Beyond the Burghal Hidage

Beyond the Burghal Hidage PDF

Author: John Baker

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2013-03-27

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 9004246053

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As the title suggests, Beyond the Burghal Hidage takes the study of Anglo-Saxon civil defence away from traditional historical and archaeological fields, and uses a groundbreaking interdisciplinary approach to examine warfare and public responses to organised violence through their impact on the landscape. By bringing together the evidence from a wide range of archaeological, onomastic and historical sources, the authors are able to reconstruct complex strategic and military landscapes, and to show how important detailed knowledge of early medieval infrastructure and communications is to our understanding of Anglo-Saxon preparedness for war, and to the situating of major defensive works within their wider strategic context. The result is a significant and far-reaching re-evaluation of the evolution of late Anglo-Saxon defensive arrangements. Winner of the 2013 Verbruggen prize, given annually by De Re Militari society for the best book on medieval military history.

Danes in Wessex

Danes in Wessex PDF

Author: Ryan Lavelle

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2015-11-30

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1782979344

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There have been many studies of the Scandinavians in Britain, but this is the first collection of essays to be devoted solely to their engagement with Wessex. New work on the early Middle Ages, not least the excavations of mass graves associated with the Viking Age in Dorset and Oxford, drew attention to the gaps in our understanding of the wider impact of Scandinavians in areas of Britain not traditionally associated with them. Here, a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to the problems of their study is presented. While there may not have been the same degree of impact, discernible particularly in place-names and archaeology, as in those areas of Britain which had substantial influxes of Scandinavian settlers, Wessex was a major theater of the Viking wars in the reigns of Alfred and Æthelred Unræd. Two major topics, the Viking wars and the Danish landowning elite, figure strongly in this collection but are shown not to be the sole reasons for the presence of Danes, or items associated with them, in Wessex. Multidisciplinary approaches evoke Vikings and Danes not just through the written record, but through their impact on real and imaginary landscapes and via the objects they owned or produced. The papers raise wider questions too, such as when did aggressive Vikings morph into more acceptable Danes, and what issues of identity were there for natives and incomers in a province whose founders were believed to have also come from North Sea areas, if not from parts of Denmark itself? Readers can continue for themselves aspects of these broader debates that will be stimulated by this fascinating and significant series of studies by both established scholars and new researchers.

Alfred's Wars

Alfred's Wars PDF

Author: Ryan Lavelle

Publisher: Boydell Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 1843837390

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"Although this book provides a selection from sources and interpretations of warfare in Viking-Age England, and presents a consideration of them, it is more than a purely historiographical study. It investigates the current state of scholarship and the key points of its development, indicating areas for enquiry and point out some less familiar sources along the way. The intention is not to deal with the canon of historical works on the Anglo-Saxon army, for remarkably there is no 'canon' as such. Much, though by no means all, scholarship on the organization of military systems in the Anglo-Saxon state has been undertaken by historians and scholars from related disciplines for whom warfare is not a primary concern. Many of the sources used will be familiar to students of early medieval England, but others are included because they are less often considered ... I have not attempted to use a chronological structure, nor have I retold any particular narrative history of the English Kingdom during the Viking Age, although for the reader's convenience a chronology of events is included as an appendix. The focus is rather the exploration of the practice and politics of warfare."--Preface.

Writing Battles

Writing Battles PDF

Author: Máire Ní Mhaonaigh

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-05-14

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 178673625X

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Battles have long featured prominently in historical consciousness, as moments when the balance of power was seen to have tipped, or when aspects of collective identity were shaped. But how have perspectives on warfare changed? How similar are present day ideologies of warfare to those of the medieval period? Looking back over a thousand years of British, Irish and Scandinavian battles, this significant collection of essays examines how different times and cultures have reacted to war, considering the changing roles of religion and technology in the experience and memorialisation of conflict. While fighting and killing have been deplored, glorified and everything in between across the ages, Writing Battles reminds us of the visceral impact left on those who come after.

