History: Highlights Of British Archaeology: Viking (800 AD) To High Middle Ages

They raided, they conquered, they settled: recent fieldwork allows us to define these three distinct phases of Anglo-Scandinavian activity. Sites at Repton (Derbyshire) and Torksey (Lincolnshire) provide evidence of Viking Age winter camps from the Conquest Period, whereas spatial analysis of both artefact scatters and place names vividly demonstrate the areas of Norse settlement.

We shall be looking at major developments in shipping technology from the Saxon through to the High Middle Ages, without which none of these invasions, including 1066, would have been possible. Sites featured will include Sutton Hoo (Suffolk), Graveney (Kent), the Mortar Wreck (Dorset), the Newport Ship (Monmouthshire) and the Grace Dieu (Hampshire).

As part of our Medieval studies we shall examine the eclectic Medieval “Voynich Manuscript”, written in an unfamiliar alphabet which has so far eluded decryption. Currently housed in Yale University Library (Rare Books Collection), it is profusely illuminated with both the mundane and the bizarre. Using the class's expertise and intuition we shall put our heads together to try to make some sense of it by reference to these illustrations.