Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History

This article presents a new hypothesis: that a range of sites and settlements in Kent, Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia (but perhaps rarely Wessex) were laid out with the aid of pre-surveyed, geometrically precise grids, employing a short perch (c. 4.6m), in which a frequent basic module was the four-perch square.

A small excavation at 15-16 Bedford Street, within the known boundaries of Anglo-Saxon London (Lundenwic), revealed six pits of Middle Saxon date, as well as a series of post-medieval features. One of the pits produced just under 400 fragments of worked bone and antler waste, with small quantities of similar waste distributed across other features, and is one of the largest assemblages of worked skeletal material yet uncovered from Lundenwic. Along with a similar assemblage at Hamwic the Bedford Street assemblage can be regarded as part of a Middle Saxon Bone Interlude of the eight century, where for the first time waste assemblages contained more worked bone than antler, with quantities of horn present. Bone as an inferior material to antler suggests that supply of antler was insufficient to cope with demand. The shortage of antler may have led to a new form of comb, the handled comb. The assemblage also suggests bone working was undertaken by sedentary, rather than itinerant, crafts people with materials acquired at a particular point in time in preparation for a seasonal episode of working. Au/SH