Archaeology and Geographies of Jurisdiction: Evidence from South-East Suffolk in the 7th Century

Abstract

Conventional models of state formation and the ways in which early polities might be expressed in the archaeological record for England in the 7th century have emphasised the importance of long-distance exchange in promoting socio-economic complexity. Such models, however, are open to challenge or refinement from interpretations that would emphasise other social dynamics, and beg serious questions about the relationships between agrarian production, elite acquisition and consumption and structures of power and jurisdiction. This chapter presents a critical evaluation of some current assumptions and approaches, and examines the interpretative questions in the light of recent evidence from south-east Suffolk, often seen as the heartland of the early kingdom of the East Angles.

Practice, Power and Place: Southern British Perspectives on the Agency of Early Medieval Rulers’ Residences

“…At Rendlesham, metal-detecting, geophysics and trial excavation have defined an extensive polyfocal settlement in use from the early or middle fifth century (Fig. 2, Scull et al 2016, Scull 2019. There is an elite element to the material culture from the outset but this massively intensifies from the late sixth century and is accompanied by a spatial shift in the focus of activity.…”

“…This serves as a reminder that expressions of rulership in the immediately post-Roman landscape need to be defined and interpreted in their own terms rather than through anachronistic back projection of later circumstances (e.g. Reynolds 2019, Scull 2019). The foundation of great hall complexes at long-established settlements can be read as monumentalizing acts by which rulers sought to lay physical and symbolic claim to places of dynastic and ancestral significance.…”

“…Yeavering has been the subject of attempts to reconstruct territorial units around great hall sites (O'Brien 2002(O'Brien , 2005 but exercises so heavily reliant on back-projection from later historical and topographic sources must be treated with caution (Scull 2019, p. 397, Reynolds 2019). There are, however, other ways to model systems of dependency with which great hall complexes were enmeshed, one being to consider their articulation with systems of surplus extraction.…”