Signals of Belief in Early England

rdf:langString Signals of Belief in Early England

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rdf:langString Signals of Belief in Early England

rdf:langString Signals of Belief in Early England

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rdf:langString Sarah Semple

rdf:langString Alex Sanmark

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rdf:langString United Kingdom

rdf:langString English

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rdf:langString Oxbow Books

rdf:langString "Our aim in this book is to throw new light on the intellect of the earliest English – the way they thought, the way they viewed the world, and the way they viewed worlds other than this. Previous understandings of the topic, well rooted in the ideas of its time, regarded the English as adherents of two consecutive religions: Paganism governed the settlers of the 4th–6th century, but was superseded in the 7th–10th century by Christianity. Of the two, Christianity, a religion of the book, documented itself thoroughly, while in failing to do so Paganism laid itself open to centuries of abuse, conjecture or mindless admiration."

rdf:langString "I would suggest that if we are to make progress in the understanding of the early Anglo-Saxon mind we should exercise three principles: first we must study the period as a continuum with prehistory, since there is little doubt the Anglo-Saxons could see prehistory all about them; second, we should adopt the premise that monumentality was the result of agency – showing us what local people were thinking and where their allegiance lay; and thirdly, perhaps most important, we are never entitled to assume, in the 5th-8th century, that this monumentality refers to an institutional religion, either pagan or Christian in persuasion, since we have no reliable evidence that there was one."

rdf:langString "This is the best kind of edited collection of scholarly essays, with a firm focus on a subject, a common purpose in tackling it, and a clear division of the material according to theme, between authors with a proven expertise in each area and comparable ability. It deserves to carry the study of Anglo-Saxon paganism forward into the new decade with renewed momentum and a new framework equipped with a useful set of comparisons and insights."

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rdf:langString Carver, Sanmark and Semple.

rdf:langString Martin Carver.

rdf:langString Ronald Hutton, in the book's afterword.

rdf:langString Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited is an academic anthology edited by the British archaeologists Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark and Sarah Semple which was first published by Oxbow Books in 2010. Containing nine separate papers produced by various scholars working in the fields of Anglo-Saxon archaeology and Anglo-Saxon history, the book presents a number of new perspectives on Anglo-Saxon paganism and, to a lesser extent, early Anglo-Saxon Christianity. The collection – published in honour of the archaeologist Audrey Meaney – was put together on the basis of a conference on "Paganism and Popular Practice" held at the University of Oxford in 2005. Opening with a foreword by Neil Price, the book's first paper, written by Carver, examines how archaeologists can best understand Anglo-Saxon paganism, drawing from the works of Price and David Lewis-Williams in order to do so. The second, written by Semple, looks at how pagan Anglo-Saxons viewed their surrounding landscape, whilst the third, written by Julie Lund, delves into Anglo-Saxon votive depositions into water. The fourth paper, authored by Howard Williams, looks at funerary practices, which is followed by Jenny Walker's study on the religious aspects of the hall. The sixth paper, produced by Aleks Pluskowski, delves into the roles of animals in Anglo-Saxon belief, while Chris Fern's following paper focuses on the role of the horse. The eighth paper, written by Sanmark, looks at conceptions of ancestors and the soul, while the ninth, co-authored by Sue Content and Howard Williams, looks at the subsequent understandings of Anglo-Saxon pagandom. In the afterword, written by historian Ronald Hutton, the findings of the book are summarised and potential areas of future research highlighted. The book received a mixed review in Charlotte Behr's review for the journal Anglo-Saxon England, and a positive one from Chris Scull in the British Archaeology magazine. It was praised by others looking at the field of Anglo-Saxon paganism, such as Stephen Pollington.