Book review

Jordanes’ Romana

This article discusses the limitations and advantages of using ›asceticism‹ as a universal category and as a hermeneutic tool in the study of late antique religious life and comparative studies of religious communities. It first explores the roots and the history of the terms ›asceticism‹, ›Askese‹ and ›ascétisme‹ arguing that they originate f…[Read more]

The narrative between the legendary Saint Patrick and his opponent, the idol Cenn Cruaich, appears from the initial mention of the location Magh Slecht in Tírechán’s Collectanea (c. 688-693AD), through the Vitae Tertia (c. 775AD), Quarta (c. 8th – 11th C. AD) and Tripartita (c. 9th – 10th C. AD), to its appearance in Jocelin’s Vita Patrici…[Read more]

While early medieval riddles in Old English and, to a lesser extent, Latin, have been studied extensively from ecocritical perspectives in recent years, the large corpora of riddles in other languages of western Eurasia have yet to benefit from or feed back into these methodological developments. Meanwhile, ecocritical research generally has…[Read more]

Review of The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate: AD 500–1000, by Timothy Power (American University in Cairo, 2012).

In response to the challenge set by one of us (Williams this volume), this chapter explores new avenues for a public archaeology of Wat’s Dyke. A host of digital and real-world initiatives for public and community engagement are suggested, but the focus is upon one new initiative: the What’s Wat’s Dyke? Heritage Trail which aims to envision Wat’s…[Read more]

In 2010, the zombie horror genre gained even greater popularity than the huge following it had previously enjoyed when AMC’s The Walking Dead (TWD) first aired. The chapter surveys the archaeology of this fictional post-apocalyptic material world in the show’s seasons 1–9, focusing on its mural practices and environments which draw upon ancie…[Read more]

Responding to the recently published edited collection exploring the hillfort and landscape context of Old Oswestry (Shropshire, England) by heritage professionals connected to the Hands off Old Oswestry Hillfort heritage protection campaign (Malim and Nash 2020), this chapter reviews and reflects on the significance of the overall…[Read more]

The chapter serves to introduce the first-ever book dedicated to public archaeologies of frontiers and borderlands. We identify the hitherto neglect of this critical field which seeks to explore the heritage, public engagements, popular cultures and politics of frontiers and borderlands past and present. We review the 2019 conference organised by…[Read more]

How are linear monuments perceived in the contemporary landscape and how do they operate as memoryscapes for today’s borderland communities? When considering Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke in today’s world, we must take into account the generations who have long lived in these monuments’ shadows and interacted with them. Even if perhaps only being dim…[Read more]

Introducing the second volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ), this five-part article sets the scene by reviewing: (i) key recent research augmenting last year’s Introduction (Williams and Delaney 2019); (ii) the key activities of the Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory in 2020; (iii) the political mobilisation of Offa’s Dyke in the context of the COVID-1…[Read more]

The Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville was one of the most widely read works of the early Middle Ages, as is evidenced by the number of surviving manuscripts. August Eduard Anspach’s handlist from the 1940s puts their number at almost 1,200, of which approximately 300 were estimated to have been copied before the year 1000. This article, based on a…[Read more]

The establishment of an Aghlabid, then Fāṭimid-Kalbid dominion in Sicily had a deep impact not only on the island and on Mediterranean power constellations, but also on mainland Italy, especially in its Southern parts. Although the Peninsula was under continuous attack between the ninth and eleventh centuries, all attempts to place it under su…[Read more]

The establishment of an Aghlabid, then Fāṭimid-Kalbid dominion in Sicily had a deep impact not only on the island and on Mediterranean power constellations, but also on mainland Italy, especially in its Southern parts. Although the Peninsula was under continuous attack between the ninth and eleventh centuries, all attempts to place it under su…[Read more]

This chapter examines the eleventh-century Arabic translation of Basil of Caesarea’s Homilies on the Hexaemeron by the translator and theologian ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Faḍl of Antioch. It begins by surveying other late antique and medieval translations of Basil’s Hexaemeron, then lists all manuscripts known to me which are reported to contain an Arabic…[Read more]

This chapter examines the eleventh-century Arabic translation of Basil of Caesarea’s Homilies on the Hexaemeron by the translator and theologian ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Faḍl of Antioch. It begins by surveying other late antique and medieval translations of Basil’s Hexaemeron, then lists all manuscripts known to me which are reported to contain an Arabic…[Read more]

This article presents the collation map, a diagrammatic method for visually mapping the texts of complex medieval Western manuscripts against their material structures. Beginning with an overview of collation formulae – currently the most frequently used method of representing collation – the article argues that the collation map is a more use…[Read more]

This chapter will deal with the origin of the people known as the Britons as defined under the headword ‘Briton, n.1. A member of one of the Brittonic-speaking peoples originally inhabiting all of Britain south of the Firth of Forth, and in later times spec. Strathclyde, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany’ in the OED, rather than the neologistic sense…[Read more]

This is the uncorrected proofs version of my review of Ingrid Rembold’s Conquest and Christianization for The Mediaeval Journal. Some wording may differ from the final published version. Please refer to the journal website.