Review of periodical literature for 2023: (i) 400–1100

The papers from the past year cover a range of topics, with much attention given to the practical aspects of economic activity such as minting coinage, and mining and trade in raw materials, which have been illuminated by the application of new methodologies such as geochemistry and zooarchaeology. We begin with coinage and an article that received considerable attention on its first publication: Coupland’s discovery of a coin that is the first known example of a queen being named on a Carolingian coin. It is a silver coin for Fastrada (d. 794), the wife of Charlemagne, with the inscription ‘FASTRADA REGIN’ and was minted in 793. Its existence may have been inspired by the Cynethryth pennies minted for Offa of Mercia's queen in the late 780s, which similarly present the Mercian queen with the abbreviation ‘REGIN’. Coupland notes that this coin is especially significant because, for the first half of his reign, Charlemagne ensured that only his name was on his coinage. He argues that its existence underlines Charlemagne's devotion to Fastrada and her status at his court, and the coin adds to the corpus of contemporary documents that name this queen. Staying with coinage, Merkel, Oravisjärvi, and Kershaw present an intriguing analysis of the provenance of silver in a collection of precisely dated early Islamic coins. The team used a new approach of geochemistry, which uses lead isotope and elemental data to determine the origins of the silver used in the production of dirhams c. 700–900. They note that written records after c. 900 relating to the production of millions of coins indicate an eastward shift in silver minting and trade linked to the rise of the Samanids in central Asia. However, their study indicates that the silver used in the earlier period, for Umayyad and Abbasid dirhams, was sourced more locally, with little evidence that silver was traded trans-regionally. In particular, they identified potential mines in previously overlooked areas, such as Tunisia, central Iran, and the Taurus Mountains, and suggest that there was an Abbasid-period mining boom. Kershaw and Merkel were involved in another analysis of mining from the other end of Europe, at the North Pennines in Britain. This article, which won the 2023 Editor's Award in the journal Medieval Archaeology, examines the mining and exporting of lead from remote uplands in northern England to Scandinavian urban centres such as Kaupang in Norway and Hedeby in modern-day Germany (historically Denmark). They identified the origin by applying new scientific provenancing techniques to the exploitation of lead mined from England. Derbyshire had been regarded as the leading, perhaps only, lead-mining region in early medieval England, but their lead-isotope analyses of lead and lead-alloy objects from York revealed a source in the North Pennines. A comparison of their results with existing lead-isotope datasets from Scandinavia showed that the same northern English lead source supplied the emporia of Kaupang and Hedeby. There is no surviving documentary evidence for the North Pennines mining industry, unlike that of Derbyshire, but evidence of mining such as lead bale sites have been discovered in this region. Their analysis indicates that seaborne trade in lead from the North Pennines began around the mid-eighth century, and mining continued in this region until the early eleventh century. Hedeby (Haithabu), the largest urban settlement in the Viking North, was the focus of Muñoz-Rodriguez et al.’s examination of long-distance connections during the early Viking Age. This team analysed an assemblage of antler combs, which had been reliably dated by typology to the ninth century, using zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS). Their results revealed that 90% of the analysed combs were made from reindeer antlers. As most craft production at Hedeby used red deer antler, the combs demonstrate extensive trade with far more northerly regions. Their results support Ohthere's account, in the Old English Orosius, of Hedeby's trade with the north, for which there had been little direct evidence, and refocus attention on Hedeby's place in North Sea trade dynamics and as the ‘gateway’ to continental Europe. The successful application of ZooMS also underlies the paper by van den Hurk et al., who analysed bone samples from Hamwic (modern Southampton, Hampshire, United Kingdom), a major bone-working centre. The discovered bone, which represents working waste from the site, was antlers and bones from terrestrial mammals, as well as large quantities of cetacean bone: 240 whale-bone fragments from 17 separate sites. ZooMS revealed that the majority of cetacean bone came from the North Atlantic right whale, now a highly endangered population. The limited evidence for whaling in early medieval England suggests it was an opportunistic endeavour that may have primarily relied on scavenging stranded cetaceans. For example, an explanatory runic panel on the Franks Casket indicates that it was made from bone acquired from a stranded whale. The whale bone at Hamwic may be due to trade, as the large quantities of antler at the site indicate such activity. However, the whale bone primarily dates to the period 670–770, which represents two of the site's five phases of occupation, and suggests its arrival may be due to opportunity rather than trade routes. Indeed, the authors argue that, as whale skeletons are so large, one whale would provide huge quantities of bone suitable for working, a theory that could be confirmed by