Beyond the Burghal Hidage: Anglo-Saxon Civil Defence in the Viking Age is a three-year project funded by the Leverhulme Trust from 2005. It aims to provide the first systematic study of Anglo-Saxon military organisation and its landscape context for the period c.850-1066, drawing on the whole range of sources available to us: archaeology, place-names, landscape and documents.

At a national scale the ASCD will bring together and assess all evidence relating to Late Anglo-Saxon civil defences including, archaeological evidence from excavated major fortifications and related sites, ‘military’ place-name elements, and other evidence from documentary sources. This survey will be complemented by detailed regional analyses of the local landscape context of civil defence networks, and their relationship to settlement, local topography, land-ownership and administration over time.

The project co-directors are:

• Andrew Reynolds (Institute of Archaeology , University College London),
• David Parsons (Institute of Name Studies, Centre for English Studies, University of Nottingham) and
• Guy Halsall (Department of History, University of York ).

Archaeological research is being carried out by Stuart Brookes at UCL and place-name research by John Baker at Nottingham .

This page last modified 14 January, 2008 by Institute Webmaster