Oxford University Department of Continuing Education Undergraduate Certificate in Archaeology 1998 Option 5 Anglo-Saxon Archaeology - Assignment 1
How Should Archaeologists Relate the Information Given by Primary Written Sources (Including Old English Literature)
to the Archaeological Evidence for the Early Anglo-Saxon Period?
Student - P.Ingram
This essay is as submitted for the Certificate course except that the illustrations have been replaced by references to the appropriate pages of the relevant text as they cannot be made available electronically here. The essay was graded 85%.
How Should Archaeologists Relate the Information Given by Primary Written Sources (Including Old English Literature) to the Archaeological Evidence for the Early Anglo-Saxon Period?
Introduction
This question tempts us to survey the relevant data, laying the pieces out as a jigsaw, and to see where the
outlines suggest a match. In fact, this is, more or less, how many texts deal with this question, a notable example
being Myres (1969, 1986) treatment of jutish pottery in Kent.
Bede’s (Sherley-Price 1990) recording of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes is interpreted as justifiable historical record of causation and the occurrence of a relatively small number of artefacts, particularly pottery, showing connection with Jutland (see Myres 1969, map 7) is then matching effect. A longer look at Myres distribution map, however, shows how widespread the occurrence of these pottery types is, not heavily biased, as Bede and Myres interpretation suggests, toward Kent. In fact there is a considerably stronger artefactual connection between Kent and the Frankish kingdoms than Jutland (Campbell 1982), thus if artefact culture-histories were any guide to ethnic descent we should be looking to France. The jigsaw approach leaves neither written source nor archaeology with firm foundations, the two are given post-hoc rationalisations which support each other, a house built of cards.
Further analysis of the politics of emergent kingdoms (such as Bassett 1989) suggests that ethnic affiliation at the time Bede is not related to actual descent but had more to do with an association with politically successful ruling dynasties, the archaeology demonstrating that the migration period population was an extremely mixed one (Arnold 1997, 190).
From this example it is clear that it is necessary to develop a firm theoretical footing for a relationship between written source and material culture and that demonstrating that relationship should not be done by jigsaw survey but by detailed case study.
The early Anglo-Saxon period extends, archaeologically, from the arrival of distinctively Anglo-Saxon pottery (Myres 1986) and metal artefacts (see Higham 1992, figure 6.3 and Campbell 1982 figures 24,25,26), dated to the second half of the fifth century A.D. (Arnold 1997), to the adoption of middle Saxon innovations such as slow wheel finished pottery (Hurst 1976) in the second half of the seventh century. Earlier than this there are finds which indicate a Saxon presence, or at least influence, in the late-Roman and sub-Roman periods; notably Romano-Saxon pottery (Myres 1986) and metalwork associated with late-Roman Saxon military units such as found around Dorchester (see Higham 1992, figure 6.2).
The main contexts in which we find evidence for this period are rural settlements and agriculture (see Higham 1992, figure 3.10; Rahtz 1976, figure 2.1), place name evidence and later land boundaries (Bassett 1989) and the largest group - burials (see Campbell 1982, figure 34) from which the case study will be drawn. One feature of this evidence is it’s lack of distinctively British elements. Only in the uncolonised west and Wales are there Christian monuments (Morris 1983; Higham 1992, figure 4.6) and some settlements/strongholds such as Tintagel or Cadbury to indicate the presence of a Romano-British population (Myres 1986).
The written sources are as follows:
i) Native contemporary writers, namely Bede (Sherley-Price 1990) and Gildas (Winterbottom 1978);
ii) Native writers distanced by time such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Nennius - Higham (1992) provides a good discussion of these sources.
iii) State documents - The Tribal Hidage, the laws of Ine (c.700s) and Aethelberht (c.600s) (Higham 1992) and the large quantities of land charters of various dates.
iv) Foriegn - examples are Gallic chronicles, Procopius, Tacitus (discussion see Myres 1986 and Higham 1992)
v) Hagiography such as Constansius or Bede (Webb & Farmer 1988) and Literature (Bradley 1991) - almost always written down much later in the period but like the law codes reflecting the values emerging from migration period society.
Analysis of these texts and their relative merits as primary sources begins the establishment of a theoretical framework.
Theory - The Emergence of Subjectivity
The sources usually accepted as primary are Bede and Gildas. Of the other sources, authorship is either known
to be separated by time or distance or is unknown and cannot be located with any accuracy. However an example of
the fallibility of Bede has already been given, he appears to have been influenced by political structures emergent
at that time and repeated the version of the past they created uncritically. For Bede most of the historical writings
are beyond living memory and in fact rely on Gildas (Campbell 1982; Higham 1992). Further, Bede’s writing is immersed
in the atmosphere of English conversion, an ‘ecclesiastical history’ and, like hagiography, cannot be separated
from the growth of the English church. A prime example of this is encountered by Morris (1983) who uses Bede to
date the founding of the church of St. Paul-in-the-bail by reference to the connection of the church to Paulinus.
