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The peasant of early medieval England has long been treated as an agent without agency. Whispers of change can be discerned in recent years, but these efforts have overwhelmingly discussed peasants' abilities to affect their primary means of production: agriculture. So, too, has the historiography of social mobility long ignored the ignoble elements of tenth- and eleventh-century England; the purview of such studies beginning in earnest in the twelfth century. The embedded narrative remains: the successful peasant had little agency in locating themselves in the social hierarchy and were reliant on avenues that were left open at the discretion of the nobility. This thesis addresses this dearth and aims to relocate the early medieval peasants of England as active agents within their social landscapes. This is achieved by establishing the means by which social boundaries are constructed and conceptualised. A handful of texts have driven historians' understanding of rank, the most notable of which have been the Gethynctho and the Northleoda lagu. These propose a seductive image of the thegn as a wealthy warrior who owned bookland to the amount of five hides. Yet, following the frameworks of Maurice Halbwachs and Jan Assman, I argue that these texts, most likely produced by, or at the request of, Archbishop Wulfstan of York, first and foremost objectivise his own conception of society. In this way they tell us more about the way in which he and other elites saw their world or, as may equally be the case, as they wanted it to be. Indeed, by borrowing from the philosophical framework of Edouard Machery, I theorise that defining exactly what a thegn was or was not remains remarkably difficult. The probabilistic mode of conceptualising ideas suggests an individual only had to fulfil one or more measures to be considered a thegn. Yet, successful peasants fulfilled many of those same criteria. I argue that defining the boundaries between ceorl and thegn became increasingly difficult across the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries. A long-overdue reassessment of the heriot, a form of death duty long seen as a marker of the martial nature of the nobility, in Chapter Two illustrates that many seemingly clear displays of rank may well have served to indicate status instead. This highlights one of the underlying themes of this thesis; that historians have, and continue to, conflate rank and status. I argue that rank was merely one of many factors that contributed to a person's status and position in society. To bypass the objectivised cultural memory propagated by Wulfstan and his ilk and their attempts to impose order based on rank, we must take the less travelled road and turn to other source types. I analyse the witness-lists of manumissions and attempt to reconstruct a landscape of local legal proceedings in which ceorls became increasingly important. Institutions in the south-west acknowledged the growing influence of successful peasants, naming them as individual witnesses to the manumission of slaves. Similarly, I reconsider the role of the guild in early England and its function as a venue for the expression and manifestation of social status. These were social spaces that controlled movement but also afforded opportunity; a space in which thegns and ceorls rubbed shoulders. Lastly, given the constraints of space, I briefly reconsider the Domesday evidence and suggest these records, long mined by historians to understand tenurial arrangements, obscure the day-to-day communicative experiences of status. Together, the spokes of this argument suggest that the tenth and eleventh centuries bore witness to the rising importance of local peasant elites as they gained increasing agency over the path their lives took and the ways in which their status was manifested.

The study of medieval computus (the calculation of the date of Easter) was popular amongst German scholars during the latter part of the nineteenth century, and American and German scholars in the early twentieth. Scholarly interest waned during the mid-late twentieth century, probably because computus is not the easiest subject to study without a firm grounding in mathematics, but the study of the ‘science’ has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years largely driven by the work of scholars at the National University of Galway. This revival is distinguished by the discovery of new computistical folios and manuscripts, an increased understanding of the Irish or ‘Celtic’ computus, significant discoveries of dating clauses by scholars such as Ó Cróinín and Warntjes, and new theories of transmission and dissemination. No study of the vocabulary of computus has presented itself although studies of Latin scientific vocabulary do exist which focus on medicine or natural sciences. Similarly, there are individual studies of vernacular vocabulary for works such as Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, but these have tended to comprise little more than word lists rather than any detailed analysis of the lexis. Therefore, an opportunity presented itself to enhance scholarly understanding of the vocabulary used by computus specifically and to add to the body of lexicological scholarship in general. This doctoral dissertation has considered the development of the vocabulary of the Roman computus (the science of the calculation of the date of Easter according to the church of Rome) in the fields of arithmetic, astronomy, and theology in selected Latin and Old English texts between the fifth and the twelfth centuries. It has investigated whether the Latin vocabulary of computus underwent significant change as the science developed from Victorius of Aquitaine’s 532-year Cursus Paschalis (c. 457), through to Dionysius Exiguus’ 95-year (5 x 19 year) Easter Table and Argumenta in the sixth century (c. 532), to Bede’s De Temporum Ratione and 532-year Circulus Paschae Magnus (Great Easter Cycle) in the eighth (c. 723). It has also briefly considered later innovations by Abbo and the School at Fleury in the tenth and eleventh centuries respectively and, by way of comparison, studied and compared Ælfric’s and Byrhtferth’s late tenth/early eleventh vernacular computistical language. It has investigated whether the vocabulary of computus employed by Victorius and Dionysius was substantially different to the lexis employed by Bede, Abbo, Ælfric, or Byrhtferth and/or whether a standardised Latin or vernacular vocabulary might have been developed specifically for computus during the period (much as the Winchester vocabulary exists for works of theology). In summary, this research has sought not only to develop a better understanding of how the vocabulary of the Roman computus developed during the period of study but also how early medieval computists might have perceived and utilised the interrelationship between astronomy, theology, and the calculation of time.

