Evaluating the Early Medieval Portable Antiquities Scheme Data for the Welsh Marches

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.