When is a Hill not Actually a Hill? Medieval Place-Names, Perception and Use of a Place

Event details:

You can choose to join us in Oxford or watch the session online. If you are joining us in person, this talk will take place in the Rewley House, Tawney Room.

About the talk:

English place-names are a store of historical knowledge about past landscapes and the communities that lived within them. When properly understood, place-names highlight perceptions, activities and identities not limited to those of a centralised, ruling or religious elite, nor to literary and learned cultures, shedding light on those that might not otherwise have a voice in the historical record. This paper looks at a targeted corpus of place-names previously thought to have been referencing hills. It arises out of a review of the influential hypothesis, proposed by Gelling and Cole, that the meaning of these place-names lay in universally-applicable physical profiles by which early medieval travellers navigated through the landscape. It uses a new interdisciplinary and GIS-based methodology to demonstrate that the rich nuance in the meanings of these names is not tied to particular physical profiles. Rather, their meanings reflected communities' use of the land, illuminating how people farmed and settled, and mitigated environmental risk, as well as shedding new light on the interrelationships between Old English and Old Scandinavian-speaking communities.

About the seminar series:

This series will be a fascinating showcase of the history and archaeology of the medieval period, with a focus on societies, economies and landscapes. It brings together current research and fresh perspectives to explore how people shaped their lives and environments across the Middle Ages.

The programme offers a friendly, collaborative space for discussion, featuring research in progress, approaches to sources and methodologies, and an interface between academic research and local and community history and archaeology. Drawing on a rich heritage of documents, material culture and landscape evidence, the series highlights the breadth and continued relevance of medieval studies.

Open to staff, students and anyone with an interest in medieval history and archaeology, locally and globally, the series includes contributions from established scholars and practitioners.

Each session lasts one hour, and drinks will be available for purchase in the common room afterwards.