Building Anglo-Saxon England

摘要

"One of the most intractable problems in the whole range of early medieval studies concerns the dwellings of the Anglo-Saxons. It is generally agreed that they were of wood and that no example survives above ground. Beyond this the student must rely on incidental references in the literature and on the scanty data provided by excavation." C. A. R. Radford's opening remarks on the Anglo-Saxon house in the inaugural issue of Medieval Archaeology (1957) belong to another age.1 In the sixty years since Radford wrote, archaeology has revolutionized our understanding of Anglo-Saxon architecture. This much is clear from John Blair's majestic new book, Building Anglo-Saxon England. The amount of archaeological evidence and scholarship amassed since 1957 is remarkable, and Blair uses it and his subject to advance a new history of Anglo-Saxon England. The result promises myriad new directions for Anglo-Saxon studies.