[SCA-AS] [Fwd: TMR 07.11.11 Laing, The Archaeology of Celtic Britain (Brady)]

[jenne at fiedlerfamily.net]

Another review, of interest, I think, to this group...

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: TMR 07.11.11 Laing, The Archaeology of Celtic Britain (Brady)
From:    "The Medieval Review" <tmrl at indiana.edu>
Date:    Wed, November 14, 2007 3:16 pm
To:      tmr-l at indiana.edu
         bmr-l at brynmawr.edu
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Laing, Lloyd. <i>The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland c. A.D.
400-1200</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pp. xiv,
406. $99.00. ISBN-13: 978 0 521 54740 6.

    Reviewed by Niall Brady
         The Discovery Programme
         niall at discoveryprogramme.ie


In presenting a survey of the lands currently occupied by Ireland,
Scotland, the Isle of Man, Wales, and Cornwall between the period c.
400-1200 AD, Lloyd Laing has taken the opportunity to produce a second
edition of his <i>Archaeology of late Celtic Britain and Ireland</i>
(1975). It is a fascinating subject area, and Laing tries to assemble
the essential cultural information that distinguishes those parts of
the islands of Ireland and Britain in which direct Roman dominance and
subsequent Anglo-Saxon settlement was absent. The book is arranged
into fourteen primary chapters, the first nine of which are organized
by subject matter (the Celtic World; Settlements; Farming; Everyday
Objects and Equipment; Industry and Technology; Trade and
Communications; Clothes and Jewellery; Art and Ornament; the Church).
The last four main chapters (249-329) take a regional focus and look
at Wales; Ireland and the Isle of Man; Southern Scotland and Northern
England; and Northern Scotland respectively. A short Epilogue is
followed by three Appendices (groups of people mentioned; brief
biographies of some important people mentioned; and a comment on date
brackets). The volume is completed with sections on notes, further
reading, references and two indices.

It is always welcome when somebody examines a geographic area from
"underneath," as it were. Instead of tackling the subject matter of
early medieval Britain and Ireland from the perspective of the
dominant forces of Anglo-Saxons and then Vikings, Laing tries to
elicit strands of commonality among the peoples over whom the Anglo-
Saxons did not exert direct authority, and who have come to be
considered in popular tradition as sharing a common "Celtic" heritage.
This is not an easy task, and readers will quickly appreciate how
"independent" each of the Celtic groups appear to have been. It is
perhaps poignant that the first map showing archaeological indicators
which are common to the larger study area does not appear until page
137, and that is of glass vessels imported from continental Europe.
Indeed, when one considers the evidence for commonality, the unity is
in what is not readily visible. It appears that prior to the seventh
century, we can expect a wide range of interaction and exchange.
However, from the 600s onwards, just when there begins to be
substantial material culture surviving, we tend to see each region
with its own distinct assemblage, and the interconnections are
difficult to distinguish. If crannogs are a feature of Scotland and
Ireland, they are not evident in numbers elsewhere, while the ringfort
is a unique settlement to Ireland. Irish scholars might also disagree
with Laing's opinion that the ringfort is a derivative subgroup of the
hillfort (32).

Readers hoping for something new in terms of insight to the economy
will not find it. Perhaps it is too specialized an area, and Laing
makes no claims to be its master, but Chapter 3 (Farming) is perhaps
the weakest in the volume. The descriptive mode does not take account
of the more current thinking on such matters, and Laing ignores the
role of urban and proto-urban sites and the Church. Instead, there is
a reaffirmation of concepts that limit the possibilities to that of a
subsistence economic paradigm right across the study area. This was
hardly the case in Ireland, and one wonders about Southern
Scotland/Northern England. Laing does not use the opportunity of
Chapter 6 (Trade and Communications) to redress this issue, and nor
does he explore the dynamic which the Irish Sea provided in connecting
the various regions.

Laing is more confident when dealing with what he knows well; art,
ornament, and prestige objects. He has included a series of very
useful summary statements and line-drawings that describe the
principal object types and subtypes. Perhaps he could have considered
more directly the sense to which there was interaction with the Anglo-
Saxon world; the uninitiated would be forgiven to think there was
little or no monumental stonework from Anglo-Saxon England, which of
course is not the case.

There is a lot in this study, and it is well worth reading. If a
book's title should somehow anticipate the contents, then in this
instance Laing should have reversed the order of the islands, since
the vast bulk of his examples come from Ireland. This cannot simply be
ignored or explained away as a special pattern of survival that
nevertheless represents the patterns in the wider and source-poor
regions of the study area. Perhaps it suggests the basis for an
absence of cultural unity. Readers will decide for themselves. They
will not find too many typographic errors in this book, and indeed
will be pleased to work with an easy narrative style.


-- 
-- Jenne Heise / Jadwiga Zajaczkowa
jenne at fiedlerfamily.net