Nested negotiations: Landscape and portable material culture in Viking-Age England

This thesis examines transitions in life and landscape in Scandinavian-occupied early medieval England. The Viking Age is here contextualised within a longer view, looking both to Middle Saxon England on the eve of the Scandinavian incursions, and beyond the end of Scandinavian rule to structures of landholding and lordship following the Norman Conquest (c.AD 700-1100). Four local case studies from across three different counties (Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Leicestershire) provide the basis for analysis. The primary dataset used to identify and assess these places was metal-detected portable material culture recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS). This is combined with data from HERs, Domesday Book, place-names, and landscape evidence in order to identify new early medieval settlements and occupied landscapes. Within these it is possible to identify a range of activities taking place, and socio-cultural negotiations being enacted. This enables the tracking of settlement dynamics over time, and in particular how changing social, political, and cultural contexts affected these transitions.