The Medieval Way of War

The Medieval Way of War PDF

Author: Gregory I. Halfond

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-09

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1317024184

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Few historians have argued so forcefully or persuasively as Bernard S. Bachrach for the study of warfare as not only worthy of scholarly attention, but demanding of it. In his many publications Bachrach has established unequivocally the relevance of military institutions and activity for an understanding of medieval European societies, polities, and mentalities. In so doing, as much as any scholar of his generation, he has helped to define the status quaestionis for the field of medieval military history. The Medieval Way of War: Studies in Medieval Military History in Honor of Bernard S. Bachrach pays tribute to its honoree by gathering in a single volume seventeen original studies from an international roster of leading experts in the military history of medieval Europe. Ranging chronologically from Late Antiquity through the Later Middle Ages (ca. AD 300-1500), and with a broad geographical scope stretching from the British Isles to the Middle East, these diverse studies address an array of critical themes and debates relevant to the conduct of war in medieval Europe. These themes include the formation and implementation of military grand strategies; the fiscal, material, and administrative resources that underpinned the conduct of war in medieval Europe; and religious, legal, and artistic responses to military violence. Collectively, these seventeen studies embrace the interdisciplinarity and topical diversity intrinsic to Bachrach’s research. Additionally, they strongly echo his conviction that the study of armed conflict is indispensable for an accurate and comprehensive understanding of medieval European history.

The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century

The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century PDF

Author: George Molyneaux

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-11-03

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0192542931

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The central argument of The Formation of the English Kingdom in the Tenth Century is that the English kingdom which existed at the time of the Norman Conquest was defined by the geographical parameters of a set of administrative reforms implemented in the mid- to late tenth century, and not by a vision of English unity going back to Alfred the Great (871-899). In the first half of the tenth century, successive members of the Cerdicing dynasty established a loose domination over the other great potentates in Britain. They were celebrated as kings of the whole island, but even in their Wessex heartlands they probably had few means to routinely regulate the conduct of the general populace. Detailed analysis of coins, shires, hundreds, and wapentakes suggests that it was only around the time of Edgar (957/9-975) that the Cerdicing kings developed the relatively standardised administrative apparatus of the so-called 'Anglo-Saxon state'. This substantially increased their ability to impinge upon the lives of ordinary people living between the Channel and the Tees, and served to mark that area off from the rest of the island. The resultant cleft undermined the idea of a pan-British realm, and demarcated the early English kingdom as a distinct and coherent political unit. In this volume, George Molyneaux places the formation of the English kingdom in a European perspective, and challenges the notion that its development was exceptional: the Cerdicings were only one of several ruling dynasties around the fringes of the former Carolingian Empire for which the late ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries were a time of territorial expansion and consolidation.

Peasant Perceptions of Landscape

Peasant Perceptions of Landscape PDF

Author: Stephen Mileson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0192894897

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Peasant Perceptions of Landscape marks a change in the discipline of landscape history, as well as making a major contribution to the history of everyday life. Until now, there has been no sustained analysis of how ordinary medieval and early modern people experienced and perceived their material environment and constructed their identities in relation to the places where they lived. This volume provides exactly such an analysis by examining peasant perceptions in one geographical area over the long period from AD 500 to 1650. The study takes as its focus Ewelme hundred, a well-documented and archaeologically-rich area of lowland vale and hilly Chiltern wood-pasture comprising fourteen ancient parishes. The analysis draws on a range of sources including legal depositions and thousands of field-names and bynames preserved in largely unpublished deeds and manorial documents. Archaeology makes a major contribution, particularly for understanding the period before 900, but more generally in reconstructing the fabric of villages and the framework for inhabitants' spatial practices and experiences. In its focus on the way inhabitants interacted with the landscape in which they worked, prayed, and socialised, Peasant Perceptions of Landscape supplies a new history of the lives and attitudes of the bulk of the rural population who so seldom make their mark in traditional landscape analysis or documentary history.

Early medieval militarisation

Early medieval militarisation PDF

Author: Ellora Bennett

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1526138646

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The societies of ancient Europe underwent a continual process of militarisation, and this would come to be a defining characteristic of the early Middle Ages. The process was neither linear nor mono-causal, but it affected society as a whole, encompassing features like the lack of demarcation between the military and civil spheres of the population, the significance attributed to weapons beyond their military function and the wide recognition of martial values. Early medieval militarisation assembles twenty studies that use both written and archaeological evidence to explore the phenomenon of militarisation and its impact on the development of the societies of early medieval Europe. The interdisciplinary investigations break new ground and will be essential reading for scholars and students of related fields, as well as non-specialists with an interest in early medieval history.

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