Rosewell, Roger. Medieval Wall Paintings in English and
Welsh Churches. Woodbridge: Boydell P, 2008. 380 pp. ill.
Art historians have been hailing the publication of this
volume. It is the first such book of its
kind in half a century. Rosewell
provides in the six chapters with copious color plates a thorough handbook to
wall paintings in churches. After a
brief introduction, the chapters cover the history of medieval wall paintings
in brief, the what or iconography of the paintings, the patrons and painters
who produced them, their methods of production, the interpretation of the works
of art, and finally their restoration.
Rosewell also provides a gazetteer, a subject guide, a bibliography. Perhaps most importantly, the photographs in
the book are fabulous.
That said, there is regrettably little of interest for the
Anglo-Saxonist. This is principally
because according to Rosewell there are very few from the Anglo-Saxon period
that survive. In fact, that is a general
problem with the subject: less than 10% of the medieval churches that survive
in England and Wales have paintings or part of paintings that survive, and that
percentage plummets for any church dated before the twelfth century. The few
that do survive are mentioned or examined briefly, but not in great detail: the
history portion for Anglo-Saxon churches covers a page and a half, including
photographs.
Of greater interest are later depictions in church painting
of Anglo-Saxon saints. St. Dunstan, St.
Swithun and other Anglo-Saxon saints do make appearances in some churches,
particularly in the twelfth century. But
though saints, even Anglo-Saxon saints, form a portion of wall paintings and
other decoration, they are outnumbered by depictions of holy history, particularly
biblical events. So even here, while
there is material of interest, the book is of limited use directly for
Anglo-Saxon studies.
It is a book hailed by art historians. It is a beautiful book with a great deal of
information. The author has written his
work to straddle the lines between a scholarly and non-scholarly audience, an
approach that has both strengths and weaknesses. One such weakness is that when the author
cites primary literature, there are no references given making tracing the
reference difficult at best. The select
bibliography in the back is insufficient to overcome this frustration. But this
is but one weakness in an otherwise very strong book.
Quite apart from what interest there is for the
Anglo-Saxonist, the purpose of this assessment, there is an important argument
that Rosewell makes in the book. We are
all familiar with the interpretation of stained glass windows, sculpture, and
paintings in churches as “books for the illiterate”, depictions of biblical stories, saints, and other matters
related to the faith for those who could not read. Rosewell rejects this interpretation of wall
paintings (and by extension other forms of graphic art). Rosewell places paintings in a different
category to other forms of art, though: the church structure itself is not just
the support of the painting, but the walls and plaster are the canvas. More importantly though, he argues that
paintings cannot be merely “books for the illiterate” since to derive meaning
from the painting, one must know the story.
Rather he argues that the depictions of holy scenes are an integral part
of the worship and liturgy, aids to contemplation and prayer, rather than
didactic tools for the unlearned. These
need not be exclusive interpretations, but Rosewell does mount a good argument
to reject the typical understanding of wall paintings in churches.
While there is little directly applicable to Anglo-Saxon England
in the book, it nonetheless is an excellent overview of the subject. Every photograph is printed in color and
there are a number of details, the text is clearly written and informative. All
in all, this is an excellent book and a good contribution to the field.
Lightfoot, Emma, Tamsin C. O’Connell et al. “An
Investigation into Diet at the Site of Yarnton, Oxfordshire, Using Stable
Carbon and Nitrogen Isotopes.” Oxford Jnl of Archaeology 28 (2009),
301-22.
Yarnton in Oxfordshire, near Eynsham, called Erdington, has
a long period of continual occupation.
The article here examines in particular remains found in a small
cemetery covering the Nealothic, Roman, and Saxon periods. The authors studied the isotopes of the
remains in order to determine diet; in some ways the finds were
unsurprising. Fortunately, in other ways
there were surprises. For example,
though the site is on a river, there was no evidence of a fish diet. Yarnton was low status both before and after
the Roman occupation; after the Romans left, the site seems to have been
abandoned for a time though even within the fifth century Saxon buildings
appear. Crops shift somewhat during this
period, not unusually in the shift from Roman to Saxon, from spelt to bread
wheat. But one unusual crop feature is
the presence of emmer wheat. Other crops
make their appearances for the first time in the Saxon period: peas, legume,
and crops grown for fodder. Saxon and
Roman inhabitants had higher levels of delta 13C isotopes indicating a diet
that included animals with a higher proportion of those isotopes such as pigs
and the consumption of fewer ruminates and horses. An alternative explanation may be that these
inhabitants consumed more millet or fat hen (a common plant known by other names
such as wild spinach, goosefoot, pigweed, and other names).
The study did not simply examine the diets of the human
inhabitants. The porcine bones indicate
that the pigs ate an ominverous diet, perhaps more so than the humans but
certainly more so than the ruminates and horses. The canines inhabitants were the most
carnivorous of all.
In addition to these results, the article contains a large
section on the materials and methodology with tables of results for those
interested.
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