The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 188 • Catherine Hills
are harder to date. The use of the building technique in which walls are constructed by setting
upright posts in a narrow trench seems to be relatively later than the use of separate posts.
However, both occur on the same site at Chalton and at Cowdery’s Down, near Basingstoke,
which could each be partly seventh century in date. This is also observable at the site of
Yeavering in Northumbria.
Yeavering was discovered from aerial photographs that showed a complex of rectangular
structures on a river terrace hill below the Iron Age hillfort of Yeavering Bell, near Wooler in
Northumbria. Excavations of this site in the 1950s produced a series of large, rectangular ‘halls’,
some of massive construction, that had been burnt down at least twice. There was also a structure
like a segment of an amphitheatre, burials, and possibly both a temple and a church. Clearly this
site had distinctive functions: the buildings required much wood, labour and skill, and the
‘grandstand’ suggests meetings and ceremonies. It has been identified as Ad Gefrin, which Bede
tells us was a ‘villa regalis’, a residence of King Edwin of Northumbria which was visited by
bishop Paulinus in 626 when he came to preach Christianity to the Northumbrians. The buildings
are consistent with such an interpretation, but there are very few finds, perhaps because the site
was occupied only occasionally, or perhaps because the Anglo-Saxons, far from living in squalor,
actually took pains to keep their houses, or indeed their royal residences, clean.
Yeavering has been interpreted as a ‘palace’ on historical grounds, and because of the range
and size of the buildings found there. Other ‘royal’ sites have been identified from aerial
photographs, including several not far from Yeavering including Sprouston, in the Tweed Valley,
and also in southern England (Rahtz 1981). At Cowdery’s Down, the size of at least one of the
buildings (22 × 9 m) has allowed it to be added to the list of high status sites. One Late Saxon
royal site, at Cheddar in Somerset, has been excavated. Although it is now possible to distinguish
excavated sites in terms of status and function, discussion of settlement hierarchy still rests on a
limited sample of excavated sites.
Christianity
In the fourth century, Britain, like the rest of the Roman Empire, was officially Christian. It is
difficult to know how deeply rooted belief had become amongst the population at large, or the
extent to which it survived the end of Roman rule, but Gildas’ account of the period was Christian,
as were the rulers of south-western England and Wales to whom it was addressed. Ireland was
converted from Britain, traditionally by St Patrick in the fifth century, and it was from Ireland
that St Columba came to found a monastery on Iona in AD 563. This became one of the great
centres of early Christian learning in Britain, and from Iona missionaries set out to convert the
Picts and the Northumbrians. In 597, a mission led by Augustine, sent from Rome by Pope
Gregory, reached England. Augustine had initial success in converting Ethelbert of Kent, but it
was not until the middle decades of the seventh century that the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
were converted, usually for reasons as much political as religious.
Archaeological evidence for Christianity takes various forms (see Webster and Backhouse
1991). At first, furnished burial continued, and the impact of closer contact with the Mediterranean
world appears in new styles of dress and ornament such as necklaces with pendants, a few in the
shape of the cross, and decorated pins, some linked by chains, used to fasten cloaks and headdresses.
Some prominent Christians were buried with objects; for example, St Cuthbert was interred
with his pectoral cross, a portable altar and a comb. Kings and other landowners who endowed
churches were buried in them, probably with elaborate clothing like that known from royal
continental Christian burials, although comparable graves have not been found in Britain.
Eventually, a standard pattern of Christian burial emerged throughout Britain, replacing the
older variety of different burial and cemetery types with uniform, unfurnished, east-west orientated