Overview

Multidisciplinary scholarship showcasing innovative methods for working with sculptural material - with essays ranging from Merovingian funerary art to Old English and Scandinavian runic inscriptions. The stone sculptures surviving across Europe from the early medieval period are an exceptional resource for understanding the communities that created them. Found at waysides, in architectural settings, and graveyards - standing crosses, inscribed stones, runestones and grave-markers are just some of the highly varied forms that attest to the art, technologies and beliefs of both Christian and non-Christian societies. The new approaches to sculpture studies found in this volume range from rethinking late antique influences to exploring how sculpture was used and encountered in a variety of political and cultural contexts; contributors also draw out the dialogues inherent in form and decoration within and across temporal and national boundaries. These fresh perspectives on iconographies, narrative art, sculpture and nature and the power of sculpture in multi-media environments, alongside studies of sourcing, production and portability, and the afterlives of carved stones, reflect the vibrancy of current research and the way in which it now integrates digital, scientific and spatial methods. The introduction and chapters 26 and 27 are available as Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND. This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/R003556/1] and the British Academy [AQ2324\240012]. Chapter 17 is Open Access under the Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND with funding from the Swedish National Heritage Board.

Full Product Details

Author:   Professor Sarah Semple ,  Jane Hawkes ,  Amanda Doviak ,  Anders Andrén
Publisher:   Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Imprint:   Boydell & Brewer
ISBN:  

9781837651535

ISBN 10:   1837651531
Pages:   544
Publication Date:   25 November 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Preface List of Abbreviations Note on Terminology I. Context 1. Introduction. Early Medieval Sculpture in Stone By Sarah Semple and Jane Hawkes [Open Access] 2. Tales of Sculptures and Scholarships By Jane Hawkes II. Sculpture at Scale: supra-regional to local contexts 3. Carved Monuments and Political Actors in Britain AD 400-1100 By Martin Carver 4. Early Medieval Sculpture in its International Context: the Pictish Symbol Tradition of Early Medieval Scotland By Gordon Noble and Martin Goldberg 5. Barrow and Cairn Cemeteries and Symbol Stones: Constructing Monumental Landscapes in Fifth- to Seventh-Century Pictland By Juliette S. Mitchell 6. Design and Influence in Early Inscribed Stones in Britain and Ireland By David Petts 7. Sculpture on Man and the Isles: An Iconographic Examination of Ecclesiastical Networks Across the Irish Sea By Heidi Stoner III. Rethinking lapidary sculptures 8. Northumbrian Lapidary Inscriptions and the Vikings By David N. Parsons 9. Why Include an Inscription on an Anglo-Saxon Sculptured Stone Monument? By Elisabeth Okasha 10. Having the Dead in Hand: Movement, Display and the Northumbrian Name Stones By Jill Hamilton Clements IV. Multi-valent sculptures 11. On the Edge of Pictish Relief By Luke A. Fidler 12. Life in Stone By Catherine E. Karkov 13. Ritual and Reuse: Early Baptismal Fonts of the Medieval West By Carolyn Twomey 14. Cross-slab to High-Cross: Understanding the Early Medieval Sculptural Remains at Carndonagh, Co. Donegal By Megan Henvey 15. Cloud Watching in Northumbria: Toward a Phenomenology of Early Medieval Stone and Landscape By Meg Boulton V. Scandinavian perspectives 16. Rune Stones, Picture Stones, and other Erected Stones in Scandinavia, c. 400-1100 By Anders Andrén 17. An introduction to the project ""Ancient Images 2.0"": Creating an Online Edition of Gotland's Picture Stones By Laila Kitzler Åhfeldt and Sigmund Oehrl [Open Access] VI. Making and meaning 18. Delving and distributing: where does the stone come from? By Paul Everson and David Stocker 19. New Cross-Components from Lindisfarne, Northumberland. By Christina Smith 20. The Virgin with the Book at Breedon on the Hill, Leicestershire By Francesca Dell'Acqua 21. Beyond a Grammar of Ornament: the Language of Visual Narratives By Lilla Kopár 22. At Cross Purposes? The Sacred and Secular Figural Iconographies of Anglo-Scandinavian Stone Crosses By Amanda Doviak 23. Celebration of the 'Special Dead', at St Gregory's Minister, Kirkdale, North Yorkshire By Lorna Watts VII. Commodification 24. An Example of Merovingian Funerary Art in Gaul: The Sarcophagi Lids Decorated with a Multiple Bands Motif from Poitou By Daniel Morleghem, Anne Flammin and Guillaume Rougé 25. Monuments and Merchants By Paul Everson and David Stocker 26. 'Isolated Memorials'? A new free-standing cross from Reymerston, Norfolk, in context By Sarah Semple, Tudor Skinner, Christina Smith, Derek Craig and Paul Stamper [Open Access] VIII. Looking ahead 27. Stone Sculpture: Futures By Sarah Semple, Tudor Skinner, Zeynap Aki, Megan Kasten, Roger Lang and Jordyn Patrick [Open Access] List of Contributors Bibliography Index

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Author Information

SARAH SEMPLE is Professor of Early Medieval Archaeology at Durham University. Her research focuses on the landscapes and material culture of Britain and northern Europe in relation to definitions of identity and religion and processes of social and political transformation. JANE HAWKES is Professor Emerita of Medieval Art History at the University of York and a leading specialist on Anglo-Saxon sculpture and iconography and its broader context in relation to late antique, British and Irish early medieval art. CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professor Emeritus of Art History, University of Leeds. JANE HAWKES is Professor Emerita of Medieval Art History at the University of York and a leading specialist on Anglo-Saxon sculpture and iconography and its broader context in relation to late antique, British and Irish early medieval art. MARTIN CARVER has been publishing with Boydell since 1993, and is one of the leading archaeologists in Britain, and indeed Europe. He was professor at York from 1986 to 2008. He has been responsible for most of the excavations at Sutton Hoo since the 1970s. ROGER WILLIAM LANG is a Doctoral research student in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, UK. SARAH SEMPLE is Professor of Early Medieval Archaeology at Durham University. Her research focuses on the landscapes and material culture of Britain and northern Europe in relation to definitions of identity and religion and processes of social and political transformation.

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