“5th & 6th century communities [in East Anglia] had a particular affinity with Roman material remains, & mourners were engaged in the conscious creation of individual narratives about people & place using old places & antique things” - @SarahSemple8
In north Wiltshire, @SarahSemple8 argues, the burials of people in or alongside the area’s prehistoric monuments fit “with the emerging political competition between the growing kingdoms of Mercia & Wessex.”
“The richest graves of the 7th century, those we might associate with an emerging kingly class, were frequently monumentalised, often experimental & ostentatious, & harnessed the apparent prestige or value of prehistoric monuments, mostly large barrows.”
Even so, it wasn’t just the elites who exploited prehistoric monuments. “The prehistoric also continued to hold potency and meaning for ordinary people & communities too.”
I love the idea of people in Wiltshire 1400 years ago feeling the draw & power of Avebury too…
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Which I find has now been renamed the Museum of the Home. Sir Robert Geffrye has been cancelled - although his statue remains... museumofthehome.org.uk/what-we-do/our…
The herb garden as lovely as ever - much else expensively & handsomely refurbished.
To get you in the mood for England-Ukraine in the Euros, @dcsandbrook & I have recorded a @TheRestHistory special on the history of Anglo-Ukrainian relations - from the origins of 'football' to Hughesovka
Includes me reciting Tennyson, our reflections on Harry Maguire & Greek civilisation, which members of the England football team properly belong to which century, & shout outs to @caitlinrgreen & @AdamRutherford
Yes, quite right, silly me - also includes Francis Fukuyama's take on the Euros.
"You will find the tobacco in the Persian slipper."
Reading a bit of Sherlock Holmes in preparation for this week's @TheRestHistory, & finding that I am loving it as much as ever.
"The whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant..."
"Buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature."
Possibly. But for the purposes of a strained history-football comparison, let's emphasise how Charles the Bold was the great-great grandson of a French king, and the duke of one of France's great wine-producing regions.