Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-n9wrp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-24T03:51:31.689Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Citations in Stone: The Material World of Hogbacks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Howard Williams
Howard Williams*
Affiliation:
University of Chester, UK
*
[email: howard.williams@chester.ac.uk].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores a meshwork of citations to other material cultures and architectures created by the form and ornament of house-shaped early medieval recumbent stone monuments popularly known in Britain as ‘hogbacks’. In addition to citing the form and ornament of contemporary buildings, shrines, and tombs, this article suggests recumbent mortuary monuments referenced a far broader range of contemporary portable artefacts and architectures. The approach takes attention away from identifying any single source of origin for hogbacks. Instead, considering multi-scalar and multi-media references within the form and ornament of different carved stones provides the basis for revisiting their inherent variability and their commemorative efficacy by creating the sense of an inhabited mortuary space in which the dead are in dialogue with the living. By alluding to an entangled material world spanning Norse and Insular, ecclesiastical and secular spheres, hogbacks were versatile technologies of mortuary remembrance in the Viking Age.

Cet article traite des réseaux de citations issues de la forme et de la décoration de monuments en pierre du haut Moyen Age de forme allongée rappelant l'aspect d'une maison et connus en Grande-Bretagne sous le nom de ‘hogbacks’ (« à dos de porc ») et qui font référence à d'autres aspects de la culture matérielle et architecturale. En plus des citations qui rappellent les formes et à la décoration que l'on retrouve dans les bâtiments, sanctuaires et sépultures de la même période on peut avancer que les monuments funéraires en « hogback » font allusion à un éventail bien plus ample d'objets mobiliers et d’éléments d'architecture. Au lieu de chercher à identifier une source d'inspiration unique pour l'origine des pierres tombales en dos d’âne on préconisera une approche qui tient compte des formes et ornementations de ces pierres sculptées dans divers matériaux et à des échelles différentes; ceci permet de réexaminer leur variabilité intrinsèque et leur capacité d’évocation dans un milieu funéraire habité où les morts dialoguent avec les vivants. En faisant allusion à un univers matériel où les éléments norrois et insulaires, ecclésiastiques et séculaires s'entremêlaient, les « hogbacks » étaient une forme de technologie polyvalente de la mémoire. Translation by Madeleine Hummler

In diesem Artikel wird das Netzwerk der Zitierungen der Form und Verzierung von frühmittelalterlichen hausförmigen liegenden Steindenkmälern (die man in Großbritannien „hogbacks“, wörtlich Schweinsrücken, nennt), die sich auf andere Bestandteile der materiellen Kultur und Architektur beziehen untersucht. Es wird hier vorgeschlagen, dass, außer der Aufführung der Form und Ornamentierung von zeitgenössischen Gebäuden, Schreinen und Gräbern, die liegenden Grabdenkmäler sich auf eine viel breitere Auswahl von zeitgenössischen mobilen Gegenständen und architektonischen Elementen bezogen. Dieser Ansatz ermöglicht es, sich von der Identifizierung eines einzigen Ursprungs für die „hogbacks” zu entfernen. Stattdessen kann die Betrachtung von Zitierungsarten in der Form und Verzierung der Steine auf verschiedenen Skalenebenen und Medien die Grundlage einer Neubewertung ihrer Veränderlichkeit und Wirksamkeit Erinnerungen heraufzubeschwören schaffen, indem ein Gefühl für einen bewohnten Bereich, wo die Toten mit den Lebenden dialogieren konnten, erzeugt wird. Durch Erwähnung einer verwickelten Welt, die die nordischen und insularischen, kirchlichen und profanen Bereiche umfassten, stellten die „hogbacks” eine vielseitige Technologie der Erinnerung an die Toten dar. Translation by Madeleine Hummler

