Activities per year
Abstract
Recent archaeological research, notably at the Viking winter camp at Torksey, has indicated that the armies that invaded Anglo-Saxon England in the late 9th century were much larger than has often been assumed and that a literal reading of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s assessment of the size of Viking fleets may, after all, have been correct. Furthermore, study of the Torksey metalwork assemblage has allowed the identification of the archaeological signature of the Viking Great Army and, when applied to Cottam, it confirmed the identification of an initial phase of raiding by an element of the Army, followed shortly thereafter by settlement represented by the development of a hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian culture. Taken together, over 25 categories of non-ferrous artefacts are diagnostic of Viking or Anglo-Scandinavian activity in Northumbria. Applying this model to over 15 sites, largely known only from metal-detecting, we can observe a common pattern. At the majority of sites, a large and fairly standardised Middle Anglo-Saxon finds assemblage is succeeded by just a few Viking finds, which we attribute to raiding following Halfdan’s return to Northumbria with part of the Great Army in AD 876. At a much smaller number of sites there are also assemblages of Anglo-Scandinavian finds, relating to the establishment of new settlements by the new landowners. The overall picture is of major settlement disruption and dislocation of existing land holdings and populations in the late 9th century. This demonstrates, for the first time from archaeological evidence, the scale and impact of Viking activity in Northumbria.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 322-350 |
Number of pages | 29 |
Journal | Medieval Archaeology |
Volume | 62 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 20 Dec 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 20 Dec 2018 |
Bibliographical note
© Society for Medieval Archaeology 2018. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.Profiles
Activities
- 2 Invited talk
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Beyond the winter camps: new evidence for the Viking Great Army in the East Riding
Julian D Richards (Invited speaker)
20 Feb 2019Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
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The Viking Great Army: raiding and settlement in Northumbria
Julian D Richards (Invited speaker)
8 Dec 2018Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
Datasets
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Cottam B: an Anglian and Anglo-Scandinavian settlement in East Yorkshire
Richards, J. D. (Creator), Archaeology Data Service, Sept 2016
DOI: 10.5284/1034389
Dataset