The dissertation is an investigation into sokemen and freemen, a group of higher status peasants, in tenth- and eleventh-century East Anglia (hereafter and throughout the dissertation referred to as less dependent tenants). The study considers four themes. The first concerns the socio-economic condition of less dependent tenants. Previous commentators have focused on, for example, light or non-existent labour services and a connection with royal service and public obligations, but the reality may have been more complex. The second theme considers the distribution of the group across East Anglia. The third and fourth themes consider, respectively, the reliability of the Domesday evidence for less dependent tenants and how far the eastern counties differed from the rest of England. It has been argued that the significant number of less dependent tenants recorded in the eastern counties in Domesday Book indicates that region's unique social structure. This view increasingly has been questioned. The dissertation uses a partially retrogressive approach, combining pre-Conquest sources with Domesday Book and manorial sources from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It argues that less dependent tenants formed a varied group, including both smallholders (probably constituting the greater part of the group) and prosperous landholders defined by high-status service. These individuals were not always clearly distinguished from those immediately above and below them in the hierarchy. There was no intrinsic connection between less dependent tenants and royal service. Less dependent tenants experienced upward and downward social mobility in the tenth and eleventh centuries, affected by the land market and the influence of lordship. The group's local distribution, and, by implication, the extent of manorialisation, could vary widely and was influenced primarily by the strength of lordship. There were longstanding and important differences between East Anglia and counties elsewhere in England. But these differences also were exaggerated by the Domesday evidence.

Thesis advisor: Robin Fleming / This dissertation charts the movement of slaves from Western Europe, through Scandinavia, and into the frontiers of the Caliphate, a movement which took shape in the early 700s and flourished into the late 800s. The victims of this movement are well attested in texts from either end of their journey, and the movement of everyday things allows us to trace the itineraries they followed. Necklace beads—produced in the east, carried to the north, and worn in the west—serve as proxies for human traffic that traveled the same routes in opposite directions. Attention to this traffic overcomes four impasses—between regional particularism and interregional connectivity; between attention to exchange and focus on production; between privileging textual or material evidence; and between definitions of slavery that obscure practices of enslavement. The introduction outlines problems of studying medieval slavery with regard to transregional approaches to the Middle Ages, the transition to serfdom, and the use of material evidence. Chapter One gathers narrative texts previously dealt with anecdotally to establish patterns for the Viking-Age slave trade, with eastward traffic thriving by the late 800s. Chapter Two confirms these patterns by graphically comparing viking violence to reports of captive taking in the annals and archival documents of Ireland, Francia, and Anglo-Saxon England. Chapter Three investigates how viking captive taking impacted Western societies and the creation of written records in Carolingian Europe. Chapter Four turns to the material record, using beads to trace the intensity and flow of human traffic that fed from early viking violence. Chapter Five establishes a corresponding demand for slaves in the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate through Arabic archival, legal, historical, and geographic texts. The conclusion places this research in the context of global history. By spanning periods, regions, and disciplines, this dissertation brings to focus people who crossed boundaries unwillingly, but whose movements contributed to epochal change. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

The same age which produced the great epic, Beowulf, also produced some of the most beautiful, most lyrical, poetry ever written. Scholars who first looked into The Exeter Book Boomed to have been less impressed by this subjective, elegiac poetry than they were by the monumental epic which had already been acclaimed as one of the greatest literary accomplishments of our ancestors. The interest in the lyrics has grown slowly through the years since 1831, when the first transcript vas made of this eleventh century manuscript.

As the only extant detailed world map of the Anglo-Saxon period, the Anglo-Saxon map, c. 1025, presents a unique opportunity to explore a sense of Anglo-Saxon social identity as evidenced in this graphic worldview. The Anglo-Saxon map has most often been dismissed as an ill-fitting illustration when viewed solely in its manuscript context or an equally poor navigational tool when considered in the context of modern cartography. The purpose of this thesis is to present the argument that the Anglo-Saxon world map is neither simply a bad illustration nor a poorly rendered map intended for travel, but is rather a richly articulated graphic and linguistic representation of a particularly Anglo-Saxon sense of social identity as it is explored in the midst of a belief in a divine creation, secular origin, and inevitable social apocalypse. This reading of the map is supported by a comparative study of these same three foundational themes as they occur in Old English elegiac literature. The goal of this study is to read the Anglo-Saxon world map in the context of the theoretical framework of social identity demonstrated in Old English elegiac literature. In so doing, a concept of Anglo-Saxon social identity, a cultural expectation of the pull of history and the future, will be presented as it is expressed across artistic genres in Anglo-Saxon England. When viewed in the context of this greater elegiac artistic tradition, the Anglo-Saxon map can be seen as a participatory exploration of Anglo-Saxon identity in the context of the themes of creation, origin, and apocalypse. As such, the map can rightly be viewed as an artifact which was created to be, and remains even now, a carrier of the memory of Anglo-Saxon identity for future generations.

