Place-name Evidence Research Articles

European Perceptions of ‘ Terra Australis’ by Anne M. Scott, Alfred Hiatt, Claire McIlroy, and Christopher Wortham (review)

Reviewed by: European Perceptions of ‘ Terra Australis’ by Anne M. Scott, Alfred Hiatt, Claire McIlroy, and Christopher Wortham Victoria Bladen Scott, Anne M., Alfred Hiatt, Claire McIlroy, and Christopher Wortham, European Perceptions of ‘ Terra Australis’, Farnham, Ashgate, 2011; hardback; pp. 320; 52 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £65.00; ISBN 9781409426059. This volume explores perceptions of the concept of Terra Australis, the mythical southern land, which was quite distinct from the idea of the Antipodes, and the continent of Australia as it was eventually mapped. The contributing authors respond to the theme through a variety of perspectives and disciplines, including cartography, hydrography, geography, history, literature, drama, and art history, which has resulted in an insightful work sure to stimulate interest in a wide range of readers. Anne M. Scott’s prefatory article provides the parameters of the volume. The concept of ‘perception’, she observes, as a theme for the volume, has enabled ‘a truly interdisciplinary approach to the topic, for perceptions can be expressed through works of imaginative art and literature, works of scientific observation, personal records and even through national policy-making’ (p. 2). The intersections between empirical knowledge and the imagination that are necessarily invoked in mapping perceptions are apparent from the first illustrations of the volume which accompany Alfred Hiatt’s article. These are maps published with Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (London, 1726) where ‘Diemen’s Land’ and ‘Sumatra’ share geographical space with ‘Lilliput’ and ‘Houyhnhnms’ Land’, marked with dates of alleged discovery to enhance the appearance of authenticity. These provide a fitting analogue for the history of Terra Australis that the volume explores. As Alfred Hiatt observes, ‘Precisely because of their partially mapped status, the South Seas and the gaping canvas of Terra Australis could, in turn, become fiction’s archipelago, a multitude of possible islands, with their possible encounters’ (p. 13). Hiatt, author of Terra Incognita: Mapping the Antipodes before 1600 (University of Chicago Press, 2008), here provides an invaluable history of late medieval and early modern perceptions of Terra Australis, distinguishing between the various conceptions of what lay in the southern hemisphere. Bill Leadbetter analyses Roman ideas of the south, looking at the application of [End Page 272] ‘zonal theory’, according to which the world was divided into various zones of different temperatures. Work of geographers like Ptolemy and Marinus challenged the assertions of Cicero and Virgil that the Antipodes were unreachable because of the central zone of extreme heat. Christopher Wortham explores medieval mappamundi and their implications for plays such as The Castle of Perseverance and Shakespeare’s Othello. The T–O maps located various ‘monstrous’ races around the periphery of the known world, particularly concentrated in the south, and ‘came to be identified with imposing a Christian meaning on geographical terrain’ (p. 65). This sacralizing of the centre had implications for those located on the ‘periphery’: ‘in short, farthest south is farthest from God’ (p. 67). While the explorations of Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama resulted in the conceptual distinction between Africa and Terra Australis, the negative associations of the ‘south’ persisted, imbued with a ‘dangerous otherness’ (p. 77). Space prevents this review from doing justice to all of the essays in the volume. Bill Richardson canvases scholarly debates over another southern concept Java la Grande and how this relates to Terra Australis, emphasizing the importance of place-name evidence in historical map analysis. Margaret Sankey explores French mapping in the seventeenth century and the writing of Abbé Jean Paulmier, who proposed to the Pope that the Terra australes be evangelized, which impacted on French exploration and utopian literature. In the seventeenth century, the mythical Terra Australis began to disappear from maps and began to be replaced with the contours of New Holland. A 1648 map by Joan Blaeu (fig. 6.8) is the first in which Hollandia nova is identified as a country and Abel Tasman’s discoveries of 1642–44 are incorporated. Nevertheless, the concept of New Holland did not initially rule out the possibilities of Terre australe (p. 127), such was the pervasive appeal of the myth and cultural memory. Mercedes Maroto Camino provides some Spanish perspectives on the creation of the idea of the...

