Download PDF | [Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 24] David Petts, Sam Turner (eds.) - Early Medieval Northumbria_ Kingdoms and Communities, AD 450–1100, Brepols, 2011.
352 Pages
INTRODUCTION: NORTHUMBRIAN COMMUNITIES
The period from the fourth century until the twelfth century was one of profound social, economic, religious, and political change in northern England and southern Scotland. At the beginning of this era, central Britain was a border area, where the military frontier comprising Hadrian’s Wall and associated infrastructure marked the northern edge of the Roman Empire. In the centuries that followed the end of Roman political control, the north became an area of contested political and ethnic identities. The kingdom of Northumbria emerged from the unification of the kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia and the subsequent extension of direct and indirect control over surrounding polities.
Its direct power stretched from the North Sea in the east to the Irish Sea in the west, and from the Humber in the south to the Forth in the north; indirectly it claimed overlordship of polities in all neighbouring parts of Britain (Map 1). As with many early medieval kingdoms, however, the impact of Viking raids, military incursions, and subsequent settlement led to profound structural transformations. The power of the great kingdom faded; Northumbria’s fragmented successors came to be squeezed between the increasingly unified polities of England and Scotland. The AngloScottish warfare of the late tenth and eleventh centuries resulted in the region becoming a border area once more, this time between England and Scotland.
The heartland territories of northern Northumbria, whose territory had persisted for perhaps five hundred years, were then finally and irrevocably divided (Rollason 2003: 277). Hidden in this bald outline of events are many other key developments, including the establishment and spread of Christianity, the transformation of the landscape, the collapse and reintroduction of a monetary economy, and the rise of urbanism. Not surprisingly, these complex and multifaceted developments in the area between the Clyde and the Humber have attracted a wealth of scholarship over the last hundred years (e.g. Hawkes 2007, Hunter Blair 1976, Rollason 2003). It is equally unsurprising to find that the focus of this research is not evenly spread geographically, chronologically, or thematically. We explore further some of the reasons for this below, but they include the innate biases of the archaeological and textual records and wider national academic traditions and fashions.
The conference held in Newcastle in 2006 in which this volume has its origins addressed aspects of this imbalance, shedding new light on areas and periods which had previously been relatively understudied, but it also reconsidered well-trodden ground in the light of new understandings and approaches developed by archaeologists and historians of the early Middle Ages in northern Britain. There was an avowed multidisciplinary, indeed interdisciplinary, approach taken; whilst it is axiomatic that individual scholars will have different methodological skills and interests, it is clear that any study of the early Middle Ages that aims to integrate all available data will provide a far more textured and nuanced consideration than one that limits itself to a single line of enquiry. For the general public, and indeed for scholars, the defining image of early medieval Northumbria is that of its ‘Golden Age’ (Hawkes and Mills 1999). Broadly speaking, this was the period from the first spread of Christianity into the kingdom in the early seventh century until the first Viking raids in the late eighth century.
It is a period in which key religious developments coincide with the rapid political expansion of the kingdom from its core between the Humber and the Tweed both northwards and westwards. It is represented by a number of iconic individuals (Edwin, Oswald, Cuthbert, Wilfrid, Bede), sites (Lindisfarne, Bamburgh, Jarrow, Monkwearmouth, York), and artefacts (the Lindisfarne Gospels, the pectoral cross of St Cuthbert, ecclesiastical stone sculpture). It is readily apparent from this list that a key element of the popular story of this period is of the central role of Christianity in the kingdom. The ‘Golden Age’ retains a potent grasp on the modern imagination, whether refracted through the use of interlace on nineteenth- and twentieth-century burial monuments or the continued allure of the ‘Celtic Christianity’ believed to characterize religious practice before the Synod of Whitby.
The Lindisfarne Gospels, for example, possesses the ability to crystallize modern senses of identity in north-east England, whilst the ongoing campaign to have Monkwearmouth and Jarrow inscribed as a World Heritage Site on the basis of their connections with Bede is another sign of the continued significance of the Northumbrian past in the region. Many factors lie behind the evolution of this notion of a ‘Golden Age’ and its intimate relationship with the spread and growth of the Church. First, there are modern imperatives. The concept is at its strongest in the north-east, a region of England far from the modern political hub in south-east England, and one which has seen an extended period of industrial decline since the end of World War I. It is perhaps unsurprising that there has been interest in a time when the region was a major political unit and an internationally important centre for art and culture, even if the uses of ‘Northumbria’ have been vague and romanticized in the twentieth century (Vall 2007).
