The Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Southern Britain AD 450-650: Beneath the Tribal Hidage - Hardcover

Harrington, Sue; Welch, Martin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1782976124 ISBN 13: 9781782976127

Publisher: Oxbow Books, 2014

Synopsis

The Tribal Hidage, attributed to the 7th century, records the named groups and polities of early Anglo-Saxon England and the taxation tribute due from their lands and surpluses. Whilst providing some indication of relative wealth and its distribution, rather little can be deduced from the Hidage concerning the underlying economic and social realities of the communities documented. Sue Harrington and the late Martin Welch have adopted a new approach to these issues, based on archaeological information from 12,000 burials and 28,000 objects of the period AD 450650. The nature, distribution and spatial relationships of settlement and burial evidence are examined over time against a background of the productive capabilities of the environment in which they are set, the availability of raw materials, evidence for metalworking and other industrial/craft activities, and communication and trade routes. This has enabled the identification of central areas of wealth that influenced places around them. Key within this period was the influence of the Franks who may have driven economic exploitation by building on the pre-existing Roman infrastructure of the south-east. Frankish material culture was as widespread as that of the Kentish people, whose wealth is evident in many well-furnished graves, but more nuanced approaches to wealth distribution are apparent further to the West, perhaps due to ongoing interaction with communities who maintained an essentially Romano-British way of life.

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Review:

Sue Harrington has [...] done scholars a great service bringing to publication a study of interest, as much for the future directions it suggests, as for its results., British Archaeology 11/08/2015

Perhaps the time has come for Roman and Anglo-Saxon archaeologists to begin a more productive dialogue, and this book will in future be seen as a crucial step towards that conversation. Early Anglo-Saxon Britain deserves more than artifact typologies and a focus on burials. This book goes a long way to redressing the balance and providing a wider way of looking at the evidence. We can only hope that someone will seek to do for other parts of Anglo-Saxon England what this book has done for the far south., Speculum 13/10/2015

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1782976124
• ISBN 13: 9781782976127
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240