Were Fallow Deer Spotted (OE *pohha/*pocca) in Anglo-Saxon England? Reviewing the Evidence for Dama dama dama in Early Medieval Europe

There is a Growing recognition that introduced species are direct records of cultural activity and that studies of their biogeography have the potential to tell us about patterns of human migration, trade and even ideology. In England the fallow deer (Dama dama dama) is one of the earliest and most successful animal introductions, whose establishment has traditionally been attributed to the Normans. However, recent investigations of Old English place names have raised the possibility that the term *pohha/pocca relates to fallow deer, suggesting that the species was widely established in the Anglo-Saxon landscape. This suggestion deserves serious consideration as it has implications for our understanding both of AngloSaxon society and the impact of the Norman Conquest. This paper therefore presents a critical review of the literary, iconographic, place-name and zooarchaeological evidence for fallow deer in early medieval England and beyond.

The King's Wood in Lindrick

From the late 12th century to the dissolution of the monasteries, the King's Wood belonged to Roche Abbey, a Cistercian house in South Yorkshire. Since then, it has formed part of the Sandbeck estate. An interdisciplinary approach draws on ecological survey, archival study and place-name evidence to understand its role as timber resource, pleasure park and heritage and wildlife site. In particular, it suggests that the remarkable abundance of large-leaved limes, Tilia platyphyllos, in this wood and along the nearby Magnesian Limestone scarp, places the wood at the core of an ancient Anglian district which still bears the name Lindrick, the 'lime-tree ridge'.

III The Central Middle Ages (900–1200)

III The Central Middle Ages (900–1200)

The Historic Landscape of the Saga of the People of Vatnsdalur: Exploring the Saga Writer's Use of the Landscape and Archaeological Remains to Serve Political Interests

The saga of the People of Vatnsdalur (Vatnsdaelasaga) provides a case study for a new approach to the Sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur). This treats the saga as a cultural product of the 13th century that can give insights into its creator's ideas and worldviews. Fieldwork at five sites in the Vatnsdalur valley in NW Iceland seeks to establish what these places were like in the 13th century. This knowledge, alongside the saga and place-name evidence, illustrates how the saga writer, presumed to come from a powerful 13th-century family, systematically used the landscape and archaeological remains in the valley to serve his political interests when describing 10th-century events.

Pigs in the Faroe Islands: An Ancient Facet of the Islands' Paleoeconomy

Abstract This paper discusses the evidence for pig husbandry in the Faroes during the Norse and early Medieval periods. The evidence from zooarchaeology, biomolecular archaeology, and place-name evidence is reviewed, proposing that the keeping of pigs was an important part of the early paleoeconomy of the islands.

Waterways and Canal-building in Medieval England

Since the early 1990s there has been lively debate about water transport in medieval England. Now there is a major collection of essays which highlights the improvements to waterways and construction of canals. A colloquium in 1999 brought together scholars who, like the editor John Blair, had been pondering the nature of the ancient watercourses encountered in their studies. This book consists of their papers together with a few others. It is divided into two distinct parts. The first considers the relationship between waterways and the economy, the second describes the canals and improved waterways. Excellent maps make the detailed local descriptions comprehensible. Part I reveals an extensive system of water transport. Edmonds shows the links between the north-west and Ireland in the early middle ages. Navigation patterns of this date are traced in various ways, including the distribution of coins and pottery and charter and place-name evidence. Cole points to the ea-tuns, meaning ‘river settlement', many of which are on the upper Thames and Severn, concluding that they had a specialist function connected with the river; she ingeniously speculates that they were places charged with keeping navigations open. Place-names are also central to Hooke's account of the uses of waterways, which stresses that navigation had to compete with mills and fisheries.

A. Plautius' Campaign in Britain: An Alternative Reading of the Narrative in Cassius Dio (60.19.5–21.2)

Three aspects of Cassius Dio's account of the Claudian invasion of Britain are discussed. First, the convention, by which ancient historians routinely introduced their detailed narrative of military campaigns with a summary, allows the two first battles in the sequence to be eliminated as separate events. Secondly, the kings, Togodumnus in Cassius Dio and Cogidumnus in Tacitus' Agricola, are taken to be the same individual, who after defeat was reconciled to be Claudius' client-ruler. Thirdly, the argument is restated that the invasion took place through the harbours of West Sussex on a route suggested by the description given by Dio and by the evidence of place-names, known from the Geography of Ptolemy and the Antonine Itinerary.

The genealogy of eagre ‘tidal surge in the river Trent’

A case is made for the derivation of the regional word eagre ‘tidal surge’, ‘bore’, and relatives or variants found in other contexts, from OE ē(a)gor- meaning ‘flood’ or the like, despite the phonological difficulty. A Latin source is proposed. The evidence for the word is considered alongside place-name evidence, and explanations are tentatively reaffirmed, and proposed, respectively, for two problematic names in Nottinghamshire and Gloucestershire.

