A01=Catherine Hills
A01=Jonathan Scheschkewitz
A01=Martin Carver
Anglo-Saxon Pots
Anglo-Saxon Site
Author_Catherine Hills
Author_Jonathan Scheschkewitz
Author_Martin Carver
Burial Mounds
Category=NK
Common Inheritance
Cremations
Cultural Diversity
England's Beginnings
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Political Choices
Religious Choices
Roman-British Agricultural Enclosure
Western Britain
Product details
- ISBN 9781843834274
- Weight: 1728g
- Dimensions: 217 x 280mm
- Publication Date: 19 Feb 2009
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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The newest research on a major Anglo-Saxon site paints a vivid picture of the beginnings of England.
[Edited by Martin Carver] For decades scholars have puzzled over the true story of settlement in Britain between the fifth and eight centuries. Did the Romans leave? Did the Anglo-Saxons invade? What happened to the British? Newlight on these questions comes unexpectedly from Wasperton, a small village on the Warwickshire Avon, where archaeologists had the good fortune to excavate a complete cemetery and its prehistoric setting. The community reused an old Romano-British agricultural enclosure, and built burial mounds beside it. There was a score of cremations in Anglo-Saxon pots; but there were also unfurnished graves lined with stones and planks in the manner of western Britain.
In a pioneering analysis, including radiocarbon and stable isotopes, the authors of this book have put this variety of burial practice into a credible sequence, and built up a picture of life at the time. Here there were people who were culturally Roman, British and Anglo-Saxon, pagan and Christian in continuous use of the same graveyard and drawing on a common inheritance. Here we can see the beginnings of England and the people who made it happen- not the kings, warriors and preachers, but the ordinary folk obliged to make their own choices: choices about what nation to build and which religion to follow.
MARTIN CARVER is Professor Emeritus of Archaeology at the University of York; Dr CATHERINE HILLS is Senior Lecturer in Anglo-Saxon Archaeology at the University of Cambridge; Dr JONATHAN SCHESCHKEWITZ is Officer with the Ancient Monuments authority of Stuttgart.
MARTIN CARVER has been publishing with Boydell since 1993, and is one of the leading archaeologists in Britain, and indeed Europe. He was professor at York from 1986 to 2008. He has been responsible for most of the excavations at Sutton Hoo since the 1970s.
