| Abstract: |
Report on excavations in 1996 at the Royal Opera House, located on the north side of Covent Garden in the heart of what was the Middle Saxon settlement of Lundenwic. This settlement was a flourishing centre for trade and manufacture from the seventh to ninth centuries. This was the largest excavation yet undertaken in the area, providing information about the settlement, its inhabitants, their work and daily lives.The report describes a sequence of occupation, and considers more general themes such as the relationship of the Middle Saxon settlement to Roman Londinium, Saxon crafts and industry, the agricultural economy, trade, and demography. The discoveries included an eighth century street plan, specialized industrial buildings, rubbish and debris from a jewellery workshop, evidence of ironworking and a ninth-century defensive ditch with a hoard of Northumbrian stycas buried in its berm. The ditch was probably a response to Viking attack, but it failed to prevent the Viking occupation of Lundenwic in 871. The book also looks at the medieval and post-medieval development of the area, and includes brief specialist reports on the documentary sources, stone objects, quernstones, sedimentary sequences and pollen, daub, loom weights, ceramic building material, pottery, glass finds, iron objects, non-ferrous metalwork and metalworking, lead finds, the purse-hoard of Northumbrian stycas, Middle Saxon sceattas, Roman coins, slag, plant remains, worked bone and antler objects and waste, animal and fish bone, eggshell, oyster shells, cowrie shell and belemnite, parasite remains, human bone, archaeomagnetic dating, and radiocarbon dating. Also includes French and German summaries. |
