Prof Helena Hamerow

Research Interests

• The archaeology of northwest Europe from AD 400-1000
• Early medieval rural settlements and economy
• The archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England
• Links between England and mainland Europe c 400-700

Current Activities

Helena Hamerow is Professor of Early Medieval Archaeology and currently Head of the School of Archaeology.  Her main interest is in the archaeology of early medieval settlements, and she has recently co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology and submitted a book provisionally entitled The Rural Settlements of Anglo-Saxon England to the Press.  

She is currently co-Director of two fieldwork projects based in Oxfordshire: the first is the School of Archaeology’s excavations at the Roman ‘small town’ at Dorchester-on-Thames, which are examining the Roman to post-Roman transition in the fifth and sixth centuries, and the settlement’s transformation in the seventh century into a centre of national importance as the seat of the first bishopric in Wessex (www.arch.ox.ac.uk/DPOT1.html). The second is a three-year AHRC-funded project involving the Universities of Leicester, Exeter, and Oxford, which is investigating the townscape of Wallingford as a platform for the wider study of processes of medieval urban development (www2.le.ac.uk/departments/archaeology/research/project/Wallingford). The ‘Wallingford Burh to Borough Project’ is examining urban transformations between c. AD 800-1300 - a crucial period of renewal and growth spanning the Saxon and Norman periods, through excavation, survey and documentary study.  She is the PI of the AHRC-funded Novum Inventorium Sepulchrale, an on-line database of Anglo-Saxon graves and grave-goods from Kent, based on archives held by the Oxford Institute of Archaeology (http://web.arch.ox.ac.uk/archives/inventorium), and of the  ‘Origins of Wessex’ Pilot Project, which will examine the formation of the first post-Roman supra-local communities in the Upper Thames Valley, the early heartland of the West Saxon kingdom.

In addition to these activities, she is Editor of Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, General Editor (with Professor John Blair) of the OUP series, ‘Medieval History and Archaeology, on the editorial Board of the Oxford Journal of Archaeology and on the Scientific Committee of ‘Debates de Arqueología Medieval’.   She has also been, since 1996, on the Academic Committee and Council of Oxford Archaeology and is on the Board of Visitors of the Ashmolean Museum as well as the Curators of the Bodleian Library.

Current & recently completed Research  Students:

• Jane Kershaw (2010), Culture and Gender in the Danelaw: Scandinavian and Anglo-Scandinavian brooches, 850-1050 AD
• Christopher Ferguson (2011), Bernicia and the Sea. Coastal Communities and landscape in North-East England and south-east Scotland c.450-850 AD
• Bradley Hull (2008), Social Differentiation and Diet in Early Anglo-Saxon England: Stable Isotope Analysis of Archaeological Human and Animal Remains
• Francis Morris (2009), North Sea and Channel Connectivity during the Late Iron Age and Roman Periods (175/150 BC-AD 409
•  Clifford Sofield (2011), Placed Deposits in Anglo-Saxon Settlements
• Thomas Green (2011), A Re-evaluation of the Evidence of Anglian-British Interaction in the Lincoln Region
• Mark McKerracher,

Selected Publications

• 'The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology' ;edited with D. Hinton and S. Crawford. (OUP, 2011)
• ‘Anglo-Saxon and earlier settlement near Drayton Road, Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire’ (with C. Hayden and G. Hey), The Archaeological Jl 164 (2008), 109-96
• 'Intensification of agrarian production in Mid Saxon England', in J. Henning (ed), Post-Roman Towns, Trade and Settlement in Europe, Byzantium and Byzantium vol. 1 (De Gruyter – Berlin – New York, 2007), 219-32.
• ‘Special Deposits in Anglo-Saxon settlements', Medieval Archaeology 50 (2006), 1-30.
• 'The earliest Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms', in P. Fouracre (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History vol. 1, 263-88 (CUP, 2005)
• Early Medieval Settlements: The Archaeology of Rural Communities in Northwest Europe, AD 400-900 (OUP 2002)
• Migrations and Invasions in Archaeological Explanation (with J. Chapman, 1997)
• Europe Between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (with J. Bintliff, 1996)
• Mucking: The Anglo-Saxon Settlement (English Heritage, 1993)