genetic analysis of the Hamwic whale fragments. Staying in southern Britain, Costello examined the discovery of swords in furnished burials in early medieval Kent (fifth to seventh centuries). He highlights the circulation of swords, which are recognized biographical objects, as heirlooms, and notes that sources such as Beowulf reveal the social importance of older or ancient swords. Indeed, the age of the weapon often reveals its trustworthiness. Consequently, the decision to include swords in burial rites would have been significant for the collective memory of the local community. His close analysis of two Kentish graves in particular—Buckland Grave 96B and Saltwood Tunnel Grave W 3779—suggests that the inhumed individuals were younger than usual for those buried with swords, and it seems likely that the swords in those graves had previously belonged to and were used by other individuals. Finally, he notes that there is evidence that graves were re-opened, often within a decade of burial, with items removed. Although these graves often contained many items, only swords and brooches appear to have been consistently removed, indicating their possible symbolic function. Military regalia also featured in the work of Vlasatý et al. following the discovery of an early medieval helmet in eastern Europe. The helmet was discovered in Pohansko near Břeclav, an important central place in the early medieval polity of Great Moravia, during recent archaeological excavations. These excavations have revealed an unknown early medieval church, a large burial site, and an adjacent settlement. The helmet is dated to the last quarter of the ninth century and has been digitally reconstructed using three-dimensional (3D) imaging from several iron fragments that were found. The authors present it as the first Carolingian helmet from central Europe to be found in a settlement context and propose that it belonged to the man who was buried in a place of honour in the proprietary church or to his close relatives. Our next two articles share new discoveries at early medieval ruling centres in Bulgaria and Scandinavia. Milo et al. present the results of a recent geophysical survey of the urban landscape between the ninth and fourteenth centuries at Velikie Preslaz, the new capital city created by Tsar Simeon I for the First Bulgarian Empire (AD 681–1018). This former fortification guarding the passes through the Balkans became a vast urban centre of three parts: an Inner City, Outer City, and suburbs. At its peak, it was of similar size to contemporaneous cities such as Constantinople and Baghdad. Previous work had focused on the Inner City, but the recent investigations examined all elements of the site, thereby greatly expanding knowledge of the settlement, which had three well-defined cultural layers. There is still much to learn about this city, but differences between the Inner City, which was made of stone, and the Outer City, which seems to have been densely populated and in which stone architecture was rare, are highlighted. Rundkvist et al. report the discovery of the first royal site from the area of Östergötland in south-east Sweden, at Aska near Vadstena. It appears to have been the principal seat of a petty royal lineage, though there is no written evidence attesting to a royal line in Östergötland. The site has an oblong platform with postholes indicating a hall with the dimensions 48 × 14 m, identified by ground-penetrating radar. The hall is believed to have stood between 650 and 990. Radiocarbon dates taken from the remains of a horse found at the site produced results of cal 670–770, and the latest date for grain recovered from the hall is cal 880–990. Thirty gold-foil figures were also discovered at the Aska platform, which is the largest known assemblage of such figures from the first-millennium kingdom of Östergötland. However, a goldsmith at Aska was also in Lofoten in northern Norway, which may suggest that Östergötland was an important region for the production of gold-foil figures. A decorative shield mount, possibly a Sutton-Hoo-type, and three gaming pieces made from right-whale bone were also found at the Aska site, which further underlines the inter-connected nature of the North Sea-world as seen in other papers from this year. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a surge of interest in studies of plague throughout history. Harper's contribution to this area presents a thoughtful assessment of the written evidence for the First Plague Pandemic, from the sixth to eighth centuries, in Italy. The Second Plague Pandemic began with the Black Death of the 1340s. The Third Plague Pandemic spread from Hong Kong in 1894. Harper cites recent scholarly developments in studies of the First Plague Pandemic which combine cutting-edge paleo-genomics (the recovery and study of ancient DNA) with close analysis of the written record (e.g. McCormick, 2021). In his close and detailed analysis of the literary sources, which reveals potentially 9–14 attested outbreaks of plague, Harper disrupts an older consensus that little attention was paid to the long-term effects of the plague in the written record from early medieval Italy. He argues that the First Pandemic needs to be considered across two centuries to allow room for nuance and comparative study, and suggests that ZooMS (applied to patterns of rodent populations) may be key for studies of the First Plague Pandemic in Italy. Comeau, Seaman, and Bloxam also consider the impact of the plague in their assessment of declining activity at hillforts and corn-drying kilns in