Howard Williams & Joanne Kirton 
Early Medieval Stone Monuments 
Materiality, Biography, Landscape

New insights into inscribed and stone monuments from across Europe in the early middle ages.


Often fragmented and without context, early medieval inscribed and sculpted stone monuments of the fifth to eleventh centuries AD have been mainly studied via their shape, their decoration and the texts a fraction of them bear. This book, investigating stone monuments from Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia (including the important memorials at Iniscealtra, County Clare), advocates three relatively new, distinctive and interconnected approaches to the lithicheritage of the early Middle Ages. Building on recent theoretical trends in archaeology and material culture studies in particular, it uses the themes of materiality, biography and landscape to reveal how carved stones created senses of identity and history for early medieval communities and kingdom. An extensive introduction and eight chapters span the disciplines of history, art-history and archaeology, exploring how shaping stone in turn shaped and re-shaped early medieval societies.


Howard Williams is Professor of Archaeology, University of Chester; Joanne Kirton is Project Manager, Big Heritage, Chester; Meggen Gondek is Reader in Archaeology, University of Chester.


Contributors: Ing-Marie Back Danielsson, Iris Crouwers, Meggen Gondek, Mark A. Hall, Joanne Kirton, Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh, Clíodhna O’Leary, Howard Williams.

Tabla de materias

Introduction: Stones in Substance, Space and Time – Howard Williams and Joanne Kirton and Meggen Gondek

Locating the Cleulow Cross: Materiality, Place and Landscape – Joanne Kirton

Walking Down Memory Lane: Rune-Stones as Mnemonic Agents in the Landscapes of Late Viking-Age Scandinavia – Ing-Marie Back Danielsson

Building Blocks: Structural Contexts and Carved Stones in Early Medieval Northern Britain – Meggen Gondek

Memory, Belief and Identity: Remembering the Dead on Iniscealtra, Co. Clare – Clíodhna O’Leary

The Biographies and Audiences of Late Viking-Age and Medieval Stone Crosses and Cross-Decorated Stones in Western Norway – Iris Crouwers

Lifeways in Stone: Memories and Matter-Reality in Early Medieval Sculpture from Scotland – Mark A. Hall

A Stone in Time: Saving Lost Medieval Memories of Irish Stone Monuments – Jenifer Ni Ghradaigh

Hogbacks: the Materiality of Solid Spaces – Howard Williams