Keywords

British IslesViking Ageearly medievalhogbackscommemorationmemorycitationmeshworkîles britanniquesépoque vikinghaut Moyen Age« hogbacks »commémorationmémoirecitationréseauxBritische InselnWikingerzeitFrühmittelalter„hogbacks“GedenkenErinnerungZitierungNetzwerk
Type
Article
Information
European Journal of Archaeology , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , 2016 , pp. 497 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 the European Association of Archaeologists 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Primary Sources

Colgrave, B. & Mynors, R.A.B., ed. 1979. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Bradley, S. trans. 1982. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. London: Dent.Google Scholar
Larrington, C. trans. 1996. The Poetic Edda. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Arwidsson, G. & Berg, G. 1999. The Mästermyr Find: A Viking Age Tool Chest from Gotland. Stockholm: Larson.Google Scholar
Ashby, S. 2014. A Viking Way of Life. Stroud: Amberley.Google Scholar
Ashby, S. 2015. What Really Caused the Viking Age? The Social Content of Raiding and Exploration. Archaeological Dialogues, 22:89–106.Google Scholar
Back Danielsson, I.-M. 2007. Masking Moments: The Transition of Bodies and Beings in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 40. Stockholm: Stockholm University.Google Scholar
Back Danielsson, I.-M. 2015. The Social Qualia of kuml. An Exploration of the Iconicity of Rune-stones with Kuml Inscriptions from the Scandinavian Late Viking Age. Current Swedish Archaeology, 23:73–94.Google Scholar
Bailey, R. 1980. Viking Age Sculpture in Northern England. London: Collins.Google Scholar
Bailey, R. 2010. Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture Volume IX: Cheshire and Lancashire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, R. & Cramp, R. 1988. Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture Volume II: Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire North-of-the-Sands. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Batey, C. & Graham-Campbell, J. 1998. Vikings in Scotland: An Archaeological Survey. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Boddington, A. 1996. Raunds Furnells: The Anglo-Saxon Church and Churchyard. London: English Heritage.Google Scholar
Brønsted, J. 1936. Danish Inhumation Graves of the Viking Age: A Survey. Acta Archaeologica, 7:81–228.Google Scholar
Brookes, S. 2007. Boat-Rivets in Graves in Pre-Viking Kent: Reassessing Anglo-Saxon Boat-Burial Traditions. Medieval Archaeology, 51:1–18.Google Scholar
Brown, P. 1981. The Cult of Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Carroll, J., Harrison, S.H. & Williams, G., eds. 2014. The Vikings in Britain and Ireland. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Christiansen, T. 2007. A New Round of Excavations at Lejre (to 2005). In: Niles, J.D., ed. Beowulf and Lejre. Tempe (AZ): Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, pp. 109–26.Google Scholar
Coatsworth, E. 2008. Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture Volume VIII: Western Yorkshire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Collingwood, W.G. 1927. Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Craig-Atkins, E. 2012. Chest Burial: A Middle Anglo-Saxon Funerary Rite from Northern England. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 31:317–37.Google Scholar
Cramp, R. 1984a. Grammar of Anglo-Saxon Ornament. A General Introduction to the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cramp, R. 1984b. Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture Volume I: County Durham and Northumberland, 2 Volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dobat, A. 2006. Bridging Mythology and Belief. Viking Age Functional Culture as a Reflection of the Belief in Divine Intervention. In: Andrén, A., Jennbert, K. & Raudvere, C., eds. Old Norse Religion in Long-term Perspectives. Origins, Changes, and Interactions. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, pp. 184–88.Google Scholar
