Tag: Elmet

At the recent meeting between the main society and representatives of sections it was suggested that the different (archaeology-related) sections consider doing more fieldwork projects together. It was suggested that a joint project be initiated to study the Kingdom of Elmet. The intention is to bring together members of the Roman and the Medieval sections to look at the period of time between the end of Roman West Yorkshire and the annexation of the post-Roman kingdom of Elmet by Northumbria in 617 AD. This would cater for both the Romanists, with their interest in the end of things Roman in Yorkshire, and the Medievalists who want to know how (from their point of view) things started.

With the professionalisation of excavation from the 1960s,  and given the fact that digging (not to mention post-excavation) nowadays is costly, time-consuming and requires experience, expertise and equipment to which the society does not have access in a sustained way, it was suggested that the sections consider the possibility of doing less intensive kinds of fieldwork such as field-walking, and working together in areas of shared interest. After all, one of the attendees commented, the divisions between different periods of history and archaeology are rarely sharp dividing lines but chronological grey areas with lots of room for overlap and crossover.

So I have recently started pulling together everything I can find on Elmet with a view to organising a day-school on the subject perhaps in spring 2015. However, my first steps were not encouraging because the Claremont didn’t have a single reference to Elmet on its card index. Thank heaven for the chapter by Margaret Faull  ‘West Yorkshire in the Post Roman Period’. In M.L.Faull and  S.A.Moorhouse (eds.) West Yorkshire: an archaeological survey to A.D.1500 Wakefield, West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council,1981:171-224. Margaret Faull and Stephen Moorhouse are both members of the Medieval Section. Since then the Rylands library at Manchester has been very helpful and I must have located more than half a dozen papers that deal with Elmet in some detail. More on this in a later blog but let me know if you’re interested in the dayschool.