Until recently, individuals with physical impairment have been overlooked within the field of archaeology due to the controversy surrounding the topics of disability and care in the past. The current research adds to the growing body of archaeological disability studies with an exploration of physical impairment and the possibility of disability-related care in Anglo-Saxon England (5th-11th centuries AD), utilising palaeopathological, funerary, and documentary analyses. Palaeopathological analysis of 86 individuals with physical impairment from 19 Anglo-Saxon cemetery populations (nine early, five middle, and five later) was performed, and the possibility of disability-related care was explored for several individuals. The mortuary treatment data (e.g. grave orientation, body position, grave good inclusion) was gathered for the entire burial population at each site (N=3,646), and the funerary treatment of the individuals with and without physical impairment was compared statistically and qualitatively, both within and between the Anglo-Saxon periods. No obvious mortuary differentiation of individuals with physical impairment was observed, although several patterns were noted. In three early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, spatial association between individuals with physical impairment, non-adults, and females was observed. Early Anglo-Saxon individuals with physical impairment were more frequently buried in marginal locations, and two such individuals were buried in isolation. In the middle and later Anglo-Saxon periods, the funerary treatment of individuals with physical impairment became less variable, they were less frequently buried in marginal locations, and at three middle Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, they were buried in association with socially significant features in the cemetery landscape. The provision of care to ensure survival was not necessary for a majority of the individuals with physical impairment, but several individuals (lower limb paralysis, mental impairment) may have received regular, long-term care. This research proposes that the decreasing variability of mortuary treatment of individuals with physical impairment observed throughout the Anglo-Saxon period suggests that more variable attitudes about disability existed both within and between early Anglo-Saxon communities, while the political, social, and religious unification starting in the middle Anglo-Saxon period may have led to the development of more standardised perceptions of disability in later Anglo-Saxon England.

A review of archaeometallurgical studies carried out in the 1980s and 1990s of early medieval (c. AD410-1100) iron knives revealed several patterns, with clear differences in knife manufacturing techniques present in rural cemeteries and later urban settlements. The main aim of this research is to investigate these patterns and to gain an overall understanding of the early medieval iron industry. This study has increased the number of knives analysed from a wide spectrum of sites across England, Scotland and Ireland. Knives were selected for analysis based on x-radiographs and contextual details. Sections were removed for more detailed archaeometallurgical analysis. The analysis revealed a clear change through time, with a standardisation in manufacturing techniques in the 7th century and differences between the quality of urban and rural knives. Analysis of cemetery knives revealed that there was some correlation between the knife and the deceased. Comparison of knives from England, Dublin and Europe revealed that the Vikings had little direct impact on England¿s knife manufacturing industry, although there was a change in manufacturing methods in the 10th century towards the mass produced sandwich welded knife. This study also suggests that Irish blacksmiths in Dublin continued their ¿native¿ blacksmithing techniques after the Vikings arrived. Using the data gathered a chaîne opértoire of the iron knife was re-constructed, this revealed that there was a specific order to the manufacture process and decisions were not only influenced by the cost of raw materials, the skill of the blacksmith and the consumer status, but also by cultural stimulus.

<p> A critical analysis of several approaches to prose, and an attempt to construct a theory of prose as art, on which a language of prose criticism might be based. </p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

The inclusion of animal remains in funerary contexts was a routine feature of Anglo-Saxon cremation ritual, and less frequently of inhumations, until the introduction of Christianity during the 7th century. Most interpretation has focused either on the animal as symbolic of identity or as an indication of pagan belief, with little consideration given to the interaction between these two aspects. Animals were a fundamental and ubiquitous part of early medieval society, and their contribution to mortuary practices is considered to be multifaceted, reflecting their multiple roles in everyday life. This project considers the roles of animals in mortuary practice between the 5th-7th centuries across five counties in eastern England – Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex – in both cremation and inhumation rites. Animal remains have been recognised in 5th to 7th century burials in eastern England from an early date, and the quality of the existing archives (both material and written) is investigated and discussed as an integral part of designing a methodology to effectively summarise data across a wide area. From the eastern England dataset, four aspects of identity in mortuary practice are considered in terms of their influence on the role of animals: choice of rite (cremation/inhumation); human biological identity (age & gender); regionality; and changing expressions of belief and status in the 7th century. The funerary role of animals is argued to be based around broadly consistent cosmologies which are locally contingent in their expression and practice. / Arts & Humanities Research Council Studentship under the Collaborative Doctoral Award scheme with Norwich Castle Museum as the partner organisation.

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