Twenty-nine studies, covering a wide range of themes, present the most up-to-date thinking on the history, archaeology and toponymy of Anglo-Saxon England, with particular attention to Wessex, in ...honour of Professor Barbara Yorke.
There have been many studies of the Scandinavians in Britain, but this is the first collection of essays to be devoted solely to their engagement with Wessex. New work on the early Middle Ages, not ...least the excavations of mass graves associated with the Viking Age in Dorset and Oxford, drew attention to the gaps in our understanding of the wider impact of Scandinavians in areas of Britain not traditionally associated with them. Here, a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approach to the problems of their study is presented. While there may not have been the same degree of impact, discernable particularly in place-names and archaeology, as in those areas of Britain which had substantial influxes of Scandinavian settlers, Wessex was a major theatre of the Viking wars in the reigns of Alfred and Æthelred Unræd. Two major topics, the Viking wars and the Danish landowning elite, figure strongly in this collection but are shown not to be the sole reasons for the presence of Danes, or items associated with them, in Wessex. Multi-disciplinary approaches evoke Vikings and Danes not just through the written record, but through their impact on real and imaginary landscapes and via the objects they owned or produced. The papers raise wider questions too, such as when did aggressive Vikings morph into more acceptable Danes, and what issues of identity were there for natives and incomers in a province whose founders were believed to have also come from North Sea areas, if not from parts of Denmark itself? Readers can continue for themselves aspects of these broader debates that will be stimulated by this fascinating and significant series of studies by both established scholars and new researchers.
Martin Davies examines Thomas Hardy's involvement with the past and the role it plays in his life and literary work. Hardy's life encompasses the transformation of archaeology out of mere ...antiquarianism into a fully scientific discipline. He observed this process at first hand, and its impact on his aesthetic and philosophical scheme was profound.
Depositional processes hold crucial controls on the diagenetic processes, events and evolution in sedimentary basins. Using the example of non-marine, Lower Cretaceous Wealden Sandstones from Wessex ...Basin in southeast England, this study reveals the depositional controls on diagenetic evolution in a sedimentary basin. Seventy-four surface samples, from 6 field locations across the Wessex Basin in Dorset and Isle of Wight were subjected to laboratory analyses such as optical petrography, scanning electron microscopy and Quantitative Evaluation of Minerals by Scanning Electron Microscopy analysis. The degree of compaction in the Wessex Basin sandstones includes moderate packing with most grains in a mix of point and long contact, with rare grains displaying concave-convex or non-grain contact and a loose packing dominated by non-grain contacts, with minor point and long contacts. The authigenic mineral phases identified in the sandstones are quartz, kaolinite, calcite and halite in decreasing abundance. The dissolution of felspars observed in the Wessex Basin sandstones possibly provided the main source of silica for the quartz overgrowths, with silica sources adjacent to the site of cementation. The small amount of quartz overgrowths may have formed during shallow burial. The partial dissolution of quartz observed in the Wessex Basin sandstones is considered likely to be the result of flushing of organic-compound rich waters derived from shale interbeds, under low temperature conditions (c. 25–50 °C). The precipitation of authigenic minerals within the Wessex Basin had a limited impact on the porosity and permeability of sandstones. Detrital mineralogy appears to be the main depositional control on diagenesis and may also explain the low abundance of authigenic kaolinite in the Wessex Basin. Similarly, the shallow burial depth of the sandstones is considered to be the main factor inhibiting more pervasive quartz cementation within the basin.
•Dissolution of felspars provided silica for quartz overgrowths.•Dissolution of quartz resulted from organic-rich waters under low temperature.•Authigenic minerals had a limited impact on the porosity and permeability of sandstones.•Detrital mineralogy and shallow burial depth controlled diagenesis.
Wessex is central to the study of early medieval English history; it was the dynasty which created the kingdom of England. This volume uses archaeological and place-name evidence to present an ...authoritative account of the most significant of the English kingdoms.