Until recently, individuals with physical impairment have been overlooked within the field of archaeology due to the controversy surrounding the topics of disability and care in the past. The current research adds to the growing body of archaeological disability studies with an exploration of physical impairment and the possibility of disability-related care in Anglo-Saxon England (5th-11th centuries AD), utilising palaeopathological, funerary, and documentary analyses. Palaeopathological analysis of 86 individuals with physical impairment from 19 Anglo-Saxon cemetery populations (nine early, five middle, and five later) was performed, and the possibility of disability-related care was explored for several individuals. The mortuary treatment data (e.g. grave orientation, body position, grave good inclusion) was gathered for the entire burial population at each site (N=3,646), and the funerary treatment of the individuals with and without physical impairment was compared statistically and qualitatively, both within and between the Anglo-Saxon periods. No obvious mortuary differentiation of individuals with physical impairment was observed, although several patterns were noted. In three early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, spatial association between individuals with physical impairment, non-adults, and females was observed. Early Anglo-Saxon individuals with physical impairment were more frequently buried in marginal locations, and two such individuals were buried in isolation. In the middle and later Anglo-Saxon periods, the funerary treatment of individuals with physical impairment became less variable, they were less frequently buried in marginal locations, and at three middle Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, they were buried in association with socially significant features in the cemetery landscape. The provision of care to ensure survival was not necessary for a majority of the individuals with physical impairment, but several individuals (lower limb paralysis, mental impairment) may have received regular, long-term care. This research proposes that the decreasing variability of mortuary treatment of individuals with physical impairment observed throughout the Anglo-Saxon period suggests that more variable attitudes about disability existed both within and between early Anglo-Saxon communities, while the political, social, and religious unification starting in the middle Anglo-Saxon period may have led to the development of more standardised perceptions of disability in later Anglo-Saxon England.

This thesis explores the complex theological beliefs about young souls expressed during the late Anglo-Saxon period. Scholars have paid surprisingly little attention to the theology of the soul between the ninth and eleventh centuries except in relation to its fate after death. Yet, the living soul appears prominently in Latin and Old English prose and verse demonstrating the extent to which beliefs about the whole of the soul’s life journey were still evolving. So great an interest did contemporary writers show in questions relating to the origins of the soul and its early experiences that it proved impossible to address the whole life journey of the soul from creation to judgment within the space of a single doctoral thesis. This thesis therefore focuses on the life journey of the young soul up to the cusp of adulthood, following pivotal moments from the birth of the soul to its adolescence. The first substantive chapter analyses the transfer of beliefs about the soul’s origin across this period from a Neoplatonic stance arguing for the soul’s pre-existence to a Creationist outlook. The second chapter questions the point at which the soul was first believed to enter the body and addresses the inconsistencies surrounding ensoulment during the period. The next chapter addresses ideas about the state of a child’s soul at the start of corporeal existence and the degree to which we can tell that the Anglo-Saxons believed in an inherited condition of original sin. The fourth chapter asks how long the soul received immediate entrance into heaven after baptism and where Anglo-Saxon writers drew the spiritual boundary between childhood and adulthood. A conclusion addresses the necessity of looking further into Anglo-Saxon beliefs about the life journey of the soul. The following epilogue studies souls outside living bodies to demonstrate the diverse and dynamic beliefs which continually appear in later Anglo-Saxon sources.

