Reviews

323 REVIEWS Movement, identity and exchange in Europe in the 2nd and 1st millennia bc: beyond frontiers. Eds Anne Lehoërff and Marc Talon. 304 pp., numerous b/w illustrations. Oxbow Books, 2017. Hardback, £24. ISBN 9781785707179. The discovery of the Dover Boat in 1992 initiated a new phase of archaeological activity focused on cross-Channel connections, comprising publications, conferences and a major international research project, ‘Boat 1550 BC’. The last two decades have also seen an explosion of development-led archaeology on both sides of the Channel, which has transformed our knowledge of the later prehistory of south-eastern England and northern France, and provided a context for the boat. It is now possible to see the broad-scale cultural similarities that existed in these maritime regions, as well as the more localised patterns of intra-regional variation. This volume includes the papers given at a seminar held at Boulogne-sur-Mer in 2012, devoted to the themes of identity and mobility. Though most of the papers are concerned with the Channel region, others focus on the Rhine as a routeway and a place of deposition, and on the crossing of the Alps. The idea of an Atlantic Bronze Age, defined mostly by metalwork, is now well accepted, but recent work has allowed the definition of a Channel/North Sea (Manche-Mer-du-Nord) zone, from Brittany to Belgium and southern England, with a much wider range of shared cultural practices; the boundary between major cultural groups lies not along the Channel, but across northern France some distance inland. The Channel was not a barrier to communication, and several of the papers aim to define the chronological, spatial and material patterns of these interactions, from the Early Bronze Age into the Early Iron Age. Equally, however, it is now clear that, within this zone of interaction, the Channel did form some sort of boundary, as some cultural elements are found only on one side. Several of the papers deal more specifically with the results of recent work in northern France. Circular funerary monuments are now well known and detailed analysis of the structural histories of the monuments and of the burial rites associated with them are yielding interesting results. Though they are generically similar to those found in Britain and the Netherlands, and share many characteristics of form, chronology and practice, there are also distinctive regional features. A review of the evidence for open settlement sites in northern France also shows similarities to Britain: such sites become common in the Middle Bronze Age, and circular houses and rectangular granaries are shared architectural features. Study of the pottery shows broad formal and decorative similarities, but very different manufacturing traditions on either side of the Channel. This is an important volume for anyone interested in the later prehistoric archaeology of southern England and its connections with the continent. The patterns of similarity and difference in settlement architecture, material culture and REVIEWS 324 technology are becoming more sharply defined, but we still have some important questions: How do these patterns relate to communities with shared identities? What was the nature of the interactions? How rare or how frequent were the crossings, recrossings and relocations? Did many move, or only a special few? TIMOTHy CHAMpION Early Medieval Monasticism in the North Sea Zone. Proceedings of a conference held to celebrate the conclusion of the Lyminge excavations 2008-15. Eds Gabor Thomas and Alexandra Knox. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 20. 148 pp., b/w and colour illustrations throughout. paperback, £30. ISBN 978- 1-905905-39-3. The excavations at Lyminge from 2008-15 led by Gabor Thomas have produced extremely important results relating both to early Anglo-Saxon seats of secular authority and also the establishment of middle Anglo-Saxon monasteries. For the first time in Kent, although documentary evidence attests a number of villae regales, or royal estate centres, the physical remains of a seventh-century ‘greathall complex’ have been revealed. Like other such sites excavated elsewhere it lacks continuity in this role, perhaps reflecting the peripatetic and sometimes transient nature of royal and lordly governance at this time. Here there is clear evidence of change and, roughly coinciding with the demise of the halls, the establishment, on an adjacent site, of a minster complex in the form of a royal nunnery, in the second half of the seventh century. The structural remains are impressive and there is excellent supporting evidence for the high status of the site in the rich finds’ assemblage. In contrast the minster itself is known mostly from the antiquarian endeavours of Canon Jenkins, recent work relating to a possibly outer precinct reserved for some domestic occupation as well as agricultural processing and industrial activity. The conclusion of the fieldwork project at