This edited volume explores how (what is today) Scotland can be compared with, contrasted to, or was connected with other parts of Early Medieval Europe. Far from a 'dark age', Early Medieval Scotland (AD 300-900) was a crucible of different languages and cultures, the world of the Picts, Scots, Britons and Anglo-Saxons. Though long regarded as somehow peripheral to continental Europe, people in Early Medieval Scotland had mastered complex technologies and were part of sophisticated intellectual networks.This cross-disciplinary volume includes contributions focussing on archaeology, artefacts, art-history and history, and considers themes that connect Scotland with key processes and phenomena happening elsewhere in Europe. Topics explored include the transition from Iron Age to Early Medieval societies and the development of secular power centres, the Early Medieval intervention in prehistoric landscapes, and the management of resources necessary to build kingdoms.

A report on the excavation of early historic features at Forteviot, eastern Scotland as part of the University of Glasgow's SERF Project (Strathearn Environs and Royal Forteviot). Also description and analysis of early medieval sculpture from the Forteviot area.

This edited volume explores how (what is today) Scotland can be compared with, contrasted to, or was connected with other parts of Early Medieval Europe. Far from a 'dark age', Early Medieval Scotland (AD 300-900) was a crucible of different languages and cultures, the world of the Picts, Scots, Britons and Anglo-Saxons. Though long regarded as somehow peripheral to continental Europe, people in Early Medieval Scotland had mastered complex technologies and were part of sophisticated intellectual networks.This cross-disciplinary volume includes contributions focussing on archaeology, artefacts, art-history and history, and considers themes that connect Scotland with key processes and phenomena happening elsewhere in Europe. Topics explored include the transition from Iron Age to Early Medieval societies and the development of secular power centres, the Early Medieval intervention in prehistoric landscapes, and the management of resources necessary to build kingdoms.

The early medieval period witnessed one of the deepest and most significant transformations of European societies and cultures with the process of Christianisation. The emergence and establishment of Christianity created a new dimension of power in society with an appeal to supernatural forces combined with an access to a broader transnational authority. Carved stones did not merely reflect these changes, but enabled them within northern societies with traditions of sculpture and epigraphic representations. This book looks at three datasets of monuments from Ireland, Scotland and Sweden using an innovative comparative framework to offer new insights on these monuments and the societies that erected them.Analysed through the three major themes of place, movement, and memory, the case studies are presented from a holistic perspective comprising the monument, their landscape settings and historical and archaeological contexts (when available). The results of this research demonstrate that by means of comparisons across national boundaries, new interpretations emerge on the use and functions of early medieval carved stones. The thematic approach adopted emphasises similarities and contrasts in a more efficient manner than a geographical approach, freed from historiographical biases within scholarly traditions of 'Celtic' or 'Scandinavian' archaeologies. Furthermore, a multi-scale analysis places the monuments within their local contexts but also within a broader narrative of Christianisation.

First extended treatment of the city of St Andrews during the middle ages. St Andrews was of tremendous significance in medieval Scotland. Its importance remains readily apparent in the buildings which cluster the rocky promontory jutting out into the North Sea: the towers and walls of cathedral, castleand university provide reminders of the status and wealth of the city in the Middle Ages. As a centre of earthly and spiritual government, as the place of veneration for Scotland's patron saint and as an ancient seat of learning, St Andrews was the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland. This volume provides the first full study of this special and multi-faceted centre throughout its golden age. The fourteen chapters use St Andrews as a focus for the discussion of multiple aspects of medieval life in Scotland. They examine church, spirituality, urban society and learning in a specific context from the seventh to the sixteenth century, allowing for the consideration of St Andrews alongside other great religious and political centres of medieval Europe. Michael Brown is Professor of Medieval Scottish History, University of St Andrews; Katie Stevenson is Keeper of Scottish History and Archaeology, National Museums Scotland and Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval History, University of St Andrews. Contributors: Michael Brown, Ian Campbell, David Ditchburn, Elizabeth Ewan, Richard Fawcett, Derek Hall, Matthew Hammond, Julian Luxford, Roger Mason, Norman Reid, Bess Rhodes, Catherine Smith, Katie Stevenson, Simon Taylor, Tom Turpie.

Twenty-three contributions by leading archaeologists from across Europe explore the varied forms, functions and significances of fortified settlements in the 8th to 10th centuries AD. These could be sites of strongly martial nature, upland retreats, monastic enclosures, rural seats, island bases, or urban nuclei. But they were all expressions of control - of states, frontiers, lands, materials, communities - and ones defined by walls, ramparts or enclosing banks. Papers run from Irish cashels to Welsh and Pictish strongholds, Saxon burhs, Viking fortresses, Byzantine castra, Carolingian creations, Venetian barricades, Slavic strongholds, and Bulgarian central places, and coverage extends fully from northwest Europe, to central Europe, the northern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Strongly informed by recent fieldwork and excavations, but drawing also where available on the documentary record, this important collection provides fully up-to-date reviews and analyses of the archaeology of the distinctive settlement forms that characterized Europe in the Early Middle Ages.

This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the development of northern England and southern Scotland in the formative era of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. How did "middle Britain" come to be divided between two separate unitary kingdoms called "England" and "Scotland"? How, and how differently, was government exercised and experienced? How did people identify themselves by their languages and naming practices? What major themes can be detected in the development of ecclesiastical structures and religious culture? What can be learned about the rural and the emerging urban environments in terms of lordly exploitation and control, settlement patterns and how the landscape itself evolved? These are among the key questions addressed by the contributors, who bring to bear multi-faceted approaches to medieval "middle Britain". Above all, by pursuing similarities and differences from a comparative "transnational" perspective it becomes clearer how the "old" interacted with the "new", what was exceptional and what was not, and how far the histories of northern England and southern Scotland point to common or not so common foundations and trajectories. Keith Stringer is Professor Emeritus of Medieval British History at Lancaster University; Angus Winchester is Professor Emeritus of Local and Landscape History at Lancaster University.BR>Contributors: Richard Britnell, Dauvit Broun, Janet Burton, David Ditchburn, Philip Dixon, Piers Dixon, Fiona Edmonds, Richard Oram, Keith Stringer, Chris Tabraham, Simon Taylor, Angus J.L. Winchester.