Further on he adds a last minute note explaining that radiocarbon dating suggests the human remains associated
with the church may antedate Paulinus by as much as two centuries.
The failure to mention Romano-British Christian activity here and the importance attached by Bede to the calculation of Easter and the wars of Penda, a pagan, and his, Christian Romano-British allies combine to suggest Bede was intentionally English in his outlook. In summary, Bede’s writings are a product of a subjective view of the world emergent from a particular cultural milieu, to use this ‘primary’ source in a jigsaw approach would require stripping away that which is culturally subjective to identify causative ‘facts’, however, this is fundamentally impossible.
Much the same applies to Gildas. Gildas is even less concerned with history than Bede, his purpose in writing is clear, he wishes to complain against the sin of contemporary society and bring a little advice from the prophets of the old testament to the Sub-Roman British tyrants. History is a biproduct of explaining how such a terrible state of affairs came to be and shows no requirement for more accuracy, completeness (beyond the most conspicuous sinners) or sequence than once would expect of a prophet.
In the jigsaw approach provenance needs to be known and so Literature is rarely dealt with, due to it’s oral background, we cannot identify those occurrences which could have been versions of ‘factual’ events. The documentation of ownership and laws are, also, usually not discussed in relation to archaeology as they are mostly later and do not record real events. However literature and law are two of the most significant emergent products of any social system, surely archaeology has a place for such sources not just as potential records of causation but alongside and in parallel with other material culture.
Such an approach has been tried by Higham (1992), however all the written sources to a greater or lesser degree are not records but culturally emergent properties of human subjectivity, a description which reveals an inherently weak source for analysis of cause and effect in history.
The archaeological remains from any period are most often taken to be the residual patterns left by determinant causes, simple such as migration or diffusion or complex and multivariate as in processual systems theory. Whether simple or complex, however, the material culture is seen as the footprint of a given entity - the causative system. Modern post-processual analysis, usually by prehistorians, has questioned whether causation of the kind implied by systems theory actually exists, the argument usually contains the following elements (Barrett 1994 & 1996; Hodder 1991):
It follows from the above that material culture itself structures the creation of material culture by acting as the reference point for action by human agency as well as being the product of such action. Systems exist only in a virtual state of being interpreted into existence (Barrett 1989). Archaeology records the symbolic discourse as human agency works it’s subjectivity into the material culture of it’s time (or rejects and revolutionises that culture) and is concerned with the creation, reproduction, transformation and demise of such texts not their subservience to causative systems that aren’t really there.
Material culture then can be seen as a culturally emergent property of human subjectivity (Tilley 1991), a description which reveals an inherently weak source for analysis of cause and effect in history. Of course I use these words only to draw parallels between material culture and the written sources discussed previously. Culturally emergent properties are the only products of past social systems which enable us to understand the past. If material culture is culturally emergent, subjective and symbolically meaningful then it is a direct parallel for the written sources and both should display the same emergent characteristics and be involved in the same fields of discourse. A closely integrated approach to archaeological text and written text is called for, the two are driven by the same social conditions and may even be interchangeable.
Case Study - The Emergence of Barrow Burial in Final Phase Cemeteries
Morris (1983) charts the basic subdivisions in the interpretation of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries:
1) Early mixed cemeteries.
2) Pagan, mainly cremation cemeteries situated away from the settlement.
3) ‘Final Phase’ pagan cemeteries separated from the previous pagan phase, showing a marked decrease in grave goods
and cremation as a burial rite.
4) Transfer to a Christian graveyard, usually attached to a church, forming an integral part of the local settlement.
The Final Phase cemeteries are seen as having been founded under Christian influence but Morris questions this and Boddington (1990) attempts to dismiss it. Both authors consider an important factor against Christian influence to be the frequent presence of conspicuously rich barrow burials "in the seventh century .... A few of the barrows present rather greater individual concentrations of funerary wealth than have been seen previously: what does this signify?" (Morris 1983:55).
By identifying the types of people, places and times at which this particular archaeological discourse was aimed - the field of discourse (Barrett 1994) - we are able to suggest the influences upon the discourse and the temporal transformations that occurred within it. How "the logic of the known world could have been revealed and sustained, thought and acted through afresh" (Barrett 1994, 72). I would also suggest that we could then look for directly parallel emergent phenomena in the written sources.
