Life and Landscape in Later Anglo-Saxon England

by Andrew Reynolds

Later Anglo-Saxon Life and Landscape

Genres: History, Medieval

Hardcover

First published July 31, 1999

Reviews

[Peter Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book. It doesn't really 'do' politics, as you can probably guess from the sub-title. Instead it talks about landscape and how this affected Anglo-Saxon England. It is very big on this, with admin, law, towns and the economy all being shown how they fitted into this and created the later period of A/S England. Knowing the underlying workings of a society gives a deeper understanding of the context in which the 'bigger' issues develop.

The chapters are:

Introduction (a great summary of Anglo-Saxon sources and their limitations)
A survey of early Anglo-Saxon England
People and society
Landscape and governance
Landscape and settlement
Towns marketing and trade
Anglo-Saxon England after the conquest

Whilst all of these are very well researched and written, I did think that there were a few too many examples of different settlements in chapter 5. I would have been happier with a summary, rather than details of each as it felt a tad repetitive, but others may prefer his approach. This is a tightly written book, with every sentence containing something useful and I frequently found myself making notes regarding various points. It was nice to see Reynolds using the word 'appears' where the evidence isn't totally above question. For such a well researched book, I'm gobsmacked that there were no foot or end notes. He does mention the specialist whose work he is following when discussing a particular aspect and there is a further reading list at the end, but the lack of notes is still something to wonder at. Worryingly I could sometimes tell which books he had been reading in some sections and that probably means I should get out more.

There are five things that you will take away from this book:

1, how hierarchical Anglo-Saxon society was
2, the importance of little, everyday, finds
3, how long the Anglo-Saxon period was and how very little was static – variety in time and space is important to consider
4, by 1066 more places could be described as towns than during the height of Roman Britain
5, the amount of continuity following the Norman Conquest

[Theo Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thorough overview of the period in an easily read style.

[Riversue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very knowledgeable synopsis of later Anglo-Saxon archaeology.