Edwards, N. & Gray Hulse, T. 1992. A Fragment of a Reliquary Casket from Gwytherin, North Wales. The Antiquaries Journal, 72:91–101.Google Scholar
Eriksen, M.H. 2013. Doors to the Dead. The Power of Doorways and Thresholds in Viking Age Scandinavia. Archaeological Dialogues, 20:187–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eriksen, M.H. 2016. Commemorating Dwelling. The Death and Burial of Houses in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia. European Journal of Archaeology, 19.3.Google Scholar
Gansum, T. 2003. Hår og stil og stilig hår. Om langhårets maktsymbolikk. In: Stylegar, F. & Rolfsen, P., eds. Snartemofunnene i nytt lys (Oldsaksamlingens skrifter 2). Oslo: Universitetets kulturhistoriske museer, pp. 191–220.Google Scholar
Gardeła, L. 2008. Into Viking Minds: Reinterpreting the Staffs of Sorcery and Unravelling Seiðr. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 4:45–84.Google Scholar
Gardeła, L. 2009. A Biography of the Seiðr-Staffs. Towards an Archaeology of Emotions. In: Słupecki, L.P. & Morwiec, J., eds. Between Paganism and Christianity in the North. Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego, pp. 190–219.Google Scholar
Gardeła, L. 2012. Entangled Worlds. Archaeologies of Ambivalence in the Viking Age, 2 Volumes. PhD dissertation, University of Aberdeen. [accessed 25 March 2016]. Available at http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1458895998338~355.Google Scholar
Gardeła, L. 2013. Dead or Alive? — ‘Chamber Graves’ and Their Inhabitants in the Old Norse Literature and Viking-Age Archaeology. In: Moździoch, S., Stanisławski, B. & Wiszewski, P., eds. Scandinavian Culture in Medieval Poland. Wrocław: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, pp. 373–93.Google Scholar
Graham-Campbell, J. 1998. A Viking-Age Harness-Bow Fragment from Cliffe, N. Yorkshire. Medieval Archaeology, 42:102–3.Google Scholar
Graham-Campbell, J. 2013. Viking Art. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Griffiths, D. 2010. Vikings of the Irish Sea. Stroud: The History Press.Google Scholar
Gustin, I. 2010. Of Rods and Roles. Three Women in Birka's Chamber Graves. In: Dobiat, C. & Leidorf, K., eds. Zwischen Fjorden und Steppe: Festschrift für Johan Callmer zum 65. Geburtstag (Internationale Archäologie. Studies honoraria, 31). Rahden: Marie Leidorf, pp. 342–54.Google Scholar
Hadley, D. 2006. The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Hadley, D. 2008. Warriors, Heroes and Companions: Negotiating Masculinity in Viking-Age England. In: Crawford, S. & Hamerow, H., eds. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 15. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, pp. 270–84.Google Scholar
Hall, M. 2015. The Meigle Stones: A Biographical Overview. Northern Studies, 46:15–46.Google Scholar
Hall, R. 2007. Exploring the World of the Vikings. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Harrison, S.H. & ÓFloinn, R. 2014. Viking Graves and Grave-Goods in Ireland (Medieval Dublin Excavations 1962–81 Ser. B. Vol. 11). Dublin: National Museum of Ireland.Google Scholar
Hawkes, J. 2002. The Sandbach Crosses. Sign and Significance in Anglo-Saxon Sculpture. London: English Heritage.Google Scholar
Hawkes, J. 2003. Reading Stone. In: Karkov, C.E. & Orton, F., eds. Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture. Morgantown (WV): West Virginia University Press, pp. 5–30.Google Scholar
Henderson, G. & Henderson, I. 2004. The Art of the Picts: Sculpture and Metalwork in Early Medieval Scotland. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Herschend, F. 1997. Livet i hallen. Tre fallstudier I den yngre järnålderns aristokrati (Occasional Papers in Archaeology, 14). Uppsala: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. 2007. Writing Texts, Reading Materials. A Response to my Critics. Archaeological Dialogues, 14:31–38.Google Scholar
