 Mae yma yma 8 oes cyfrifio enghreifio'r gwahanol y maen nhart yn ôl, свnd ar y gweithio'r gwahanol. Felly, y gwrthodd o'r cyfrifio arbennig, yma'n ymddangos i'r cyfrifio a'r cyfrifio. Mae yma eich bod yn gallu gael wedi eu gwaith, a oedd gwrs fel y gallwn ymddangos i gael eich cyfrifio yma. Mae yma yma yma yma yma'n gweithio i'r llwyddon yma yn y bwysigol cyfrifio. ac yn y cwmddoedd, mae'r mhagynaladau yn ei fod o'r mynd yn ymgyrchol, ac mae'r cwmddor arall yn y twyd y margynwyr yn ymbyddiad. Y dyfodol y gwaith yn y bobl yn ymblwysig, rwy'n gweithio'r amser o'r ddifu Cymru yn y ddifu Cymru, Ymgyrchwyr yn Ymgyrchwyr, ac mae'n gweithio'r ddifu Cymru yn y ddifu Cymru. Yr hord yn y ddifu Cymru, ond yw'r cygwlad o'r ffordd, ac eu bod yn ystyried y rhan o'r drwy fath gynhau'r ffordd, croydedd hwn yn callu eich sylwedd, gweld i'r gwybod yn gweld i'r ffordd o'r cyf rodsd. Yn y Ffigur 6.7, yw'r bobl mae'r ffordd yw'r iawn o'r swyddo ar gyfer os sydd am hynny'n digwydd unrhywe eu hyd o'r rhai tynnag sy'n annes ar gyfrydau, a mae yn chweithiau'r ffordd o'u gwbl Mae'r pob i fynd yn ymddangos ymddangos i gyda hawerd. Roeddwn i'n ceisio'n dweud eich gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'n ddegau'r ddegau cacol. Felly mae'n ddigonol yn y brifoedd hynny yn y brif, mae'n ddigonol yn ymddangos i ddegau. Mae'n ddigonol yn ymddangos i Eistedd, yn ymddangos i ddweud, mae'n ddweud eich economi. It just so that their wealth was expressed in different ways. And in ways that are much less susceptible to being seen by us. We've already seen this map on what needs Kevin's map on all seven century gold and silver now. While it does seem to me there is a difference. The silver of course concentrates very heavily in the eastern zone. But actually the gold though is a lot of it in the midlands. y safad hwn yn ystod y gweithloedd ymddangos. Ond yna ymwneud hynny yw'n ei bod yn ystod o'r economaeth. Yn ymgyrch yn ymwyaf o'r economaeth, y economaeth o'r cyflawn ac ymddiad, o'r cyflawn â'r cyflawn, o'r cyflawn. Ymgyrch yn gyflawn i'r cyflawn. Mae'r cyflawn o'r cyflawn o'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn a'r cyflawn a'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn. Efallai yn mynd ymwneud yma, ysbyn ychydigwyr tynnu'r c58 trefn y cefnol bod y cyflawn o'r cyflawn yn ystod o'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn a'r cyflawn i wneud yma ar gyfer o'r gyflawn o'r cyfflawn a bod yma'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn yn ymwyaf o'r cyflawn. Ond os yw weithio, dwi'n cyd-dioenbarth yn y maes rydyn nhw'n cylleg ymddangos, ychydig ynghylch, dechrau'r mynd i'r clwr, ac yn y fwyfyrdd ar gyfer y syniad bwysig, mae'r cyflei hord yn y bwysig yn gweithio'r cyflog yma. Efallai, mae'r cyflei hordeb yn ddigwyd wedi ddod yn y dyn nhw, mae'r cyflei hord yn y dyn nhw, yn y cyflei hordeb, yn cyflog yr wyniad, yn gyfan yr oeddwyr yn fawr, yn roedd, yr oedd, yr oedd, yr oedd, yr oedd, yn yr oedd, yn yr oedd, yr oedd, yr oedd, yr oedd, ychydig. Rychniol Street is, I think, a very important part of our story, and in the 8th century, it's linking two important areas, the old mercy and heartland and the Trent, and then the area in the Wick-Witching territory, which is important economically and strategically, and where there's quite a lot of evidence for mercy and activity, because by the time I'll offer, there are more charters from this area. Rychniol Street links the two, and indeed, just there, as we'll see, at the crossing of the Trent, is Wichnor, a place in which means the over, a hill form of the Witcher. That is named in relation to a road that leads to the Witcher, and the presence of a horde so close to this major north-south route may perhaps be significant. So here is an attempt at a new map of the mercy and heartland. This is the area we'd be concerned with, but I want to look mainly at a region slightly further north, going on up Wichniol Street to the Trent of Confluence. Actually, it's in this area, at the northernmost end, that we find most evidence in the later 7th century for mercy and royal patronage in the form of the important royal ministers of Wrecton, Reedon and Hanbury, the remarkable earthquake of Tuckrey, which I've argued on in the Wrecton evidence, might perhaps be important in the 8th century. The broken lines are the borders of the parishes, unfortunately there are no charter bounds, but they're the parishes named from estates granted by King Edmonds to one of the Wolffy of the Black in 942. Now, this, of course, is much later, but given the location of these estates, it seems to me hard not, at least to suspect, that what we're seeing here in the 940s is the final privatisation of the old, core lands of the mercy and kingdom. And if that is true, you can see how much they centre around this area with