Revistas de JAS Arqueología
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Great Works by Great Men? Rethinking Linear Earthworks
No full textIntroducing the sixth volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ) for 2024, the introduction surveys the contents and recent related research published elsewhere as well as the main Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory’s activities during late 2023 and 2024
A Drone Photographic and Photogrammetric Portrait of Offa’s Dyke
No full textThis preliminary article applies drone photograph and photogrammetry visualisations to four significant sections of Offa’s Dyke to provide fresh insights into specific features of the monument. Also demonstrated is the role of drones as a means to record the present state of features for future reference, and as a tool for the discovery of subtle features not previously recorded. The four case studies chosen for this article are part of a drone survey that covers an effectively continuous 16km ribbon of the Dyke plus the sections of Hergest Corner and Rushock Hill. Together with the complete set of Offa’s Dyke drone photography undertaken, they establish a platform for future work
The Contemporary Archaeology of Offa’s Dyke
No full textThis article evaluates the present-day material cultures of Offa’s Dyke, Britain’s longest linear monument. Having previously considered how Offa’s Dyke is constituted in today’s landscape through road and residence signs (Williams 2020), artistic heritage trails (Williams 2023a) and heritage interpretation panels (Williams 2025), here I consider the broader assemblage of art, material cultures, monuments, waymarkers and local landscape features between Sedbury (Gloucestershire) to Prestatyn (Denbighshire) that together constitute a variegated landscape-scale assemblage we can define as ‘today’s Offa’s Dyke’. While elements are designed to support the Offa’s Dyke Path National Trail, other components have accrued by happenstance to waymark, interpret and commemorate Offa’s Dyke both along the surviving line of the monument, following the path, but also in locations disconnected from either. Today’s Offa’s Dyke is a late-modern hybrid of embodied practice and diverse materialities. This perspective invites reconsideration of the monument’s role within the contemporary landscape. It offers recommendations for enhancing heritage interpretation in the Welsh Marches, with attention to the complex interplay of landscape, monument, and borderland identities
Today's Offa's Dyke: Heritage Interpretation for Britain's Longest Linear Monument
No full textHow is Offa’s Dyke interpreted for visitors and locals in the contemporary landscape? The article considers the present-day heritage interpretation of Britain’s longest linear monument: the early medieval Mercian frontier work of Offa’s Dyke. I survey and evaluate panels, plaques and signs that follow the course of the surviving early medieval linear earthwork from Sedbury in Gloucestershire, north to Treuddyn in Flintshire, and along stretches away from the surviving earthwork and north to Prestatyn, Denbighshire, along the line of the Offa’s Dyke Path National Trail. Critiquing for the overarching narratives and envisionings of Offa’s Dyke the first time, I identify how anachronistic ethnonationalist narratives pervade its interpretation: pertaining to the origins of both England and the English, and Wales and the Welsh. As such, the article provides a baseline for further research into the contemporary archaeology and heritage of Offa’s Dyke and affords insights of application to other ancient linear monuments in today’s world. I conclude with reflections and recommendations for future heritage interpretation of the monument in relation to the national trail, the border and borderlands identities
Border Culture and Picturing the Dyke
No full textDan Llywleyn Hall is a painter who spent three years walking and making paintings inspired by Offa’s Dyke. Born in Cardiff 1980, Dan now lives near the border in Llanfyllin where his studio is based. He has recently taken on the role of guest Editor of Borderlands – a revised Newsletter–cum–Journal that is published twice a year in behalf of the Offa’s Dyke Association. With a new introduction, the key components of the 2021 Walking with Offa project are reproduced here: nineteenth paintings and English-language versions of five of the original twelve poems. These are joined by three perspectives on the project by an artist (Baur), archaeological illustrator (Swogger) and archaeologist (Williams)
The Linear Earthworks of Cornwall: What if They Were Early Medieval?
No full textThis article examines various linear earthworks in Cornwall that may date to the early medieval period. The dating evidence for the earthworks is discussed. While incontrovertible evidence for when they were built is lacking, the article asks how they might fit into the early medieval period if that is when most or all of them were built. The article postulates that they may have provided refuges against raiding, probably from the kingdom of Wessex in the eighth and ninth century, so allowing the Cornish to preserve their distinctive identity and language until the modern era (Padel 2017)
Evaluating the Early Medieval Portable Antiquities Scheme Data for the Welsh Marches
No full textThis article explores the early medieval data from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) from across two countries and several counties to ascertain what this can reveal about boundary formation, including the construction and use of Offa’s and Wat’s Dykes, during the seventh to ninth centuries AD. Surveying the borderlands which become Welsh Marcher lordships in the Later Middle Ages, the study disproves the popular assumption that the region is devoid of early medieval material culture. Instead, by examining what material culture is known through the PAS it may be possible to demonstrate activity here from the beginning of the ingress into Britain of Anglo-Saxon and later Scandinavian culture
Treaties, Frontiers and Borderlands:The Making and Unmaking of Mercian Border Traditions
No full textThis article explores the complexity and nuance of borderlands and border relations focusing on Mercia. Identifying a host of border maintenance strategies negotiating control over people, places and resources, mitigation of risk and maximisation of opportunity, but also strategic escalation and de-escalation of tensions, the study re-evaluates how Mercian border traditions supported expanded hegemony between the seventh and ninth centuries. The significant departures of the approach presented here are (i) rethinking the traditional focus on military, religious and ethnic identities to integrate these among other activities and experiences defining early medieval frontiers and borderlands and (ii) considering the reimagining not only Mercia’s frontiers and borderlands during its emergence and heyday as a kingdom but also reflecting on how Mercian territory itself became a borderland under the rule of Aethelred and Aethelflaed during the Viking Age, and as such how it was formative in the creation of the Danelaw and of England. The Alfred/Guthrum Treaty and Ordinance of the Dunsaete are here contextualised against other strategies and scales of negotiation and activity framing Mercian/Anglo-Welsh and Anglo-Danish borderlands. Different ‘Mercian borderlands’ are compared in this study and analysed as complex zones of interaction, responsive to geographical factors, but also criss-crossed by multi-stranded pathways of daily life. Mercian borderlands were understood and maintained militarily, physically, spiritually, and ideologically. The article considers how these zones were shaped by convenience but also need and were reinforced or permeable at locality, community and kingdom levels
Insights from a Recent Workshop on Walls, Borders, and Frontier Zones in the Ancient and the Contemporary World
No full textThis article reports on the ‘Walls, Borders, and Frontier Zones in the Ancient and Contemporary World’ workshop and its implications of transdisciplinary research for building comparative insights into the uses, meanings and experiences of border and wall constructions in the past and present
The Current State of Research on Early Medieval Earthworks in East Central and Southeastern Europe
No full textMuch has changed in the last forty years in the study of the early medieval earthworks of East Central and Eastern Europe. While the exact chronology and cultural attribution of the Csörsz Dykes in Hungary or the Bessarabian Dykes in Moldova and Ukraine remains a matter of debate, significant progress is clear in other cases, particularly the West Bulgarian Dykes, as well as the Large Earth Dyke in Dobrudja. The use of radiocarbon dating, as well as stratigraphical observations suggest that, in both cases, the key period for the building and use of those earthworks was the ninth century. The article surveys the main problems of interpretation raised by the recent studies of dykes in the region