IMC 2015: Sessions
Session 514: Networks & Neighbours, I: Beyond Continuity and Revival - Constructions of Identity in Early Medieval Britain
Tuesday 7 July 2015, 09.00-10.30
| Sponsor: | Networks & Neighbours |
|---|---|
| Organisers: | Paul Gorton, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds James Michael Harland, Department of Arts, Design & Social Sciences, Northumbria University Catalin Taranu, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds |
| Moderator/Chair: | James Gerrard, School of History, Classics & Archaeology, Newcastle University |
| Paper 514-a | The 'Germanic' Origins of the Anglo-Saxons: Continuity or Revival? (Language: English) Index terms: Geography and Settlement Studies, Literacy and Orality, Mentalities |
| Paper 514-b | The Wledig and Romano-British Identity in the Early Medieval Period (Language: English) Index terms: Literacy and Orality, Mentalities |
| Paper 514-c | Attitudes and Their Implications: The Ethnic Problem in Anglo-Saxon Archaeology (Language: English) Index terms: Archaeology - General, Historiography - Modern Scholarship |
| Abstract | Building a group identity often entails proclaiming a presumed continuity with an invented past while effacing its own constructed nature. Thus, as in many other cases, in the case of identity construction in early medieval Britain, continuity and invention are two sides of the same coin. The papers of this panel explore the various modes in which communities manifest and construct their identity (archaeological, poetical, historiographical, legendary), attempting to read them not as marks of monolithic ethnicities, but as texts voicing the interplay between ethnicity, authority, narrative traditions, and modern historiography in the formation of identities in early medieval Britain (and also how these are often blurred or misrepresented by ourselves). |