Description

The author's chief purpose in compiling and presenting this illustrated guide to Anglo-Saxon pottery of the period from about AD 400-650 is to show how this pottery can be used as evidence for the early Anglo-Saxon period in England in terms of both political history and culture. Introductory chapters in Volume I explain the typology employed in classifying the pots and give evidence for the dating and development of each type and for the relationship which the English pieces bear to the corresponding series on the continent, mainly to be found in north Germany, Scandinavia and the Low Countries. The core of the work is the inventory of some 3,500 pots typologically arranged and described according to standardised formulae, each one illustrated in the catalogue of drawings which forms Volume 2. These volumes provide the detailed evidence on which Dr Myres' earlier book Anglo-Saxon Pottery and the Settlement of England was based and therefore of value as much for the general history of early England as for the study of an important branch of archaeology. They will be of great help and interest to museum curators and archaeologists and students of ceramics generally.