Wrecton Street and the stretch of the Trent that, rather oddly, runs parallel to Wrecton Street, forming a very strong tropical and communications spine to that area. There's working out of all the murdered in 7457, perhaps doesn't tell us very much, I suppose you can be murdered anywhere, but it's not far from the place which, of course, everybody thinks of, was the major mercy and centre at Chanworth. Chanworth is not part of my story because, in my view, the balance of evidence suggests that it was not a place of importance before the 780s when it emerges as a major centre under offer, which seems to me most likely part of his imperial display towards the end of his reign connected with the building up of Lichfield into an archipisk called Seat. And to be much more to do with the carringinising of the later part of offers reign than with anything else that went before. So from the moment I'm going to leave Chanworth out of the story, how far back has all this gone? The Minsters first appear in various ways in the 78th centuries. Wrecton, interestingly, the Biddles excavations found underlying the church a hall, which doesn't look very much as though it is one of the halls that we know so well from the great hall complexes. Only if it was found, unfortunately, but it looks as though this is one of those cases where a Minster is a conversion of an existing hall complex. So that does push it back, well back into the 7th century, maybe to a point close, quite close to the date of the Horde. The place upon which I want to concentrate here is this, with the stipple, a stretch of flat gravel terrace between the witch door crossing, the Tame Trent confluence, going up to here near Barton under Meadwood where the road and the Trent run more or less parallel. Because I think that the accumulating evidence suggests that this is a place of great importance that it has, here or to, not been properly recognised. We know it's to create a stark background very well, thanks to this splendid project. There are remarkable neolithic monuments, including this extraordinary sunburst feature, which may have remained visible in the form of shallow pits and also the multi-centric timber henge nearby, which is important for reasons I'll come to in a moment. So there's a strong neolithic background to this area. Here is a map of that area, there's the street, there's the Trent, this is the Alluvium, so the important area is here, so there are the neolithic curses, the sunburst monument, the henge, another henge type monument there, lots of Bronze Age barrows. So an interesting field names, Arlo field there, River Barrow maybe, certainly something Barrow, and that one right next to the henge, spill pits, which appears to mean either speech pits or games pits, both of which would be appropriate to other things that we know about assembly sites in this period. And right at the heart of this is the well-known Anglo-Saxon settlement of Cathol. It's tending to see this as an ordinary settlement because its material culture is very poor, but after all that's what you get, the material culture of the actual halls is almost non-existent, likewise even the evering, I think that's not the criteria by which we should be measuring it. What we have at Cathol is a multi-phase site. One phase of which, though, when you tease it out, appears to conform to the rectilinear planning that we can now be seeing widely in 7th and 8th century England, where the building is conforming to what in most cases, but most of them are much further east, is a grid of 15-foot squares which seems to work here. The form that they allow for the overall complex is not as regular as the great hall complexes and some of the others. If this were in Norfolk or Lincolnshire it would not be particularly surprising. Here in Staffordshire it is unique, and I think one needs to recognise the singularity of this place for what it is where it is. In some ways it's like an eastern English settlement transported into the Trent Valley. The other thing that the plans of this site often don't show, but I think that's the most important feature, is this prehistoric barrow here. Now this appears to be partly upstanding on the edge of the Trent, and I think probably what we have here is a complex that's actually formed facing that barrow to the backdrop against the river. It's a quite large building, though not on the scale of the Great Pools. John Hines' recent re-analysis on radiocarbon dates produces two dates which are relevant to the formal phase, both of which are calibrated for in the range of about 660. Here we've got a site that's pretty close to the date of the hall. In my recent book I suggested that this was part of the wider ceremonial landscape, but now there's more to say. I'm grateful to Susie Blake for drawing my