Jane Harrison

The Languages, Myths and Finds project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, ran in the years 2013-14, coinciding with the British Museum's international exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend. The aim of the project was to encourage conversations between specialist university academics and advanced research students in Old Norse and Viking Studies, and local communities around Britain and Ireland who were interested in knowing more about their Viking heritage. The communities chosen for the project were Cleveland, Dublin, Isle of Lewis, Isle of Man and Munster. Five small teams of academics were chosen to work with each community by developing and researching topics most suited to that locality, as identified in dialogue with the community. These booklets are the products of the research done by those teams together with the local partners, especially during field trips to the localities in the spring of 2014.

WHY WERE important Viking longhouses built on large mounds of sand and then repeatedly rebuilt in precisely the same apparently challenging location? Generations of Viking–late Norse people did so, on sandy bays along the coasts of the Northern Isles of the United Kingdom. These prominent, 'layered-up' longhouse complexes were landscape statements. They reflected, in their location and the detail of their construction and use, the social attitudes and arrangements of those who lived in and visited them. The settlements played a pivotal role in power relationships and in the organisation of the local economy. This article explores the meaning of these focal settlement mounds through landscape archaeology; investigates building practices, stratigraphic detail and place-name associations; looks at their cultural roots in Scandinavia; and considers the role they played in the development of local social and political structures in Orkney. During the Viking–late Norse period, ad 800–1200, complex cultural connections were forged between the Northern Isles and Norway. Archaeological evidence and the Orkneyinga Saga suggest that people and things, and thus ideas, moved both ways between the two countries. The study of documents, place names, objects and structures has shaped our understanding of these exchanges: this article widens that appreciation by exploring the part landscape itself played in cultural change. Looking at the period from the first settlement in Orkney, through the beginnings of the Orkney Earldom (purportedly founded in the later 9th century) to the establishment of medieval authority structures in the mid-to late 13th century, I will draw, in particular, on new material from Oxford University's Birsay–Skaill Landscape Archaeology Project (Fig 1a). This project has undertaken survey and excavation along the coast of West Mainland (Orkney, Northern Isles, UK) since 2004, with excavation work concentrated on the Bay of Skaill (Sandwick, West Mainland, Orkney) and Marwick Bay (West Mainland) (Fig 1b). 2 Viking–late Norse settlement in the Orkney Islands is overwhelmingly coastal and predominantly located on the windblown-sand bays of the islands and in particular of Mainland, Rousay, Westray, Sanday and North Ronaldsay (Fig 2a). 3 These bays and coastal stretches were extremely attractive to Viking settlers, providing sheltered harbours and locations well situated for a broad-based economy exploiting land, shore and sea. The vast majority of farms in such prime locations were located on a mound and associated

The background to the project and site has been detailed in the previous ten interim reports in South Midlands Archaeology (Lock and Gosden 2002; Lock and Gosden 2003; Lock et. al. 2004; Gosden and Lock 2005; Lock and Gosden 2006; Kamash et al. 2007; Kamash et al. 2008; Kamash et al. 2009; Kamash et al. 2010b, Kamash et al. 2011), as well as on the project web site: http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/VRP1.html and a longer interim (Kamash et al. 2010a).

The subject of this study is Viking-Late Norse settlement (c. AD800-1200) in the North Atlantic, focusing on Orkney and on longhouse complexes constructed on mounds. For the first time these mound settlements are investigated as a group and as deliberately constructed mounds. Settlement mounds in Orkney are also closely associated with nearly 40 Skaill ON skali ('hall') place-names, which place-names linked the sites with the social and economic networks of Orkney's peripatetic leaders. This association is examined more closely. The analysis also demonstrates that constructing settlements on mounds required particular building techniques, which relied heavily on the use of midden-type material. Those techniques are examined using new and freshly analysed material from published and grey literature-published excavations and surveys of sites from the Viking-Late Norse period in Orkney and elsewhere. Three core data-sets were established to provide the evidential basis: the...

Heritage-Lottery Funded Archaeology and History Project on East Oxford, based at Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. Book edited by Jane Harrison and David Griffiths. Excavation, survey, extensive test pitting place name, object, map and documentary research done in collaboration with hundreds of local people, dozens of whom have contributed to the volume. The archaeology covers excavations at a leper hospital and a nunnery as well as charting landscape and settlement change through test pitting and other research.

This article reports the results of recent fieldwork carried out at Long Wittenham, Oxfordshire. The site at Long Wittenham had previously been identified from aerial photographs and LiDAR as a possible seventh-century great hall complex – a distinctive type of high-status settlement – but the site had never been ground-truthed. Fieldwork was therefore undertaken to confirm the nature and date of the Long Wittenham cropmarks, through geophysical survey, metal-detecting and three seasons of excavation. The results have confirmed the existence of high-status seventh-century buildings at Long Wittenham, but the largest building previously identified at Long Wittenham is now interpreted as a Roman enclosure, leaving the complex of buildings without an exceptionally large hall. This complicates the interpretation of the site, suggesting that Long Wittenham may have been a secondary high-status site, potentially subordinate to the great hall complex at Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire.