Place-names and other evidence for Anglian settlement in south-east Scotland

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper has developed from a study of place- names relating to Edwina Proudfoot's work on the long-cist cemetery at Hallow Hill, Fife, (Proudfoot & Aliaga-Kelly forthcoming 1996a) along with the study of place-name evidence for Old English-speaking, Anglian settlement in Scotland, in Christopher Aliaga-Kelly's thesis ‘The Anglo-Saxon Occupation of South-East Scotland’. In treating the place-names as artefacts in their own right, no correlation was found between them and the very limited artefactual and structural evidence for Anglian settlement. The documentary evidence allowed some place-names to be seen in association with one another and even with possible estates or lordships. There was limited evidence for concentration of settlement by Old English speakers and later expansions or shifts of population. The meaning of some place-names was found to be informative and there were examples of British elements in surviving Anglian place-names. The county names used throughout this paper refer to the historic pre-1974 names.