Thegns of Mercia
  • About Us
  • Services
    • Living History >
      • Events Calendar
    • Talks & Workshops
    • Reconstructions
    • Recent Reconstructions
  • TV & Film
  • Blog
  • Contact Us

Folk of the Avon Valley (3): Wasperton 'Warrior'

12/4/2024

Comments

 
Picture
In previous chapters we began an exploration of the archaeology representing an early ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or perhaps more accurately ‘Anglo-British’ community which lived along the Warwickshire & Worcestershire Avon valley in the 5-7th centuries, in a chain of settlements along a westward flowing river in an area – the West Midlands – generally regarded as the western frontier of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ activity. This community provides perhaps the perfect case-study for getting to grips with the complexities of late antiquity in Britain, with themes of both continuity and change, and the interplay and transformation of identities after Roman withdrawal, leading ultimately to the emergence of coherent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

PictureCostume impression of the mid c6th woman from Wasperton g24.
In part 2 (here) we explored the cemetery at Wasperton – a rare case of a community cemetery in continuous use from the Roman to early medieval period – and presented a costume reconstruction based on one 6th century woman’s burial, with a particularly diverse array of jewellery and textiles which provide a compelling image of the interaction of different influences and fashions adopted by the folk who lived here at a ‘crossroads’ between cultures.

Although there are many early medieval cemeteries in this zone – some exhibiting a proportionally more impressive array of grave-goods – Wasperton is one of very few to have been excavated relatively recently and subject to modern analysis. Unlike with other cemeteries in the valley (many excavated in the early 20th century) the work at Wasperton sheds light on phases of burial tradition, bioarchaeology, and the invaluable insights into textiles and costume locked within the mineralised remains on the backs of metal items – the ‘mud’ which, in the earlier days of cemetery excavation would’ve been ignored and scrubbed away. Our choice of a high-status woman’s burial as a case-study is partly justified by the fact that it is these burials, with their impressive copper-alloy jewellery on which textile remains can be preserved, which provide the richest seam of information for costume more broadly. Lower-status burials, or burials from phases in which such elaborate grave-goods were not included, unfortunately yield little to no information with which costumes can be reconstructed, and it is for this reason that costume presentations skew towards high status, and towards phases with well-furnished burials.

Information concerning mens costume is also proportionally scarcer within these cemeteries, with mens dress including fewer metal items on which textiles can be preserved (Walton-Rogers, 2007). Setting aside the famous but highly atypical princely burials of the late 6th to 7th centuries, masculine grave-goods assemblages from furnished burials within cemeteries tend to have (and to some extent are defined by) an absence of anything which could be described as jewellery: the only common metal dress-item being a buckle at the waist, which even in putatively ‘high status’ / well-furnished burials can often be small, utilitarian and plain. The extremely limited textile remains tend to come from these buckles, only found at the waist, providing little evidence directly representing the form and construction of garments without reference to more complete examples of clothing from adjacent periods and cultures. Well-furnished male burials instead tend to stand out through the inclusion of non-costume-related objects – particularly weapons and shields – though represented primarily by degraded iron remains, these still typically appear superficially less impressive than the equivalent feminine assemblages. The true impressiveness of such items can only be revealed through deeper analysis (particularly via radiography and metallography) and visualised by reconstruction.
​
Complimenting the costume reconstruction already presented based on Wasperton G24, here we present the results of team member Marc Smith’s project to represent another of the 242 burials from the same cemetery: grave 91. 


Read More
Comments

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

25/4/2022

Comments

 
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. 
Picture
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.
​
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.

Read More
Comments

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

19/3/2022

Comments

 
Picture
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. 
​
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.
​
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. 



Read More
Comments

'Shoddy' Sheaths; Rethinking some early medieval leatherwork

12/4/2021

Comments

 
Picture
 ​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.
​
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.


Read More
Comments
<<Previous

    Thegns Blog

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

    Archives

    May 2024
    April 2024
    October 2023
    September 2023
    July 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    November 2022
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    July 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    November 2019
    September 2019
    May 2019
    January 2018
    December 2017

    Categories

    All
    Andalus
    Anglo Saxon
    Archaeology
    Architecture
    Arms And Armour
    Art
    Auseklis
    Avon Valley
    Byzantine Empire
    Christianity
    Coins
    Coronation
    Cosmology
    Dyes
    Experimental Archaeology
    Farming
    Fashion
    Festivals
    Food & Drink
    Frankish Empire
    History
    Kingship
    Knives
    Language
    Leatherwork
    Magic
    Migration Period
    Music
    Norman
    Old English
    Opinion
    Pagan
    Philosophy
    Poetry
    Princely Burials
    Prittlewell
    Reenactment
    Religion
    Roman
    Seasons
    Secrets In The Stones Series
    Shields
    Sociology
    Staffordshire Hoard
    Sutton Hoo
    Swords
    Symbology
    Taplow
    Textiles
    Thegns Reconstructions
    Trade
    Traditions
    Viking
    Women

    RSS Feed