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Late Anglo-Saxon metal-work: an assessment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

David A. Hinton
David A. Hinton
Affiliation:
The University of Southampton
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Extract

It is a decade since the British Museum published its catalogue of late Anglo-Saxon metal-work – ‘late’ in this context meaning between the eighth century and the eleventh – and the only museum with a comparable collection has now produced an equivalent volume. Probably there will not be any more such catalogues, for no other museum has enough metal-work to make a separate publication worthwhile, although composite catalogues, like the numismatists' sylloges, could be produced; for example, Cambridge, Ipswich, King's Lynn and Norwich would make a substantial East Anglian contribution. Except for catalogues, it seems unlikely that there will ever be books devoted exclusively to the metal-work of post-pagan England, since this is not a subject that can be isolated from its archaeological and art-historical contexts. If there is a distinction between archaeology and art history, metal-work, since it is relevant to both, provides a bridge between them, although often a minor one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 4 , December 1975 , pp. 171 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

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