The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

The Scandinavian presence
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shrines. Their distribution is
concentrated in northern England
but with outliers in Scotland, Wales
and Cornwall. The best collection is
in the church at Brompton, North
Yorkshire, but the largest group is at
Lythe, North Yorkshire (Lang 1978).
Settlement
The stone monuments provide the
best evidence for an influential
Scandinavian presence in the British
Isles. In the Danelaw, it is difficult
to determine from excavated rural
sites if they were occupied by
Scandinavians. The upland
farmstead at Ribblehead is
frequently advanced as a Viking site
(Figure 11.4). It comprises the stone
footings of a longhouse, bakery and
smithy set in an enclosed farmyard
with an associated field system. The
few artefacts recovered suggest a
mixture of agricultural and simple
craft activities. They included an
iron cow bell, a horse bit, a
spearhead, two iron knives and a
stone spindlewhorl. Local materials
were used for most needs and the
site was largely self-sufficient,
although four Northumbrian
Figure 11.4 Ribblehead, North Yorkshire: an artist’s reconstruction of the
Viking Age farmstead.
Source: Yorkshire Museum
copper coins, or stycas, attest to links with the urban markets to the east (King 1978).
At Doarlish Cashen, on the Isle of Man, a longhouse with wall benches was also discovered
on marginal land at about 210 m above sea-level. Such settlements would undoubtedly have been
familiar to Norse settlers but they are also standard upland building forms. In lowland England,
it is becoming apparent that a number of villages were first established in the tenth century. At
Furnells Manor, Raunds, Northamptonshire, a Middle Saxon settlement in a ditched enclosure
was replaced by a large timber hall and an adjacent church in the early tenth century. At about the
same time, the first regular tenements of peasant farmers were being laid out at Furnells and
West Cotton in Northamptonshire and marked by ditched enclosures. At Goltho, an early ninthcentury
village was superseded by a fortified earthwork enclosing a bow-sided hall, a kitchen and
weaving sheds. The manorial complex may have been founded by a member of the Saxon
aristocracy, although the discovery of a Scandinavian style bridle bit could be used to suggest
that it was a late ninth-century Viking foundation. Bow-sided halls are associated particularly
with Viking Age Denmark, and are also found in most of the areas settled by Scandinavians. At
Goltho, there was evidence that the hall, 24 m long by 6 m wide at the centre, was divided into
three rooms, with a raised dais at one end and a cobbled hearth in the centre. During the late
tenth and early eleventh centuries, the site underwent considerable expansion. The hall was replaced