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Shield of an Anglo-Saxon Prince - Part 3:  Painting

25/4/2022

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Compared to the famous shield from Sutton Hoo Mound 1, the shields from the other treasure-filled princely Anglo-Saxon burials lack ostentatious decorative fittings. In the first chapter (link) we discussed the striking similarity of these shields, which appeared to be high-performance gear for warrior princes, optimised for agility rather than ostentation. In the second chapter (link) we reported on our project to produce an authentic replica of such a shield, and explore just how light weight they could have been. 
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Despite the minimal fittings, its hard to imagine the shields of the late 6th century princely burials were entirely plain, and new evidence has come to light concerning early Anglo-Saxon paints, and the painted designs preserved from the late Iron Age, which has allowed us to more confidently wade into the painting of early Anglo-Saxon shields for the first time.
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Researching and experimenting these paints, exploring the evidenced designs, and how they relate to decorative motifs seen in other media across both Anglo-Saxon material culture and adjacent cultures, we were finally able to finish our replica princely shield with a plausible painted design.

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Shield of an Anglo-Saxon Prince - Part 2:  Building the Shield

19/3/2022

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Aside from the magnificently decorated, heavy shield from Sutton Hoo Mound 1, remains of early Anglo-Saxon shields suggest they were typically relatively plain. Curiously the shields from the other treasure-filled princely burials – Taplow, Broomfield, Prittlewell, Sutton Hoo Mound 17 and others appear especially so, not befitting the status of these burials, with little in the way of decorative fittings, and very minimal, unusually simplified bosses. 
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In the previous chapter (link) we revealed that (in contrast to the wide variability of shields from contemporary graves) the late 6th century princely burial shields were all practically identical, with suites of four simple disc mounts on the board, simple 1a(i) iron grip reinforcers, and innovative SB-4b / Dickinson’s Type 6 shield bosses – the smallest and lightest of all Anglo-Saxon bosses. In a number of these cases the boards were also made of ultra-light-weight willow. This is the lightest combination of fittings possible, among those evidenced from early Anglo-Saxon graves.   We have therefore argued that the princely shields represent a class of very carefully made, high-performance versions of the standard Anglo-Saxon shield, with weight-reduction prioritised over ostentation.
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In 2021 we undertook a project to reconstruct such a shield – to explore precisely how light such a shield could be for a given diameter, and to explore methods consistent with archaeological clues which might have been employed to embellish such shields, commensurate with the status of their owners, without compromising their performance.  The result would provide a theoretical minimum weight for an early Anglo-Saxon shield of practical size, and represent our tenth and most ‘authentic’ shield reproduction to date. 



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'Shoddy' Sheaths; Rethinking some early medieval leatherwork

12/4/2021

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 ​In the frequently damp environment of early medieval Britain and western Europe sheaths were essential for valuable ferrous blades, including swords, war-seaxes and smaller utility knives. The sophisticated and labour-intensive construction of sword scabbards, formed of animal-hair lined carved wooden plates enclosed in leather or hide (“skin product”) is evidence of the priority given to protecting blades. Well preserved examples of seax sheaths, mainly from productive leatherworking sites of the mid-to-late Anglo-Saxon period, at York and Gloucester (Cameron, 2000) as well as more trace evidence from earlier grave finds, demonstrates the high level of craftsmanship which went into these, usually of a single piece of folded and moulded skin-product, sometimes intricately decorated, as might be expected given that the sheath, and not the blade, was the most visible component of any seax assemblage day to day and therefore an important surface for wealth display. Vastly more common but nevertheless valuable personal possessions and often of sophisticated smithcraft, smaller utility and eating-knives also required tight-fitting sheaths of valuable skin-product, but despite the abundance of such knives in the archaeological record, for a wide range of reasons clues about the sheaths of smaller knives are scarcer than for larger seaxes.  

It might be reasonable, and has been the practice among more detail-oriented living historians and reenactors, to assume that sheaths of smaller knives in, for example, the early Anglo-Saxon period, might be miniature analogues of those of larger seaxes, yet fragmentary sheath remains from a handful of well-studied early Anglo-Saxon sites appear surprisingly crude, with amateurish stitching having unattractively contorted the seams in a way that might disgust a modern leatherworker. There is no reason not to think these examples are not well representative, and indeed, many of the later (Viking-Age) knife-sheath remains from York, though often skilfully decorated, bear the tell-tale marks and contortions of this same rudimentary stitch work.
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It is always tempting to base the sheaths of our knives on the very fanciest, and neatest archaeological examples to hand, and perhaps neaten them up with some more modern handiwork, but this can lead to a creeping departure from what is truly known of the historic craft culture purportedly represented. In contrast, replicating (to our modern eyes) “unbecoming” examples might provide useful, practical insights into why they were made this way.  Such is the case with these apparently crudely stitched knife sheaths – our experiments in replicating them have revealed what might be a cunning Dark Age leatherworker’s “life-hack” which made the tricky shaping of sheaths vastly quicker and more reliable.


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Two Princely c7th Anglo-Saxon Lyres

30/9/2019

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Few objects in early Anglo-Saxon archaeology are more evocative, than the so-called “warrior-lyres” or “hearpes” which have gradually emerged from analysis of mostly quite poorly preserved remains from some of the most famous 6-7th century burials. For those exploring this historic period, they also possess a unique power – transmitting to us another sensory dimension to enrich our sense of the Anglo-Saxon world. With accurately built replica lyres, we are granted the unique opportunity experience the sound of the 6-7th century mead hall, echoing across the centuries, which accompanied the first recorded stories and poems in our langu​age.

In autumn 2018, member Æd Thompson (having previously produced Dreamgifu – a reasonably faithful replica of the perfectly preserved 6th century Alemannic lyre from Trossingen) embarked on a project to produce two new lyres, of the (in some ways) more challenging Anglo-Saxon design.



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    Thegns Blog

    Exploring the history, archaeology and cultures of the "Anglo-Saxon Period" (encompassing the Migration and Viking Ages).

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