List of the contents of Sakrale Gewänder des Mittelalters.

It reminded me that in Bamberg Cathedral’s treasury there is meant to be a cloak that belonged to Duke Melo of Bari from his time of exile at the court of Emperor Henry II.

Half follis of Justinian, Portable Antiquities Scheme

Catalogue of the imperial Byzantine coins in the British Museum (1908), vol. 1

Catalogue of the imperial Byzantine coins in the British Museum, vol. 2 (1908)

Catalogue of the coins of the Vandals, Ostrogoths and Lombards, and of the empires of Thessalonica, Nicaea and Trebizond in the British museum (1911)

Courtesy of http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/

The reaction to the news of the recent discovery of an immense hoard, rich in gold and silver, has been predictably varied, both from the academic and museum communities and the general public. The Staffordshire hoard was announced on 24 September 2009. The story of its discovery by metal detectorist Terry Herbert and its subsequent reporting to the Portable Antiquities Scheme and recovery archaeology at the understandably secret site is well covered in the press and can be read in the press statement on the hoard’s website. Here is a brief reflection I recently left on the Early Medieval Forum mailing list and the full thread with reactions from other medievalists can be accessed in September’s archives and October’s archives.

I read Alex Burghart’s review with great interest. As demonstrated in the article, the questions such exceptional finds raise are as important for the understanding of the past (whether ‘history’ or ‘archaeology’) as any answers that might be yet be put forward. Rather than the rather tired debate about whether such things inform history, or whether history informs them, I found the last sentence of most interest:

Not much certainty is likely to come of this, but when faced with this collection of strange, undiminished beauty, certainty is hardly the point.

What makes this find so intriguing, to me, above all the detail and analysis, whether of the inscription or the workmanship or the materials, is the effect it has already had upon a the popular consciousness of the early Middle Ages. If any of you followed the story on twitter, or indeed take a look at some of the comments left on its flickr pages, you would see what I mean (even overlooking the odd and downright bizarre).

I wish I had had the chance to go up to Birmingham and hear what others were saying, what they were expecting and what indeed it made them think about. The hoard will now be studied by (hopefully) a large cohort of scholars of all persuasions and will enter into lectures and seminar discussions, even if it might start on the legendary ‘booty of Penda’ question. This is only to be encouraged, even before any consensus might be reached about why and how.

We have to give a voice to our texts to get answers, and so do we to our objects. I hope that discussion on the hoard doesn’t get stuck on this issue, nor, I hope does its study become too fragmented between specialist scholars who will all find their own areas of interest in it but not readily come together or share. These finds could be used to create a museum in their own right, in the landscape in which it was found, and with the myriad other finds, texts and images from here. Perhaps if they were all put together, we might feel more certain about its role in the past, and its role today.
/ends

Since then, I have discussed the hoard with other people and kept half an eye on the hoard’s website, still trying to digest it all. What went into that work on the millefiori stud? How long would it have taken? And so on. Of particular interest is Emeritus Professor Nicholas Brook’s first impressions which raise the important issue of such objects having been heirlooms in their own time. I look forward to hearing more from Dr Kevin Leahy in his lecture to be given at the British Museum on 26 November (Tickets £5 and £3 concessions). His outwardly facing agenda for the hoard and its interpretation, in other words, working to put as much ‘raw’ information out to tender as it were, is something to be commended as I have alluded to above. I know of at least one undergraduate student who has already chosen this as his dissertation subject. British Archaeology Magazine’s recent coverage (issue 109 November/December 2009) of the hoard and its discovery is to be similarly commended. Its pure and simple descriptive analysis just states things as they are and doesn’t seek to make comment in order to appropriate some position on it or another or to make pointlessly bold statements about the how the hoard will irrevocably change our understanding of the ‘Dark Ages’… (of course it will only do so through a completely new mode of collaboration, debate, assimilation and dissemination of information).

I now come to a point where I feel that I want to understand better the relationship of one object to another in the haul, more than say, workmanship, techniques, dating, kingdoms and associated historic events. Something about this feels deeply personal. Can’t quite put my finger on it. In the meantime I can only look forward to its imminent arrive in London.