Jesch, J. 2015. The Viking Diaspora. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jones, A. 2007. Memory and Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jørgensen, L. 2003. Manor and Market at Lake Tissø in the Sixth to Eleventh Centuries: The Danish ‘Productive Sites’. In: Pestell, T. & Ulmschneider, K., eds. Markets in Early Medieval Europe: Trading and Productive Sites. Macclesfield: Windgather, pp. 175–207.Google Scholar
Kershaw, J.F. 2009. Culture and Gender in the Danelaw: Scandinavian and Anglo-Scandinavian Brooches. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 5:295–325.Google Scholar
Klevnäs, A. 2016. ‘Imbued with the Essence of the Owner’: Personhood and Possessions in the Reopening and Reworking of Viking Age Burials. European Journal of Archaeology, 19.3.Google Scholar
Kopár, L. 2012. Gods and Settlers. The Iconography of Norse Mythology in Anglo-Scandinavian Sculpture. Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar
Lang, J. 1972–4. Hogback Monuments in Scotland. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 105:206–35.Google Scholar
Lang, J. 1976. Sigurd and Weland in Pre-Conquest Carving from Northern England. Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 48:83–94.Google Scholar
Lang, J. 1984. The Hogback: A Viking Colonial Monument. In: Hawkes, S.C., Campbell, J. & Brown, D., eds. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 3. Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, pp. 83–176.Google Scholar
Lang, J. 1991. Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture Volume III: York and Eastern Yorkshire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lang, J. 1994. The Govan Hogbacks: A Reappraisal. In: Richie, A., ed. Goven and Its Early Medieval Sculpture. Stroud: Sutton, pp. 123–32.Google Scholar
Lang, J. 2001. Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture Volume VI: Northern Yorkshire. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Larsson, L. 2010. Memories of Features, Memories in Finds. The Remembrance of the Past in Iron Age Scandinavia. In: Lillios, K.T. & Tsamis, V., eds. Material Mnemonics: Everyday Memory in Prehistoric Europe. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 174–87.Google Scholar
Lund, J. & Arwill-Nordbladh, E. 2016. Material Citations: Diverging Ways of Relating to the Past in the Viking Age. European Journal of Archaeology, 19.3.Google Scholar
Mikkelsen, P., Moltsen, A.S.A. & Sindbæk, S.M. 2008. Tæbring, NW Denmark, AD 600–1100, an Archaeological and Archaeobotanic Study. Acta Archaeologica, 79:79–109.Google Scholar
Ní Ghrádaigh, J. & Mullins, J. 2013. Apostolically Inscribed: St Cuthbert's Coffin as Sacred Vessel. In: Ashbee, J. & Luxford, J., eds. Medieval Art and Architecture in Newcastle and Northumberland (British Archaeological Association Transactions Series, 36). Leeds: Maney, pp. 73–89.Google Scholar
Pierce, I. 2002. Swords of the Viking Age. Woodbridge: Boydell.Google Scholar
Price, N. 2002. The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Uppsala: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History,Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Price, N. 2010. Passing into Poetry: Viking-Age Mortuary Drama and the Origins of Norse Mythology. Medieval Archaeology, 54:123–56.Google Scholar
Price, N. 2015. From Ginnungagap to the Ragnarök, Archaeologies of the Viking Worlds. In: Eriksen, M.H., Pedersen, U., Rundkberget, B., Axelsen, I. & Berg, H.L., eds. Viking Worlds. Things, Spaces and Movement. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 1–9.Google Scholar
Richards, J.D. 1991. Viking Age England. Stroud: Tempus.Google Scholar
Richards, J.D. 2011. Anglo-Scandinavian Identity. In: Hamerow, H., Hinton, D.A. & Crawford, S., eds. The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 46–61.Google Scholar
Rodwell, W., Hawkes, J., Howe, E. & Cramp, R. 2008. The Lichfield Angel: A Spectacular Anglo-Saxon Painted Sculpture. The Antiquaries Journal, 88:48–108.Google Scholar
Schmidt, H. 1973. The Trelleborg House Reconsidered. Medieval Archaeology, 17:52–77.Google Scholar
Schmidt, H. 2007. Reconstruction of the Lejre Hall. In: Niles, J.D., ed. Beowulf and Lejre. Tempe (AZ): Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, pp. 103–8.Google Scholar
