospel’s festermen provided similar evidence. Townend concluded that contemporaries were aware of linguistic differences in their naming practices, which provide evidence for regional and local differences, rather than fashion, Such practices were constrained within the contexts of family and community but they were clearly a matter of distinct identity and pride, since the Domesday elite retained such affiliations in the late 11^th century.

In discussion questions returned to the issues of Roman roads, and parallels between Townend’s findings and Welsh naming practices were noted by Austin. The revolution of the 12^th century onwards, where Norman and especially Biblical names and hereditary surnames emerged, was also discussed. Indeed, some individuals changed their names during this period.

Conclusion.

In the concluding discussion, Stephen Daniels drew attention to three themes: performance, mobility and memory, which were the subject of the AHRC Landscape and Environment programme theme, and which many of the papers had considered during the day. He asked delegates to consider landscape both as an analytical framework, to be studied through topography and spatial analysis and as a cultural sensibility of people in the past. He suggested that moving from one to the other was one of the greatest challenges faced by scholars.

Saturday Field Trip: Wharram Percy and Burdale

The following day about 15 delegates attended the field trip to Wharram Percy, where Paul Stamper (English Heritage) and Al Oswald (English Heritage) provided a fascinating tour and discussion about the site, its excavation and re-interpretation, in the light of recent EH geophysical and topographical survey. Julian Richards and David Stocker added their thoughts and ideas in what was a fascinating continuation of many of the debates aired during the conference. After lunch, delegates continued to Burdale, where Julian Richards presented the results of a 2-year University of York project, highlighting the difficulty of interpreting a site regularly raided by nighthawks, and presenting some of the finds for analysis and discussion.