Defining the OE hearg: a preliminary archaeological and topographic examination of hearg place names and their hinterlands

The OE term hearg is interpreted variously as 'pagan temple', 'hilltop sanctuary' and even 'idol'. It is a rare survival in the English place-name record. When it can be identified, the place name is commonly considered to refer to a location of pre-Christian religious activity, specifically a pagan Anglo-Saxon temple. Taking inspiration from the extensive and methodologically well-advanced studies in Scandinavia, which have successfully related place-name evidence for cultic and religious sites with the archaeology and topography of these localities, this paper adopts and uses a similar methodology to investigate the archaeological and topographic character of a selection of hearg locations. The traditional interpretations of the place name are questioned and evidence is presented that these sites are characterized by long-lived, localized cult practice spanning the late prehistoric to early historic periods, but with activity reaching a zenith in the late Iron Age to Romano-British eras, rather than the fifth to seventh centuries AD.

Scandinavia and Europe 800-1350: Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence (review)

Reviewed by: Scandinavia and Europe 800-1350: Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence Shane McLeod Adams, Jonathan and Katherine Holman , eds. Scandinavia and Europe 800-1350: Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence, ( Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 4), Turnhout, Brepols, 2004; hardcover; pp. xvi, 369; 60 b/w illustrations; RRP €65; ISBN 250351085X. This attractive volume is a welcome addition to Scandinavian studies, going beyond the usual confines of the Viking Age, and examining the two-way interaction between Scandinavia and Europe. However it must be noted that 'Europe' is Western Europe, and the significant contact between Scandinavia and Eastern Europe receives almost no mention. The only exception to this is Janus Møller Jensen's article on Denmark's twelfth century war against the Wends. The book is divided into four sections: 'Historical and Archaeological Evidence for Contact with the British Isles', 'Evidence for the Linguistic Impact of Scandinavian Settlement', 'Evidence for the Impact of Christianity on Scandinavia', 'Textual Evidence for Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence'. Olwyn Owen opens proceedings with an examination of the Scar boat burial in Orkney, and goes on to suggest earlier contact between the Norse and the Northern Isles, and that Norse power in the area was extended more peacefully than is usually thought. Derek Gore's article, 'Britons, Saxons, and Vikings in the South-West' is strangely out of place in the volume as Scandinavians are almost peripheral to the discussion. Anne Pedersen's article discusses the archaeological evidence for contact between England and Denmark, including the period after Danish rule in England ended. The first section of the volume ends with David Caldwell's 'The Scandinavian Heritage of the Lordship of the Isles', which examines such things as fifteenth century buildings to show that Norse influence continued. Section two begins with an interesting article by Peder Gammeltoft, suggesting that the place-name evidence of Orkney and Shetland indicates that priests may have continued to live alongside the Norse settlers. Arne Kruse argues that the place-names along the west coast of mainland Scotland suggest Norse settlers rather than visitors as is usually thought. Andrew Jennings then takes this argument further in relation to Kintyre, using the early sixteenth-century Crown Rentals to show that 17% of named estates have Norse names. [End Page 131] He suggests that Kintyre was settled in the second half of the ninth century following MacAlpin's conquest of Pictland, an interesting idea that will hopefully be developed. Michael Barnes next provides an overview of what the runic evidence says about the Scandinavian language throughout the British Isles. An overview is also provided by Gillian Fellows-Jensen, using place-name evidence to discuss Scandinavian settlement in the British Isles and Normandy. Normandy is also the focus of Elisabeth Ridel's examination of the Norse words used there from the eleventh century; unsurprisingly, she discovers that most of them are nautical. The third section opens with Stefan Brink discussing the Christianization of Scandinavia, and the regional differences evident in burial customs, the building of churches, and the formation of parishes. Christopher Morris considers that place-name evidence indicates the survival of Christian religious centres during the Norse settlement of Orkney and Shetland. He also finds little evidence for tenth-century paganism, and that there may have been Norse chapels there before 1000. In 'Early Monasticism in Scandinavia', Tore Nyberg surveys the development of monastic foundations throughout Scandinavia. Jan Ragner Hagland discusses the application of regulations on consanguinity in the early Norwegian laws, concluding that the strict rules of the church were not strongly applied. Janus Møller Jensen argues strongly that the Danish wars against the Wends were seen as a crusade. Remaining in Denmark, Axel Bolvig examines the Christian visual language used from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. He finds that Romanesque art fitted into contemporary aristocratic ideals, and therefore appealed as much to the elite in Denmark as in the rest of Europe. The final section of the volume begins with Judith Jesch using runic inscriptions and skaldic poetry to provide greater evidence for Scandinavian activity in Western Europe during the eleventh century. Brian Levy then looks at how Vikings were depicted in Anglo-Norman literature, showing how in many...

