Early Medieval Urban Centres in Britain: Comparative Typological Model from a Diachronic Perspective
Channel: Denis Sukhino-Khomenko
Date: 15/11/2019

This is my presentation at the 12th Student Symposium on Viking and Medieval Scandinavian Subjects (March 19–21st, 2019).

Over the recent decades, historians and archaeologists alike have greatly enhanced mod-ern understanding of the urban development in early medieval Britain. However, as of now, there seems to be a lack of a meta-analytical synthesis of the collected information, i.e. scholars have so far not put forward any concise framework to collate this information with, the need for which is especially acute in the light of the multifaceted Anglo-Scandinavian interaction in the 9–11th centuries. For instance, the contribution of the Danish settlement for the English urban landscape has on multiple occasions been emphasised, but it is hard to evaluate in the absence of a comparison with both native Scandinavian urban development and parallel late Anglo-Saxon urbanisation. 
The suggested paper aims at presenting one of the possible typologies of the post-Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian urban centres and communities up until the beginning of the High Middle Ages. The expected framework, built on the firm chronological principle, shall categorise them:
1. on the basis of origins: (post-)Roman settlements, early Anglo-Saxon wīcas/emporia, later Scandinavian fortresses, West Saxon burhs, etc.;
2. on the basis of functions: royal centres, territorial capitals, commercial hubs, etc.;
3. on the regional basis: Southern England, Western Mercia, and the Danelaw.
Of a special interest is the integration of the pre-existing Danelaw urban settlements into the West Saxon administrative system, particularly when compared with the parallel process in Eng-lish Mercia to the west.