It is interesting to note that across the later medieval and modern border in southern Scotland, where the Picts and the rise of the Scottish kingdom provide alternative national historical narratives, there is far less interest in early medieval Northumbria. There are also important practical reasons behind the development of the seventh and eighth centuries as a focus for scholarship and research. It is hard to underestimate the central importance of the works of Bede in the writing of Northumbrian history. The Ecclesiastical History in particular provides the key narrative for the development of the kingdom up to c. AD 730. Whilst other sources, such as the Historia Brittonum and The Ruin of Britain supply complementary and sometimes differing versions of events, the works of Bede still form the core of all traditional histories of Northumbria. However, Bede’s geographical location (Jarrow) and his ecclesiastical context mean that his perspective has inevitable biases. Other key narrative sources, such as the Vita Wilfridi are also rooted firmly in the church of the Bernician/Deirian heartland. Combined, they provide a detailed historical narrative for the Middle Anglo-Saxon period in Northumbria that is lacking in earlier and later periods. The seventh and eighth centuries were also a period of economic wealth for the Northumbrian church, and an era that has left a profound impression on the surviving body of material culture.
The corpus of pre-Viking stone sculpture from northern England and southern Scotland is of international importance; like the historical sources, it is entirely derived from ecclesiastical contexts. The sculpture is not only of particular art-historical interest in its own right, but also acts as a fundamental source of evidence for recognizing the spread of the Anglo-Saxon church, and so it complements Bede and other sources. Ecclesiastical investment in material culture was not just limited to stone sculpture; the kingdom’s monasteries were also centres of manuscript production resulting in volumes such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Codex Amiatinus (Brown this volume). Finally, the importance of the Anglo-Saxon church for our understanding of Northumbria is reflected in the extent to which the archaeological record is dominated by well-excavated (and crucially, published) monastic sites, such as Monkwearmouth and Jarrow (Cramp 2005; 2006), Whithorn (Hill 1997), Hoddom (Lowe 2006), Hartlepool (Daniels 2007), and Ripon (Hall and Whyman 1996).
It is clear that compared to other major British kingdoms, our image of early medieval Northumbria comes primarily through an ecclesiastical lens. There is no question that whilst the Middle Anglo-Saxon period has attracted the most interest, there are certain areas and topics that remain under-researched. This is partly caused by significant lacunae in the available evidence. Although we have of a number of notable archaeological sites in northern Northumberland (e.g. Yeavering and Bamburgh Castle), and the extensively examined settlement at West Heslerton in North Yorkshire, very little excavation has been carried out on secular settlements, particularly those of low status (Hope-Taylor 1977; Powlesland 1998; Young 2003). Our understanding of the landscapes of Northumbria are frustrated by the virtual absence of pre-Conquest charters. Combined with the absence of surviving law codes, this means that developing an understanding of the mechanics of kingship is fraught with challenges, particularly when compared with kingdoms such as Wessex. More generally, both the historical and archaeological evidence is weaker for areas outside the core province, with the north-west of England and the central and eastern Scottish borders being particularly understudied.
The modern national border that runs across the heart of Northumbria has also influenced the research carried out on the early medieval kingdom. The presence of the border has both practical and conceptual implications, as can be seen clearly in the study of early medieval sculpture. The British Academy’s magisterial Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture has catalogued, illustrated, and analysed early medieval material from England but not Scotland. This means that whilst all the sculpture from the southern part of Northumbria has been published to a modern standard (or soon will be), the only corpus that covers the Scottish material is over one hundred years old (Bailey and Cramp 1988; Cramp 1984; Lang 1991; 2001; Romilly Allen and Anderson 1903). Though a recent publication included a gazetteer of ‘Pictish’ sculpture, ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘British’ sculpture from Scotland was not included (Fraser 2008). In addition to these practical issues, the presence of the modern border may influence the way in which the varied sculptural traditions between the Clyde and the Tyne are characterized. So-called Pictish sculpture is known from sites that are geographically south of such major Northumbrian centres as Lindisfarne and Bamburgh (e.g. Borthwick Mains, Scottish Borders) and Pictish influences can be seen clearly in so-called Anglo-Saxon sculpture from the upper Tweed valley at places like Jedburgh.
