Archaeology was, once upon a time, referred to as “the handmaiden of history.” Images of artifacts served primarily to adorn the pages of historical accounts regarded by publishers as needing enlivening. How times have changed. Material culture—uncovered for the most part by archaeological excavation—is increasingly playing a central role in the writings of early medieval historians. Notable examples include Chris Wickham’s Framing the Early Middle Ages (2005) and, more recently, John Blair’s Building Anglo-Saxon England (2018).1 The two volumes under review here—both written by historians—bear witness to this growing engagement with material culture and how it is changing the way we view early medieval Britain.
The Material Fall of Roman Britain has the archaeological record at its core and uses it to challenge conventional understandings of the notoriously elusive late Roman to post-Roman transition. Refusing to be constrained by traditional disciplinary and chronological divides, the book spans the period...
University of California Press