The first Archaeology of the Norman Conquest Project workshop took place on Thursday 8th December at the University of York. It was a packed day, with a range of short talks delivered around break-out sessions in which we sought to identify key questions and issues around the idea of the “Norman conquest,” and how best to facilitate discussions between disciplines to address these.
The Project seeks to reassess how the Norman Conquest is approached in academic discourse, and to consider how archaeology can impact on a holistic study of this period. The aim of this first workshop was specifically to focus on the questions that we have for this phenomenon, and how approaches from outside the period, or outside medieval England might assist in the shaping of these questions.
The workshop drew together a number of postgraduate researchers, early career researchers, and established academic staff from a range of fields, including archaeology, osteology, and history; and the talks posed questions of identity and meaning, and investigated how we access and present our understanding of the past. Attention was paid to the intersection of archaeology and historical texts, and between buildings and practice; and our discussions on the day also questioned common bias towards certain sorts of evidence. Towards the end of the afternoon we heard from researchers working on Norman Sicily and medieval Ireland (1035-1166), encouraging us to think outside of England for our understandings of the events and aftermath of 1066.
The workshop was live-streamed, and recordings of the individual talks are available here.
Speakers:
Mike Fulford, University of Reading: Another conquest: a perspective from Roman Britain
David Stocker, University of Leeds; Paul Everson, Keele University: Survival or Revival? Anglo-Saxon kudos in Anglo-Norman England
Greger Larson, University of Oxford: Ancient DNA
Anja Rohde, University of Nottingham: Small, Difficult and Boring? Coins, Researchers, Curators and the Public
Leonie Hicks, Canterbury Christ Church University: Making the landscape visible: reading chronicles with archaeology in mind
Katherine Weikert, University of Winchester: Telling Buildings' Stories
Martin Carver, University of York: Normans in Sicily: adventure, multiculturalism and massacre
Tadhg O'Keeffe, University College Dublin: Influence without invasion: Ireland 1035-1166
