Able Minds And Practiced Hands

One hundred years on from J Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson's 1903 landmark publication, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, twenty six essays explore the current state of knowledge of early medieval sculpture in Scotland. They demonstrate the unique value of this material in contributing to our understanding of the society and people that created it between 1000 to 1500 years ago. Today's approaches and techniques offer new insights, as well as great hope, for what might be learnt from future study of 'familiar' and new material alike. The essays exemplify the ever-diversifying, interdisciplinary approaches that are being taken to the study of early medieval sculpture. Key themes that emerge include: the interdependence of conservation, research and access; the need for a 21st-century inventory of the sculpture; the breadth and value of the wide range of the research tools that now exist; conservation issues, including the politics of how and where sculpture should be protected, and the pressing need to identify priorities for action; and, what is probably the most important development over the last 100 years, the increase in awareness of the range of values and significances that attaches to early medieval sculpture, including appreciation of context.

One hundred years on from J Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson's 1903 landmark publication. The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland. 26 essays explore the current state of knowledge of early medieval sculpture in Scotland. They demonstrate the unique value of this material in contributing to our understanding of the society and people that created it around 1500 to 1000 years ago. Today's approaches and techniques offer exciting new insights, as well as great hope for what might be learnt from future study of 'familiar' and new material alike. Book jacket.

Seals and Society arises from a major project investigating seals and their use in medieval Wales, the Welsh March and neighbouring counties in England. The first major study of seals in the context of one part of medieval Western European society, the volume also offers a new perspective on the history of medieval Wales and its periphery by addressing a variety of themes in terms of the insight that seals can offer the historian. Though the present study suggests important regional distinctions in the take-up of seals in medieval Wales, it is also clear that seal usage increased from the later twelfth century and spread widely in Welsh society, especially in those parts of Wales neighbouring England or where there had been an early English incursion. Through a series of chapters, the authors examine the ways in which seals can shed light on the legal, administrative, social and economic history of the period in Wales and its border region. Seals provide unique insights into the choices individuals, men and women, made in representing themselves to the wider world, and this issue is examined closely. Supported by almost 100 images gathered by the project team, the volume is of great interest to those working on seals, their motifs, their use and developments in their usage over the high and later Middle Ages.

Winchester’s identity as a royal centre became well established between the ninth and twelfth centuries, closely tied to the significance of the religious communities who lived within and without the city walls. The reach of power of Winchester was felt throughout England and into the Continent through the relationships of the bishops, the power fluctuations of the Norman period, the pursuit of arts and history writing, the reach of the city’s saints, and more. The essays contained in this volume present early medieval Winchester not as a city alone, but a city emmeshed in wider political, social, and cultural movements and, in many cases, providing examples of authority and power that are representative of early medieval England as a whole.

Presenting the results of new research on the monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow—among the most sophisticated centers of learning and artistic culture in 17th- and 18th-century Europe, and the home of Bede—and their churches, this study examines the long-lasting effect of their buildings and estates on the surrounding region from the Anglo-Saxon period to the present day. The authors trace these relationships through time with new studies of the changing landscape, the monastery precincts, and the surviving structures themselves, detailing how the historical archaeology of the sites reveals how the churches and their communities were rooted in the landscapes of Northumbria but flourished through their links with other parts of Britain and Europe. Researchers from many different backgrounds contributed to the project, using aerial, geophysical, geoarchaeological, and palaeoenvironmental surveys and digital mapping to examine the monasteries and surrounding lands. This book reveals not only the link between the churches and the region’s political and economic history, but also demonstrates how their cultural significance for local people in northeast England has changed over time.

The Routledge Companion to Cultural Property contains new contributions from scholars working at the cutting edge of cultural property studies, bringing together diverse academic and professional perspectives to develop a coherent overview of this field of enquiry. The global range of authors use international case studies to encourage a comparative understanding of how cultural property has emerged in different parts of the world and continues to frame vital issues of national sovereignty, the free market, international law, and cultural heritage. Sections explore how cultural property is scaled to the state and the market; cultural property as law; cultural property and cultural rights; and emerging forms of cultural property, from yoga to the national archive. By bringing together disciplinary perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, law, Indigenous studies, history, folklore studies, and policy, this volume facilitates fresh debate and broadens our understanding of this issue of growing importance. This comprehensive and coherent statement of cultural property issues will be of great interest to cultural sector professionals and policy makers, as well as students and academic researchers engaged with cultural property in a variety of disciplines.

"With Into the Ocean, Kristjan Ahronson makes two dramatic claims: that there were people in Iceland almost a century before Viking settlers first arrived c. AD 870, and that there was a tangible relationship between the early Christian 'Irish' communities of the Atlantic zone and the Scandinavians who followed them." - Book jacket.

Archaeology has, on the whole, tended to dominate the development of public policies and practices applicable to what is often referred to as â oeheritageâ . This book aims to examine the conflation of heritage with archaeology that has occurred as a result. To do so, it asks whether archaeology can usefully contribute to critical understandings of heritage, which, the volume contends, must consider heritage both in terms of what it is and the cultural, social and political work it does in contemporary societies. Archaeologists have been very successful in protecting what they perceive to be their databaseâ "a success that owes much to the development and maintenance of a suite of heritage management practices that work to legitimize their privileged access to, and control of, that database. However, is archaeological data actually heritage? Moreover, does archaeological knowledge offer a meaningful reflection of â oethe historic environmentâ , in terms of the uses, values and associations it carries for the various and different communities or publics that engage with that environment/heritage? The volume brings together academic and field archaeologists, academics from heritage studies and community activists from the UK and Europe more generally to debate these issues.