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"Contextualizing the Vikings in Anglo-Saxon History and Literature" examines the Scandinavian impact of Viking presence in Anglo-Saxon England during the so-called First and Second Viking Age, concentrating on the portrayals of the Viking activity in Anglo-Saxon chronicles and annals, as well as Scandinavian (chiefly Icelandic and Danish) sources. It aims to identify the patterns of representation in those portrayals and their development relative to the historical events of the period, the political situation in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, the state and progress of the Church, and contemporary literary tendencies, including the influence of heroic literature and the development of the Anglo-Saxon kingship. Three distinct accounts that came into existence as a result of the Viking invasion of England in 866 are examined. Three main traditions can be discerned - the Scandinavian tradition, reflecting the battle of York, the slaying of king Ella and king Edmund, the East Anglian tradition, reflecting the slaying of king Edmund, and the Wessex tradition, reflecting king Alfred's struggle with the Danes. The thesis proposes to trace the historical origins and development of these traditions, attempting to discern their historical and fictional elements by comparing them with the record of the historical...

This thesis explores how the local media in East Anglia portrayed the US military presence during the Cold War at times of international crisis. It aims to assess this portrayal in comparison with national media images and critically interrogates the socio-political, economic and cultural reasons for it. This media related study contributes to Cold War historiography and the historiography of the USAF. Research was mainly archival, based on discourse analysis and comparative focusing on the official discourse of the Cold War and the news media. Central to the research were the written records of the British government and articles in appropriate newspapers issued near American airbases. The region of East Anglia was selected for its strategic location and large number of military bases, and data collection focused on selected periods of international crisis due to their impact on media coverage. The examination of newspaper articles identified a wide range of images with some recurring from time to time while others remain specific to certain periods. Findings suggest that local economic as well as political interests played a role in shaping the images of the US presence in the local media, and it could be argued that there is a correlation between the conservative landscape of the region and the newspaper articles’ overwhelming tolerance or at least acceptance of the US presence, which is in line with conservative governmental discourse in all periods of crisis explored. However, the articles – and in particular the readers’ letters to the editors – also highlight that there were strong debates between supporters and opponents of the American presence, and this debate blurs the boundaries of political parties, i.e. in certain periods there are also strong opponents in the conservative camp.

This study describes the way in which the various Methodist groups contributed to the English agricultural labourers coming to trade unionism in the early 1870s. It is concerned both with the genesis and the subsequent growth of this movement which extended from 1872 until 1896, and is commonly denoted "The Revolt of the Field". This is a local study being concerned with the three East Anglian counties of Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and it examines the fortunes of two major agricultural unions both of which operated in each of those counties. Attempt has been made to utilise as much primary source material as possible both for Methodism and Agricultural Unionism. Much use has been made of letters, questionnaires and unstructured interviews. It has been the writer's endeavour to show how and why the fortunes of the rural labourer in our chosen area became entwined with Methodism, and how this in turn helped to give birth to agricultural unionism. The study is in two parts. In the first of these, attention is focussed on some of the specific ways in which Methodism contributed to the origin of agricultural unionism by such means as providing a rudimentary education, opportunities for public speaking, leadership and organisation, or by the loan of chapel premises for meetings. In the second part, attempt has been made to illustrate the continuing impress of Methodism on the subsequent progress of the movement. Throughout, specifically Methodist phenomena have been a particular focus of attention. Such aspects as for example, Methodist conversion experience, Methodist organisation, and Methodist views with regard to the Millennium have been treated in some detail. Attention has also been given to the contemporary Methodist attitudes both to the unions themselves as well as to related matters of union policy such as Temperance or the loan of buildings.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 2000. / Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of English Language, Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow, 2000. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

An image processing technique was applied to detect roddon soil features from UK-DMC2 base data. Roddon soil features represent former watercourses in English Fenland, now raised banks with altered soil composition. They can be clearly seen on remotely sensed imagery as bright features in contrast to the darker surrounding peat land. Based on difference in brightness of roddons and surrounding peat soil the Soil Brightness Index (SBI) was applied to detect the roddons. To identify the edges of these features where there is a large spectral contrast a non-directional filter was applied together with an image enhancing technique to better differentiate the roddons form other non-soil features. Understanding the location of roddons will allow adaptive farming practices that account for differences in soil properties, and help optimizing yields.