However, as the research communities studying Pictish and Anglo-Saxon sculpture have no great overlap, little consideration has been given to this issue. Few scholars have attempted to develop approaches that address material from both sides of the border (see Toop this volume). Besides appreciating these modern conceptual and practical challenges, it is also increasingly clear that communities across Northumbria differed from one another during the early Middle Ages. Although scholars use ‘Anglo-Saxon’ as a convenient shorthand to describe the society and culture during the early Middle Ages of what became England, it is clear that this was not a culturally homogeneous zone. Both between and within regions there could be differences in culture, politics, and the organization of society, which are made manifest in the surviving sources in many ways. Even in the Northumbrian heartlands, for example, it is clear that cultural landscapes which changed and developed over many centuries bore signs of their earlier heritage which would have made one region distinct from another. In this book, Mark Wood’s paper on Bernicia shows how distributions of early medieval place-names vary at quite localized scales, betraying their origins in different languages and administrative areas.
Whatever can be inferred about the early relationships between British and English speakers, these subtle variations would surely have affected the perception of these cultural landscapes even in the ‘Golden Age’. Likewise, different regions of Northumbria had different settlement patterns, tenurial structures, and ways of exploiting the physical landscape. The origins of these patterns are still being debated, and much that we can discern of medieval arrangements today may have its roots in the tenth or eleventh centuries (Roberts 2008). Nevertheless, it seems highly unlikely that there was ever uniformity all across the North: instead, the long-term inheritance of prehistory and the more immediate events of early medieval social and political life combined to create distinctive regional patterns within kingdoms. Likewise, we should not be surprised to find regional differences in material culture. The ‘namestones’ recently discussed by Robin Daniels (2007: 133–42) provide a clear example. The distribution of these small inscribed memorials is restricted to just six monasteries in the former kingdom of Bernicia.
Even though there is good documentary evidence for close links between some of these sites and monasteries elsewhere (e.g. Hartlepool and Whitby in North Yorkshire), there is no trace of namestones elsewhere in Northumbria (see also Carver this volume). Beyond this monastic milieu, the evidence of small finds shows that certain types of metal objects were used much more frequently in some regions than in others (Richards and Naylor this volume). Such regional differences in landscapes and material cultures are being recognized in many types of evidence, and new interpretations made that begin to explain differences within kingdoms and subregions in terms of economy, society, politics, and ideology (e.g. essays by Ashby, Carver, McClain, Richards and Naylor, Toop, and Wood this volume). The papers in this volume reflect an increased move towards looking at the region of Northumbria over the longue durée. Unlike much of the rest of England, the key debates linked to the history of fifth-century Northumbria are not dominated by assessing the extent and impact of Anglo-Saxon immigration. Instead, there is a developing interest in the nature of the Roman–early medieval transition (e.g Collins this volume; Wilmott and Wilson 2000), which reflects a wider interest in this period in British archaeology and history (e.g. Dark 2000; Faulkner 2000; Collins and Gerrard 2004; Esmonde Cleary 2001).
The relationship between the rump of the Roman state in the early fifth century, particularly the army, and emergent medieval kingdoms, such as Rheged, the Gododdin, and Bernicia, as well as more shadowy polities, such as Craven, are increasingly being problematized (e.g. McCarthy 2002; Wood 1996). It is apparent that the early social and political development of the region was not simply a story of the relationship between two ethnic groups, the Anglians and the British, but a far more diverse process involving also the Irish and the Picts. The collapse of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria under the impact of Viking raiding and settlement is another key stage in the region’s history. In most scholarship, the rise of the Viking kingdom of York has held centre stage in this process. The archaeological understanding of the city in this period is strong and has allowed us to develop a sophisticated understanding of York’s political, cultural, and economic transformation under its new Viking rulers (Hall this volume).
The ongoing publication of material from excavations at Coppergate and elsewhere in the region (e.g Cottam, Richards 1999) is allowing archaeologists to explore the material manifestations of Viking rule and the city’s integration into international trading networks (e.g. Ashby this volume). Even so, the archaeology of Anglo-Scandinavian Northumbria continues to be primarily understood through the lens of Jorvik. It might well be argued that these developments in the south-east of the kingdom are in fact atypical of the wider Northumbrian experience during the Viking period. The evidence of place-names, historical sources, and material culture is strongest from the area south of the Tees, although the wider distribution of stone sculpture showing Anglo-Scandinavian stylistic developments is of some help in understanding these changes.
