The archaeology of Lincoln, Volume 14 Part 1.

The medieval marketplace is a familiar setting in popular and academic accounts of the Middle Ages, but we actually know very little about the people involved in the transactions that took place there, how their lives were influenced by those transactions, or about the complex networks of individuals whose actions allowed raw materials to be extracted, hewn into objects, stored and ultimately shipped for market. Twenty diverse case studies combine leading edge techniques and novel theoretical approaches to illuminate the identities and lives of these much overlooked ordinary people, painting of a number of detailed portraits to explore the worlds of actors involved in the lives of everyday products - objects of bone, leather, stone, ceramics, and base metal - and their production and use in medieval northern Europe. In so doing, this book seeks to draw attention away from the emergent trend to return to systems and global models, and restore to centre stage what should be the archaeologists most important concern: the people of the past.

This report examines the finds from the 17th-century backfill of a well in the churchyard of St. Paul-in-the-Bail. Dug possibly as early as the 1st century, the well lay within the east range of the later forum , and may have been used subsequently as the baptistry of two successive early churches, built some time between the late 4th and 7th centuries. The history and use of the well is briefly outlined, with the focus of the volume on the finds. The assemblage from the 17th-century backfill represents the largest group of artefacts of this period to have been recovered in the city of Lincoln and contains a high proportion of organic material. The artefacts show a wide range in type and quality, including both common household articles and items indicating a relatively high social status. Selected finds are catalogued, primarily by function.

From shortly before AD 800 until the Norman Conquest, England was subject to raids from seafaring peoples from Scandinavia—the Vikings. However, they were not only raiders but also traders and settlers. Using the latest archaeological evidence, the author reassesses the Viking contribution to Late Anglo-Saxon England and examines the creation of the new mixed Anglo-Scandinavian identity.

An engaging look at life in the Viking Age.

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.