The presence of Roman material in early Anglo-Saxon graves in England is well documented, and recent excavations at Scremby in Lincolnshire have revealed a complete copper-alloy enamelled drinking cup in a sixth-century ad female burial. Not only is such a Roman vessel a very rare find, but also its inclusion in an early medieval grave makes it a unique example of the reuse of an antique object in a funerary context. This article presents a typological and metallurgical analysis of the cup and selected comparative examples from England and France are discussed. The context of deposition and the role the cup played as a burial container for animal fat are examined, as are the mechanisms that lay behind the cup's continued life several centuries after its manufacture.

The rising popularity of hobbyist metal detecting has provided early medieval scholars with various important new datasets, not least the concentrations of metalwork commonly known as ‘productive sites’. Awareness of these foci derives almost exclusively from archaeological evidence, yet they continue to be interpreted through a documentary lens, and are frequently labelled ‘monasteries’. Using the recently discovered site of Little Carlton, Lincolnshire, as a case study, it is argued that comprehension of metal-rich sites is significantly furthered by turning to archaeologically-orientated research agendas and terminologies. As a consequence, seventh- to ninth-century Little Carlton can be understood as one element of a high-status ‘meshwork’ within early medieval East Lindsey, in which elite power was articulated in the landscape through a number of contemporary centres. On site, archaeology indicates the presence of occupation, burial and craft working, but shows that highly symbolic indigenous practices were taking place too, including intentional deposition into a naturally-occurring pond. Evidence for activity either side of the seventh to ninth centuries also stresses the importance of long-term trajectories in shaping the character of places previously celebrated for their finds-rich phases alone.

The discovery of mass burial sites is rare in Europe, particularly in rural areas. Recent excavations at Thornton Abbey in Lincolnshire have revealed a previously unknown catastrophic mass grave containing the remains of at least 48 men, women and children, with radiocarbon dating placing the event in the fourteenth century AD. The positive identification of Yersinia pestis in sampled skeletal remains suggests that the burial population died from the Black Death. This site represents the first Black Death mass grave found in Britain in a non-urban context, and provides unique evidence for the devastating impact of this epidemic on a small rural community.

In global ocean dynamics Rossby waves play a vital rôle in the long-term distribution of vorticity; knowledge of the interaction between these waves and topography is crucial to a full understanding of this process, and hence to the transportation of energy, mixing and ocean circulation. The interaction of baroclinic Rossby waves with abrupt topography is the focus of this study. In this paper we model the ocean as a continuously stratified fluid for which the linear theory predicts a qualitatively different structure for the wave modes than that predicted by barotropic or simple layered models, even if most of the density variation is confined to the thermocline. We consider the scattering of a westward-propagating baroclinic Rossby wave by a narrow ridge on the ocean floor, modelled by a line barrier of infinite extent, orientated at an arbitrary angle to the incident wave. Transmission and reflection coefficients for the propagating modes are found using both an algebraic method and, in the case where this breaks down, matched asymptotic expansions. The results are compared with recent analyses of satellite altimetry data.

This paper locates labour process theory in broader sociological debates concerned with the action-structure dualism before examining three broad programmes for research that have emerged in response to the question of subjectivity and agency. Whereas the ‘orthodox’ school tends to re-assert the structuralist and economistic features of Marx, the ‘anti-realist’ or deconstructionist position invites the abandonment of analysis that has traditionally been orientated by the polarities of ‘structure’ and ‘agency’. We identify and develop a third, ‘hybrid position’, one that is informed by poststructuralist insights but does not neglect or reject established traditions of ‘modern’ sociology and labour process research. Critical examinations of two recent studies of ‘subjectivity and the labour process’ – Mike Sosteric's (1996) case study of a night club and Douglas Ezzy's (1997) paper on ‘good work’ – are undertaken to show how poststructuralist insights may offer an instructive way of understanding how subjectivity is co-implicated in the accomplishment and reproduction of capitalist employment relations.