Great Works by Great Men? Rethinking Linear Earthworks

Introducing the sixth volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ) for 2024, the introduction surveys the contents and recent related research published elsewhere as well as the main Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory’s activities during late 2023 and 2024

Today’s Offa’s Dyke: Heritage Interpretation for Britain’s Longest Linear Monument

How is Offa’s Dyke interpreted for visitors and locals in the contemporary landscape? The article considers the present-day heritage interpretation of Britain’s longest linear monument: the early medieval Mercian frontier work of Offa’s Dyke. I survey and evaluate panels, plaques and signs that follow the course of the surviving early medieval linear earthwork from Sedbury in Gloucestershire, north to Treuddyn in Flintshire, and along stretches away from the surviving earthwork and north to Prestatyn, Denbighshire, along the line of the Offa’s Dyke Path National Trail. Critiquing for the overarching narratives and envisionings of Offa’s Dyke the first time, I identify how anachronistic ethnonationalist narratives pervade its interpretation: pertaining to the origins of both England and the English, and Wales and the Welsh. As such, the article provides a baseline for further research into the contemporary archaeology and heritage of Offa’s Dyke and affords insights of application to other ancient linear monuments in today’s world. I conclude with reflections and recommendations for future heritage interpretation of the monument in relation to the national trail, the border and borderlands identities

Nico Ditch: A Review of its Form, Function, and Date

Nico Ditch is an enigmatic curvilinear earthwork, the core of which runs for c. 8km across the southern part of the City of Manchester from Hough Moss to Ashton Moss. Although much of its length was built over during the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where it survives as an earthwork it comprises a U-shaped ditch 2m to 3m wide and 1.5m to 2m deep, with possibly a low bank on its northern side. This article reviews research into the origins, form, and function of Nico Ditch, drawing on over 140 years of study, as well as discussing grey literature archaeological fieldwork from the 1990s and 2000s. Using this material, it is argued that the line of Nico Ditch extended further west of Hough Moss into Stretford. This longer monument strengthens the argument that the ditch dates from the early medieval period

An Indication of Northern Souls: Revisiting the ‘Territory of Ritual’

This article revisits the interpretation of the distinctive cross-ridge boundaries of north-east Yorkshire and explains a regular association between these features and the far earlier Early Bronze Age burial mounds. Radiocarbon dating and palynological evidence now provides a chronology for the boundaries, while field survey and excavation evidence confirms a new and specific role for cross-ridge boundaries in protecting long established Early Bronze Age funerary areas and enabling their continued veneration in the changing landscape of the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age

The Short Dykes of Mechain

The article considers a group of short dykes which were examined as part of a study of this monument type, carried out by the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust on behalf of Cadw, between 2000 and 2006.Various interesting points came out of the study, particularly regarding how short dykes in general fitted into their local landscapes. Their poor defensibility if viewed as monuments designed to impede or block access was also noted and this gave rise to an unease with this conventional interpretation of their function. Five of the dykes examined during the project, about a quarter, were dated by organic material which had been sealed beneath their bank at the time of construction and dates covering the period from the mid-fourth to late eighth centuries AD were obtained.A group of six short dykes centred on the town of Llanfyllin in northern Powys were identified during the study, all of which lay close to the boundary of the medieval Welsh cantref of Mechain, as defined by Melville Richards. This implied that they might have been used to identify parts of this boundary and the acquisition of two radiocarbon dates collectively covering the period from the fifth to early eighth centuries AD from one of these dykes (Clawdd Mawr) was seen as being significant in perhaps showing that the cantref was based on an early medieval political entity. An analysis of the Mechain dykes will attempt to prove that they form a coherent group and have the potential to point further research of the site type in a more productive direction

Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke: Scientific Dating at Chirk and Erddig

In 2018 and 2019, the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust undertook excavations on Offa’s Dyke at Chirk Castle, and on Wat’s Dyke at Erddig. The background, circumstances and stratigraphic narrative of these projects were presented in Volume 1 of this journal, but the scientific dating programme was not complete at the time of publication and the results were further delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper describes the radiocarbon and OSL dates obtained by 2021 and discusses implications for future research

Treaties, Frontiers and Borderlands:The Making and Unmaking of Mercian Border Traditions

This article explores the complexity and nuance of borderlands and border relations focusing on Mercia. Identifying a host of border maintenance strategies negotiating control over people, places and resources, mitigation of risk and maximisation of opportunity, but also strategic escalation and de-escalation of tensions, the study re-evaluates how Mercian border traditions supported expanded hegemony between the seventh and ninth centuries. The significant departures of the approach presented here are (i) rethinking the traditional focus on military, religious and ethnic identities to integrate these among other activities and experiences defining early medieval  frontiers and borderlands and (ii) considering the reimagining not only Mercia’s frontiers and borderlands during its emergence and heyday as a kingdom but also reflecting on how Mercian territory itself became a borderland under the rule of Aethelred and Aethelflaed during the Viking Age, and as such how it was formative in the creation of the Danelaw and of England. The Alfred/Guthrum Treaty and Ordinance of the Dunsaete are here contextualised against other strategies and scales of negotiation and activity framing Mercian/Anglo-Welsh and Anglo-Danish borderlands. Different ‘Mercian borderlands’ are compared in this study and analysed as complex zones of interaction, responsive to geographical factors, but also criss-crossed by multi-stranded pathways of daily life. Mercian borderlands were understood and maintained militarily, physically, spiritually, and ideologically. The article considers how these zones were shaped by convenience but also need and were reinforced or permeable at locality, community and kingdom levels

Border Culture and Picturing the Dyke

Dan Llywleyn Hall is a painter who spent three years walking and making paintings inspired by Offa’s Dyke. Born in Cardiff 1980, Dan now lives near the border in Llanfyllin where his studio is based. He has recently taken on the role of guest Editor of Borderlands – a revised Newsletter–cum–Journal that is published twice a year in behalf of the Offa’s Dyke Association. With a new introduction, the key components of the 2021 Walking with Offa project are reproduced here: nineteenth paintings and English-language versions of five of the original twelve poems. These are joined by three perspectives on the project by an artist (Baur), archaeological illustrator (Swogger) and archaeologist (Williams)

Linear Pasts and Presents: Researching Dykes, Frontiers and Borderlands

This editorial essay introduces the fifth volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ) by presenting a review of the contents, recent related research published elsewhere, and the Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory’s activities during 2022 and early 2023

‘Cofiwn i Facsen Wledig/We remember Macsen the Emperor': Frontiers, Romans, and Welsh Identity

Taking as its starting point the commonly held public perspective that Wales was largely unconquered by the Romans and was indeed a focus of resistance to Roman rule, this article argues from the archaeology to demonstrate that such perceptions are misleading. Archaeological evidence demonstrates Rome certainly conquered and held Wales throughout its occupation of Britain. Furthermore, its hold on Wales was so firmly established by the second century that Rome’s identity was fully stamped upon the territory and was maintained by the peoples of Wales after the end of Roman rule. The degree to which Wales was in the end Romanised is encapsulated in the post-Roman identity of the emerging Welsh kingdoms which consciously looked back to the Roman Emperor, Magnus Maximus (Macsen Wledig in Welsh) for their foundation as actual and spiritual successors to Roman power. Rather than offering resistance to Rome, it can be argued instead that notions of Roman power provided the peoples of Wales with the means to resist the rise of English power in the immediate post-Roman period