Offa's Dyke: Pattern and Purpose

Hill, David

doi:10.1017/s0003581500050216

Cited by 9 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Therefore, while scholars vary in their emphasis upon the military, territorial, economic and ideological dimensions to these monuments (Fox 1955;Noble 1983;Hill 2000;Hill and Worthington 2003;Malim and Hayes 2008;Ray and Bapty 2016;Belford 2017;Grigg 2018), the modes of interaction are primarily seen as pertaining to land. Discussions thus focus on linear earthworks in terms of movement on foot or horseback, droving animals and moving goods and materials.…”

Section: Discussion: Linear Earthwork and Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Wat’s Dyke: A Monument’s Flow in a Hydraulic Frontier Zone

Williams

2021

OD Journal

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Britain’s second-longest early medieval monument – Wat’s Dyke – was 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. Wat’s Dyke was not only created to monitor and control mobility over land, but specifically did so through its careful and strategic placement by linking, blocking and overlooking a range of watercourses and wetlands. By creating simplified comparative topographical maps of the key fluvial intersections and interactions of Wat’s Dyke for the first time, this article shows how the monument should not be understood as a discrete human-made entity, but as part of a landscape of flow over land and water, manipulating and managing anthropogenic and natural elements. Understanding Wat’s Dyke as part of a hydraulic frontier zone not only enhances appreciation of its integrated military, territorial, socio-economic and ideological functionality and significance, most likely the construction of the middle Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, it also theorises Wat’s Dyke as built to constitute and maintain control both across and along its line, and operating on multiple scales. Wat’s Dyke was built to manage localised, middle-range as well as long-distance mobilities via land and water through western Britain and beyond.

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Section: Discussion: Linear Earthwork and Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking Wat’s Dyke: A Monument’s Flow in a Hydraulic Frontier Zone

Williams

2021

OD Journal

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“…So, for example, the only discussion of the exact relationship between Wat's Dyke and Offa's Dyke in all the various publications arising from the 'Offa's Dyke Project' of the late twentieth century (e.g. Hill 1977;Hill 2000;Worthington 1999;Hill and Worthington 2003) was in Margaret Worthington's article specifically on Wat's Dyke (Worthington 1997; republished as Worthington Hill 2019). Here, among other things, she attempted to solve the conundrum of the various past labellings of what would now be regarded as Wat's Dyke as instead 'Offa's Dyke' in the northern lengths of the former in Flintshire south of Holywell.…”

Section: Greater Frontier Depth In the Northmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Organisation of the Mid–Late Anglo-Saxon Borderland with Wales

Ray

2022

OD Journal

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With hardly any written documentation concerning the creation of Offa’s Dyke or for the contemporary communities that it affected, the intricacies of how the Mercian-Welsh frontier was organised during the late eighth and early ninth century and afterwards can seem entirely unknowable. This article addresses the question of the likely variable character of the long and undoubtedly complex frontier in reference to some location-specific existing archaeological evidence and close study of the form of the Dyke and other contemporary features in the landscape. One of the key elements of this attempt at detection of early frontier organisation therefore involves looking at the potential role of the inherited Roman road network especially where it runs parallel with the Dyke. Two examples based upon archaeological excavations in Herefordshire are noted here as providing clues as to the diversity of frontier structuring. The first example is the uncovering of a mid–late Anglo-Saxon fortified enclosure at Breinton just to the west of Hereford in 2018 that has at last added some substance to the possibility of the past existence of sophisticated military infrastructure including fortresses close to the Mercian/Welsh frontier. A key factor in the organisation of the pre-Norman frontier at least from the English side could have been the location of ‘quasi-military personnel’ close to the Dyke and to the inherited routeway system. Certain entries in the county-based Domesday surveys of Circuit V for the border counties are briefly re-examined here to consider the implications of the spatial distribution of a single category of specialised freemen. This highlights the importance of Leintwardine and the Roman road south from Shrewsbury as a key location: a possibility underlined by discoveries made during an excavation in the 1990s.

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“…These included Offa's Dyke, attributed to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia in the Eighth Century AD. It was built along the border with the Welsh kingdom of Powys and the core earthwork ran continuously for approximately 103 km (Hill 2000). The Danevirke is a similar rampart-palisade structure some 35 km long, built by the early medieval polities of what is now Denmark after AD 700 (Dobat 2008).…”

Section: Bounding Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards an Archaeological Theory of Infrastructure

Wilkinson

2018

J Archaeol Method Theory

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Infrastructure makes up a considerable portion of the material culture that archaeologists study. Whether measured in terms of spatial extension or just sheer mass, infrastructural entities are often among the biggest artifacts that archaeologists encounter in the field. Yet there is no overarching theoretical framework for the archaeological study of infrastructure, and its different varieties tend to be treated in a rather piecemeal fashion. This article therefore seeks to lay some foundations for a more theoretically unified approach to infrastructure within the discipline. It offers a general definition or infrastructure, as well as a basic typology. The typology presented is fourfold, encompassing (1) static infrastructure (e.g., terraces, harbors and storehouses), (2) circulatory infrastructure (e.g., highways, canals, aqueducts, and sewers), (3) bounding infrastructure (e.g., palisades, ditches, and corrals), and (4) signaling infrastructure (e.g., lighthouses and beacons). By analogy with more heavily theorized categories such as urbanism, it is suggested that infrastructure should be a topic of global comparative analysis within archaeology and its allied disciplines.

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Offa's Dyke: Pattern and Purpose

Cited by 9 publications

References 4 publications

Rethinking Wat’s Dyke: A Monument’s Flow in a Hydraulic Frontier Zone

Rethinking Wat’s Dyke: A Monument’s Flow in a Hydraulic Frontier Zone

The Organisation of the Mid–Late Anglo-Saxon Borderland with Wales

Towards an Archaeological Theory of Infrastructure

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