Wessex: A Landscape History

Wessex: A Landscape History

Author: Hadrian Cook

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2024-04-04

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1803275367

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Wessex is famous for its coasts, heaths, woodlands, chalk downland, limestone hills and gorges, settlements and farmed vales. This book provides an account of the physical form, development and operation of its landscape as it was shaped by our ancestors. Major themes include the development of agriculture, settlements, industry and transport.


Book Synopsis Wessex: A Landscape History by : Hadrian Cook

Download or read book Wessex: A Landscape History written by Hadrian Cook and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2024-04-04 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wessex is famous for its coasts, heaths, woodlands, chalk downland, limestone hills and gorges, settlements and farmed vales. This book provides an account of the physical form, development and operation of its landscape as it was shaped by our ancestors. Major themes include the development of agriculture, settlements, industry and transport.


Wessex

Wessex

Author: HADRIAN. COOK

Publisher:

Published: 2024-04-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781803275352

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Wessex is famous for its coasts, heaths, woodlands, chalk downland, limestone hills and gorges, settlements and farmed vales. This book provides an account of the physical form, development and operation of its landscape as it was shaped by our ancestors. Constituting no modern political entity, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and archaeological province of 'Wessex' may be defined by its natural resources and connectivity by both land and sea, for its borders include the English Channel and Severn Estuary. Following the tundra environments that dominated south of the ice sheets during the past two million years, the Wessex area experienced dramatic changes in climate, something reflected in its soils and vegetation cover. Humans hunted in the 'wildwood' established after the Ice Age, then cleared the land for agriculture and settlement in a 6,000 year old process. In more recent times, areas of cultural importance and nature conservation have been established as well as a thriving economy based largely on natural resources, trade and manufactures. The region comprises the counties of Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight), Dorset, Wiltshire, historic Somerset, and Berkshire. Whether through Thomas Hardy, a water company service area, or a royal title, Wessex has lingered in the imagination and secured its place in the construction of English history. The reader is taken through not only the physical landscape, but also the human institutions that have affected its evolution, including manors, great estates, monasteries and hunting forests; major themes include the development of agriculture, settlements, industry and transport.


Book Synopsis Wessex by : HADRIAN. COOK

Download or read book Wessex written by HADRIAN. COOK and published by . This book was released on 2024-04-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wessex is famous for its coasts, heaths, woodlands, chalk downland, limestone hills and gorges, settlements and farmed vales. This book provides an account of the physical form, development and operation of its landscape as it was shaped by our ancestors. Constituting no modern political entity, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom and archaeological province of 'Wessex' may be defined by its natural resources and connectivity by both land and sea, for its borders include the English Channel and Severn Estuary. Following the tundra environments that dominated south of the ice sheets during the past two million years, the Wessex area experienced dramatic changes in climate, something reflected in its soils and vegetation cover. Humans hunted in the 'wildwood' established after the Ice Age, then cleared the land for agriculture and settlement in a 6,000 year old process. In more recent times, areas of cultural importance and nature conservation have been established as well as a thriving economy based largely on natural resources, trade and manufactures. The region comprises the counties of Hampshire (including the Isle of Wight), Dorset, Wiltshire, historic Somerset, and Berkshire. Whether through Thomas Hardy, a water company service area, or a royal title, Wessex has lingered in the imagination and secured its place in the construction of English history. The reader is taken through not only the physical landscape, but also the human institutions that have affected its evolution, including manors, great estates, monasteries and hunting forests; major themes include the development of agriculture, settlements, industry and transport.


The Landscape of Wessex

The Landscape of Wessex

Author: J. H. Bettey

Publisher:

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13: 9780239002426

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Book Synopsis The Landscape of Wessex by : J. H. Bettey

Download or read book The Landscape of Wessex written by J. H. Bettey and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:


Danes in Wessex

Danes in Wessex

Author: Ryan Lavelle

Publisher: Oxbow Books

Published: 2015-11-30

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1782979344

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There have been many studies of the Scandinavians in Britain, but this is the first collection of essays to be devoted solely to their engagement with Wessex. New work on the early Middle Ages, not least the excavations of mass graves associated with the Viking Age in Dorset and Oxford, drew attention to the gaps in our understanding of the wider impact of Scandinavians in areas of Britain not traditionally associated with them. Here, a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to the problems of their study is presented. While there may not have been the same degree of impact, discernible particularly in place-names and archaeology, as in those areas of Britain which had substantial influxes of Scandinavian settlers, Wessex was a major theater of the Viking wars in the reigns of Alfred and Æthelred Unræd. Two major topics, the Viking wars and the Danish landowning elite, figure strongly in this collection but are shown not to be the sole reasons for the presence of Danes, or items associated with them, in Wessex. Multidisciplinary approaches evoke Vikings and Danes not just through the written record, but through their impact on real and imaginary landscapes and via the objects they owned or produced. The papers raise wider questions too, such as when did aggressive Vikings morph into more acceptable Danes, and what issues of identity were there for natives and incomers in a province whose founders were believed to have also come from North Sea areas, if not from parts of Denmark itself? Readers can continue for themselves aspects of these broader debates that will be stimulated by this fascinating and significant series of studies by both established scholars and new researchers.