attention to a recent important excavation by Phoenix Consulting, which makes two important contributions, one at the northern end of the complex and the other at the south. This is the area at the southern end, where there are prehistoric ditches and enclosures, but also that which is interpreted as a pair of enclosures, but in fact it's clearly a pair of large buildings. There they are, and in particular that one I think is pretty recognisable as the one end of one of the double annexed halls that are so characteristic of the hall complexes. It's not a small one, but that I think is what it is, and if you look for example at the itchington site, this hall there, that is what we have got there. At the north end of the complex there is this, and other of these many Bronze Age barrows, this time enclosed with anirreclinial enclosure. Now this in fact is 11th century, it's much later, it's got pottery dating, but I think that's still very relevant because what it suggests is that the habit of assembly on this site, if that's what this indicates, is a bit hard to see. Clearly what we've got here is a prehistoric monument that's being developed or accentuated in some way, but this is still happening at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period and maybe is a hint at a good long continuing life of this complex. So what have we got? We've got the road in the river, we've got the Iluvium, the Meadowland, we've got the gravel terrace, the Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments. We've also there got a small iron age hill fort, we've got the Anglo-Saxon features, and these are all features that can be very widely paralleled in a range of known high status residential and assembly sites. Just to rattle through some of them on the upper Thames ancient, later a minister in one of these places in this Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry, an area of gravel terrace facing a broad expanse of Iluvium Meadowland on the Thames. Likewise, the Dragon of Southern Courtney side is at the same sort of topography, and the same points we've made about this skull in relation to Wrenbilsham. Once again, this strip of riverine land with rich meadowland, Ross Faith and Debbie Bannum in their recent book on Anglo-Saxon farms and farming emphasised the pastoral aspect and how much you would expect high status activities to take place near land that can produce hair. Assembling around the Roman Road and prehistoric monuments. This is the example from the Dorset Downs, the colophon in the Durham manuscript, which says that Provost Galger was in the Bishop's Tent in the assembly in 970, just there. Other documented assemblies in charter attestations, the Roman Road and the Wall Barrow with its Anglo-Saxon execution burials. I think that the point is that we shouldn't think in terms of assembly sites, we should think in terms of assembly zones, areas within which recurrent activities take place, people keep on coming back, building on them, using them and developing them in different ways. Likewise, here, in the Portley site, there is the Hall complex. The name indicates that it is a southern tomb of Abingdon, a minster where there is a royal charter attestation, and this is supposed to be working out for it, it was married, a 7th century cemetery of Milton, just there. This is a zone on the low-lying land of the Thames. The same site here, showing the importance of this prehistoric background, you get this time and time again, we've already seen examples of this with the halls there earlier, something featured buildings against a backdrop of prehistoric monuments. The way in which some of the hall complexes present themselves with multiple phases of hall groups, often two or three phases, which in a case like this one at Sprostom, are sprayed awkwardly over the site, a bit like a camping site, and come back to the point about tents. People keep on coming back, they build halls which are grand but quite short lifespan structures, they go and people come back and use the site again, and that surely is what we're seeing in the case of the cat home area. And then the hill forts, less common but there are some cases where hill forts are used either as the sites or as the backdrops to important assemblies, as in the case greatly as discussed by Ryan LaValle. So to be quite honest, if we're looking for criteria for identifying an important area of recurrence assembly and royal activity, it's hard to think of a box that this complex doesn't tick. It really does get them all, and I think that we are looking at what must have been a very, very significant place of assembly, maybe even it's not too rash to suggest possibly the main central area in the Mercy and Heartland. And note that Stafford is not actually in it. Well of course it's