Welsh Journals

ALFRED'S KINGDOM: WESSEX AND THE SouTH, 800-1500. By D. A. Hinton. J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, 1977. Pp. xii, 228/29 plates, 40 figs. £ 5.95. King Alfred would hardly recognize his kingdom. The region which lies in a band a score or two of miles wide between Oxford and South- ampton, clearly enough the area of the author's own experience, may perhaps be a valid unit for regional archaeology in certain periods. But to confine Wessex to Wiltshire and Hampshire in a Saxon context; to call it Alfred's Wessex and leave out Wantage, where he was born; to skate so thinly over Athelney, which he founded, and over Wedmore and the whole complex of royal estates in Somerset where he spent a critical part of his reign, is to pander to a popular title and thoroughly to mislead serious readers. Any relationship Alfred had with the Welsh is, of course, totally ignored. The series is intended 'to provide valuable and original insights into archaeological history'. Whatever that last phrase means, the author, a third of the way through the book and leaving Alfred well behind, finds himself facing the fact that there are limitations to the archaeological evidence with which he feels most familiar. This is a theme which forms the conclusion of this book: that neither 'documentary study' nor the physical evidence alone is sufficient for a complete reconstruction of the past; though he has the curious notion that archaeologists alone have need to reinterpret their evidence, and that historians rely on documents which 'present a historical statement simply to be printed and edited'. There is still a need, it is obvious, for greater mutual understanding of both sources and methods. The early chapters on Alfred's inheritance and on the king himself are, within the topographical limitations, a useful summary of the evidence, and make the valid point that the period produces a remarkable correla- tion of archaeological and historical evidence. Excursions outside the Hants./Wilts. area, better known to the reviewer, must raise doubts about the work as a whole. That Somerton has 'no early history' (p. 13) is patently untrue: the 'royal town' was taken by Ethelbald of Mercia in 733 from the West Saxon kings, and was returned to them by the early-ninth century; and documents and archaeology together indicate the position of that town north of the present market-place. Watchet is not on the Devon coast (p. 35), nor does the place-name element 'minster', found so frequently in Dorset, necessarily indicate the presence of a minster. In several cases, notably Beaminster and Yetminster, it reveals the possession of a minster, one of those important communities of priests which (so p. 83) were converted to Augustinian canonries (sic) in the twelfth century. And Ethelwold introduced the strict Benedictine Rule from Fleury, not from Cluny (p. 82). It must be recognised that medieval archaeology is still in an experimental stage. Studies of particular places, notably Winchester and Southampton, have been singularly successful in demonstrating how documents and artifacts can together illuminate details of medieval society, both in a local and a national context. A wider canvas makes greater demands, and the material is simply not yet marshalled. ROBERT DUNNING Victoria History of Somerset