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Settlement mobility and the ‘Middle Saxon Shift’: rural settlements and settlement patterns in Anglo-Saxon England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

H. F. Hamerow
H. F. Hamerow
Affiliation:
The University of Durham
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Extract

The traditional image of the stable Anglo-Saxon village as the direct ancestor of the medieval village is no longer tenable in view of growing evidence for settlement mobility in the early and middle Saxon periods. Indeed, it now appears that most ‘nucleated’ medieval villages are not the direct successors of early, or even middle Saxon settlements, and that nucleation itself appears to be a remarkably late phenomenon.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 20 , December 1991 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

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2 The high profile of archaeology within the wider spectrum of settlement studies is apparent in Anglo-Saxon Settlements, ed. Hooke, D. (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar, the contributors to which evaluate the results of archaeological excavation and survey within the same topographical context as place-name and charter evidence. The present study owes a considerable debt to this book, as will be apparent.

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22 An elaborate silver-inlaid bronze belt-set or cingulum, several sword burials and imported glass vessels excavated from the cemeteries are among the grave-goods illustrated in Jones, and Jones, , ‘The Crop-Mark Sites at Mucking, Essex’, pls. xxvii–xxviii and figs. 58–62.Google Scholar

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26 West, West Stow. It seems unlikely, however, that the whole of the settlement was excavated.

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