This dissertation studies the diverse approaches to ‘soldiering for Christ’ in Anglo-Saxon hagiographical narratives of warrior-saints. The investigation selects a group of four saints — Martin of Tours, Guthlac of Crowland, the Apostle Andrew, and Placidas–Eustace — as case studies of non-royal warrior-saints who are celebrated in anonymous Old English prose and poetic Lives that engaged diverse audiences. Medieval hagiographers associated each of these saints with literal as well as spiritual warfare and appear to have used the saint’s association with warrior culture to define Christianity’s relationship to a martial ethos. The Old English narratives concerning these four saints are analysed by comparing the vernacular texts to their sources and intertextual parallels while also placing the compositions, transmissions, and audiences of the Old English accounts in their historical contexts. In doing so, the analyses find that there was a range of perspectives surrounding Christian warrior culture which were produced and copied in tandem, from peaceful and nonviolent portrayals in the ninth-century Martinmas-homily and various Anglo-Saxon narratives on Guthlac, to the apparent advocacy of Christian violence for converting or subduing pagans reflected in the ninth-century poem Andreas, the tenth-century prose Life of Andrew, and the late tenth- or early eleventh-century Life of Eustace. Texts presenting conflicting attitudes towards Christian warrior culture are transmitted in similar contexts and time periods, sometimes within the same manuscript, suggesting that no cohesive ideology concerning milites Christi developed throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. Moreover, the works on Martin, Guthlac, Andrew, and Eustace illustrate that Old English depictions of spiritual warfare were heavily indebted to models inherited from Scripture and early Christian texts, indicating that Christian militancy was not the result of a ‘Germanisation’ of the faith. Rather this dissertation argues that Anglo-Saxon hagiographers were individually responding to their historical context, source material, and intended audiences to define what it meant to soldier for Christ.

This thesis is a study of landholders named in Domesday Book in 1066 and 1086 in Hampshire, from the wealthiest in the kingdom to families holding only a few acres of land. It pieces together and maps their landholding across the kingdom and the shire, exploring how and why they held land where they did. It considers the structure of landed society, establishing clear, comparable measures of landed wealth to enable a quantitative comparison of landholding in 1066 and 1086. It explores the dynamics of the Conquest, the dispossession of the English, and the rationale behind and logistics of the land transfers, between the two dates. It first evaluates royal landholding and the night’s farm estates. Winchester emerges as an important venue, on the edge of the royal heartlands, for royal assemblies and festival courts. To the west of Winchester, this research contends that there was an extensive pre-Conquest forest along the Hampshire-Wiltshire border, where Edward the Confessor enjoyed hunting. Known as the King’s Forest, its management provides an important comparison with the more extreme measures taken by William the Conqueror in the New Forest. Subsequent chapters analyse secular landholding. It is argued here that, before 1066, leading thegns who attended royal assemblies constituted an itinerant elite who often held estates across the north of the shire. The distribution of their estates facilitated travel to Winchester and into the royal heartlands. In contrast, many local thegns, who held most of their estates in Hampshire, possessed estates on a north-south alignment through the shire, intersecting with the estates of the itinerant elite in the Hampshire Downs. By 1086, these pre-Conquest patterns of landholding had been almost entirely swept away. Hugh de Port, sheriff of Hampshire, acquired several of the downland estates but most of the wealthier Norman landholders now held just one or two estates close to Winchester, or on the coast en route to Normandy. The thesis also considers the status and role of female landholders, including Queen Edith and Wulfgifu Beteslau, and reconstructs the landholding and itinerary of Queen Matilda within the kingdom and the shire. The final chapter investigates how and why ecclesiastical landholders saw an increase in their landed wealth between 1066 and 1086. In Hampshire, this came about not so much through the acquisition of new estates as through an increase in the value of existing demesne. It considers how this increase in value may have come about.