Book Synopsis Danes in Wessex by : Ryan Lavelle

Download or read book Danes in Wessex written by Ryan Lavelle and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have been many studies of the Scandinavians in Britain, but this is the first collection of essays to be devoted solely to their engagement with Wessex. New work on the early Middle Ages, not least the excavations of mass graves associated with the Viking Age in Dorset and Oxford, drew attention to the gaps in our understanding of the wider impact of Scandinavians in areas of Britain not traditionally associated with them. Here, a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to the problems of their study is presented. While there may not have been the same degree of impact, discernible particularly in place-names and archaeology, as in those areas of Britain which had substantial influxes of Scandinavian settlers, Wessex was a major theater of the Viking wars in the reigns of Alfred and Æthelred Unræd. Two major topics, the Viking wars and the Danish landowning elite, figure strongly in this collection but are shown not to be the sole reasons for the presence of Danes, or items associated with them, in Wessex. Multidisciplinary approaches evoke Vikings and Danes not just through the written record, but through their impact on real and imaginary landscapes and via the objects they owned or produced. The papers raise wider questions too, such as when did aggressive Vikings morph into more acceptable Danes, and what issues of identity were there for natives and incomers in a province whose founders were believed to have also come from North Sea areas, if not from parts of Denmark itself? Readers can continue for themselves aspects of these broader debates that will be stimulated by this fascinating and significant series of studies by both established scholars and new researchers.


The Medieval Landscape of Wessex

The Medieval Landscape of Wessex

Author: Michael Aston

Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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Wessex formed the heartland of Alfred the Great's kingdom, and continued to wield immense economic power long into the Middle Ages with many extensive and wealthy royal and ecclelesiastical estates. Contributors to this collection of 13 papers on the medieval landscape of Wessex include: B Eagles (The Archaeological evidence for settlement in the 5th to 7th centuries); D Hinton (The archaeology of 8th- to 11th-century Wessex); P Hase (The Church in the Wessex heartlands); D Hooke (The administrative and settlement framework of early medieval Wessex); M Costen (Settlement in Wessex in the 10th century); J Bond (Forests, chases, warrens and parks); J Hare (Agriculture and settlement in Wiltshire and Hampshire); C Lewis (The medieval settlment of Wiltshire); M Hughes (Towns and villages in medieval Hampshire); C Taylor (The regular village plan); M Aston (Medieval settlement in Somerset); S Rippon (Medieval wetland reclamation); R Croft (Protecting medieval settlement sites).


Book Synopsis The Medieval Landscape of Wessex by : Michael Aston

Download or read book The Medieval Landscape of Wessex written by Michael Aston and published by Oxbow Books Limited. This book was released on 1994 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wessex formed the heartland of Alfred the Great's kingdom, and continued to wield immense economic power long into the Middle Ages with many extensive and wealthy royal and ecclelesiastical estates. Contributors to this collection of 13 papers on the medieval landscape of Wessex include: B Eagles (The Archaeological evidence for settlement in the 5th to 7th centuries); D Hinton (The archaeology of 8th- to 11th-century Wessex); P Hase (The Church in the Wessex heartlands); D Hooke (The administrative and settlement framework of early medieval Wessex); M Costen (Settlement in Wessex in the 10th century); J Bond (Forests, chases, warrens and parks); J Hare (Agriculture and settlement in Wiltshire and Hampshire); C Lewis (The medieval settlment of Wiltshire); M Hughes (Towns and villages in medieval Hampshire); C Taylor (The regular village plan); M Aston (Medieval settlement in Somerset); S Rippon (Medieval wetland reclamation); R Croft (Protecting medieval settlement sites).


The Land of the English Kin

The Land of the English Kin

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 717

ISBN-13: 9004421890

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This volume draws together a series of papers that present some of the most up-to-date thinking on the history, archaeology and toponymy of Wessex and Anglo-Saxon England more broadly. In honour of one of early medieval European scholarship’s most illustrious doyennes, no less than twenty-nine contributions demonstrate the indelible impression Barbara Yorke’s work has made on her peers and a generation of new scholars, some of whom have benefitted directly from her tutorage. From the identities that emerged in the immediate post-Roman period, through to the development of kingdoms, the role of the church, and impacts felt beyond the eleventh century, the rich and diverse character of the studies presented here are testimony to the versatility and extensive range of the honorand’s contribution to the academic field.


