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Walsingham House is situated at the intersection of Crutched Friars and Seething Lane, inside the eastern portion of the walled Roman and medieval City of London. Initially, during the Roman period, the site was quarried for brickearth, but by the end of the 1st century AD it had been incorporated into the rapidly expanding urban centre known as Londinium. Latterly, the site may have consisted of several backyards delineated by linear ditches, where rubbish pits were dug. Whilst no Roman buildings were discovered on site, the assemblage of building materials indicates that a wide range of structures existed nearby. By the late 4th century AD, it appears that the site had been abandoned and it was sealed by an accumulation of dark earth. The site was not reoccupied until the Late Saxon period when the present street network was established. By the 12th century the adjoining streets were lined with buildings, behind which were back yards where more rubbish pits were dug. Other medieval features included a barrel-lined well, which was reused as a rubbish pit during the later 13th or early 14th century. Medieval masonry structures consisted of truncated cellar wall foundations and cesspits, some of which remained in use for centuries. Tudor structural activity consisted of a brick-built cellar and a drain. This area miraculously survived the Great Fire of 1666 but was devastated by a subsequent fire in 1673. This destruction probably encouraged the nearby parish church of St Olave’s, Hart Street, to acquire part of the site as an additional graveyard, which was consecrated in 1680 and closed in 1781. Excavations revealed 20 adult inhumations, ten of whom had been interred in stacks within two shaft graves. In 1787 the eastern and southern parts of the site were developed as part of an East India Company warehouse, the remains of which were represented by substantial brick foundations. Following the demolition of the warehouse during 1912—22 to facilitate the construction of Pepys Street and the adjacent Port of London Authority Building, the site was redeveloped in 1927—9 as Walsingham House, named after Sir Francis Walsingham, principal secretary to Elizabeth I, who was a famous resident of this locality during 1580—90. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In much of Europe, the advent of low-input cereal farming regimes between c.ad 800 and 1200 enabled landowners—lords—to amass wealth by greatly expanding the amount of land under cultivation and exploiting the labour of others. Scientific analysis of plant remains and animal bones from archaeological contexts is generating the first direct evidence for the development of such low-input regimes. This article outlines the methods used by the FeedSax project to resolve key questions regarding the 'cerealization' of the medieval countryside and presents preliminary results using the town of Stafford as a worked example. These indicate an increase in the scale of cultivation in the Mid-Saxon period, while the Late Saxon period saw a shift to a low-input cultivation regime and probably an expansion onto heavier soils. Crop rotation appears to have been practised from at least the mid-tenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zooarchaeological evidence is combined with anthropological, artistic and historical sources to investigate the role of human-animal interactions during periods of social change in post-Roman England. Data from nearly 500 assemblages covering 1500 years in southern England provide a unique basis to investigate the use of non-livestock animals in diverse areas from cosmology to commodities, companions to status. Results showcase the potential for integrated studies to provide insights into the changing perceptions of animals from creatures that play a role in the afterlife, to those that are earthbound and soulless, to express status and power, to reveal a demand for spectacle and education and to reflect contrasting functions of economy alongside an increasing sentimentality for pets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The roots of the English population lie in diverse cultural origins. Within the second half of the first millennium AD, there were two major migrations, firstly the Saxons in the immediate post-Roman period, and later following the 'Viking' incursions of the mid-9th century. This paper considers the visibility of these migrations in the animal economy. Zooarchaeological data from 141 Saxon sites within England were analysed for evidence of diet and animal husbandry. Results indicate that there were signatures specific to native British rural populations in the early Saxon phase, relying largely on a self-sufficient economy, consuming very few wild species or domestic birds. Saxon cultural differences were implied from a number of sites, dependant on the increased importance of cattle in the diet and as culturally symbolic animals signifying status and utilised for trade. There was also evidence for the earliest settlers to have used pigs as a 'mobile larder', to provide meat while they established herds and flocks of cattle and sheep. Regional differences were visible in the late Saxon phase, within Wessex and the Danelaw, related to agricultural changes in the midlands and central southern region, and cultural identity, particularly within the heartlands of the northern Danelaw, towards an increase in cattle production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Pitcarmick-type' houses were identified by the Royal Commission in north-east Perthshire in 1988 and published in their survey of 1990. Long and narrow with rounded ends, they seemed to occur in a sequence between prehistoric roundhouses and medieval and post-medieval dwellings. They were therefore provisionally assigned to the later 1st millennium At), a period associated in this region with the Picts. Excavations by John Barrett and Jane Downes at Pitcarmick (North) in 1993-5 defined the basic properties of two Pitcarmick-type houses and produced radiocarbon dates between the 8th and llth centuries. A subsequent survey of the broader landscape by Janet Hooper offered a sequence of the main phases of occupation and their context. The Pitcarmick upland had been settled in the Bronze Age with circular stone-and-turf houses, thought to represent a series of self-supporting farmsteads using mixed farming and in touch with similar settlements in adjacent territory. Two thousand years later, Early Historic settlers inserted their dwellings into this relict landscape, also practising mixed stock and crop farming. In the Middle Ages, the land was settled by farmers who kept sheep and ploughed the earlier settlement areas. The post-medieval period is represented by a group of shielings on the eastern edge of the prehistoric and early medieval settlement area, where ploughing continued. These investigations are here brought to press by Martin Carver, supported by Historic Scotland and a team of specialists who examined the quartz, charcoal, animal bone and pottery and produced a tighter array of radiocarbon dates. This account proposes that the Bronze Age roundhouses are of conventional type, with a central hearth, entrances facing south-east, and roofs supported by a post-ring. The two Pictish buildings are defined as longhouses with byres (properly byre-houses), constructed with turf-and-stone layered walls and timber roof-supports. Occupants sheltered round a hearth at the west end and animals were stalled either side of a paved drain at the east end. These houses are radiocarbon-dated to the period c AD 700-850. Both buildings had been reused between c At) 1000 and 1200 and both were subsequently flattened by later medieval and post-medieval ploughing, the effects of which severely inhibited subsequent interpretation. While Pictish in date and territorial affiliation, these longhouses exhibit strong links with preceding and contemporary practice across the North Sea. Their form currently stands in marked contrast both to their prehistoric predecessors and to contemporary neighbouring settlement in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]