The history of the late-antique papacy has long fascinated historians, but studies of popes and their allies have rarely considered both Latin and Greek sources on equal terms. This thesis aims to fill this unfortunate lacuna by considering together networks of individuals aligned with papal interests from both the Roman Empire ('Byzantium') and the post-Roman West. In the process, a new interpretation of the careers of particular popes and the course of the monothelete controversy will be presented. While the seventh century is still often seen as a time when the unity of the Mediterranean world and late-antique Christendom fractured, by examining Palestinian monks, Frankish bishops, and Anglo-Saxon pilgrims together, the case is made that, from the perspectives of contemporaries, the divisions were perhaps not yet so obvious. This study begins with the friends and acquaintances of Gregory the Great, whose pontificate often looms large in histories of the early medieval West. Events in Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch, however, should still be integrated into narratives of the pope's actions, for specific parallels to Gregory's projects, most especially the Gregorian mission to England, can be detected in the available Greek sources. Similar connections in the seventh century are highlighted in the second chapter, which revisits papal history after Gregory's death to 649. This period remains a poorly understood and poorly documented one, but here I argue that fresh insights can be drawn from the words of the Venerable Bede and the writings of the monastic circle that gathered around the Cilician John Moschus. A revised narrative of the opening salvos of the monothelete controversy completes this analysis, for recent reinterpretations of this doctrinal debate have changed considerably our understanding of the Christological furore consuming the empire. The third and fourth chapters continue the story by venturing far beyond imperial borders. The consequences of the Lateran Synod of 649 in Visigothic Spain and Merovingian Gaul are discussed in detail first, for the imperial 'heresy' also left a tangible mark among the 'barbarians'. The hagiographical and conciliar evidence are certainly difficult to work with, but new possibilities can still be raised for how these western churches responded to pleas from Rome. The final chapter meanwhile surveys both the struggles of the anti-monothelete dissidents after the condemnation of their leaders, Pope Martin and Maximus the Confessor, and developments in Anglo-Saxon England. The careers of Wilfrid of York and Theodore of Tarsus, two men who loom large in any history of the early Anglo-Saxon church, are given particular attention. Indeed, this thesis argues that they too can be situated within imperial history, for their entanglements with Rome had exposed them to the very real consequences of papal dissent against Constantinople. Throughout this study, I argue that a transregional reading of the sources can provide more nuanced interpretations of even well-known texts. Latin histories, for example, can help to fill the gap in contemporary Greek historiography, while Greek writings are invaluable for understanding the often obscure twists and turns of papal politics. The interpretations offered here of events from Egypt to Northumbria and between Visigothic Spain and caliphal Palestine still present only a limited picture of the networks and exchanges possible in the seventh century, but the connections outlined in this thesis are, nonetheless, important additions to narratives of the end of late antiquity.

While gender has become one of the most prominent subjects in the study of history, including medieval history, over the course of recent generations, the study of masculinity -- of men as men -- has only been explored by relatively few medievalist scholars; Anglo-Saxonist historians in particular have hitherto generally failed to explore masculinity as a field of historical enquiry. This study seeks to fill that gap in the research, and reassess Anglo-Saxon kingship through the lens of gender history and masculinity theory. It focuses in particular on the period of the 'long tenth century', from c. 871-1035. During this time, the Anglo-Saxon realm underwent a number of significant changes: the formation and development of a larger and more centralised Anglo-Saxon state, generations of viking attacks and conquests, a number of serious internal political conflicts, and, perhaps most importantly, the development and promulgation of a religious movement now generally known as the 'Benedictine reform', which greatly influenced not only monastic life but secular life as well. In order to understand the connections between masculinity and kingship in this period, this dissertation first explores what it meant to be a male, and a prince, in the long tenth century. It also asks, 'Who raises royal sons?' -- that is, who was responsible for instilling in them proper masculine (and royal) behaviours? The following chapters then explore the matrix of royal and masculine behaviour into which those sons were enculturated though an in-depth analysis of the range of primary source texts that illuminate tenth-century Anglo-Saxons ideals of kingship and masculinity. Chapter 2 proposes that, while many Continental sources (i.e., specula principum, or 'mirrors for princes') were explicitly written as guides for right kingship, Anglo-Saxon kings and princes had no such guides. They were, this chapter argues, instead instructed through homiletic and political-theological texts that can also be read as evidence of a specific type of 'right kingship' promoted by the monastic authors of the tenth-century Benedictine reform movement. Chapter 3 turns then to another main source of Anglo-Saxon textual material: the literary world of Old English 'heroic' poetry. It proposes that these texts, too, have much to say about how men, especially aristocratic ones, were expected to behave in the long tenth century, the period from which the surveyed poetic manuscripts date. It urges caution in envisioning too strong of a dichotomy between 'heroic' texts on one hand and religious ones discussed in the previous chapter on the other, though, and argues that they must instead be read within the same tenth-century context. Chapter 4 then finally explores the actual performance of masculinity and kingship by later Anglo-Saxon kings and princes, as near as can be assessed in the surviving sources, taking as its model a three-fold conception of aristocratic and masculine 'duties' -- warfare, hunting, and procreation -- and exploring how all three underwent considerable renegotiation in the course of the tenth century. In the end, the dissertation concludes that the myriad changes of the long tenth century resulted in a reimagining of both kingship and masculinity. Moreover, it argues, these new developments in the performance of kingship in the long tenth century strongly intersected with the developments in masculinity in the last centuries of Anglo-Saxon England.

