This thesis will address a question which is fundamental to our understanding of the period: was there a money economy in Anglo-Saxon and early Norman England? This question has been asked often enough before, but currently the literature does not afford a satisfactory answer, principally because the relevant historical and numismatic evidence has never been systematically assembled and analysed. The object of my research will be to make good this gap. It will seek to establish how, by whom, and in what circumstances coins were − and were not − used in England between the reigns of King Athelstan and King Henry I (924−1135). The thesis will build on substantial secondary literature on the early English economy. However, what this literature lacks is a comprehensive analysis of the documentary evidence which reveals how money was actually used and what it could and could not buy. One major strand of this thesis will be to examine this material systematically to demonstrate the value of monetary equivalents and small-scale transactions in the period before 1135. Secondly, there is abundant numismatic material in the form of single coin finds and coin hoards, which affords more specific evidence of how money was actually used. The other major element of my thesis will therefore be to assemble,collate and analyse this material, in order to facilitate more precise and penetrating analysis of such finds. The combination of approaches proposed here will make possible to form a more precise understanding of how money was used throughout the social spectrum of English society, from the peasantry to the upper ranks of the nobility, throughout a period of momentous political change.

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This thesis reanalyses the beginnings and endings of towns in Roman Britain through a critical examination of the archaeological terms of growth and decline. The early phases on the sites of towns provide a context for action and the first part of the thesis examines the evidence for activity in the immediate pre-conquest period. It establishes aspects of the meaning of the sites and the way in which they survived and had an impact on experiences and understandings of the areas into the Roman period. The significance of these sites as places continued into the later Roman period. The second part of the thesis looks at aspects of continuity and transformation within towns in the later Roman period. The importance of these sites as places continuing into the later Roman period contrasts with the more economically-dominated notion of decline. The thesis examines evidence for the use of public buildings in the late-third, fourth and early-fifth centuries (and beyond) demonstrating that many remained significant foci of activity and that decline is a simplistic theory for interpreting the material. The themes discussed include 'industrial' activity, structural changes to buildings, timber structures within buildings and 'squatter occupation'. A wider perspective is introduced at the end of the study by also examining Roman towns of France and Spain. An important part of reanalysing decline is an examination of Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788), its reception and its impact upon archaeology including the study of late Roman towns, the 'Golden Age' and pre-Roman place. The historical and social context in which Roman archaeology developed, together with widerscale changes from the Renaissance onwards, will have had an impact upon the way in which themes such as place and transformation have been studied. The evidence indicates that towns remained important symbolic, but also viable and functioning, places in the later Roman period despite exhibiting changes in the organisation and appearance of public buildings and urban space. This reanalysis ofthe evidence for two important phases of these places provides a more challenging context in which to set the 'Golden Age' and approach Roman urbanism in the future.

The stable isotope values of the early Anglo-Saxons (410-700 AD) in Britain are used to assess dietary variability across a culture group. A total of 801 bone collagen samples from 15 inhumation cemeteries and 4 settlements were analysed for stable isotopes. The universality of human diet in a single cultural group, in the same time period, at a variety of sites is questioned. To address this issue, stable isotope results from Anglo-Saxon inhumations were compared with six different types of burial evidence: sex, age, height, body position, grave orientation and grave goods.

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This thesis will determine what can be considered ‘kingly’ imagery before depictions of individual kings began to appear in the art of late Anglo-Saxon England. To accomplish this, contemporary texts, vernacular and Latin, are examined alongside the artefacts and materials that survive from the earlier period (c. 500-900) in order to inclue consideration of the widest possible corpus of what could be considered the image of a king. Thus close attention will be given to the objects associated with kingship: such as helmets, swords, rings and harps. Further, the places of the king – the sites where kingship was enacted – such as the Great Hall Complex and the (idea of the) throne, will be examined. Together these will enable the visual contexts of (secular) kingship in this early period to be reconstructed. In closing, these contexts will be further elucidated by consideration of the biblical ideals of kingship that circulated in the region at this time; here images of the Magi of the New Testament, the Old Testament figure David, and Christ will be examined and the ways in which they were appropriated to articulate power and authority in ways particularly appropriate to Anglo-Saxon concepts of kingship will be set out. Overall, it will be demonstrated that by examining the material and visual culture of kings, insight can be gained into the ways in which stylized concepts and abbreviated iconographies were used to express ideas of kingship as a constant throughout the period.

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This thesis illustrates features of Anglo-Saxon settlement in the valley of the river Soar, Leicestershire, between the northern limit of Leicester and the river Trent, herein called the lower Soar valley. It is a poorly attested area in documentary and archaeological evidence, and the place-name evidence presents difficulties of interpretation. These circumstances determine the methods employed and the structure of the thesis, which is in three parts. Part One examines the pre-Conquest evidence for the area: an appropriate regional context is sought, firstly by examining the Anglo-Saxon history of the purely conceptual region of the East Midlands, and secondly by examining the Iron Age and Romano-British history of the area. Thus, it is hoped, an appropriate regional context is established, geographically and historically. The archaeological evidence for the early Anglo-Saxon settlement of the lower Soar valley is next considered, its value assessed, and some tentative conclusions formed about the organisation of settlement in the area. Documentation of the lower Soar valley during the Anglo-Saxon period is minimal, and the attempt is made to illuminate its history from developments in the neighbouring, better documented valley of the rivers Tame and Mease. Part Two, which examines the post-Conquest evidence, employs retrospective analysis to illustrate the history of the lower Soar valley from a later, better documented period. Domesday Book, the Leicestershire Survey of 1129-30, the Rothley custumal of c.1245 and the Hospitallers Extent of 1338 are adduced. The Norman magnates holdings in the lower Soar valley appear to be arranged transversely, including land in the forest to the west, in the valley itself, and in the wolds to the east. This practice was also followed by the Anglo-Saxon lords. The 'mixed bag' of lands, vills and private jurisdictions presented by the Domesday survey of Leicestershire contrasts with the accounts of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, where a hundredal system distinct from the Danish system of wapentakes can be traced. In Leicestershire, instead of a recognisable jurisdictional, administrative and economic system controlled by royal officers, a patchwork of private jurisdictions existed, its organisation and economy determined by unregulated entrepreneurism.

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