Prof Christopher Scull
Projects
Identities at English emporia
Following publication of the cemeteries at Boss Hall and Buttermarket, Ipswich, this research investigates individual and community identities at the 7th-century English emporia through comparative assessment of the evidence for burial practice and population at their associated cemeteries.
Anglo-Saxon England c. 580-720: the chronological basis
(With Prof John Hines)
A programme of collaborative research comprising several complementary techniques. These review the artefact typology and grave assemblages from what has been known as the ‘Final Phase’ of Anglo-Saxon furnished burial; undertake a seriation of finds using correspondence analysis; undertake high-precision radiocarbon dating of selected samples; Bayesian statistics are then used to refine the dates and evaluate the chronological modelling.
The project aims, methodologically, to test and develop the scope for archaeological dating using an integrated suite of techniques, each of which has a high degree of sophistication and precision of its own; to improve the basis for radiocarbon dating by re-calibrating the master curve for the period A.D 390-810; to yield a finer archaeological dating of fines from a key period of Anglo-Saxon history, in which the major kingdoms were established, and the conversion to Christianity took place.