1 - Four Windows on Early Britain

Summary

Britain only became an island in around 8000 BCE, but since then it has made something of a profession of its insularity. Anglo-Saxon England has gone one better by making a separate country out of south-east Britain, an island within an island. Our own profession reflects this to some extent. The study of Anglo-Saxon England forms a subset of studies on early medieval Britain, and even these are further divided into the Christian and pre-Christian phases. In some ways this subdivision is an inevitable consequence of being confronted with materials in different ancient languages. But from an archaeological point of view such divisions can be inhibiting. In this paper I propose to treat the people of Britain as individuals and will try to make no a priori assumptions about their ethnic, religious, or political affiliations. I first offer an archaeological method of listening to and distinguishing the different voices, and then ask if we can hear ideas and opinions expressed that exceed expectations in their originality. As with practitioners of other disciplines, archaeologists have come in recent years to credit the people we study with a greater capacity for decision-making and more agency. It has become interesting and important to ask what was in the mind of the burial designer or the erector of monuments, and we increasingly credit these monument-makers with creativity, that is, an ability to escape the imperatives and exigencies of their day and express their own views on past and future.