Overview

Romantic rock-perched sea-girt Tintagel is a magical place that resonates with Arthurian associations - and the archaeological reality is no less intriguing than the legend. Investigation of the site began in the 1930s, when Dr Ralegh Radford uncovered remains of buildings with significant volumes of eastern Mediterranean and North African pottery of fifth- to seventh-century date, suggesting a western British site of iconic importance in the economy of the late Antique and Byzantine world. The research presented in this book comes from renewed fieldwork carried out at this promontory site over several seasons between April 1990 and July 1999, using modern archaeological techniques, together with previously unpublished work from Radford's private archive, along with that of his architect, J A Wright. This work has demonstrated the complexity and variability of building forms and associated occupation at the site and the wide-ranging connections of Tintagel during the fifth to seventh centuries, as reflected in the extensive ceramic assemblage, while re-examination of the 'Great Ditch' has established that this is the largest promontory or hill-top site of its period. A unique glass assemblage and a stone with a probable imperial inscription to Honorius - later the object of graffiti from three post-Roman personages, Paternus, Coliavus and Artognou - serve as dramatic testimony to the cultural and literary milieu of high-status Dumnonian society in the post-Roman period.

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A publication of high scientific standard and great historical significance. It is set to become the primary source for our understanding of Tintagel.'--Michel Bonifay Antiquity vol. 82 (01/01/2008)

Author Information

Rachel Barrowman is a research associate at the University of Glasgow. She worked with colleagues on the Viking and Early Settlement Archaeological Research Project in the 1990s, when she was involved in excavations at Tintagel in Cornwall. She has since published work on the chapel and burial ground on St Ninian's Isle, Shetland, the late medieval clan stronghold of Dun Eistean, and the chapel-sites of Lewis. She lives and works with her husband and family in Ness at the north end of Lewis. Christopher D. Morris is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, having previously been Reader in Viking Archaeology at the University of Durham. His lifelong research interests have been in the Early Medieval period, especially post-Roman, Anglo-Scandinavian, Pictish, Viking and Late Norse. He has carried out archaeological fieldwork in Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, Sutherland, the Isle of Man, northern England and Cornwall, and his many publications include four major site monographs together with two edited volumes on the Viking Age and Late Norse settlements across the North Atlantic region.

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