Creating and curating an archive: Bury St Edmunds and its Anglo-Saxon past

This contribution explores the mechanisms by which the Benedictine foundation of Bury St Edmunds sought to legitimise and preserve their spurious pre-Conquest privileges and holdings throughout the Middle Ages. The archive is extraordinary in terms of the large number of surviving registers and cartularies which contain copies of Anglo-Saxon charters, many of which are wholly or partly in Old English. The essay charts the changing use to which these ancient documents were put in response to threats to the foundation's continued enjoyment of its liberties. The focus throughout the essay is to demonstrate how pragmatic considerations at every stage affects the development of the archive and the ways in which these linguistically challenging texts were presented, re-presented, and represented during the Abbey’s history

Review of \u3ci\u3eArchaeology, History, and Custer\u27s Last Battle\u3c/i\u3e By Richard Allen Fox, Jr.

It is important to note, however, that arechaeological knowledge is largely a product of interpretation, neither as certain nor as monolithic as Fox might have his readers believe. Indeed, some of his conclusions are sure to be disputed by fellow archaeologists with differing views, as well as by those historians he confronts directly in the book. Still, Fox deveolops a compelling argument that will serve as a point of departure for future debates on the enduring and ever-controversial subject. Accordingly, there is little doubt that his book will garner a vast audience among historians and archaeologists, students of military tactics, those broadly interested in the American West, and of course the many thousands who share a peculiar fascination with Custer\u27s fatal hubris

Contributions in Archaeology, No. 2

This report describes archaeological testing at a site known as Fort St. Leon in Louisiana. Studies were made of levee building, geomorphology, and comparison of archival maps and aerial photographs, which contribute to the understanding of human activity as well as geological processes at the site

Gildas

International audienceGildas est le premier auteur britannique à témoigner des événements postérieurs au départ des légions romaines. C'est par l'analyse de ses modèles, principalement bibliques, et de ses buts que son récit historique allusif, si frustrant, peut être compris et interprété comme un témoignage de premier plan

Tall tales from the archive

The administrative documents preserved in archives tell stories which are shaped by their institutional and governmental context, and are as deceptive and full of invention as more self-consciously literary works. Medieval archives contain a vast repository of historical narratives which, despite their fictional components and bureaucratic manipulation, nevertheless provide vivid insights into everyday life. The rhetorical conventions of such bureaucratic documents as pardons, petitions and appeals represent forms of historical literature which are cultural productions of equal significance to the chronicle or the epic poem. But, unlike court poetry or chronicles, the archives tell us a great deal about the life of ordinary people. In the wake of the discussion of the archive by Foucault and Derrida, the archive has been seen as a symbol of power and a means of control, but often the archive is the chief means by which non-elite groups find their voice