As a semantic investigation into Anglo-Saxon medicine, this thesis investigates the ways in which the Old English language was adapted to the technical discipline of medicine, with an emphasis on semantic interference between Latin medical terminology and Old English medical terminology. The main purpose of the examination is to determine the extent to which scholarly ideas concerning the nature of the human body and the causes of disease were preserved between the Latin texts and the English texts which were translated and compiled from them. The main way in which this has been carried out is through a comparative analysis of technical vocabulary, excluding botanical terms, in medical prose texts utilising the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus of texts, and a selection of printed editions of Latin texts which seem to have been the most likely sources of medical knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England. As a prerequisite to this comparative methodology it has been necessary to assemble a corpus of Latin textual parallels to the single most significant Old English medical text extant, namely Bald’s Leechbook. These parallels have been presented in an appendix alongside a transcript and translation of Bald’s Leechbook. A single question thus lies at the heart of this thesis: did Old English medical texts preserve any of the classical medical theories of late antiquity? In answering this question, a number of other significant findings have come to light. Most importantly, it is to be noted that modern scholarship is only now beginning to focus on the range of Late Antique and Byzantine medical texts available in Latin translation in the early medieval period, most notably for our present purposes Alexander of Tralles, but also Oribasius, Galen, pseudo-Galen and several Latin recensions of the works of Soranus of Ephesus, including the so-called Liber Esculapii and Liber Aurelii. The linguistic study further demonstrates that the technical language of these texts was very well understood and closely studied in Anglo-Saxon England, the vernacular material not only providing excellent readings of abstruse Latin technical vocabulary, but also demonstrating a substantial knowledge of technical terms of Greek origin which survive in the Latin texts.

The thesis explores burial practices across all three phases (early, middle and late) of the Anglo-Saxon period (c.450–1066 AD) in Norfolk and the relationship with the identity of the deceased. It is argued that despite the plethora of research that there are few studies that address all three phases and despite acknowledgement that regional variation existed, fewer do so within the context of a single locality. By looking across the whole Anglo-Saxon period, in one locality, this research identified that subtler changes in burial practices were visible. Previous research has tended to separate the cremation and inhumation rites. This research has shown that in Norfolk the use of the two rites may have been related and used to convey aspects of identity and / or social position, from a similar or opposing perspective, possibly relating to a pre-Christian belief system. This thesis stresses the importance of establishing biological identity through osteological analysis and in comparing biological identity with the funerary evidence. Burial practices were related to the biological identity of the deceased across the three periods and within the different site types, but the less common burial practices had the greatest associations with the biological identity of the deceased, presumably to convey social role or status. Whilst the inclusion of grave-goods created the early Anglo-Saxon burial tableau, a later burial tableau was created using the grave and / or the position of the body and an increasing connection between the biological and the social identity of the deceased, noted throughout the Anglo-Saxon period in Norfolk, corresponds with the timeline of the religious transition.

The inclusion of animal remains in funerary contexts was a routine feature of Anglo-Saxon cremation ritual, and less frequently of inhumations, until the introduction of Christianity during the 7th century. Most interpretation has focused either on the animal as symbolic of identity or as an indication of pagan belief, with little consideration given to the interaction between these two aspects. Animals were a fundamental and ubiquitous part of early medieval society, and their contribution to mortuary practices is considered to be multifaceted, reflecting their multiple roles in everyday life. This project considers the roles of animals in mortuary practice between the 5th-7th centuries across five counties in eastern England - Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Essex - in both cremation and inhumation rites. Animal remains have been recognised in 5th to 7th century burials in eastern England from an early date, and the quality of the existing archives (both material and written) is investigated and discussed as an integral part of designing a methodology to effectively summarise data across a wide area. From the eastern England dataset, four aspects of identity in mortuary practice are considered in terms of their influence on the role of animals: choice of rite (cremation/inhumation); human biological identity (age & gender); regionality; and changing expressions of belief and status in the 7th century. The funerary role of animals is argued to be based around broadly consistent cosmologies which are locally contingent in their expression and practice.

