Thirteenth volume of the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture published

Posted on 24 May 2018

The thirteenth volume of the British Academy Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture has now been published. The work, co-authored by our own Prof. Jane Hawkes, focuses on the early medieval sculpture of the modern-day counties of Derbyshire and Staffordshire produced between the eighth and eleventh centuries.

Eleven years in the making, the volume contains over 500 photographs, most taken by Jane, of every single piece of sculpture in the region, in addition to extensive introductory chapters on the historiography of the the monuments, the early medieval history of the region, the iconographic significances of the carvings, and the ways in which they relate to sculptures elsewhere in the Insular world, and the art of early medieval Europe more generally.

The material includes probably the greatest number of monuments carved with figural iconography extant from early medieval England so the volume includes extensive discussion of this, much of it for the first time (such as the crosses from Checkley in Staffordshire which were the first such monuments to be illustrated - in 1686 by Robert Plot, Professor of Chymistry [and Alchemy] at Oxford). The sculptures also emerge from a region that marked the inexact 'border' between the Danelaw and Wessex in the tenth and elenth centuries, and so provide interesting insight into transitional iconographies and motifs produced by cultures both Scandinavian and 'Mercian'. Also integral to the volume is the complete account of the sculptures and carved stone-work that have emerged from the royal site of Repton in Derbyshire, and a report on their archaeological context/s - something that has been long awaited by Anglo-Saxonists.

You can view the cover and contents here: CASSSXIII cover (PDF , 803kb).