western Britain in the later sixth and seventh centuries. The plague was one of three paradigms of change affecting Britain at this time. The others were climate change and conversion to Christianity, with the corresponding development of the Church. Datasets from the selected sites were compiled by the authors and subjected to chronological analysis using kernel density analysis. The authors’ conclusion is that the most significant force for change in the west of Britain was the development of Christianity. There is no documented evidence for the plague at any of their sites and little evidence for a climate downturn when hillfort activity and corn-drying kiln activity was decreasing. They propose that some hillforts may have fallen out of use because their lands were donated to the Church and were, therefore, no longer part of the rulers’ seasonal circuits, such as hunts. Malt-making may also have declined with the transfer of land to the Church, especially in areas with ascetic communities who avoided alcohol. Ultimately, these changes may reflect wider shifts in social attitudes of the time. Our next four papers continue with events on the island of Britain. Rabin keeps us in the conversion period with his analysis of what Bede may have meant when describing the law-making activities of King Æthelberht of Kent (d. 616) as following the ‘examples of the Romans’ (Ecclesiastical history of the English peoples II.5). He notes that this reference is the only time that Bede marked a transition from orality to textuality, and suggests that Bede's statement reflects a new understanding of the prerogatives of kings as lawmakers. The emperor had legal authority under Roman law, unlike Germanic law, which was conciliar, with the king serving a representative rather than legislative function. In many respects, Æthelberht's law code was in keeping with other Germanic royal legislation—there is very little reference to Christianity or the church—but the text expanded the scope of the king's authority to more closely resemble the Roman model of active and interventionist monarchs. Rabin argues that the ‘examples of the Romans’ may have provided a precedent for a new conception of kingly authority that reflected Bede's priorities as a historian and chimed with the political aspirations of the Northumbrian ruling elite. Hanlon, who shared the Early Medieval Europe first article prize with the next article by Jonathan Tickle, is also concerned with legal matters and presents a close analysis of the language of violence in Old English. She links the Old English word reaflac with the Latin word violentia, as it was used in eleventh-century French charters, and argues that reaflac was used as a rhetorical device to emphasize the violence in a case and delegitimize the other side. Hanlon closely examines the lawsuits presented in two Old English charters, Sawyer 877 and Sawyer 1211, both of which were concerned with defending the rights of widowed queens. She argues that reaflac was used to present the subjects of both as weak and pious victims who were being attacked by immoral murderers. She also relates the term to descriptions of the pillaging of estates in the twelfth-century Ely house chronicle, the Libellus Æthelwoldi, which she argues relied on a collection of now lost tenth-century charters. Tickle also presents a close analysis of Sawyer 1211, though his focus concerns the narrative framing of this intergenerational property dispute. The charter records the donation of the Kentish estates of Cooling and Osterland by Queen Eadgifu to Christ Church, Canterbury. However, due to the contested nature of the ownership of these estates, the charter also confirms the queen's right to make such a donation by presenting a chronological history of the legal dispute, which began with Eadgifu's father long before she became the wife of King Edward the Elder (r. 899–924). Tickle argues that Eadgifu shaped the narrative presented in the charter, which is intended to reconstruct her speech as spoken (whether or not she actually spoke at the donation ceremony), in a manner which few could contradict. This argument aligns with Hanlon’s assessment of the strategic use of reaflac in charters. Tickle also notes that, in successfully negotiating the challenges of female legal agency, Eadgifu may have inspired the actions of later queens, including her grandson Edgar's wife, Ælfthryth, who is credited with re-imagining the possibilities of female royal status. Clark keeps us in the legal sphere with her analysis of the West Saxon perambulatory boundary clause. She argues that this distinct example of narrative cartography was a West Saxon phenomenon, which enables us to understand how they imagined land and landscape. These boundary clauses differed from the earliest such clauses from early medieval England, which were written in Latin and modelled on Roman forms. Instead of using cardinal directions, the West Saxon evidence presents land as a series of vernacular landmarks on a Latin perambulatory route. This practice began in eighth-century Wessex, and replaced the Latin quadripartite boundary clauses in the rest of England during the ninth century as the West Saxon kings increased their influence. Clark argues that these boundary clauses were also brought to the continent by West Saxon missionaries, specifically Boniface and his followers. Perambulatory bounds in Latin with German place names or noun phrases have been identified in continental charters from monasteries with West Saxon connections. 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