The land named from the sea? Coastal archaeology and place-names of Bigbury Bay, Devon

The south coast of Devon has seen settled occupation for several thousand years. However, it is suggested that many coastal sites may have been named from a maritime perspective in the first millennium AD. Archaeological information from aerial and geophysical survey and excavation is considered, and new interpretations of a number of place-names are proposed. The archaeological and place-name evidence together suggests that in the later first millennium AD the inhabitants of south Devon knew their coast from both the land and the sea.

Early-Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales: Context and Function

Antiquaria, archaeological, topographical and place-name evidence may be used to piece together the original contexts of a significant number of early-medieval inscribed and sculptured stones in Wales and throw valuable light on their functions and on the origins and development of church sites. The differing locations of early inscribed stones are examined, including associations with prehistoric and Roman monuments as well as with cemeteries and churches, and regional differences are noted. It is suggested that, although their primary function was commemorative, some monuments also acted as symbols of landowning by secular elites. Cross-decorated stones originating c. A.D. 600 mark a change to largely anonymous grave-markers mainly associated with cemeteries and local churches, while some others are indicative of landowning by the church. Crosses and cross-slabs of the 9th to 11th centuries are clustered in and around major monasteries and regional churches. Some record the donation of land to the church while the Pillar of Eliseg functioned as a symbol of secular entitlement to land.

Place-Name Evidence for the History of Modern English hut

Citations of hut in the Oxford English Dictionary are substantially ante-dated by occurrences of the word in the place-names Hutfall and The Hutt. The place-name evidence also demonstrates that the sense 'a dwelling of ruder and meaner construction . . . than a house' is earlier than the sense 'a wooden structure for the temporary housing of troops'.

Medieval Monaghan: The Evidence of the Placenames

Medieval Monaghan: The Evidence of the Placenames

A Roman Signal Station at Whitby

SUMMARYThe possible existence of a Roman signal station at Whitby has a significant impact upon the study of the Roman defensive system of the North Yorkshire coast and our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical topography of the area. Whitby lies at the mouth of the River Esk and its associated harbour on the North Yorkshire coast, amidst an intervisible chain of five known signal stations, but is perhaps best known for its Anglo-Saxon monastery founded by the Northumbrian king Oswy in A.D. 657. No absolute archaeological evidence of a signal station at Whitby exists, but the toponym suggests that the site had an association with a signal station or watchtower. It is clear that the existing stations were designed to function as a cohesive system, given their similar form and contemporary dates: communication and intervisibility were therefore essential aspects of this defensive network. Despite this, the stations to the north and south of Whitby—those at Goldsborough and Ravenscar respectively—are not intervisible. A station positioned at Whitby would effectively close this gap in the system.Attempting to reconcile the near complete absence of archaeological remains with the place-name and geographical evidence, this paper uses geologically determined erosion rates to examine the possibility that such a station existed on the more than three hundred metres of coastal land that has eroded since the Roman period. In doing so it addresses the extent to which archaeologists can reconstruct and work with an ancient coastline on a local scale. Having established the probability of a ‘lost’ station, the paper discusses the results of a GIS viewshed application which address the feasibility of such a station's intervisibility from its neighbouring station to the south. The concluding sections investigate the stations' possible form.

The Linguistic Evidence of Placenames for History

The Linguistic Evidence of Placenames for History

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

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.

The pattern of Old Englishburhin early Lindsey

In Lincolnshire as a whole, place-names which have Old Englishburh‘a fortified place’ as their generics fall into two distinct geographical groups (fig. 1). In the northern half of the county, the locations of these names suggest that a comprehensive system of defence was eventually created for the territory of the Lindisfaran. In the far south, the two isolated instances ofburhmay signal original strongholds of Middle Angles styled in The Tribal Hidage the Bilmigas (but who on place-name evidence are more correctly to be called the Billingas) and the Gyrwe. It is, however, theburhnames in that region defined as Lindsey in The Lindsey Survey of the reign of Henry I (1100–35) which are the focus of this paper.

Place-Name Evidence for the Survival of British Settlements in the West Derby Hundred (Lancashire) After the Anglian Invasions

Place-Name Evidence for the Survival of British Settlements in the West Derby Hundred (Lancashire) After the Anglian Invasions