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- Linear Pasts and Presents: Researching Dykes, Frontiers and Borderlands
Authors: Howard Williams
Pages: 1 - 12
Abstract: This editorial essay introduces the fifth volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ) by presenting a review of the contents, recent related research published elsewhere, and the Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory’s activities during 2022 and early 2023.
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7726
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- Insights from a Recent Workshop on Walls, Borders, and Frontier Zones in
the Ancient and the Contemporary World
Authors: Gideon Shelach-Lavi, Tal Ulus, Gideon Avni
Pages: 13 - 18
Abstract: This article reports on the ‘Walls, Borders, and Frontier Zones in the Ancient and Contemporary World’ workshop and its implications of transdisciplinary research for building comparative insights into the uses, meanings and experiences of border and wall constructions in the past and present.
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7727
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- The Olger Dyke: An Early Roman Iron Age Linear Earthwork in Denmark
Authors: Lisbeth Christensen
Pages: 19 - 50
Abstract: The Olger Dyke is a large-scale linear earthwork in southern Jutland in Denmark which consists of a combination of earthwork and (in part) well-preserved timber palisades that can be traced for at least 12 km. The article provides a synthesis of the history of fieldwork of this monument, including detailed overviews of recent excavations, which have enabled new dating work to be carried out. This linear earthwork is unusual in that it has exceptional preservation of timber uprights in several palisade trenches, and recent dendrochronological dates combined with the application of new dating methods has enabled the construction sequence to be refined and accurately pinpointed to the early first century AD, lasting for around 100 years. The article presents the location, construction and function of the Olger Dyke together with an outline of the new dating evidence.
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7728
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- The Current State of Research on Early Medieval Earthworks in East Central
and Southeastern Europe
Authors: Florin Curta
Pages: 51 - 74
Abstract: Much has changed in the last forty years in the study of the early medieval earthworks of East Central and Eastern Europe. While the exact chronology and cultural attribution of the Csörsz Dykes in Hungary or the Bessarabian Dykes in Moldova and Ukraine remains a matter of debate, significant progress is clear in other cases, particularly the West Bulgarian Dykes, as well as the Large Earth Dyke in Dobrudja. The use of radiocarbon dating, as well as stratigraphical observations suggest that, in both cases, the key period for the building and use of those earthworks was the ninth century. The article surveys the main problems of interpretation raised by the recent studies of dykes in the region.
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7729
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- The Serpent Ramparts in Ukraine: Fifty Years of Archaeological Research
Authors: Florin Curta
Pages: 75 - 92
Abstract: Named after a folk tale first recorded in the nineteenth century, the Serpent Ramparts in the Ukraine have been thoroughly investigated archaeologically in the 1970s and 1980s. The results of the excavations clarified the chronology of the earthworks, but also revealed a sophisticated building technique employing timber structures. The relation of the dykes to neighbouring strongholds and especially open settlements have been the focus of the subsequent research. The dates initially advanced for the earthworks (late tenth to early eleventh century) may not apply to all surviving segments, but the initial impetus for the building of the Serpent Ramparts seems to have come from the Rus’-Pecheneg confrontations along the northern boundaries of the steppe belt in Eastern Europe.
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7730
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- ‘Cofiwn i Facsen Wledig/We remember Macsen the Emperor': Frontiers,
Romans, and Welsh Identity
Authors: Roger H. White
Pages: 93 - 118
Abstract: Taking as its starting point the commonly held public perspective that Wales was largely unconquered by the Romans and was indeed a focus of resistance to Roman rule, this article argues from the archaeology to demonstrate that such perceptions are misleading. Archaeological evidence demonstrates Rome certainly conquered and held Wales throughout its occupation of Britain. Furthermore, its hold on Wales was so firmly established by the second century that Rome’s identity was fully stamped upon the territory and was maintained by the peoples of Wales after the end of Roman rule. The degree to which Wales was in the end Romanised is encapsulated in the post-Roman identity of the emerging Welsh kingdoms which consciously looked back to the Roman Emperor, Magnus Maximus (Macsen Wledig in Welsh) for their foundation as actual and spiritual successors to Roman power. Rather than offering resistance to Rome, it can be argued instead that notions of Roman power provided the peoples of Wales with the means to resist the rise of English power in the immediate post-Roman period.
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7731
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- The Linear Earthworks of Cornwall: What if They Were Early Medieval'
Authors: Erik Grigg
Pages: 119 - 139
Abstract: This article examines various linear earthworks in Cornwall that may date to the early medieval period. The dating evidence for the earthworks is discussed. While incontrovertible evidence for when they were built is lacking, the article asks how they might fit into the early medieval period if that is when most or all of them were built. The article postulates that they may have provided refuges against raiding, probably from the kingdom of Wessex in the eighth and ninth century, so allowing the Cornish to preserve their distinctive identity and language until the modern era (Padel 2017).
