Product Description: The characteristics of the precious metals, the enamel and crystal, aspects of craftsmanship, importation of materials, animals in Anglo Saxon art, language and inscription, and the Christian significance are only some of the themes sure to excite collect

In this highly illustrated book, David Hinton looks at what possessions meant to people at every level of society in Britain in the middle ages, from elaborate gold jewellery to clay pots, and provides a fascinating window into the society of the middle ages. Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins is about things worn and used in Britain throughout the Middle Ages, from the great treasure hoards that mark the end of the Roman Empire to the new expressions of ideas promoted by the Renaissance and Reformation.

Product Description: The coastal area of Purbeck in Dorset is rich in archaeological finds, and much rescue work has recently taken place here due to oil-field and other industrial development. The Purbeck project was initiated to see what could be added to this knowledge through modern methods of archaeological survey and through the analysis of historical sources...read more

The purpose of this book is to examine the contribution that archaeology can make to an understanding of the social, economic, religious and other developments that took place in England from the Migration period to the beginning of the Renaissance. It does not provide detailed descriptions of archaeological material which are available elsewhere, but takes a chronological approach in order to emphasize the changes that can be observed in the physical evidence and some of the reasons for them can be suggested. The difficulty of setting some of the archaeological material into a very precise time-scale or ascribing it to particular people means that it is usually general trends rather than exact moments in time and the deeds of particular individuals that become apparent through physical change. This is not therefore a book to please current government thinking, which promotes the view that history should be about great people and great events - provided of course that the great people were British and the great events British victories. History, however, should seek to explain the processes which shaped past societies and caused individuals to behave as they did. Archaeology can reveal the physical environment in which people functioned and how they expressed themselves through it - in their cooking-pots, houses, quern-stones or burial practices. There are occasional names of individuals in this book, because their ambitions affected other people, and they were themselves constrained by social customs and economic pressures. But castles and palaces are not more important than peasants' tofts and crofts: all are symbolic of the behaviour patterns and aspirations of different social classes. The scope of the book is severely limited geographically to present-day England (with two exceptions: Hen Domen, for instance, is too important not to mention). Other areas settled by English people or ruled by English kings, whether briefly or not, have been excluded. This insularity is not desirable, merely practical, as the book had to have some limits of time and space.

Product Description: A unique early medieval assemblage of tools and associated fragments of metal and glass was found during the excavation of a prehistoric and Roman site in 1981. Post-excavation revealed that the objects were Anglo-Saxon and had been placed in wooden boxes in a grave...read more