Based on a combination of morphological and biometrical analyses, this book provides a new, objective and transparent methodology to distinguish between sheep and goat post cranial bones in the archaeological record. Additionally, on the basis of the newly proposed approach, it reassesses the role of the goat in medieval England.

The first section of the book describes how zoo-archaeologists go about studying faunal remains from archaeological sites, and to explore the nature of these remains, and some of the information they provide. The second part discusses the relationship between humans and animals from earliest Africa to post-Medieval Britain. The latter can, of course, not be a complete survey; instead it sets out to describe some of the types of relationship that have existed throughout history, and the material consequences of those behaviours in the archaeological record. Helpful bibliography. `One of the most lucid expositions on archaeozoology available' New Scientist.

Written by a team of experts and presenting the results of the most up-to-date research, The Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology will both stimulate and support further investigation into a society poised at the interface between prehistory and history.

Four very different kinds of Anglo-Saxon thinking are clarified in this volume: traditions, learned and oral, about the settlement of the country, study of foreign-language grammar, interest in exotic jewels as reflections of the glory of God, and a mainly rational attitude to medicine. Publication of no less than three discoveries augments our corpus of manuscript evidence. The nature of Old English poetry is illuminated, and a useful summary of the editorial treatment of textual problems in Beowulf is provided. A re-examination of the accounts of the settlement in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle yields insights into the processes of Anglo-Saxon learned historiography and oral tradition. A thorough-going analysis of an under-studied major work, Bald's Leechbook, demonstrates that the compiler, perhaps in King Alfred's reign, translated selections from a wide range of Latin texts in composing a well-organized treatise directed against the diseases prevalent in his time. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.

'Food in Medieval England' draws on research across different disciplines to present a picture of the English diet from the early Saxon period up to 1540. It uses a range of sources, from the historical records of medieval farms, abbeys, & households both great & small, to animal bones, human remains, & plants from archaeological sites.