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Thesis advisor: Robin Fleming / Britain’s long fifth century, 350-550 CE, was a period of transformative change across the island. It was not simply the end of one civilization and the beginning of another, but rather was a period during which people made meaningful choices about how important it was to them to continue acting like Romans or start acting like their new neighbors when the economy and social structures that had defined life in Britain for centuries dissolved. Historians can study material culture and burial practices to make these fifth-century inhabitants of Britain – invisible in the scarce textual accounts of the fifth century – visible in our historical narratives. Where living communities chose to bury their dead, what they chose to send with the deceased, and how they chose to build monuments to their memory can tell historians how they connected with or distanced themselves from the past that was, materially at least, rapidly disappearing and being replaced. Careful analysis of data from 8,602 burials in 102 cemetery populations, as well as burials of dogs and infants on settlements, indicates that changes in burial practices were the result not of migration from the continent nor the “fall” of Roman Britain, but rather were part of a larger shift from a society based upon Britain’s relationship with the Roman Empire to one based upon its local communities, whether composed of natives, or newcomers, or both. No matter where people came from, no two communities reacted to the upheaval of the fifth century in the same way, and there were no monolithic or universal ways of relating the past to the present and future. New practices appeared, and old practices continued, some of which were better suited to some fifth-century inhabitants of Britain than others.

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Yes / Objective: Evaluate the prevalence of DISH through time from the Roman to the post-Medieval period in England and Catalonia. Material: 281 individuals from England and 247 from Catalonia were analyzed. Methods: Adult individuals with at least three well-preserved lower thoracic vertebral bodies were analyzed. DISH was assessed considering the early stages of development. Diachronic and geographical dietary shifts were investigated using reported light isotope data, archaeological reports and historical documentation. Results: Males and older individuals showed consistently higher prevalence of DISH, however, only the English sample showed a significant difference between males and females in the prevalence of DISH. No significant difference was found in the prevalence of DISH though time (from Roman to post medieval periods) nor across regions (England and Catalonia). Conclusion: The development of DISH is probably influenced by a combination of factors including increasing age and sex. Significance: This is the first exhaustive analysis of DISH in ancient Catalan populations and the first that considers the early stages of DISH. Limitations: Reduced sample size, particularly in post-medieval samples, as a result of the available excavated samples and the inclusion criteria adopted. Future Research: Include rural, religious and high-status samples in the analysis of DISH. Re-assess the prevalence of DISH in post-medieval populations. / This project was funded by an Institute of Life Sciences Research Studentship awarded by the University of Bradford, Bradford, UK.

The traditional social and political divisions between the Late Roman and ‘Barbarian’ inhabitants of the post-Roman successor states has in the last few decades been challenged from several new angles. In this thesis, a comparative approach to the question of post-migration period urban settlement is constructed, taking into account recent scholarly research and developments. Following a short introduction broad issues such as terminology, ethnicity, historiography, cultural exchanges, and archaeological evidence are examined in the first two chapters of this work. After this the case studies of Visigothic Spain, Lombard Italy, and Merovingian Francia are presented in three respective chapters. Having looked at some of the specific details for these regions and how they illustrate some of the underlying concepts, trends, or variations in urban administration, the sixth chapter of this thesis presents the comparative approach itself. The main goal of the approach is to alter the ways in which historians perceive the processes of ethnic interactions and identity formation taking place from the mid-sixth to eighth centuries AD, and consists of six main points based upon both the earlier broader chapters, but also incorporates the specific details from the case studies as well. Ultimately it states that while each of the newly established aristocracies inherited a largely fragmentary and localized region following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, the administrative structures and means of interaction with the Roman populace varied widely in each of the three case studies. The greatest variations were detected in how each group administered non-capital cities within their respective region, particularly the degrees to which they altered the Late Roman urban framework. This work advocates the importance of focusing on ‘the new elite and interactions with different types of cities’, rather than the traditional approach of studying their impact upon cities as a general and broad term.

This study digs beneath the cultural façade of pottery, delving deeper into the individual consciousness and choices behind the selection of the clays used to make them. The social significance of clay and its sourcing practices is rarely considered in ceramic studies, and is generally restricted to an assessment of technical properties. This subject is thus poorly theorised, ignoring the potential of that first choice and act in the social process of ceramic production. This thesis sets out a theoretical approach – raw-material spatialisation – and utilises a ceramic petrographic methodology designed to investigate social change through the changing composition of ceramic fabrics. The study focuses on the continuous pottery sequence spanning the 4th-11th century AD in Cornwall, a period of immense social, religious and political change, viewed in its regional and national context. The first synthesis of ceramic traditions in the South West for 50 years, this study highlights previously overlooked similarities in the phases of ceramic innovation and production between Cornwall and western Wessex and the role of Devon as an aceramic buffer zone. Previous studies have highlighted the selection and preference of gabbroic clays, unique to the Lizard Peninsula, used in the production of pottery in Cornwall since the start of Neolithic and which became a tradition that lasted roughly 5000 years. Interpretation has rarely moved beyond David Peacock’s original assumption of the technical superiority of this material. This study challenges and overturns that assumption, establishing that social choice was the motivating factor in its procurement. The repeated use of gabbroic clay created and maintained a shared social reality within the socialised landscape occupied by the past peoples of Cornwall. Gabbroic clay had a totemic meaning within society: its source became a node in the socialised landscape; and its repeated extraction and distribution maintained not only society but regional kinship networks and their identities. The shift away from the exploitation of this totemic material towards clays sourced locally to settlements around the 7th-8th century coincides with the growing influence of Christianity in Cornwall. One of the early monastic foundations was strategically placed at its socially significant gabbro source eventually eroding its totemic meaning. The end of the gabbroic tradition and the region’s resilient decentralised system of pottery production came with the Norman Conquest, when the creation of a new market centres, networks and systems of landownership forcibly integrated Cornwall into the wider national framework once more. This study conclusively demonstrates that the selection of a clay source should be interpreted as an indicator of social, and not merely technical or economic, choice. It also establishes that the use of a rigorous and systematic programme of scientific inquiry, combined with an informed theoretical perspective, can identify the evidence for social change behind the façade of the otherwise largely static pottery traditions of the 5th-11th centuries AD in most parts of the British Isles.