Book Synopsis The Land of the English Kin by :

Download or read book The Land of the English Kin written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 717 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume draws together a series of papers that present some of the most up-to-date thinking on the history, archaeology and toponymy of Wessex and Anglo-Saxon England more broadly. In honour of one of early medieval European scholarship’s most illustrious doyennes, no less than twenty-nine contributions demonstrate the indelible impression Barbara Yorke’s work has made on her peers and a generation of new scholars, some of whom have benefitted directly from her tutorage. From the identities that emerged in the immediate post-Roman period, through to the development of kingdoms, the role of the church, and impacts felt beyond the eleventh century, the rich and diverse character of the studies presented here are testimony to the versatility and extensive range of the honorand’s contribution to the academic field.


Burial, Landscape and Identity in Early Medieval Wessex

Burial, Landscape and Identity in Early Medieval Wessex

Author: Kate Mees

Publisher: Anglo-Saxon Studies

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781783274178

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Multi-disciplinary investigation of Anglo-Saxon funerary traditions. Burial evidence provides the richest record we possess for the centuries following the retreat of Roman authority. The locations and manner in which communities chose to bury their dead, within the constraints of the environmentaland social milieu, reveal much about this transformational era. This book offers a pioneering exploration of the ways in which the cultural and physical environment influenced funerary traditions during the period c. AD 450-850, in the region which came to form the leading Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. This was a diverse landscape rich in ancient remains, in the form of imposing earthworks, enigmatic megaliths and vestiges of Roman occupation. Employing archaeological evidence, complemented by toponymic and documentary sources and elucidated through landscape analysis, the author argues that particular man-made and natural features were consciously selected as foci for funerary events and ritual practice, becoming integral to manifestations of identity and power in early medieval society. Kate Mees is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University.


Book Synopsis Burial, Landscape and Identity in Early Medieval Wessex by : Kate Mees

Download or read book Burial, Landscape and Identity in Early Medieval Wessex written by Kate Mees and published by Anglo-Saxon Studies. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Multi-disciplinary investigation of Anglo-Saxon funerary traditions. Burial evidence provides the richest record we possess for the centuries following the retreat of Roman authority. The locations and manner in which communities chose to bury their dead, within the constraints of the environmentaland social milieu, reveal much about this transformational era. This book offers a pioneering exploration of the ways in which the cultural and physical environment influenced funerary traditions during the period c. AD 450-850, in the region which came to form the leading Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. This was a diverse landscape rich in ancient remains, in the form of imposing earthworks, enigmatic megaliths and vestiges of Roman occupation. Employing archaeological evidence, complemented by toponymic and documentary sources and elucidated through landscape analysis, the author argues that particular man-made and natural features were consciously selected as foci for funerary events and ritual practice, becoming integral to manifestations of identity and power in early medieval society. Kate Mees is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University.


The Ancient Ways of Wessex

The Ancient Ways of Wessex

Author: Alexander Langlands

Publisher: Windgather Press

Published: 2019-11-30

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1911188542

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The Ancient Ways of Wessex tells the story of Wessex’s roads in the early medieval period, at the point at which they first emerge in the historical record. This is the age of the Anglo-Saxons and an era that witnessed the rise of a kingdom that was taken to the very brink of defeat by the Viking invasions of the ninth century. It is a period that goes on to become one within which we can trace the beginnings of the political entity we have come to know today as England. In a series of ten detailed case studies the reader is invited to consider historical and archaeological evidence, alongside topographic information and ancient place-names, in the reconstruction of the networks of routeways and communications that served the people and places of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. Whether you were a peasant, pilgrim, drover, trader, warrior, bishop, king or queen, travel would have been fundamental to life in the early middle ages and this book explores the physical means by which the landscape was constituted to facilitate and improve the movement of people, goods and ideas from the seventh through to the eleventh centuries. What emerges is a dynamic web of interconnecting routeways serving multiple functions and one, perhaps, even busier than that in our own working countryside. A narrative of transition, one of both of continuity and change, provides a fresh and alternative window into the everyday workings of an early medieval landscape through the pathways trodden over a millennium ago.


