410-1066
A Meeting of the Forum has been arranged at which a series of talks will be presented by members of the Forum on a wide range of interesting topics.
The programme for the meeting is attached. The charge for the meeting is £5, payable on the door. All are welcome.
To help with practical arrangements including refreshments please e-mail medforum@hotmail.co.uk to register your intention to attend.
On Thursday 16 November at 18:00, the MSF will be hosting their annual lecture online via Zoom.
This year’s talk will be by Dr Gabor Thomas of the University of Reading, who will be speaking on ‘Anglo-Saxon monasteries of the Middle Thames: New Archaeological Perspectives from Cookham, Berkshire’. Dr Thomas has been leading excavations at Cookham, close to the parish church and the river which has been producing new insights into the Middle Saxon period.
The Annual Symposium of the Society will take place in East Horsley Village Hall. Online booking via PayPal at £12 per person is now available by clicking on the BOOK tab above. Due to difficulty in paying them in cheques cannot now be accepted. Online booking enables us to assess the catering requirements and streamlines the administration process.
Payment by cash on the day is discouraged but will be possible and exact change would be appreciated. Tickets cost £12 per person.
The Medieval Studies Forum have arranged a special lecture by Professor Alexandra Sanmark (University of the Highlands and Islands) on 'Medieval Sites of Power and Assembly in the Thames Valley', which includes a look in detail at the sites of both Kingston and Runnymede.
After Prof Sanmark's lecture, the National Trust team will provide a short presentation and update on the Runnymede Explored project.
This talk will be held online, via Zoom.
Although welcome to all, the event is free for SyAS and MSF members, with a fee of £2 from non-members.
The Saxon period AD 410-1066
Although early medieval studies have the advantage of documentary evidence – particularly from the 6th century onwards – the historical accounts are often rife with bias and must be treated with caution. Saxon and Viking studies are also complicated by issues of ethnicity and religion, and it clear that rather than notions of mass migration or simple ‘Christianisation’ of pagan practices, identities formed through a variety of processes.
This year's annual Surrey Historic Environment Research Framework will be held jointly with the Council for British Archaeology South-East annual conference and themed around the subject of church archaeology. The event will be a one-day virtual conference held online, via Zoom video conferencing.
Strip, map and record excavation and watching brief by S Westall of AOC revealed a layer of loose, light brown sand, 0.13–0.24m thick, containing a large quantity of worked Mesolithic flints; none were in situ, having been deposited through colluvial or fluvial activity. Two ditches of Roman or possibly medieval date and a Saxon pit were also recorded.
