Data for an early Anglo-Saxon census of southern Britain released
Fascinating insights into the early medieval people of southern Britain can be gained from their burial practices. In Kent alone, there are over 240 burial sites consisting of the graves and cremations of at least 5300 individuals of the fifth to seventh centuries AD. Associated with these people were over 13800 objects, a vast array including weaponry, jewellery, glassware, and more mundane items such as knives, beads, and spindle whorls. Studying these assemblages and their locations in the landscape give us important information about past lives. The sheer scale of this information has been difficult to encompass, but digitisation now allows us to collate and present this data in a publicly accessible and freely available format.
The UCL Early Medieval Atlas is pleased to announce the launch of the Beyond the Tribal Hidage burial data. This is the baseline research data of the Leverhulme Trust funded project Beyond the Tribal Hidage: the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern Britain AD 450–650 directed by the late Dr Martin Welch FSA at UCL Institute of Archaeology, 2006–9. The project aimed to bring together in an accessible format all the available evidence for burial and material culture in southern Britain from the fifth to seventh centuries AD. Over the years Martin had compiled a meticulous card catalogue of sites in the knowledge that only the full deployment and accessibility of the data would allow the fundamental questions of the early Anglo-Saxon period to be addressed with clarity. This ambition was realised as a digital census created by Sue Harrington and Stuart Brookes. The current iteration is a development of an earlier pilot database of Kentish burials, made available via the Archaeology Data Service and published in 2008:
https://archaeologydataservice. ac.uk/archives/view/ asked_ahrc_2008/
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[pg15]The process of data acquisition was one of desk-based assessment by county, followed by discrete searches to both published and unpublished grey literature and other archive material held by county archaeological societies, research libraries, national and county journals, museum day books and accession registers, as well as through various communications with local researchers. In general, it was possible by this additional level of search to add 10 per cent to the number of sites recorded by national and county archaeological registers. Next, discrete county site lists were assembled, and museum and archive visits arranged to view the relevant objects from these national listings. Data was collected geographically in county sets working clockwise around the study region, beginning with East Sussex in November 2006 and finishing in Kent, Surrey, and Greater London in August 2008. This iteration of the dataset also includes listings of new sites appearing between 2008 and 2017.
The study area extends south from the River Thames and westwards into Somerset. The downloads comprise: sites table lists of 834 burial sites with grid references; the Individuals table of 12,379 people for whom there References Harrington, S. and Welch, M. 2014. The early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern Britain, AD 450-650: beneath the Tribal Hidage. Oxford: Oxbow Books are partial or complete burial records; and the Objects table noting their 26,043 associated artefacts. The three tables can be freely downloaded from:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/earlymedieval-atlas/map-data/ beyond-tribal-hidage-data
The data enables users to explore the nature, distribution and spatial relationships of burial sites in their landscape context.
The web page also gives a full list of references and suggested further readings. We are pleased also to announce that Dr Audrey Meaney FSA has permitted us to include pdfs of her 1964 gazetteer of Early Anglo-Saxon burial sites.
As originally envisaged, this data is being made public in the expectation that future researchers will be able to enhance and extend its content. The conclusions of the project, as presented in the project monograph (Harrington and Welch 2014) could thus be tested, challenged, revised and extended as others see fit in the future, aware that what is presented here is but one assessment of the wonderfully complex and engaging material for this crucial period of early medieval studies.
If you would like further information, please contact:
Data content: Dr Sue Harrington FSA s.harrington@ucl.ac.uk
Website: Dr Stuart Brookes FSA s.brookes@ucl.ac.uk
References
Harrington, S. and Welch, M. 2014. The early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern Britain, AD 450-650: beneath the Tribal Hidage. Oxford: Oxbow Book