This thesis examines the physical legacy left by the unification of the Kingdom of England during the tenth century, and seeks to redress the way in which the Kingdom of Mercia is often overlooked or discounted in the traditional historical narrative. It principally examines the means by which Æthelflæd of Mercia extended political and military control over the West Midlands, both in terms of physical infrastructure and through ‘soft’ power in terms of economic control and material culture. It uses landscape archaeology, artefactual and textual evidence to compare Mercia with its ally, Wessex, and assess the different means by which Æthelflæd of Mercia and her brother Edward the Elder were able to consolidate and expand their territory, the physical infrastructure they established in order to defend it, and the ways in which these sites developed in response to the changing political, military and economic climates of the later tenth century. It will assess why some defensive sites developed into proto-urban settlements while others disappeared, and the extent to which this was a conscious or planned process. This thesis seeks to overturn the idea that burhs constructed in Mercia were insignificant or unplanned ‘emergency’ sites and instead were part of a sophisticated network of landscapes of defence, reflecting a significant level of manpower and logistical investment on the part of the Mercian state. It will furthermore seek to explore the ways in which the Mercian state supported such a network, how sites were chosen, constructed, maintained and garrisoned, and the impact these sites had both on the local population, in terms of patterns of settlement and material culture, and on the wider political scale.

Materiality is a significant component of medieval manuscript studies, but there is little research that approaches the subject from an anthropological-archaeological perspective. This project examines the Junius Manuscript (Bodleian Library MS. Junius 11) from its initial creation to its modern-day digitization. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative data collection, this archaeological approach constructs the manuscript’s life story. Examination of material interventions within the manuscript, such as holes, writing/notations, and creases offers insight into what material traces are left behind on manuscripts and what these can tell us about human interactions in relation to the object. In addition, this thesis considers the concept of digital materiality and the digitization of manuscripts to interrogate the nuances of digital accessibility within manuscript studies. An archaeological approach to the comprehensive life history of manuscripts contributes to the articulation of new perspectives on manuscript materiality and their social lives, considering these objects as artifacts rather than solely textual sources.

Birds were conspicuous in medieval people's lives, variously influencing and enabling the experiences of daily living. In medieval poetry, birds are one of the most ubiquitous of all nonhuman presences. Despite this commonplace appearance, no comprehensive study of their relevance and significance has yet been attempted. As a starting point, then, this thesis aims to redress this absence. It moves beyond traditional analyses that read avian presence as generic ornamentation or allegorical ciphers in order to suggest that encounters with real birds register as nuanced, diverse engagements in the texts here discussed. I draw on the fields of ecocriticism and animal studies to explore the ways in which metaphorical treatments do not dismiss real birds, but make feathered physicality and vocality intimate and essential aspects of poetic strategy, generating responses that are variously profound, comic and affective. Exploring moments where birds resist conventional expectations, or disperse into conflicting representations, also reveals why avian quiddities hold sway in medieval thought and practice. I argue that birds crystallise focus on particular concerns about the enmeshment of the nonhuman and human in medieval writings: the misdirecting and transcending capabilities of these aerial shape-shifters make them outliers that are pertinent to medieval preoccupations with a range of religious and secular transformations. The birds that fly and sing through my five chapters enact, provoke and evade transformations, both metaphorical and literal. They are engaged with Christian spiritual ascension and intellectual taxonomic conundrums in Old English texts from the Exeter manuscript, and take issue with falsified literary appropriations of species in The Owl and the Nightingale. Their remarkable voices are embroiled in Chaucerian experimental cross-species translation possibilities, and, finally, the unique, mutable qualities of birds are realised in the most physical, empowering manner possible - in Ovidian metamorphoses that intimately combine avian and human narratives.

This dissertation examines the literary and historical contexts of four collections of medical material from Anglo-Saxon England. These collections are widely known under the titles Bald's Leechbook, Leechbook III, the Lacnunga, and the Old English Pharmacopeia. As medical literature, these texts have tended to be primarily approached through the lens of the history of medicine or cultural history and folklore. However, as textual compositions carefully engaging with learned culture, these texts are relevant to the wider literary history of the period. The aim of this thesis is to examine these collections within specifically literary contexts, where they have been frequently overlooked. Towards this end, I take the approach of considering each of the four collections as individual, coherent texts, rather than treating them as simply as part of a general corpus of Old English medical literature, as has sometimes been done. This approach is reflected in the organisation of this thesis, which dedicates one chapter to each collection, with a final chapter on the characterisation of medicine within broader Anglo-Saxon literary culture. Each of these chapters details what I view as the distinctive qualities of a particular collection and considers what intellectual and literary milieux it may reflect. Chapter 1 discusses the strategies of compilation and translation employed in Bald's Leechbook and the relation of some passages within the text to translations associated with the Alfredian revival. Chapter 2 considers the incorporation of liturgical material within Leechbook III, while at the same time exploring the relationship of ælfe (elves) and the Christian demonic in these texts. Chapter 3 explores the textual and manuscript relationships surrounding the Lacnunga and argues that this collection reflects interests consonant with early insular expressions of grammatica. Chapter 4 examines the translation style used in the Old English Herbarium (comprising the first half of the Old English Pharmacopeia) and the place of this collection within the context of the tenth-century Benedictine Reform movement. Finally, Chapter 5 considers the representation of medicine within the larger Old English literary corpus and suggests that the depiction of medicine in these sources is ultimately positive, something that perhaps encouraged the flourishing of vernacular medical production we see testified to in the Old English medical collections. It is my hope that by highlighting the literary and learned aspects of these collections this dissertation will bring a new appreciation of these texts to a wider readership interested in Old English literature.