Book Synopsis The Ancient Ways of Wessex by : Alexander Langlands

Download or read book The Ancient Ways of Wessex written by Alexander Langlands and published by Windgather Press. This book was released on 2019-11-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ancient Ways of Wessex tells the story of Wessex’s roads in the early medieval period, at the point at which they first emerge in the historical record. This is the age of the Anglo-Saxons and an era that witnessed the rise of a kingdom that was taken to the very brink of defeat by the Viking invasions of the ninth century. It is a period that goes on to become one within which we can trace the beginnings of the political entity we have come to know today as England. In a series of ten detailed case studies the reader is invited to consider historical and archaeological evidence, alongside topographic information and ancient place-names, in the reconstruction of the networks of routeways and communications that served the people and places of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. Whether you were a peasant, pilgrim, drover, trader, warrior, bishop, king or queen, travel would have been fundamental to life in the early middle ages and this book explores the physical means by which the landscape was constituted to facilitate and improve the movement of people, goods and ideas from the seventh through to the eleventh centuries. What emerges is a dynamic web of interconnecting routeways serving multiple functions and one, perhaps, even busier than that in our own working countryside. A narrative of transition, one of both of continuity and change, provides a fresh and alternative window into the everyday workings of an early medieval landscape through the pathways trodden over a millennium ago.


The Wessex Hillforts Project

The Wessex Hillforts Project

Author: Andrew Payne

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2014-06-15

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1848022212

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The earthwork forts that crown many hills in Southern England are among the largest and most dramatic of the prehistoric features that still survive in our modern rural landscape. The Wessex Hillforts Survey collected wide-ranging data on hillfort interiors in a three-year partnership between the former Ancient Monuments Laboratory of English Heritage and Oxford University. These defended enclosures, occupied from the end of the Bronze Age to the last few centuries before the Roman conquest, have long attracted archaeological interest and their function remains central to study of the Iron Age. The communal effort and high degree of social organistation indicated by hillforts feeds debate about whether they were strongholds of Celtic chiefs, communal centres of population or temporary gathering places occupied seasonally or in times of unrest. Yet few have been extensively examined archaeologically. Using non-invasive methods, the survey enabled more elaborate distinctions to be made between different classes of hillforts than has hitherto been possible. The new data reveals not only the complexity of the archaeological record preserved inside hillforts, but also great variation in complexity among sites. Survey of the surrounding coutnryside revealed hillforts to be far from isolated features in the later prehistoric landscape. Many have other less visible, forms of enclosed settlement in close proximity. Others occupy significant meeting points of earlier linear ditch systems and some appear to overlie, or be located adjacent to, blocks of earlier prehistoric field systems.


Book Synopsis The Wessex Hillforts Project by : Andrew Payne

Download or read book The Wessex Hillforts Project written by Andrew Payne and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-15 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earthwork forts that crown many hills in Southern England are among the largest and most dramatic of the prehistoric features that still survive in our modern rural landscape. The Wessex Hillforts Survey collected wide-ranging data on hillfort interiors in a three-year partnership between the former Ancient Monuments Laboratory of English Heritage and Oxford University. These defended enclosures, occupied from the end of the Bronze Age to the last few centuries before the Roman conquest, have long attracted archaeological interest and their function remains central to study of the Iron Age. The communal effort and high degree of social organistation indicated by hillforts feeds debate about whether they were strongholds of Celtic chiefs, communal centres of population or temporary gathering places occupied seasonally or in times of unrest. Yet few have been extensively examined archaeologically. Using non-invasive methods, the survey enabled more elaborate distinctions to be made between different classes of hillforts than has hitherto been possible. The new data reveals not only the complexity of the archaeological record preserved inside hillforts, but also great variation in complexity among sites. Survey of the surrounding coutnryside revealed hillforts to be far from isolated features in the later prehistoric landscape. Many have other less visible, forms of enclosed settlement in close proximity. Others occupy significant meeting points of earlier linear ditch systems and some appear to overlie, or be located adjacent to, blocks of earlier prehistoric field systems.


Thomas Hardy's Pastoral

Thomas Hardy's Pastoral

Author: Indy Clark

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1137505028

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This book reads Hardy's poetry of the rural as deeply rooted in the historical tradition of the pastoral mode even as it complicates and extends it. It shows that in addition to reinstating the original tensions of classical pastoral, Hardy dramatizes a heightened awareness of complex communities and the relations of class, labour, and gender.


Book Synopsis Thomas Hardy's Pastoral by : Indy Clark

Download or read book Thomas Hardy's Pastoral written by Indy Clark and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reads Hardy's poetry of the rural as deeply rooted in the historical tradition of the pastoral mode even as it complicates and extends it. It shows that in addition to reinstating the original tensions of classical pastoral, Hardy dramatizes a heightened awareness of complex communities and the relations of class, labour, and gender.