Short Food Supply Chains (SFSC) can be understood as ‘alternatives’ to conventional, complex food chains that tend to dominate contemporary agri-food systems. They redefine producer-consumer relations through socially and physically ‘closer’, more transparent supply chains founded upon quality cues associated with provenance, whereby products become embedded with information about the spaces of production. It has been argued that SFSC can have significant socio-economic benefits for rural development, providing livelihoods for small-scale, independent food producers who would otherwise be marginalised from food markets. SFSC have received plenty of attention amongst ‘alternative’ agri-food scholars in recent years. However, empirical research has typically addressed SFSC in relation to a specific set of values, politics and traditions, examining a locale or region in relation to cultural structures ingrained in a particular context. This has resulted in vast amounts of agri-food literature with specific reference to the contexts of Europe, North America and other global North regions. Attention to countries from the global South has increased recently, but there are limited cross-cultural, comparative analyses between regions from the global North and South. This is surprising given that small-scale food producers the world over face similar obstacles associated with access to markets, adaptation to climate change, contradictory policies and development programmes and increased competition from imports. This research investigates how SFSC operate in context, drawing on evidence from case studies in rural regions of The Gambia, West Africa and East England; illustrative cases of the global North and South. This thesis adopts an inductive methodology, incorporating grounded theory and a range of qualitative methods and data analysis techniques. The regional food group Tastes of Anglia and social enterprise named ‘Gambia is Good’ served as gatekeepers and provided access to small-scale food producers in each case. The Sustainable (Rural) Livelihoods Framework as originally conceived by the Department for International Development (DFID) was used as a conceptual toolkit to guide data collection and analyses. This involved an amalgamation of the largely disparate ‘alternative’ agri-food literature with that of sustainable livelihoods, revealing the important role that horizontal embeddedness and vertical embeddedness have in the context of SFSC. This research has found that in The Gambia, limited access to capital assets, infrastructural constraints and a lack of social embeddedness between rural producers and customers in the high value tourist industry undermines SFSC as viable livelihood strategies. This is in contrast to the UK, where food producers have access to a wider set of resources and can also draw on established ‘quality’ cues associated with Product-Process-Place linkages to market their products. Results suggest this is due to the historical (agri)cultural trajectories of East Anglia and spatial-temporal synergies that enable products embedded with information to be differentiated in competitive marketplaces. The processes enabling this differentiation can be considered as a form of cultural capital. This cannot be as readily drawn upon in The Gambia given its different agricultural and political-economic histories, and comparatively weaker forms of vertical embeddedness. This raises questions about the relevance and transferability of SFSC models to contexts such as The Gambia and other ‘similar’ regions in sub-Saharan Africa and the global South. The broader implications of these findings are discussed and five future research agendas that explore the key processes of horizontal and vertical embeddedness in both the global North and South are presented.

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Yes / Early life is associated with high vulnerability to morbidity and mortality - risks which can be reduced in infancy and early childhood through strategically high levels of parental or alloparental investment, particularly in the case of maternal breastfeeding. Recent evidence has supported links between early-life health and care patterns and long-term population health. This growing body of research regarding the broader impacts of infant-parent interactions transcends a traditional partitioning of research into discrete life stages. It also highlights implications of childhood data for our understanding of population health and behaviour. Skeletal and environmental data indicate that the 5-7th century cemeteries at Littleport and Edix Hill (Barrington A), Cambridgeshire represent populations of similar material culture but contrasting environments and health. The high prevalence of skeletal stress markers at Littleport indicates a community coping with unusual levels of biological stress, potentially a consequence of endemic malaria present in the marshy Fen environs. In contrast, Edix Hill was an inland site which exhibited lower skeletal stress marker prevalence comparable to wider British data for the early medieval period. Early life patterns relating to diet and physiological stress at Littleport (n=5) and Edix Hill (n=8) were investigated through analyses of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes from incrementally-sampled deciduous dentine. Meaningful variation in isotopic values within and between populations was observed, and should be a focus of future interdisciplinary archaeological childhood studies. / The Society for the Study of Human Biology, the Durham University Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and by the Rosemary Cramp Fund.