The origins of kingship have typically been accepted as a natural or inevitable development by scholars. The purpose of this thesis is to question that assumption. This work will re-examine the origins of early Anglo-Saxon kingship through a coherent and systematic survey of the available and pertinent archaeological and historical sources, addressing them by type, by period and as their varying natures require. The thesis begins with the archaeological evidence. ‘Elite’ burials, such as Mound One, Sutton Hoo, will be ranked according to their probability of kingliness. This process will point to elite burial as being a regionally-specific, predominately-seventh-century, phenomenon of an ideologically-aware, sophisticated and established political institution. Consequently, elite burial cannot be seen as an indication of the origins of kingship, but can instead be interpreted as a development or experiment within kingship. Analysis of ‘elite’ settlements, such as Yeavering, and numismatic evidence, will lead to similar conclusions. Further, consideration of various other settlement types – former Roman military sites in Northern Britain, former Roman Towns, and enclosed settlements – will point to various potential origins of Anglo-Saxon kingship in the form of continuities with previous Roman, Romano-British or British power structures. The thesis will go on to consider the historical sources. Those of the fifth and sixth centuries, primarily Gildas’s De excidio et conquestu Britanniae, point to several factors of note. The cessation of formal imperial rule over Britain following c.410 effectively created a power vacuum. Various new sources of political power are observable attempting to fill this vacuum, one of which, ultimately, was kingship. Through analogy with contemporary British kingdoms, it is possible to suggest that this development of kingship in England may be placed in the early sixth, if not the fifth, centuries. This would make the origins of Anglo-Saxon kingship significantly earlier than typically thought. This kingship was characterised by the conduct of warfare, its dependence on personal relationships, and particularly by its varying degrees of status and differing manifestations of power covered by the term king. Further details will be added to this image through the narrative and documentary sources of the seventh and early eighth centuries. These predominately shed light on the subsequent development of kingship, particularly its growing association with Christianity. Indeed, the period around c.600 can be highlighted as one of notable change within Anglo-Saxon kingship. However, it is possible to point to the practice of food rents, tolls and the control of resources serving as an economic foundation for kingship, while legal intervention and claimed descent from gods also provide a potential basis of power. Several characteristics of seventh- and early-eighth-century kingship will also be highlighted as being relevant to its origins – the conduct of warfare and the exercise of over-kingship – relating to the general propensity for amalgamation through conquest. Other trajectories are also highlighted, specifically continuity from previous Roman and British entities and the development of ‘pop-up’ kingdoms. The overall result is one in which long-term amalgamation and short-term disintegration and re-constitution were equally in evidence, set against the wider context of broad regional continuities. Overall, therefore, the thesis will not fully resolve the issue of the origins of Anglo-Saxon kingship, but it does offer a means to re-frame discussion, explore the social and economic underpinnings of kingship and assess its primacy as an institution within early Anglo-Saxon England.

Across Britain, there are over 100 possible early-medieval linear earthworks commonly termed dykes; in total, they stretch for over 400 kilometres. They vary in size from those just 100 metres in length to the famous Offa’s Dyke, which is over 95 kilometres long. There have been studies of individual dykes (Noble and Gelling 1983 for example) and general discussions of the larger examples (Squatriti 2002 for example), but no systematic attempt to catalogue and analyse them all. Their size and number suggests these earthworks were probably an important aspect of early-medieval life and have the capacity to tell us a great deal about the societies that built them. Dating such earthworks is difficult even with modern archaeological techniques and, as few early-medieval written sources survive, historians have often incorrectly ascribed enigmatic dykes to this period. This present study ascertained which dykes probably belong to the early-medieval period and contains a comprehensive gazetteer of them in the appendix. It also discusses how the dykes relate to the surviving written records, how many people were involved in their construction, what were their functions and what dykes can tell us about the processes that created early-medieval Britain. It calculated that far fewer people were needed to build them than many previous studies had supposed. While some were estate boundaries and King Offa may have ordered the building of the dyke that bears his name to bolster his power, it is argued that many of these earthworks were designed to prevent raiding. The dykes were a symptom of the endemic low-intensity warfare and small-scale forays into neighbouring territories that often characterised this period.

