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History, archaeology, language, nicknames and more

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Latest Posts

Obscene and Offensive Early Medieval Nicknames

FAIR WARNING – there are some naughty words below. Nicknames are not an uncommon occurence in early medieval Europe, and can be given to all ranks and classes of peoples (although, notably, female nicknames are substantially less frequent). One of the remarkable features of early medieval nicknames is their shock factor. The frequency of names…

Beacons of the Past: Help Find a Hillfort!

This week I’d like to highlight an amazing website which has endless potential to provide both a fun passtime and contribute towards archaeology: Beacons of the Past. The project builds on a massive set of LiDAR data, covering 1400 km2 across the Chilterns. The issue is, this is a HUGE amount of data, and it’s…

The Early Medieval Nicknames Bot

To help keep me sane during this heat, and as part of my Very Serious Research™ (read: pissing about with a dictionary and writing down the occasionally funny name), I have constructed a new Twitter bot (@botmedieval), which you can follow here. The bot feeds off my database of nicknames that I am currently in…

‘Anglo-Saxon’ England – An Introduction

The ‘Anglo-Saxons’ inhabited what would become England following the fall of Rome, from c.410 up until the invasion of the Normans in 1066. Their lives covered some momentous social changes – the widescale (re?)adoption of Christianity, the emergence of an idea of ‘England’, invasion and occupation by the ‘Vikings’ and finally the introduction of feudalism.…

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