Revistas de JAS Arqueología
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Linear Pasts and Presents: Researching Dykes, Frontiers and Borderlands
No full textThis editorial essay introduces the fifth volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ) by presenting a review of the contents, recent related research published elsewhere, and the Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory’s activities during 2022 and early 2023
'Cofiwn i Facsen Wledig/We remember Macsen the Emperor': Frontiers, Romans, and Welsh Identity
No full textTaking as its starting point the commonly held public perspective that Wales was largely unconquered by the Romans and was indeed a focus of resistance to Roman rule, this article argues from the archaeology to demonstrate that such perceptions are misleading. Archaeological evidence demonstrates Rome certainly conquered and held Wales throughout its occupation of Britain. Furthermore, its hold on Wales was so firmly established by the second century that Rome’s identity was fully stamped upon the territory and was maintained by the peoples of Wales after the end of Roman rule. The degree to which Wales was in the end Romanised is encapsulated in the post-Roman identity of the emerging Welsh kingdoms which consciously looked back to the Roman Emperor, Magnus Maximus (Macsen Wledig in Welsh) for their foundation as actual and spiritual successors to Roman power. Rather than offering resistance to Rome, it can be argued instead that notions of Roman power provided the peoples of Wales with the means to resist the rise of English power in the immediate post-Roman period
The Serpent Ramparts in Ukraine: Fifty Years of Archaeological Research
No full textNamed after a folk tale first recorded in the nineteenth century, the Serpent Ramparts in the Ukraine have been thoroughly investigated archaeologically in the 1970s and 1980s. The results of the excavations clarified the chronology of the earthworks, but also revealed a sophisticated building technique employing timber structures. The relation of the dykes to neighbouring strongholds and especially open settlements have been the focus of the subsequent research. The dates initially advanced for the earthworks (late tenth to early eleventh century) may not apply to all surviving segments, but the initial impetus for the building of the Serpent Ramparts seems to have come from the Rus’-Pecheneg confrontations along the northern boundaries of the steppe belt in Eastern Europe
The Olger Dyke: An Early Roman Iron Age Linear Earthwork in Denmark
No full textThe Olger Dyke is a large-scale linear earthwork in southern Jutland in Denmark which consists of a combination of earthwork and (in part) well-preserved timber palisades that can be traced for at least 12 km. The article provides a synthesis of the history of fieldwork of this monument, including detailed overviews of recent excavations, which have enabled new dating work to be carried out. This linear earthwork is unusual in that it has exceptional preservation of timber uprights in several palisade trenches, and recent dendrochronological dates combined with the application of new dating methods has enabled the construction sequence to be refined and accurately pinpointed to the early first century AD, lasting for around 100 years. The article presents the location, construction and function of the Olger Dyke together with an outline of the new dating evidence
Rethinking Offa's Dyke as a Hydraulic Frontier Work
No full textBuilding upon a fresh interpretation of Wat’s Dyke as a component of an early medieval hydraulic frontier zone rather than primarily serving as a symbol of power, a fixed territorial border or a military stop-line (Williams 2021), here, I refine and apply this approach to its longer and better-known neighbour: Offa’s Dyke. This linear earthwork’s placement, alignments and landscape context are evaluated afresh using a simple but original comparative mapping methodology. First, on the local level, I show that Offa’s Dyke was carefully and strategically positioned to connect, overlook and block a range of watercourses and wetlands at key transverse and parallel crossing points, thus observing and choreographing mobility on multiple axes. Second, I address the regional scale, showing how Offa’s Dyke interacted with, and controlled, biaxial movement through and between water catchments parallel and transverse to the monument’s principal alignments. Both these arguments inform how the Dyke might have operated on the supra-regional scale, ‘from sea to sea’ and also ‘across the sea’, by controlling the estuarine and maritime zones of the Dee Estuary in the north and the Wye/Severn confluence to the south. Integrating military, territorial, socio-economic and ideological functionality and significance, Offa’s Dyke, like its shorter neighbour Wat’s Dyke (in an as-yet uncertain relationship), configured mobilities over land and water via its hydraulic dimensions and interactions. Together, the monuments can be reconsidered as elements of a multi-functional hydraulic frontier zone constructed by one or more rulers of the middle Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and operative both in times of peace and conflict
Donation and Conquest: The Formation of Lothian and the Origins of the Anglo-Scottish Border