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7732
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- Rethinking Offa’s Dyke as a Hydraulic Frontier Work
Authors: Howard Williams
Pages: 140 - 169
Abstract: Building upon a fresh interpretation of Wat’s Dyke as a component of an early medieval hydraulic frontier zone rather than primarily serving as a symbol of power, a fixed territorial border or a military stop-line (Williams 2021), here, I refine and apply this approach to its longer and better-known neighbour: Offa’s Dyke. This linear earthwork’s placement, alignments and landscape context are evaluated afresh using a simple but original comparative mapping methodology. First, on the local level, I show that Offa’s Dyke was carefully and strategically positioned to connect, overlook and block a range of watercourses and wetlands at key transverse and parallel crossing points, thus observing and choreographing mobility on multiple axes. Second, I address the regional scale, showing how Offa’s Dyke interacted with, and controlled, biaxial movement through and between water catchments parallel and transverse to the monument’s principal alignments. Both these arguments inform how the Dyke might have operated on the supra-regional scale, ‘from sea to sea’ and also ‘across the sea’, by controlling the estuarine and maritime zones of the Dee Estuary in the north and the Wye/Severn confluence to the south. Integrating military, territorial, socio-economic and ideological functionality and significance, Offa’s Dyke, like its shorter neighbour Wat’s Dyke (in an as-yet uncertain relationship), configured mobilities over land and water via its hydraulic dimensions and interactions. Together, the monuments can be reconsidered as elements of a multi-functional hydraulic frontier zone constructed by one or more rulers of the middle Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and operative both in times of peace and conflict.
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7733
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- Evaluating the Early Medieval Portable Antiquities Scheme Data for the
Welsh Marches
Authors: Pauline Clarke
Pages: 170 - 207
Abstract: This article explores the early medieval data from the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) from across two countries and several counties to ascertain what this can reveal about boundary formation, including the construction and use of Offa’s and Wat’s Dykes, during the seventh to ninth centuries AD. Surveying the borderlands which become Welsh Marcher lordships in the Later Middle Ages, the study disproves the popular assumption that the region is devoid of early medieval material culture. Instead, by examining what material culture is known through the PAS it may be possible to demonstrate activity here from the beginning of the ingress into Britain of Anglo-Saxon and later Scandinavian culture.
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7734
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- Treaties, Frontiers and Borderlands:The Making and Unmaking of Mercian
Border Traditions
Authors: Morn Capper
Pages: 208 - 238
Abstract: This article explores the complexity and nuance of borderlands and border relations focusing on Mercia. Identifying a host of border maintenance strategies negotiating control over people, places and resources, mitigation of risk and maximisation of opportunity, but also strategic escalation and de-escalation of tensions, the study re-evaluates how Mercian border traditions supported expanded hegemony between the seventh and ninth centuries. The significant departures of the approach presented here are (i) rethinking the traditional focus on military, religious and ethnic identities to integrate these among other activities and experiences defining early medieval frontiers and borderlands and (ii) considering the reimagining not only Mercia’s frontiers and borderlands during its emergence and heyday as a kingdom but also reflecting on how Mercian territory itself became a borderland under the rule of Aethelred and Aethelflaed during the Viking Age, and as such how it was formative in the creation of the Danelaw and of England. The Alfred/Guthrum Treaty and Ordinance of the Dunsaete are here contextualised against other strategies and scales of negotiation and activity framing Mercian/Anglo-Welsh and Anglo-Danish borderlands. Different ‘Mercian borderlands’ are compared in this study and analysed as complex zones of interaction, responsive to geographical factors, but also criss-crossed by multi-stranded pathways of daily life. Mercian borderlands were understood and maintained militarily, physically, spiritually, and ideologically. The article considers how these zones were shaped by convenience but also need and were reinforced or permeable at locality, community and kingdom levels.
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7735
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
- Border Culture and Picturing the Dyke
Authors: Dan Llywelyn Hall
Pages: 239 - 264
Abstract: Dan Llywleyn Hall is a painter who spent three years walking and making paintings inspired by Offa’s Dyke. Born in Cardiff 1980, Dan now lives near the border in Llanfyllin where his studio is based. He has recently taken on the role of guest Editor of Borderlands – a revised Newsletter–cum–Journal that is published twice a year in behalf of the Offa’s Dyke Association. With a new introduction, the key components of the 2021 Walking with Offa project are reproduced here: nineteenth paintings and English-language versions of five of the original twelve poems. These are joined by three perspectives on the project by an artist (Baur), archaeological illustrator (Swogger) and archaeologist (Williams).
PubDate: 2023-06-27
DOI: 10.23914/odj.v5i0.7736
Issue No: Vol. 5 (2023)
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