Prof. Miri Rubin began with the most deft and breathless exposé of intellectual movements that have had great impacts on medieval history writing. From the Annales School establishment of social and economic histories of the longue durée to the Marxian approaches of late Prof. Rodney Hilton and the history of peasantry, to radical gender historians of North America, historians of ethnicity, identity and the mandala of fields and sub-fields which have resulted from these, we were reminded that it was this question, what is important? that has been asked over and over by historians who have wanted to change our thinking of the past, and by extension, of us today. All of this was gold-threaded with the idea that historians in the last century began to want to know more about European ‘peoples’ than its institutions. In other words, those affected by big decisions, rather than the decision makers. In in a current climate of political activity on ‘Europe’ and ‘Europeans’ (and the prospect of a President Blair–Il presidente del popolo, presumably) this point was made even more apposite.

Prof David Carpenter came at the question from a quite different perspective. He equally deftly made us travel to thirteenth-century England to Kibworth Harcourt near Leicester and the killing of a certain William King. We entered the court room of Gilbert of Preston who held an inquiry into the case of the defendant ‘Wodard of Kibworth’. All this, only weeks after the rebellion of Simon de Montfort of 1265. Wodard was pardoned (by the Montfortian government) and we know this from a slightly more than normally detailed entry in the Patent Rolls of Henry III. What excited Prof. Carpenter was the thought of how the pardon that was eventually granted by Gilbert was used by Wodard in his locality and what the responses to it might have been, all in the light of the recent rebellion. Sadly, no more on Wodard to date. All the more exciting however, that what might be seen as sterile patent rolls, are in fact some of our best sources for the ‘impact’ of big events on ‘the people’. I could say the same for the southern Italian charters I use, recalling the Bishop of Troia’s statement in his roll of gifts to the cathedral in the mid-twelfth century that he was unable to make these gifts before owing to the turmoil and strife in his region (referring to the salutary lesson imposed by William I on the big cities of Apulia by razing cities like Bari to the ground).

The discussion which ensured was expectedly amorphous as people homed in on the concept of importance and their own way of judging whether, for example, an innate curiosity in the piece of research was enough to justify its pursuit, or whether there is an inescapable element of current interest that determined importance. An instance of this being the pressure to create new projects with a research council definition of ‘impact’ in mind, modern relevance or relevance to economy and society today. And this also applied to how those with a more ‘interesting sounding’ topic might get shortlisted for a job or funding application over another whose subject matter and questions seem ‘boring’. In other words, the judge is important and the privilege of being able to do research in medieval history should be justified by, presumably, results which ameliorate the greater good. A milder form of this was a point made that we need to express our work to others in a way they can relate to, otherwise what’s the point. Yet another angle proposed was that we should be concentrating on the questions we ask of our sources: do our questions do justice to the evidence we have before us?

The healthy tensions between one point made and another were all rooted in the use of abstract nouns, e.g. what on earth is ‘agency’ and haven’t historians been looking at that forever anyway? Important is a classic abstract noun that is over-used by historians without adequate thought. Even on occasions when evidence has been presented to back up the important finding, it is seldom prefaced with a justification of why anyone else should care. And this is really where my position lies. I want to constantly test my thoughts with the ‘who cares?’ question. It is not, however, up to me to care about why others don’t, but merely to invite them to think differently. When you are an historian of material culture (how abstract does that sound?) this becomes especially important (ahem) because you have to constantly justify a) why any of this should change the way we think about people in the past (I’m not in the business of writing a history of things) and b) what on earth you are doing in history and why aren’t you in archaeology or art history. But that can be the subject of a future post.

I had one final observation. When Prof. Carpenter gave out handouts to share, I took a look around to see which bit people would begin to pour over first. It comprised a map, summaries and translations of the three documents under scrutiny and a photocopy of two of the entries on the original rolls, one in a beautiful hand. I went straight to the map. I wanted to see where Kibworth was in relation to other places. I wondered which of the modern routes were also the main drags in and out 850 years ago. My esteemed neighbour carefully read the photocopied excerpts in their original hand. Many others, I could see, wanted to quickly read through all the translations to understand the story, the words, the people’s names. That’s what makes a medieval topic important to me. The ability of a broad academy of practitioners to each bring to the same topic something of themselves, their skills and their hunger to learn.

Read Who’s Who in Medieval Southern Italy.

Putting Humpty Together Again: Overcoming the Fragmentation of the Middle Ages

The conference will be held at the Avenue Campus (School of Humanities) on 15-17 December 2008 (Monday to Wednesday).

This session is co-organised with Ben Jervis, also of the University of Southampton (Archaeology) and is supported by the Society for Medieval Archaeology.

To submit an abstract, please use TAG 2008′s submission page on the website as well as emailing a copy to both myself (tehm@soton.ac.uk) and Ben Jervis (bpj106@soton.ac.uk).

