Vicky Crewe (University of Sheffield, UK)

The reuse and appropriation of pre-existing monuments is a phenomenon which has been recognized in a variety of archaeological contexts. This is especially true in the early medieval period in England, when prehistoric and Romano-British monuments were frequently used as burial sites, as researchers such as Howard Williams, Sam Lucy and Sarah Semple have demonstrated. It has been shown that these earthworks influenced the location of pre-Christian and Christian sacred sites too, as well as acting as places of assembly. A great deal of research has taken place into these aspects of monument reuse, with theories being offered which interpret reuse in social, ideological and ritual terms. What has not been fully addressed, however, is the relationship between pre-existing monuments and settlements in Anglo-Saxon England. Whilst Richard Bradley’s (1987) well-known and influential reconsideration of the evidence from Yeavering represented a different take on Anglo-Saxon settlement archaeology and monument reuse, Yeavering can hardly be considered representative of early medieval settlement as a whole, and is perhaps more ‘Anglo-British’ than ‘Anglo-Saxon’.

The aim of my PhD research is to assess the role of prehistoric monuments in more ‘ordinary’ Anglo-Saxon settlements of the fifth to ninth centuries, in order to find out how reuse in these instances compares to reuse on funerary, religious and assembly sites. This paper will discuss my findings so far, using examples of settlements which reused prehistoric monuments in order to demonstrate the different forms which appropriation could take in these contexts. I will present the questions I am asking of my data and the patterns which have appeared thus far, as well as examining some of the potential reasons for, and interpretations of, monument reuse in settlements. Central to this discussion will be the question of whether we can attribute the same ideological and ritual interpretations to monument reuse on settlement sites as we do when it is found in other circumstances, such as burial. When reuse occurs in settlements can it be explained as purely practical or coincidental, as some researchers have suggested, or can it help us to find ideological symbolism in the ordinary, day-to-day lives of early to middle Anglo-Saxon communities and the landscapes they inhabited?