No full textVarious ‘donation’ accounts of the twelfth century attempted to explain Scottish rule of ‘Lothian’ as the outcome of grants from English rulers to Scottish kings. Until relatively recently historians of both Scotland and England tended to accept these accounts. However, ‘Lothian’ was a politically sensitive topic in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the value of these accounts for an earlier period is low. There is a variety of evidence of better value, and although the guidance of strictly contemporary sources is very poor prior to the later eleventh century, continuous Scottish rule south of the Forth cannot be traced prior to the reign of Máel Coluim III (r. 1058–1093), and in the case of some areas David his son (r. 1113/24–1153). It is suggested that the emergence of ‘Lothian’ as a jurisdiction is a response to the political changes of that era, an important development in its own right but also a critical intermediate development for the emergence of the familiar Anglo-Scottish border
The Organisation of the Mid–Late Anglo-Saxon Borderland with Wales
No full textWith hardly any written documentation concerning the creation of Offa’s Dyke or for the contemporary communities that it affected, the intricacies of how the Mercian-Welsh frontier was organised during the late eighth and early ninth century and afterwards can seem entirely unknowable. This article addresses the question of the likely variable character of the long and undoubtedly complex frontier in reference to some location-specific existing archaeological evidence and close study of the form of the Dyke and other contemporary features in the landscape. One of the key elements of this attempt at detection of early frontier organisation therefore involves looking at the potential role of the inherited Roman road network especially where it runs parallel with the Dyke. Two examples based upon archaeological excavations in Herefordshire are noted here as providing clues as to the diversity of frontier structuring. The first example is the uncovering of a mid–late Anglo-Saxon fortified enclosure at Breinton just to the west of Hereford in 2018 that has at last added some substance to the possibility of the past existence of sophisticated military infrastructure including fortresses close to the Mercian/Welsh frontier. A key factor in the organisation of the pre-Norman frontier at least from the English side could have been the location of ‘quasi-military personnel’ close to the Dyke and to the inherited routeway system. Certain entries in the county-based Domesday surveys of Circuit V for the border counties are briefly re-examined here to consider the implications of the spatial distribution of a single category of specialised freemen. This highlights the importance of Leintwardine and the Roman road south from Shrewsbury as a key location: a possibility underlined by discoveries made during an excavation in the 1990s
Bige Habban: An Introduction to Money, Trade and Cross-Border Traffic
No full textThis short survey examines issues in early medieval cross-border trade, particularly with reference to England, but also drawing comparisons with mainland Europe and other regions of Britain. Three themes are considered: tolls charged on traders and travellers; the vulnerability of traders and the importance of building trust and familiarity; and the practical challenges of moving between different means of exchange
Borders in Early Medieval Britain: Introducing the Special Issue
No full textThe contents of this special issue comprise the proceedings of a conference held over Zoom on the weekend of 11-12 July 2020. The event was originally planned to take place in Cambridge, but, as the unforeseeable events of 2020 began to unfold, it was soon realised that it would be necessary either to cancel the event or move it into digital space. The latter path was taken, making this conference part of the first wave of academic Zoom events that we have subsequently become so accustomed to. It was a steep learning curve, but hopefully a valuable learning experience for all concerned
Shifting Border, Shifting Interpretation: what the Anglo-Norman Castle of Dodleston in Cheshire might be trying to tell us about the eleventh-century northern Anglo-Welsh Border
No full textThis chapter follows on from research and publication by this author on the form and placing of Anglo-Norman castles situated within the northern Anglo-Welsh medieval borderland, recently interpreted and newly termed the Irish Sea Cultural Zone (Swallow 2016). This interpretation argues for the Anglo-Normans’ reuse of pre-existing monuments dating from the prehistoric and Romano-British periods for the deliberate placing of their castle builds. Dodleston Castle was situated within the fluctuating borders of this frontier borderlands zone, and, it is argued, played a significant role in the continuity of strategic and commercial movement along the entirety of the Anglo-Welsh border and the Irish Sea Region. Within this context, and taking a cross-period and interdisciplinary research approach to re-examine the earthworks and landscape of Dodleston Castle in more detail than hitherto, the earthworks at Dodleston may reveal a meeting point of significance over millennia. It will be demonstrated, for instance, that Dodleston’s earthworks likely represent an Anglo-Saxon assembly site situated at the meeting points of important medieval administrative boundaries within the Irish Sea Cultural Zone. By considering the wider spatial significance of Dodleston beyond the temporal confines of the Anglo-Norman period, it is therefore possible to understand better, and reinterpret, the form of the castle earthworks as they exist in the landscape today