Outline

OUTLINE

The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia was politically among the most significant in England and yet very little has so far been done to analyze its early archaeology. I will be examining the cemetery and settlement evidence (much of it new and still unpublished) in order to trace the stages by which the Mercian Kingdom developed until approximately 650. I will also be examining the various settlement patterns in the region from the Roman Period to the Anglo-Saxon Period. The methods that I am currently using to obtain this evidence are by gathering all information on Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in the region, by obtaining drawings and photographs of Anglo-Saxon artifacts so that unpublished artifacts can be compared to the known artifacts and compiling maps of the region that will contain the cemetery and settlement evidence on them.

The methodology is in a sense traditional, in that I am attempting to assemble a corpus of data against which interpretations can be made and theories of settlement developed. This is basic work, but it needs to be done, since in many areas of the region the most up-to-date survey is still Audrey Meaney's summary gazetteer of 1964.

The analysis of this corpus and its subsequent plotting on maps has indicated three significant aspects to the early Anglo-Saxon occupation of the region. In the first place, the greatest density of both cemeteries and chance finds is concentrated around the Roman centres, most heavily near Lincoln and Leicester, and along the principal Roman roads. Secondly, the area between the Trent and the Peak, though a district convenient for agriculture and settlement, is largely empty of early Anglo-Saxon material, and, thirdly, a close examination of the place-names in the immediate vicinity of known cemeteries has shown, against expectation, a correlation with -tun, normally believed to be of later origin, while the -ingas family are very little represented.

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