Early Medieval Art and Archaeology in the Northern World

It is a testimony to the far-reaching impact of James Graham-Campbell’s scholarship that this volume, his Festschrift marking his sixty-fifth birthday, extends to some 950 pages. Packed within it are forty-two essays by Graham-Campbell’s friends, colleagues and former students—many of whom have benefited greatly from James’s expertise and encouragement, and are leading scholars in their chosen fields. A number of sub-disciplines are represented, but, with one or two exceptions, all papers deal with the subject specialism of the honorand: the material culture of early medieval northern Europe. Fittingly, objects and assemblages from Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia take centre stage. To help the reader negotiate such a large number of contributions, the essays are loosely organised into four groups: Objects; Hoards; Places; and Style, Symbol and Meaning. There are no overarching themes as such: this is a volume that most readers will dip into, rather than read cover to cover. Despite this, there is much on offer. The largest section, on Objects, comprises twenty papers on early medieval artefacts (including dress-fittings, vessels, finger-rings, mounts, equestrian items, weights and weapons) from Insular and Scandinavian contexts. The items are a mix of recent discoveries (pendants from Iceland; a re-used Anglo-Saxon disc brooch found on a Viking-Age Danish settlement) and hitherto neglected or less well known artefacts and assemblages, preserved principally in archives and minor collections (a lost gold and garnet Anglo-Saxon pendant from Catterick; a ninth-century Anglo-Saxon gold finger-ring from Gloucestershire). Reflecting Graham-Campbell’s own trademark approach, most authors combine full object descriptions with thorough archival investigations of the object’s history: the result is a cornucopia of pithy, detailed and finely illustrated object studies with a strong historiographical theme. They will delight artefact specialists. Admittedly, some typology-based papers (e.g on Anglo-Saxon knives) are unlikely to attract a broader readership, but most papers situate the objects in their wider, historical framework. Of particular importance is Marion Archibald’s paper, in which she proposes a re-dating of the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 ship burial to the second (rather than the first) quarter of the seventh century, based on the independent dating of the Wilton Cross pendant. Readers of EHR will also be interested in David Hinton’s discussion of a bone acanthus mount from Malmesbury, and its potential to demonstrate royal patronage of the monastery in the tenth century

Archaeology · Art history · Honour · Middle Ages · Ninth · Scholarship · Settlement (finance · Style (visual arts · Subject (documents · Classics · Historical and Archaeological Studies · Historical Studies of British Isles · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History