Lyminge was rightly celebrated with a conference providing a time for initial reflection on the results and this volume comprises for the most part the conference proceedings. An initial section contains two papers re-examining the Frankish background to monasticism in Anglo-Saxon Kent, underlining the kingdom’s special relationship with the continent. The second part reviews what an early monastic precinct would have looked like and how it would have functioned, drawing on case studies in Northumbria, Ireland and the Loire valley. Additionally there is a review by professor Rosemary Cramp of the lay-out of Anglo-Saxon monastic settlements and the function of buildings within them, reflecting on the debates and changing perspectives of the last forty years. Indeed can a monastic site be distinguished from an elite secular one solely on the basis of archaeological evidence and are there overlaps spatially and chronologically? The final four papers look at Lyminge itself, the first of which, by Gabor Thomas, focuses very much on the ‘great hall complex’, looking both at the physical remains and what they say about the exercise of authority, with special reference to Kent. A little more discussion of the findings of the project’s initial years, relating to the outer realms of the later nunnery, would have been welcome within a volume which focuses on early medieval monasticism, although an overview is available REVIEWS 325 elsewhere (see Antiquaries Journal 93 (2013), 109-46). The other three papers are essentially interim reflections on the important glass assemblage (the largest from an early Anglo-Saxon rural site), and the archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological evidence. The editors and contributors are to be congratulated on bringing this volume out so speedily after the conference. Analysis of the results of such significant investigations at Lyminge will inevitably require time and resources, but full publication, which will surely greatly enhance our understanding of the secular and ecclesiastical worlds in Kent and further afield during the early medieval period, is something to be eagerly looked forward to. JOHN H. WILLIAMS ‘John Mower: Vicar of Tenterden in the Late Fifteenth Century: His Will, His Career and His Library’. By David Shaw. Extract from The Library, The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, Seventh Series, vol. 18, no. 2, June 2017. Available in full online (enter title) and at OUp via a site with a subscription. In a meticulous study of the records for John Mower, David Shaw has provided a fascinating insight into the intellectual culture of secular clerics in the late fifteenth century during the development of the English interpretation of the Studia Humanitatis. In a varied career from a scholar at New College Oxford in 1446 to his final position as rector of St Benet Sherehog, London in 1482, and as perpetual vicar at St Mildred’s, Tenterden, from 1479, John Mower collected an impressive library and rubbed shoulders with other humanist scholars. On the cusp of the printing revolution, the collection included manuscript and printed books. This exemplary study highlights the challenges for the researcher to make a positive identification of an individual, given the wide range of possible candidates with similar names, amid numerous different spellings, and similar careers and overlapping dates. Having established the institutions linked to this John Mower, Shaw brings in the Canterbury connection between Christchurch Cathedral priory and Canterbury College, Oxford, with a secular teaching role in the Benedictine houses of both Christchurch and St Augustine’s. prior Selling had a leading role in education at Canterbury and Oxford, and was patron to the young Mower who was ordained in 1462 and was acquainted with the humanist scholar, Thomas Linacre. Most of the evidence for the article comes from the bequests of the Library in the Will of Mower and the Kentish connection was obviously very strong. After bequests to Eton College and Magdalen College, Mower also left books to Wye and Ashford Colleges, the last named getting a significant number. Bequests also went to rectors of local Kent parishes including Biddenden, Sandhurst, Chartham and St George’s Canterbury, as well as to the Franciscans at Winchelsea, the Carmelites at Lossenham, and the Trinitarians at Mottenden. Fifty books were left in bequests, but more were sold under the terms of the will, and Shaw also lists surviving books with ownership inscriptions where the provenance is secure. Shaw’s conclusion from the evidence of the Library and the Will is that Mower was a humanist scholar of quality. The principal sources for the study are given in the Appendices: a full translation of the Will in Appendix I and a list of the items in the Library in Appendix III, REVIEWS 326 with Mower’s career in Appendix II. This is an article where the reader is further rewarded by a careful reading of the detailed footnotes. ELIzABETH EDWARDS Death as a Process: The Archaeology of the Roman Funeral. Studies in funerary Archaeology, J. pearce and J. Weekes, eds, Vol. 12, Oxbow Books 2017. 