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Yes / Historical, artefactual and place-name evidence indicates that Scandinavian migrants moved to eastern England in the ninth century AD, settling in the Danelaw. However, only a handful of characteristically Scandinavian burials have been found in the region. One, widely held, explanation is that most of these Scandinavian settlers quickly adopted local Christian burial customs, thus leaving Scandinavians indistinguishable from the Anglo-Saxon population. We undertook osteological and isotopic analysis to investigate the presence of first-generation Scandinavian migrants. Burials from Masham were typical of the later Anglo-Saxon period and included men, women and children. The location and positioning of the four adult burials from Coppergate, however, are unusual for Anglo-Scandinavian York. None of the skeletons revealed interpersonal violence. Isotopic evidence did not suggest a marine component in the diet of either group, but revealed migration on a regional, and possibly an international, scale. Combined strontium and oxygen isotope analysis should be used to investigate further both regional and Scandinavian migration in the later Anglo-Saxon period.

This thesis explores the impact of Rome upon Anglo-Saxon politics, religion, and culture in the ninth century. From the Gregorian mission onwards, Rome helped shape the ecclesiastical and devotional contexts of Anglo-Saxon Christianity and occupied a central place in the imaginations of early English writers. Yet the extent to which these links continued into and throughout the ninth century remains obscure, with scholarship about religion and culture often treating the period as a hiatus. In political narratives, the ninth century is treated as a crucial period, and Roman involvement is most visible in this sphere. By redressing the imbalance between religion and politics, this thesis achieves a thorough appreciation of the part played by Rome in these various fields of experience, as well as showing how Anglo-Saxon writers located themselves and their pasts in relation to the city. It does so over the course of five thematic chapters, which progress from an analysis of the most fundamental issues to more imaginative ones. Chapter one examines contact and communication between England and Rome, arguing that the two areas were closely and constantly connected across the century. The second and third chapters explore the impact of Rome on religion and kingship respectively, finding that while Roman influence on the church was most pronounced in the first half of the century, in political terms the city played a significant and changing role throughout the period. Chapters four and five consider the position of Rome in Anglo-Saxon historical thought and geographical understanding, examining how writers continued to define their position in a wider Christian world with reference to the city and its past. This thesis argues that, in the ninth century, Rome continued to play an important role in English life, while also influencing Anglo-Saxon thought and experience in new and dynamic ways.

On conserve un nombre inhabituellement élevé de manuscrits ayant appartenu à la bibliothèque du chapitre cathédral de Lyon au IXe siècle, dont bon nombre ont été personnellement utilisés ou produits par le principal acteur de la vie intellectuelle lyonnaise de l’époque, le diacre Florus (floruit v. 825–855). Comme on connaît par ailleurs plusieurs grandes compilations rassemblées également par lui, Florus représente pour nous une double occasion particulièrement rare d’étudier la bibliothèque d’une école cathédrale carolingienne et les méthodes de travail d’un intellectuel de ce temps. Les comparaisons et les nombreux recoupements que permet cette situation étayent et alimentent notre connaissance des livres qu’on utilisait et qui circulaient à l’époque, mais aussi des hommes qui les lisaient et les échangeaient, et des conditions dans lesquelles le travail de Florus a pu passer dans la tradition manuscrite des Pères (première partie). Ces analyses nous peignent Florus un homme de son temps, formé dans un certain milieu à de certaines méthodes, mais que son expérience et ses goûts poussèrent à faire évoluer, tout au long de sa carrière, ses propres méthodes au service de ses propres projets (seconde partie). Un travail d’historiographie est aussi proposé, qui n’avait pas encore été entrepris, et qui fait apparaître les voies de la redécouverte de Florus au cours du XVIIe siècle, puis au XXe. La place de Florus et de sa bibliothèque d’usage, dans l’histoire intellectuelle et dans l’histoire de la transmission des textes antiques, en ressort mieux circonscrite et qualifiée plus précisément, en même temps que se dévoile le cours de sa propre évolution intellectuelle. / An unusual amount of manuscripts that belonged to the Cathedral library of Lyons in the IXth century has been preserved, among which a number were firsthand used or produced by its prominent intellectual figure, the deacon Florus (floruit ca. 825—855). As we also know several large compilations that were gathered by the very same, Florus represents a rare double opportunity to investigate both a Carolingian cathedral library and the work methods of a Carolingian scholar. Numerous comparisons and crosscheckings can strengthen and supply informations regarding the books that were used and circulated at the time, but also regarding the men that read and circulated them, and clarify how Florus’s work on the Fathers has spread in the manuscript tradition (first part). Such analyses depict Florus as a man of his time, who was educated in a certain environment and to use certain methods; but who was then driven, all along his career, by his own experience and taste, to evolve his own methods in the pursuing of his own projects (second part). A historiography study is also held, which was never undertaken before, and reveals the how and why of Florus’s rediscovery in the XVIIth century, and then again in the XXth. Florus’s part and his work library’s, in the intellectual history and in the history of ancient texts transmission, is thus better circumscribed and more precisely described, as is unvailed the course of his own intellectual evolution.

Over the past two decades, environmental history as an approach to the understanding and explanation of historical processes has become gradually fashionable amongst academics; empirical data collected over the North Atlantic proposed new trends with regards to economic patterns during the Viking Age. The increasing number of Viking Age sites exposed in Iceland, the amount of zooarchaeological collections highlighting an abundant presence of fish bones in the overall archaeofauna, together with one’s expertise in environmental history as well as a strong interest in socio-economic development during the Viking Age and medieval periods were many factors which help identify strengths and weaknesses with regards to the understanding of the emergence of commercial fish trade in Iceland, and to a lesser extent, the Faeroe Islands. The thesis proposes a new theory with regards to human adaptation to new environments, and subsequent economic developments based on the commercial exploitation of fish. The interdisciplinary aspect of this project using cultural sediment analysis and zooarchaeology, as well as concepts from anthropology and economic anthropology, allows for the theory to be tested by empirical data.