Thesis advisor: Robin Fleming / This dissertation examines the formation of Christian identity in Europe through the ritual performances of baptism. Baptism was an essential act of social and religious initiation experienced by the majority of people in Europe, yet historians have struggled to understand its administration for ordinary lay participants as Europe transitioned from paganism to Christianity. Rather than a uniform indicator of Christian identity as described in clerical texts and current scholarship, baptism changed dramatically between the sixth and twelfth centuries. I show how what began as a flexible array of diverse religious practices located in watery landscapes, Roman-style baptisteries, portable spoons, lead tubs, and wooden buckets, evolved into a ritual standardized in the stone baptismal font, a form which persists to this day. I deploy an interdisciplinary methodology that engages robustly with church archaeology and art history to demonstrate how baptism created localized religious identities for new converts through its use of diverse ritual places and things. This study challenges our definition of a united medieval Christendom by radically reinterpreting the long-term practice of baptism as a slow process of Christianization in Europe from below. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

The island of Iona had the primacy of the Columban familia from the foundation of the monastery by St Columba in the sixth century until Viking invasions led to a transfer of primacy to Kells in the ninth century. Though located off the coast of western Scotland, it was not isolated from the Insular and Christian world. Surviving documents demonstrate the learning and outlook of the monks on Iona. The Abbot Adomnán, who died in 704, in particular was known for his travels and varied writings. The titles of theologian, lawmaker and peacemaker can be applied to him. Not only was Iona a religious centre for the community and pilgrims, it was also politically associated with the ruling families of Dál Riata (Scotland) and Ireland. Iona is credited with the production of such seminal artworks as the Book of Durrow and Book of Kells. The high crosses of Iona were either the first or among the first of the Insular stone tradition. The crosses are monumental, free-standing crosses carved in relief with ornament and figural imagery. The Insular monumental stone tradition has created enduring symbols—the Irish high crosses, Pictish cross-slabs and Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture. This dissertation offers an innovative interpretation of the iconographic programme of the high crosses of Iona by emphasizing their natural and liturgical landscape and environment. Previous studies have looked at individual panels and motifs such as the Virgin and Child panels and the snake-boss motif: the whole programme across the four crosses has not been attempted. The ritualised usage of the crosses can be gleaned through analysing the crosses as a whole project meant to complement each other in the environment of Iona the island and monastic settlement, over the eighth and ninth centuries. Close scrutiny of the crosses in a variety of contexts, both on Iona and when they were removed for conservation, has allowed for the analysis of the individual crosses. The crosses were erected in the physical landscape where the sun directs how and when the programme is to be accessed. The sun elucidates some of the iconographic conundrums. Additionally, the placement of the crosses was in a liturgical landscape, where the crosses were approached in complement to certain devotions. The programme of light enhances the liturgical day, particularly assisting in devotion to the Divine Office. The four crosses were erected as a spiritual tool, part of the ritualised, virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Iona as a pilgrimage destination was more accessible than Rome and Jerusalem. Whereas the Lindisfarne Gospels were commissioned for the translation of the relics of St Cuthbert, the translation of the corporeal relics of St Columba, founder of Iona’s monastery, led to the commission of a cross that acts as a crux gemmata and cross-reliquary.

This doctoral thesis deals with the transmission and reception of the works of Cyprian of Carthage in the early Middle Ages. The process of research combined the study of the manuscript transmission of Cyprian’s works with the study of texts that were (in an immediate way or not) influenced by these writings. The connections between the transmission of Cyprian’s writings and the publishing activities of various groups, from the Donatists in fourth-century North Africa to Carolingian priests, is a central part of the thesis. The appropriation of the Church Father by different groups, including Arian writers in the aftermath the Council of Aquileia, proves not only the sense of authority Cyprian’s works invoked but also the, often liberal, way in which ancient works were used or interpreted. In addition, Cyprian was the first Latin Church Father to connect the concept of the unity of the Church with the office of the bishop. He was therefore influential in medieval ecclesiological thought and in the shaping of episcopal identities throughout the early Middle Ages. The thesis examined how Cyprian’s works functioned as tools of legitimisation for the causes of ninth-century bishops, such as Hincmar of Reims; invocations of priestly and episcopal identity, which were often based on Cyprian’s contribution to Catholic theology, enabled influential bishops to affirm their place in a Christian society as major players in ecclesiastical and secular politics.