The fact remains that we still understand little of the history or social and economic life of much of Northumbria in the later ninth and tenth centuries, with far fewer archaeological sites or textual sources available to illuminate this period. During the tenth and eleventh centuries the definition of the Anglo-Scottish border was an important process, although there is a strong argument for recognizing a common ‘border’ culture well into the post-Norman period and perhaps only ending in the sixteenth century. This was also the time when the administrative and tenurial frameworks that came to structure the region through much of the medieval period come into place. Although the lack of charter material, or even the Domesday Book, for most of Northumbria has meant that there may have been a reluctance to explore this aspect of the region’s development, there is an increased engagement with the existing material, combining the limited documentary resource with the testimony of the study of historic landscapes (Roberts 2008; Phythian-Adams 1996). This is allowing a renewed and critical eye to be cast upon the way in which land was held and organized, exploring such notions as ‘multiple estates’ and the small ‘shires’ (e.g. Norhamshire, Bedlingtonshire, Islandshire, Hexhamshire, Tynemouthshire, Heighingtonshire, and Staindropshire) that characterize much of northern England (O’Brien 2002; Winchester 2008).
As elsewhere in England, the tenth and eleventh centuries also witnessed the creation of a network of parishes. By integrating traditional documentary sources with the evidence derived from detailed studies of patterns of investment and patronage in sculpture and built structures (see McClain this volume), it is possible to begin to explore the negotiation between centralized authority and local agency in the creation of these networks of power. There are a number of reasons for this increased interest in wider aspects of the Northumbrian past. Firstly, not surprisingly, new and unexpected archaeological sites are being discovered and changing our understanding of the region. Some of these, such as the recent discovery of a spectacular seventh-century cemetery at Street House, Cleveland, will undoubtedly become iconic sites in their own right (Sherlock and Simmons 2008) (Figure 1). However, the most important aspect of the expansion of development-driven archaeology is not the identification of the high-status or the unique. Rather it is the fact that small-scale rural sites are being found, counteracting the bias towards the excavation of high-status and ecclesiastical sites. As commercial archaeology is driven by different imperatives to research archaeology, early medieval material is appearing in unexpected locations, such as the probable early medieval reuse of an Iron Age enclosure in the later first millennium AD at Bowburn (County Durham) or the continuity of activity into the Anglo-Saxon period found on the Roman villa at Quarry Farm, Ingleby Barwick (Teesside) (Figure 2).
Even well-studied cities such as York have benefitted from a growing number of archaeological interventions (Hall this volume). Going hand-in-hand with changes in the organization of archaeology are increasingly sophisticated field techniques. A good example of the potential of these developments is the appearance of sub-Roman and early medieval deposits on virtually every Roman fort along Hadrian’s Wall or in its hinterland that has been investigated in the last twenty years (e.g. Birdoswald, South Shields, Binchester, Vindolanda). Previous generations of archaeologists working on the same sites had usually failed to recognize the admittedly ephemeral remains of these periods and removed them in their enthusiasm to tackle the Roman deposits. Another key development has been the increased use of metal-detectors by hobbyists recovering a wide range of important artefactual material. The success of the Portable Antiquities Scheme has allowed the material recovered in this way to be adequately recorded, harnessing an important new source of information (Richards and Naylor this volume). Finally, the advent of new analytical techniques has allowed archaeologists to start asking increasingly subtle questions of existing data. For example, the isotopic analysis of bone chemistry has allowed patterns of migration and population movement to begin to be addressed with intriguing results (Groves this volume). Understandably, there have been no discoveries of new textual sources to compare with the new archaeological finds, although new editions of existing sources have been linked to major reassessments of their historical potential (e.g. the Gododdin, the Durham Liber Vitae, the historical works of Symeon of Durham: Koch 1997; Rollason 2000; 2004).
There has also been a developing integration between historical and archaeological approaches, with traditional divides being eroded as scholars are increasingly comfortable moving between textual and material sources (e.g Clark, Carver, and Brown this volume). However, one of the most important developments in the study of early medieval Northumbria has been an increasing willingness to look beyond the traditional confines of early medieval studies and bring a range of new, unfamiliar approaches to bear onto existing material (e.g. Walker, Clark, O’Brien, and Ferguson this volume). In this volume we have attempted to place the papers in an order which will bring out some of the key tendencies which have been explored above, namely the increased appreciation of the regionality in the study of Northumbria over the longue durée and the importance of material culture, not just to illustrate the history of the region, but as a means of explaining and analysing social, economic, and cultural change. Often within the world of early medieval studies, the divide between those working in academia and those working ‘in the trench’ is a strong one. One of the encouraging aspects of both the conference and this volume is that contributors have been drawn from both sides of this divide, emphasizing both the success academic research has had in percolating into the commercial world of archaeology, and also demonstrating the very real potential that fieldwork and other research driven by cultural resource management issues has for contributing directly to our wider understanding of the subject.
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