Pecsaetna: People of the Anglo-Saxon Peak District

by Phil Sidebottom

This book is intended to pull together our current knowledge of the ‘lost’ group of people called the Pecsaetna (literally, meaning the ‘Peak Sitters’) by synthesizing more recent historical and archaeological research towards a better understanding of their activities, territory and identity. This group of people is shrouded in the mists of the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ and are only known to us by the chance survival of less than a handful of documents.

Since the mid-20th century, valuable work has been done to identify former Anglo-Saxon estates in the Peak from the analysis of charters and from the Domesday survey, together with recent wider historical analysis. In addition, some have also attempted reconstructions of geographical territories from the Tribal Hidage, the document, which first mentions the Pecsaetna. To this historical analysis can be added further archaeological evidence which ranges from Anglo-Saxon barrow investigation in the limestone Peak District, to studies into the geographical distributions of free-standing stone monuments of the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian periods. It is this latter study that has prompted the writer to attempt this study.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Topography of the Peak
Early Anglo-Saxon Settlement In A Post-Roman Context
Historical Sources for the Pecsaetna
Settlement and Control in the Wider Region
The Pecsaetna in the Late Saxon Period
Place-names in the Peak and the Hiberno-Norse
The Archaeology of the Pecsaetna
The Barrow Burials
Earthworks and Communications
The Pecsaetna And Stone Monuments
King Edward’s Burgh
The Significance of Dore
Changes in the
The demise of the great peak estates and later-saxon settlement
The Pecsaetna, Religion, and the Church
The Pecsaetna and Lead
The Pecsaetna of the Peak piecing it together
Bibliography
Places to Visit

Scientific Dating in Archaeology
Chapter 1 Introduction – Dr Seren Griffiths
Chapter 2 Dendrochronology –Dr Martin Bridge (UCL) and Dr Seren Griffiths
Chapter 3 Radiocarbon – Dr Seren Griffiths
Chapter 4 Luminescence – optically simulated and thermoluminescence – Dr Abi Stone (Manchester University), Dr Seren Griffiths, with ‘critical friend’ Prof Ian Bailiff (Durham University)
Chapter 5 Archaeomagnetic Dating –Dr Cathy Batt and Dr Seren Griffiths
Chapter 6 Uranium Series Dating –Prof Alistair Pike and Dr Seren Griffiths
Chapter 7 Palynological and other macrofossil reconstruction –Dr Suzi Richer and Dr Seren Griffiths
Chapter 8 On Site – project design and sampling strategy for scientific dating – Dr Seren Griffiths
Chapter 9 Analysing Datasets – Bayesian statistical modelling – Dr Seren Griffiths and TBC Prof Tom Higham
Chapter 10 Writing Histories – combining statigraphic analysis, finds, and multi-technique scientific datasets in narratives – Dr Seren Griffiths
Bibliography

Continuity and Rupture
Chapter 1: Structure, Agency, and Power in Roman Mediterranean Gaul
Chapter 2: “They Make a Desolation and Call it Peace”: Roman Rule in Mediterranean Gaul
Chapter 3: Living Together, Living The Creation of New Domestic Relations
Chapter 4: From the Home to the A New Mode of Production
Chapter 5: Turning People into The Rise of Coinage and a Money Economy at Lattara
Chapter 6: Community and Cosmology at Continuity and Entanglement in Religious Practices
Chapter 7: Feasting, Power, and Transformations in Political Life at Lattara
After Lattara

Animating the Dead
PART 1 Background and Context
Introduction
1.1 The Orkney Barrows Project
1.2 Cist burials
1.3 Layout of the book
1.4 Bronze Age burial practices
1.5 Bronze Age Orkney
1.6 Bronze Age Burial in Orkney
PART 2 Excavation Findings
Barrow cemeteries
2.1 Linga Fiold
2.2 Gitterpitten, Varme Dale, Vestra Fiold
Cists
2.3 Riff, Quarrel Geo, Blomuir 1, Blomuir 2, Howe, Moan, Redland, Upper Bigging
PART 3 Mortuary Rites
3.1 Dying and death; Preparation for the funeral
3.2 The Cremation rites and technology
3.3 Cremation burial rites
3.4 Inhumation & cremation rites compared and contrasted
PART 4 Burial, Cemetery and Landscape Architecture
4.1 Burial, cist, and burial mound architecture
4.2 Cemetery sequence and development
4.3 Bronze Age environment and landscapes
4.4 Cist burial and cemetery sitings in landscape
PART 5 Bronze Age burial rites
5.1 A chronology for Orkney Bronze Age burials
5.2 Burial and Cemetery typology
5.3 Comparing and contrasting rites – cremation and inhumation
5.4 Discussion of findings in context of Orkney, Scotland, Britain and wider N European