The deadline is 1 September 2008

Full session abstract

Medieval archaeology is one of the most vibrant fields of historical archaeology. In previous years and decades there has been much debate over the directions medieval archaeology should travel. This has generally centred around questions of interdisciplinarity: understanding the archaeology in the contexts of other disciplines such as history, anthropology and philosophy; or criticisms of the lack of archaeological theory applied to the interpretation of landscapes, sites and objects when compared with archaeologists engaged in prehistory. However we have identified many other areas of ‘fragmentation’ which archaeologists and those who use archaeological evidence have faced and attempted to overcome. Some examples include:

• Transitions between periods, e.g. Saxon to Norman, early to high medieval, late to post medieval
• Divisions between material specialists, e.g. ceramicists, numismatists, small finds or metalwork specialists
• Geographic boundaries, e.g. studies according to modern regional and national boundaries (Kent, Italy) or those according to contemporary boundaries (Wessex, Normandy)
• Landscape and settlement vs. object-based archaeology
• Cultural focus vs. biological/environmental focus (including human and animal remains)
• Life and death archaeology, e.g. finds and settlements relating to people’s lifestyles and those found within funerary landscapes
• Relationships between urban and rural archaeology
• Theme-based divisions, e.g. social, economic, cultural, military
• Fragmentation between professions, e.g. academia, heritage (including museums), commercial archaeology and conservation

This session seeks papers from those who want to, or have, overcome the kind of fragmentation outlined above in their investigations and research. Have you actively sought to apply theory to the way you view your period, sites and materials in order to transcend the traditional boundaries of your field? Can you demonstrate ways in which you have tried to challenge fragmentation successfully? Or, if you have tried and it has failed, why? Is some fragmentation necessary to retain specialisms and expertise or is it time to challenge the basis of these divisions which operate within the boundaries of outdated academic traditions?

Patricia Skinner: Seasonal Business Patterns: Solving the Amalfitan ‘Enigma’?  in:

Session 621: Cities in Medieval Italy and Italians in Medieval Cities, I: New Approaches to Old Problems in Local and Long-Distance Trade, 10 July, 11.15-12.45

Tehmina Goskar: A Bed, a Mattress and a Pillow Full of Feathers: Practical Provisions upon Marriage in 12th-Century Southern Italy (download paper abstract) in:

Session 1627: Nearest and Dearest: The Construction of Family Relationships in Norman Europe, 12 July, 11-15-12.45

The workshop is hosted by the Centre for Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Date: 22 January 2007
Venue: Lecture Theatre C, Avenue Campus, University of Southampton. How to get here.

Full programme

PROGRAMME
10.30-11.00 Arrival and coffee
11.00 Welcome and Introduction – Trish Skinner
11.30 Keynote – Bonnie Effros (SUNY Binghamton)
‘Anthropology and ancestry in 19th-century France: craniometric profiles of Merovingian-period populations’

12.40 Lunch (Café available next to venue, pub 10 minutes’ walk)

2.00 Workshop session 1
Paolo de Vingo (Turin)
‘From farmers to warriors and conquerors: a comparison of ethnogenetic developments of the Longobard population and archaeological data to understand how a Germanic ethnic group conquered and dominated Italy in the early medieval centuries’

Ben Jervis (Southampton)
‘Scale, identity and pottery in late Saxon Sussex’

3.15 Short break

3.30 Workshop session 2
Tehmina Goskar (Southampton)
‘Pennanular brooch; silver; animal head terminals with opening jaws; Lombardic. What am I? An historian’s interpretation of some early medieval metalwork from southern Italy’

Anne Mathers-Lawrence (Reading)
‘Anglo-Saxon outlines? Stylistic classification and the politics of manuscript illustration’

4.45-5.00 Closing discussion

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPANTS
The past decade has seen intensive work on the problems of ethnicity, identity and migration, and on modern interpretations of early medieval texts and artefacts. Although contributions have been made to these debates by historians and archaeologists, there has been little reflection on how these might then lead to revisionist readings of extant early medieval objects in museum collections, which are still largely categorised on stylistic grounds established in the 19th and 20th centuries.

We invite short 20-minute papers from historians, archaeologists, art historians and museums professionals, as a means of starting an ongoing, reflective dialogue. Postgraduates are very welcome to attend and To register interest or to contribute a paper or communication, please email Dr Patricia Skinner (p.skinner@soton.ac.uk) or Tehmina Goskar (tehm@soton.ac.uk) by 10 January 2007.
Download poster.