Sherlock, S. 2012. A Royal Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Street House, Loftus, North-East Yorkshire (Tees Archaeology Monograph Series, 6). Hartlepool: Tees Archaeology.Google Scholar
Sikora, M. 2010. The Finglas Burial: Archaeology and Ethnicity in Viking-Age Dublin. In: Sheehan, J. & Corráin, D. Ó, eds. The Viking Age: Ireland and the West. Papers from the Proceedings of the Fifteenth Viking Congress, Cork, 18–27 August 2005. 2005: Dublin, pp. 402–29.Google Scholar
Sindbæk, S. 2007. The Small World of the Vikings: Networks in Early Medieval Communication and Exchange. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 40:59–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staecker, J. 2006. Heroes, Kings, and Gods. Discovering Sagas on Gotlandic Picture-Stones. In: Andrén, A., Jennbert, K. & Raudvere, C., eds. Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives. Origins, Changes, and Interactions. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, pp. 363–68.Google Scholar
Stocker, D. 2000. Monuments and Merchants: Irregularities in the Distribution of Stone Sculpture in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire in the Tenth Century. In: Hadley, D.M. & Richards, J. D., eds. Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 179–212.Google Scholar
Stylegar, F.-A. & Grimm, O. 2005. Boathouses in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 34:253–68.Google Scholar
Svanberg, F. 2003. Death Rituals in South-East Scandinavia AD 800–1000. Decolonizing the Viking Age 2. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.Google Scholar
Thäte, E. 2007. Monuments and Minds: Monument Re-use in Scandinavia in the Second Half of the First Millennium AD (Acta Archaeologica Lundensia Series in 4°, 27). Lund: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Lund.Google Scholar
Thompson, V. 2003. Memory, Salvation and Ambiguity: A Consideration of some Anglo-Scandinavian Grave-Stones from York. In: Williams, H., ed. Archaeologies of Remembrance: Death and Memory in Past Societies. New York: Kluwer, pp. 215–26.Google Scholar
Thompson, V. 2004. Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge: Boydell.Google Scholar
Tweddle, D., Biddle, M. & Kjølbye-Biddle, B. 1995. Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture Volume IV: South-East England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Webster, L. 2011. Anglo-Saxon Art. London: British Museum.Google Scholar
Williams, H. 2006. Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, H. 2013. Death, Memory and Material Culture: Catalytic Commemoration and the Cremated Dead. In: Tarlow, S. & Nilsson Stutz, L., eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 195–208.Google Scholar
Williams, H. 2014. Memory Through Monuments: Movement and Temporality in Skamby's Boat Graves. In: Alexandersson, H., Andreeff, A. & Bünz, A., eds. Med hjärta och hjärna. En vänbok till professor Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh (GOTARC Series A, Gothenburg Archaeological Studies, 5). Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitet, Institutionen för historiska studier, pp. 397–414.Google Scholar
Williams, H. 2015. Hogbacks: The Materiality of Solid Spaces. In: Williams, H., Kirton, J. & Gondek, M., eds. Early Medieval Stone Monuments: Materiality, Biography, Landscape. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, pp. 241–68.Google Scholar
Williams, H. 2016. ‘Clumsy and Illogical’? Reconsidering the West Kirby Hogback. The Antiquaries Journal, 96.Google Scholar
Williams, H., Kirton, J. & Gondek, M. 2015. Introduction: The Materialities, Biographies and Landscapes of Early Medieval Stone Monuments. In: Williams, H., Kirton, J. & Gondek, M., eds. Early Medieval Stone Monuments: Materiality, Biography, Landscape. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, pp. 1–34.Google Scholar
Youngs, S., ed. 1989. ‘The Words of Angels’: Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork, 6th–9th Centuries AD. London: British Museum.Google Scholar