Where power lies: the archaeology of transforming elite centres in the landscape of medieval England c. AD 800-1200

This project offers the first systematic examination of the physical evidence for elite centres in the landscape of medieval England between the late Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods (c. 800-1200AD). It will use a combination of archaeological survey techniques and digital approaches to transform our understanding of the origins, development, and character of aristocratic power in the Middle Ages.

In the rural landscape in this period, high-status centres typically consisted of a residence alongside a church and its burial ground. One or more halls formed the accommodation and focus of elite life and consumption, often served by other buildings, all of which were surrounded by a fenced and ditched enclosure. Churches or chapels that adjoined these domestic complexes were invariably founded by lords and their families, and were furnished with sculpture. Together, these components were the very embodiment of aristocratic or 'lordly' power in the English landscape, and were the spaces in which elite identities were established, perpetuated, and reinvented. From them, high-status individuals articulated their authority, impacting aspects of medieval society as diverse as the agricultural economy, the form and function of settlement, and the character of religious worship and investment.

Research into elite centres, therefore, not only tells us about high-status life and death, but informs us about the composition of medieval communities on a far wider social scale. These sites are crucial to how we view the medieval period, so it is surprising that so few have been examined in detail by archaeologists. Understanding of them as a nationwide phenomenon is very limited, and we remain unsure of fundamental issues such as their distribution across the landscape, what they looked like, and how they transformed over the medieval centuries. Significantly, many elite places were transformed into castles during the period but, partly due to lack of evidence, we are unsure why some places were selected for this treatment over others.

This project will transform our understanding of lordly sites, and assess for the first time the national distribution of places that have evidence for both residential and ecclesiastical investment. This data will be used as a platform for detailed investigation of a carefully selected sample of case study sites, which will be subject to comprehensive archaeological survey and digital mapping techniques. These methods approaches will allow us to reconstruct the biography of the case study locations in detail, and to explore how the character and expression of elite power evolved over time. Working with the British Museum's Portable Antiquities Scheme, the project will also produce a new profile of the artefacts of the aristocrats who built and occupied these sites.

The different strands of evidence will be integrated to produce a rounded and holistic understanding of how elite centres developed across the Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods. A programme of outreach work will engage communities in co-creation of knowledge about their landscapes and built heritage, while the project's academic findings will be communicated to the scholarly community through a portfolio of publications and conference presentations. The results will contribute to debate in the fields of medieval archaeology and medieval history generally, and in the specific fields of landscape studies, material culture studies, and castle studies. Digital outputs, including new and enhanced datasets, maps and fieldwork data will be deposited and curated online for sustainable future use.