272 pp., b/w photographs, figures and illustrations throughout. Paperback, £38. ISBN: 9781785703232. The study of funerary practice has become one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of Roman archaeology in recent decades. This volume draws on large-scale fieldwork from across Europe, methodological advances and conceptual innovations to explore new insights from analysis of the Roman dead, concerning both the rituals which saw them to their tombs and the communities who buried them. In particular the volume seeks to establish how the ritual sequence, from laying out the dead to the pyre and tomb, and from placing the dead in the earth to the return of the living to commemorate them, may be studied from archaeological evidence. Contributors examine the rites regularly practised by town and country folk from the shores of the Mediterranean to the English Channel, as well as exceptional circumstances, as in the aftermath of the Varian disaster in Augustan Germany. Case studies span a cross-section of Roman society, from the cosmopolitan merchants of Corinth to salt pan workers at Rome and the rural poor of Britannia and Germania. Some papers have a methodological focus, considering how human skeletal, faunal and plant remains illuminate the dead themselves and death rituals, while others examine how to interpret the stratigraphic signatures of the rituals practised before, around and after burial. Adapting anthropological models, other papers develop interpretive perspectives on the funerary sequences which can thus be reconstructed and explore the sensory dimensions of burying and commemorating the dead. Through these varied approaches the volume aims to demonstrate and develop the richness of the insights into Roman society and culture which may be won from study of the dead. [This is a preliminary notice: a full review will appear in the next volume.] A Guided Walk around Otford Palace. By Cliff Ward. 48pp, b/w illustrations throughout. Otford and District Historical Society, 2017. paperback, £7.00, email: info@otfordhistoricalsociety.co.uk. ISBN 978-0-9956479-2-3. Otford Palace was first gifted to the Church in ad 821 by King Cenwulf who ruled Kent until his death the following year. year by year its lands and status, as one of the archbishop’s manors and palaces in Kent, continued to grow with major alterations made in 1501 during the short archiepiscopate of the unenthroned Henry Dean and some further improvement by Archbishop Warham between 1510-15. Twenty-two years later it was acquired by Henry VIII and thereafter began to fall into decline as Elizabeth I refused to spend money on it. But Warham made good REVIEWS 327 use of the palace, receiving the papal Legate, Campaggio, there in 1518, and the King and Catherine of Aragon in 1520 with a retinue of 5,000. Thus, Cliff Ward sets the scene and importance of Otford during its first 700 years and whets the appetite for a walk around this large medieval site, which has been rescued and made available as a public space, offering much to locals and visitors. The preservation work continues today ensuring that the history of both the original manor and its survival are kept alive. This is an excellent guide book for a walk, with clear diagrams and highlighted photographs, set alongside an informed and well illustrated text. All are enhanced by the careful architectural analyses, historical context and local myths. Sevenoaks Forgotten Park Lodges and Coach Houses. By Elizabeth purves and Geraldine Tucker. 120 pp, b/w photographs, illustrations and maps throughout. Sevenoaks Society, 2017. paperback £12. ISBN: 978-0-9572631-1-6. This well-organised and produced book is essentially a guide to the lesser buildings in and around Sevenoaks associated with grander estates and institutions. The photographs and illustrations are well-chosen and displayed, giving due prominence to the lodges, and keeping the large houses duly remote. They are accompanied by an accessible text and the few maps of the various areas and estates are useful for the stranger to Sevenoaks. The book begins with the Old Sevenoaks estates including inter alia, Knole, Wildernesse, Bradbourne and Greatness. It then moves on to the impact of the railways and the dramatic changes to the Kippington estates of Oak Hill, Mount Harry and developments to the south and within Sevenoaks town. Not forgotten are the School Lodges and outlying estates at Broughton House, Combe Bank and Chipstead place. The range of architectural styles, including the many varieties of Arts and Crafts buildings, becomes very evident throughout the book. There are also some good comparative photographs from various periods. This is an illustrated guide and the text is clear, but quite basic giving the more inquisitive walker/reader the incentive to do further research.