Landscapes of Defence in Early Medieval England

Beacons, lookouts, assembly sites and ‘army’ roads played key roles in the networks of local and regional civil defence of England during the Viking Age. While the large fortified centres of the period are well known, the nature of interconnections between them and smaller-scale local arrangements have recently been studied in a series of Leverhulme Trust-funded projects.

This paper describes how a landscape approach, combining place-names, written evidence and archaeology, can be used to reconstruct the evolution of civil defensive systems in England during a period of significant military and political change.