Boddington (1990) relies on a set of normative rules which can be tested (and found wanting) against the data - the suppression of grave goods must be due to Christian policy. There are many reasons why cultural change associated with Christianity may have lead to a reduction in grave goods, requiring suppression or dismissing the suggestion reduces the problem to a trivial level. Not least of possible reasons is ideology used to promote or legitimise a desired social change (eg. Bradley 1987). The church’s success in using ideology to better it’s social position rather than imposing burial standards, is highlighted by Morris (1983:50) "[by] the end of the pre-conquest era ... to be excluded from a churchyard was a fate worse than death.". Is the same ideology driven transition away from grave good deposition evident in the written sources? One need not look far :
"A man may bury his brother with dead
and strew his grave with the golden things
he would have him take, treasures of all kinds,
But gold hoarded when he here lived
cannot allay the anger of God
toward a soul sin freighted."
(Boddington 1990:177 from the Seafarer)
What then of the rich monumental burials built in the face (literally at Taplow - Arnold 1997:162) of this growing social change. The fall off of weapon burial has been analysed and illustrated by Harke (1992, Figures 29 and 32), Harke’s figure 32 demonstrates that the average wealth of weapon burials didnot fall off at anything like the rate of non weapon pagan burials and, throughout the period, is consistently a wealthy form of burial (Harke 1992). From this and the special nature of the barrow burials it is apparent that we are dealing with a field of discourse that was only relevant to a wealthy elite (Harke 1992: 164; Arnold 1997:199).
The importance of the thegn and his gift giving relationship with Anglo-Saxon warriors is documented from Tacitus to the Battle of Maldon. Whilst we can not read off social identity from graves (Arnold 1997:179) this group shows other parallels with the discourse we are considering. The importance of gifts during the early Anglo-Saxon period is a feature of the literature (Arnold 1997:102). The difference between gift and commodity exchange has been analysed by Gregory (1980:40) "gift debt is created by an exchange of inalienable objects between people in a state of reciprocal dependence." The gift is indissolubly bonded to the giver and creates political capital and status. Different kinds of gift are rarely interchangeable and "each cycle of exchange was used to establish and maintain certain forms of political status, and it was through the accumulation of political statuses that the entire system was integrated." (Barrett & Needham 1988:127).
Thus the noble Anglo-Saxon’s position was inseparable from his ability as Hlaford and ‘ring-giver’. A feature of competitive gift exchange is that the only way to accumulate political advantage is to control the amount of high value gift items in circulation and a particularly prestigious way of doing this is to destroy them as gifts to the dead or to the gods (or God) (Gregory 1980; Bradley 1985).
Before the arrival of the church it is likely that land tenure was infrequently permanent and that land was in royal gift (Arnold 1997,65). Thus at the same time as a concentration of royal power there flourishes amongst a wealthy section of society a monumental method of consumption of gift wealth. It is possible then to see the barrow burials not as assertions of paganism but demonstrations of political power in support of claims to hereditary rights, of princes and ealdormen, which might otherwise be gifted to the church by royal authorities consolidating their own political status.
Directly parallel emergence of exactly this scenario occurs in Beowulf. Beowulf was son of "a nobly born man of foremost rank called Ecgtheow" (Bradley 1991:418) and of thegn rank himself and yet for most of the poem he appears landless. It is not until he is able to gift royal war-gear to his king that he is granted "seven thousand hides of land, a hall and a princes throne....land and hereditary rights" (Bradley 1991:469). That the poem displays concern with hereditary claims has been noted previously (Baker, 1995:65) and the parallel is certainly compelling.
Conclusion
Land rights may have been a concern throughout the early Anglo-Saxon period when a consistent tendency to re-use prehistoric landscape features has been interpreted as creating a visible ‘traditional’ presence for ancestors (Bradley 1987; Van de Noort 1993). A typical example, from the author’s local area, (Butterworth and Lobb 1992) also contains weapons showing evidence of deliberate damage, a phenomenon frequently associated with consumption of gift wealth (Bradley 1985).
Such concerns when combined with the influence of the Christian church may have resulted in cultural phenomena emergent in both the archaeological and written record. It is clear, whatever the merits of the case study, that post-processual theory and the study of the emergent properties of indivisibly complex human systems, rather than causative sub-system breakdown, leads to direct comparison between written record and archaeology; best analysed in terms compatible with the discourse through which it was constituted. Writing does not record cause and archaeology effect, they are two sides of the same coin.
Finally Harke (1992:165) finishes thus "it [weapon burials] was phased out after it’s one remaining symbolic function had been ..... replaced by other, archaeologically invisible symbols which accompany the living but not the dead." If the case study is correct the suggestion would be that for part of the community the replacement symbols would have been written land charters; two sides of the same coin.