APPENDICES
Appendix 1 Vessels
1.1 Linga Fiold – A Macsween, Campbell et al., M Taylor
1.2 Gitterpitten, Riff, Blomuir 2, Redland, Upper Bigging – A Macsween
1.2 Linga Fiold – P Sharman
Appendix 2 Stone artefacts
2.1 Coarse Stone Linga Fiold, Gitterpitten - A Clark
2.2 Linga Fiold, Varme Dale - C Wickham-Jones
Appendix 3 Human Bone
3.1 Linga Fiold – J McKinley
3.2 Gitterpitten – J Roberts
3.3 Varme Dale – J Roberts
3.4 Quarrel Geo – S King, D Lorimer
3.5 Blomuir – ...

144 pages, Paperback

Published September 22, 2020

Reviews

[Peter Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pecsaetna, People of the Anglo-Saxon Peak District, Phil Sidebottom, 2020, 120 pages plus appendix,


The first thing that strikes you about this book is the production values. The paper is good quality and glossy and the pictures are crystal clear. There are lots of big pictures and maps, which is also nice. However, when this is combined with blank pages at the end of chapters and the fairly large text, you do get the impression that the 120 pages would probably have been less than 100 with a different publisher.

This work straddles academic writing and more general interest. There aren't any notes with additional bits of information, Sawyer numbers are sometimes mentioned and sometimes not, but there are in-text citations stating the specialist and the year of publication. Personally I find this type of referencing intrusive and it doesn't half break up the flow of the prose.

The chapters include:

Topography

Early settlement

Historical sources

Place-names in the Peak

Archaeology

Changes in the countryside

Religion and the church

Lead

Piecing it all together
(this works really well in recapping the main points)


This book took me three days to read and if it hadn't been for having to faff around with a faulty boiler, I'd have read it more quickly. We don't know that much about the Pecsaetna, but by fusing together everything we do know or can reasonably infer, Sidebottom has created a good book. He makes a strong argument for the limestone territory of Hamenstan wapentake being the core of the Pecsaetna, which is perfectly reasonable. He also makes a surprisingly good argument for the Pecsaetna maintaining a separate identity (under the lordship of greater powers) for a long time – this comes more from the amount of hints/circumstantial evidence he adduces, rather than any one aspect being incontrovertible in itself.

There were a few things that I wasn't so sold on, though:

He gives two possible reasons for the small number of late charters for this area,

1, the lack of estate fragmentation could have meant there was little need for them,
2, the 'continued use of ancient ritualised and unwritten transactions known as folcland'

I'd add a third reason – a simple absence of records, rather than an underlying cause as such. With few great monastic houses appearing to have been granted land in the area, the chances of any written transaction being preserved are slight.


Sidebottom reads a lot into Uhtred having the area within his portfolio as Ealdorman and devotes quite a bit of space to him. He suggests that Uhtred was from Bernicia (a term not used by contemporaries in connection with Bamburgh), having sought sanctuary in the Peak after a defeat in around 913. However, this is too late for the renewal of a charter that predates this, having been originally witnessed by Earl Aethelraed, who died in in 911. Also, the Peak is arguably easier for Raegnald of York to get to than Bamburgh.

It's possible that Uhtred may have been a son of Eadwulf II of Bamburgh, but if so, his subsequent Bamburgh connections appear to be either non-existent or unrecorded and it's possible that there may be more than one Uhtred involved as his active career seems to have spanned fifty years.

His notion of it being tempting to see the sons of Eadwulf exerting some form of influence all the way down the spine of the Pennines to the Peak District can be discounted. The various viking rulers of York mostly looked towards Dublin and this would have cut across their lines of communication and it's hard to see Bamburgh having the military muscle, economic strength and political will to enable their writ to run far from the area around their core area – they had enough problems without needing more. The same can be said of Raegnald having concerns that Bamburgh could have allied with the Scots and that they were a useful buffer zone. Bamburgh had more to fear from the Scots than the rulers of York and St Cuthbert provided a buffer to their north, with fewer political complications.

Those odd few things I disagreed with aside, this was a book I enjoyed.

[Richard Hakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously never going to be a best seller. A book about a very minor and what could be said almost insignificant piece of history. But if you have an interest in these things one to read.