Humanity is a dominant presence in the Exeter Book riddle collection, significantly more so than it is in other early English riddle collections, and it is shown actively shaping, changing, and interacting with the physical world. The Exeter Book riddles engage with issues of exploitation, degradation and suffering and use their playful literary context to portray and, at times, reassess the roles of mastery and servitude that humans and nature have assumed in the post-lapsarian world. In this thesis, I set out to explore the depiction of the non-human world in the Exeter Book Riddle collection, investigating humanity's interaction with, and attitudes towards, the rest of creation using the fields of eco-criticism and eco-theology. Much scholarly attention has been given to what the riddles have to say about human society and culture, about heroism, service, sex and war, but very little has been said regarding the point-of-view of the natural world. I argue that there is a programme of resistance to anthropocentrism at work in the Exeter Book Riddle collection, whereby the riddles challenge human-centred ways of depicting and interpreting the created world. Depictions of the marginalised perspectives of sentient and non-sentient beings such as trees and animals are not just a characteristic of the riddle genre, but are actively used to explore the point of view of the natural world and the impact humanity has on its non-human inhabitants.

The phenomenon of the reuse of prehistoric monuments—notably Bronze Age barrows—for early medieval burial has long been recognised as remarkably prevalent in the archaeological record. This systematic study of the landscape context of ‘Early-Middle Saxon’ burial in Wessex assumes a broader outlook, and considers all aspects of the antecedent landscape which may have influenced the siting of funerary locales. Engaging primarily with archaeological evidence, complemented by documentary and place-name sources, it examines the influence of topography, land-use, territorial organisation, and perceptions of ancient features on the location of burial sites, and the role played by burial in the formation of group identities. Moreover, it investigates the emergence and evolution of the practice of monument appropriation, and its exploitation and adaptation by an increasingly defined elite class. The selection of three case study counties—Wiltshire, Hampshire and Dorset—within a discrete area of southern England which, by the latter part of the period of study, had been incorporated into the kingdom of Wessex, allows the evidence to be examined at local and sub-regional levels, and facilitates supra-regional comparisons. The burial record is scrutinised and analysed with the aid of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in order to construct a detailed picture of the influence of topography and other aspects of the natural and man-made environment on burial location. It also reveals the significant impact that antiquarian and modern archaeological investigation patterns have had on the distribution and nature of the burial record.

Over the past decade, historians and archaeologists have become increasingly aware that the Mid Saxon period in England (7th-9th centuries AD) witnessed a transformation in agricultural practices. According to the emergent consensus, in contrast to the heavily pastoral, broadly subsistence-based mode of agriculture characteristic of the Early Saxon period (5th-7th centuries), Mid Saxon agriculture was geared towards higher levels of surplus production and placed a greater emphasis upon arable farming. The increased cultivation of bread wheat and the specialist production of sheep’s wool have been identified as particularly important innovations of this period. This thesis represents the first attempt to explore agricultural development in Mid Saxon England on a systematic archaeological basis. It considers settlement, zooarchaeological, and archaeobotanical evidence in detail, with a special emphasis on charred plant remains. The analyses utilize data gathered from excavation reports, published and unpublished, covering two case study regions: (i) the Upper/Middle Thames valley and environs, and (ii) East Anglia and Essex. In addition, a sub-assemblage of charred plant remains from a Mid Saxon monastic site at Lyminge (Kent) is studied at first hand. In this way, a series of agricultural innovations is identified in the archaeological record, including in particular: specialized pastoralism, an increased emphasis on sheep in some regions, an expansion of arable production, growth in fibre production, growth in cereal surpluses, a consequent investment in specialist storage and processing facilities, and a general diversification of crop spectra. These innovations were contingent upon, and adapted to, local environmental factors. The process of agricultural development is thought to have begun in the 7th century and continued through the 8th and 9th centuries, facilitated and stimulated by newly consolidated élite landholdings and, probably, a growing population.