Basin and petroleum systems modelling of the Wessex Basin, UK has been conducted to identify the maturation and migration events that charged the principal Bridport Sands and Sherwood Sandstone ...reservoirs at the Wytch Farm oil field. Modelling results have been compared with recent observations of magnetic enhancements at oil-water contacts (OWCs) and possibly paleocontacts (PCs) in Wytch Farm reservoirs, to assess the use of magnetic OWCs to help calibrate petroleum systems models and provide insights into the migration history of the Wessex Basin. The model predicts the Blue Lias source rock only reached maturity to the south of the Purbeck Fault, with hydrocarbon generation initiating in the Late Jurassic and peaking in the Late Cretaceous, requiring lateral migration to Wytch Farm using the Bridport Sands as the main carrier bed. Cross-fault and northward migration occurred through conduits at Creech, Bushey Farm and in offshore areas, which charged the principal structures at Wytch Farm. A ∼20 km wide Late Cretaceous juxtaposition between the Bridport Sands and Sherwood Sandstone in the hangingwall and footwall of the Purbeck Fault, respectively, led to the charging of the Sherwood Sandstone reservoir. A basin-wide Cenozoic easterly tilt of ≤1⁰ caused a westerly hydrocarbon remigration, has shifted the Bridport Sands and Sherwood Sandstone Wytch Farm structures to the west, and drastically reduced the size of Bridport Sands accumulations. There is a strong correlation between the predicted depths of Late Cretaceous and present-day OWCs with magnetic enhancements in drill cores. Multiple magnetic enhancements above the OWC at the Wareham oil field indicate the Cenozoic tilting event was periodic, forming multiple stable OWCs, with migration modelling suggesting a spill from Wytch Farm.
•The Blue Lias source rock matured during the Early to Late Cretaceous in the hangingwall of the Purbeck Fault.•Wytch Farm was charged from the south by lateral migration routes through Creech, Bushey Farm and offshore conduits.•There is a strong correlation between the depths of magnetic enhancements in drill cores and OWCs identified in the model.•Modelling and magnetic analyses suggest a periodic basin-wide easterly Cenozoic tilt produced pulses of westerly remigration.
Twenty-nine studies, covering a wide range of themes, present the most up-to-date thinking on the history, archaeology and toponymy of Anglo-Saxon England, with particular attention to Wessex, in ...honour of Professor Barbara Yorke. ; Readership: This book will appeal to historians, archaeologists and place-name scholars of the early medieval period and those interested in more specifically in the Anglo-Saxon world and the kingdom of Wessex.
This book is the culmination of the author’s lifelong interest in the Roman to medieval transition in England and in the analysis of the historic landscape of Wessex. It begins with a focused, ...referenced, and critical exploration of the thorny, but crucial, issues of post-Roman personal and group identity, employing linguistic, historical, archaeological, and toponymical evidence. A series of integrated studies seeks to elucidate changes in the territorial organization of the Wessex landscape, from Somerset to Hampshire, from the Roman period to the emergence of the historic counties. It is shown that the defined limits of the self-governed Roman civitates had a significant impact upon subsequent historical developments, not least on the early English settlements. In eastern Wessex - Berkshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire – the Roman boundaries broke down piecemeal, but continued to influence political developments and patterns of settlement into the seventh century. It is argued that those three counties acquired their medieval and later form only at the time of the Viking wars. In western Wessex, Dorset and Somerset, by contrast, the core of the territories of both the southern and northern Durotriges in the Roman period has persisted until the present day. The book also includes a re-examination of the formation and extent of the kingdom of the Jutes in southern Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. The chronology, history and archaeology of the fifth century, set alongside the many changes of the later fourth century, and vital to our understanding of the momentous events of that time as Saxon control took hold in the east, are here the subject of a separate, detailed study. Place-names across Wessex with a bearing on the presence of the Britons, and the changing nature and distribution of archaeological sites in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, are discussed in their historical context.
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