The Portable Antiquities Scheme

These projects are being conducted by researchers who have personal research agendas such as books or degree research in the pipeline.

• David Hinton
  Research for his book: Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins. In medieval Britain people wore jewellery made of gold if they were rich, of base metal if they were poor; they might hoard their property, or give it away to guarantee that they would have friends when needed; and many of them paid tax on their possessions. In Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins , David Hinton reviews the significance of artefacts in this period. From elaborate gold jewellery to clay pots, he looks at what possessions meant to people at every level of society. His emphasis is on their reasons for acquiring, keeping, displaying, and disposing of the things that they wore and had in their houses.
• Helen Beveridge (York University)
  Undergraduate student at the University of York conducting a dissertation on Early Medieval weapons records on the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
• Martin Biddle (Oxford University)
  Early Medieval Southampton area. Preparation for an article by Birthe Kjolbye-Biddle and himself, ‘Winchester: from Venta to Wintancaestir’ for the festschrift for Martin Henig, now in preparation for publication in March 2007.
• Alice Blackwell (PHD student at the Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow)
  Studying Anglo-Saxon Northumbria.
• Keith Coppin (University of Reading)
  MA student in Medieval Archaeology at the University of Reading. Working on an MA Dissertation on medieval pilgrim badges. I’m trying to compare the badges found in the Low Countries, Germany, France and England.
• Will Anderson (Australian university - forgotten which one!)
  A study of medieval ampullae for research degree.
• James Gerrard (Professional Archaeologist)
  Study into distribution of fourth-century siliqua with that of fourth-century hoards.
• Gabor Thomas Research into Late Anglo-Saxon strapends.
• Chris Ferguson (Oxford University)
  DPhil on Early Medieval England. Title not confirmed.
• Alex Grassam (Oxford University)
  MSt Archaeology. Database analysis
• Adam Partington (Oxford University)
  MSt Professional Archaeology - Thames Foreshore analysis project
• Bruce Eagles - Research into Roman Gloucestershire
• Suzie Thomas (Newcastle University) - I am looking at the relationships between archaeologists and metal detector users in England and Wales for my PhD research at Newcastle University.
• The Development, Distribution and Significance of ( Hallstatt D - La Tène I,II) Brooches in Britain
  My PhD research will be investigating the distribution, development, social and ritual significance of the Iron Age brooch (Hallstatt D - La Tène I, II ) across different sites and regions. Patterns of variation or correlation will be established using brooch attributes such as: type, style, size, modification, re-use, as well as depositional and distributional data, possibly resulting in the identification of region specific types and preferences. Gary Saunders ( Leicester University , PhD Research)
• Prof. Seiichi Suzuki - Anglo-Saxon Button Brooches
• Kate Andersen - Prehistoric weapons of northern Britain.
• Nisha Doshi (Cambridge Uni) - Bronze Age data held by the PAS/SMR/HER for Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk to address the research dividends of public participation in archaeology.
• Nick Boldrini - PAS/HER data comparison
• Bruce Eagles - Roman landscapes
• Jane Kershaw (D.Phil Oxford) - Researching all known finds of Scandinavian and Anglo-Scandinavian brooches from the Danelaw. These include a growing corpus of artefacts decorated in the Borre style, incluing trefoil , disc and oval brooches, and several items with Jelling and later Scandinavian art styles. This considers the distribution of these artefacts within the Danelaw and the application of particular styles to certain types of object. This material has enormous potential to enhance our understanding of the Scandinavian settlement in England.

The projects listed below incorporate funding from external sources of significant size.

Viking and Anglo-Saxon Landscape and Economy project. (http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/arch/vasle/vasleoverview.html) VASLE is a three-year project examining society and economy in the Middle and Later Anglo-Saxon periods in England. It encompasses both the Wessex-dominated south of England and the northern Viking (or Anglo-Scandinavian) region known as the Danelaw, utilising data produced through a range of activities including metal-detecting, archaeological excavations and field surveys. The project has four aims, which will run chronologically through the project. These are:

1. To map national distributions of metalwork types c. AD 700-1000 and to compare these with distributions of early medieval coinage, and landscape factors, in order to understand the visibility, recovery and archaeological distribution of early medieval ‘productive sites’.
2. To characterise the finds assemblages of individual known sites, graphing percentages of coins and other object types in order to examine change through time and to derive ‘fingerprints’ which will help define a hierarchy of settlement types.
3. To use targeted and controlled metal detecting of specific sites in the north of England to study their development and morphology from finds distributions.
4. To use changes in object and coin types to chart ethnic identity and change, specifically the Anglo-Saxon to Anglo-Scandinavian transition, and to write an economic and landscape history of England AD 700-1000.

Archaeological evidence for state formation between the 5th and 8th centuries AD in southern England.

Led by Martin Welch as principal investigator (with Dr Sue Harrington as the paid research assistant) for a new three-year project funded by the Leverhulme Trust. We are investigating the archaeological evidence for state formation between the 5th and 8th centuries AD in southern England (defined as the Anglo-Saxon region south of the Thames between Somerset and Kent) and in particular we will compare and contrast the development of settlement patterns in what became the kingdoms of Kent, Sussex and Wessex. Our project will build on the research of Dr Stuart Brookes, who examined the political, social and economic development of east Kent and whose doctoral thesis will be published by BAR in 2007.

Our project will draw on an electronic database (Anglo-Saxon Kent Electronic Database) jointly created by Brookes and Harrington for their research degrees and will seek to create an enhanced database for both Kent and (from scratch) for the remaining counties in our study area. The product of our research will be a monograph study utilising GIS technology and the new database which will be lodged with the ADS at York. We would very much like to include data for individual finds within our period from the Portable Antiquities Scheme and incorporate this data (with full acknowledgement of its source) in our Southern England Database. In the same way we are incorporating electronic records from the NMR and county SMRs, data sets from unpublished excavations undertaken by commercial archaeological units, datasets prepared by fellow archaeologists and other scholars for their own research, on the principle that all those contributing will be acknowledged and subsequently will receive access to cross-checked and enhanced data sets that will assist their future research.

In the case of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, our research will include assessments of the degree to which the distribution of finds matches, overlaps with or confirms the distributions of contemporary burial sites, excavated settlements, selected place-names and written sources from slightly later periods. It will address the issues of how PAS data should be utilised in comparative studies. Brookes did make use of sceatta and early penny distributions using the FitzWilliam Museum database in his research and we wish to explore its value for earlier metal finds in particular.

We would hope that our research project would be recognised by the Portable Antiquities Scheme as a model for how its data should be utilised and that we would have your full consent to incorporate data from the PAS along the lines indicated above.

Steering committee will include Mrs Leslie Webster (BM), Dr Catherine Hills (Cambridge) and Dr Barbara Yorke (Winchester) as well as staff with specialist knowledge from the UCL Institute of Archaeology.