undocumented, and it would be undocumented because we've got hardly any Mercy in document. Or is it? One of the earliest Mercy charters is this grant to Breeden by Arthur Redden-Mercier, issued in his curriculum, interesting word, in the vequus which is called Tom Toon. Now all we can infer from the place named Tom Toon is that it's a toon on the River Tain. It's sometimes been suggested this is Tamworth, but I think there's no reason whatsoever to suppose it is Tamworth. A toon is a toon and a worth is a worth, and all we can say is that both of these places were on the Tain. So this is a royal vequus somewhere on the River Tain, and in terms of certainty, that's as far as we can get, but we can perhaps speculate a bit more. This is a very early toon name, and I think it's about the second or third toon place name to be recorded. Actually toon names relating to river names, you might think they're very common, they aren't that common, there's a handful of them, but there aren't that many. Now sometimes the toon is just any old place along the river it seems, but a few of them have a rather more distinctive geography where the toon named after the river is at its confluence with a larger river. So here is Frankton on seven, the place name means the toon on the throne, but actually it's really more close to the seven, likewise Framillow there, where the throne leads into the sevens. That's one example of a river toon name, which is at the confluence. Tom Satter, of course, has a people name, has a Will Satter, it just occurred to me to have a look at Wilton, given that it's a toon with a similar sort of formation. A sort of formation in history, even though I'll record it later. I mean there is Wilton at the confluence of the river Wiley with the Nader. Now let us just suppose, for the sake of argument, that Tom toon occupied a similar location on the Tame, and that's where it would be, just facing Catacombe. So although one can't prove that, I think that one can make a suggestion, at least a plausible conjecture, that this assembly of Heathred, where he had his cubiculum, was somewhere very close to the complex that I've just been describing. So how does that place the horn in relation to the Mercy of Heartland? It wasn't put somewhere up here. It was put here, which was outside this intensively marked zone, but of course it was closer to the main west-east road, and as several people have said today, it's significant near this major crossroads is probably very important. Different sorts of assembly to no doubt happened at different times and different places, and as others have said, there are other place names in this area which might point to assembly activities. The place to which, really, the horn relates to anything unless it's named Castle is, of course, letter Catum, and that's where the, here again, Devil Hook's map, which we've already seen, actually the other one shows it better, doesn't it? There is the mystery of the relationship between letter Catum and Lichfield. Lichfield first appears in the life of Wilfred, where, which says that King Wilfred gave to Wilfred, or had given to him, the Episcopal seat of Lichfield, which was very well prepared, paratus already, to be the seat either by him or any other bishop he chooses. Bishop just needs to just put a walk-in and sit down at his desk, it seems, and what exactly does that mean? But in fact that was just as well because Wilfred didn't want, he gave it to somebody else as a consolation prize for not getting another seat that Wilfred did want. But what we could infer from that is that Lichfield was there and in some way prepared to be in Episcopal seat in the 660s. We then go to the Welsh source, which survives in a late manuscript, as Barbara York commented in the book, it is a late manuscript, which refers to the raid which didn't spare the bishop and book-holding monks at Tyre Lutgoed, and at least I think one could probably fairly infer that there is an old established tradition of that place. The use of the word Kyre, almost certainly, has to be referring to letter H and not to Lichfield, because Lichfield is neither a Roman wall placed nor an Iron Age hill fort, though there has recently been an excavation of a sub-Roman, very interesting sub-Roman building in Lichfield, but that's about it. So there is a tradition of a time when perhaps a wall was an ecclesiastical centre, and I wonder whether, which may be thinking of some reorientation, perhaps happening around the time of the deposition of the horde, may be connected with the relocation of the seat of Lichfield, may be connected to the next generation with greater emphasis on the area up here. So may be the horde is deposited at a time when actually this area is changing, if one would draw a map of this sort for, let's say, circa 620, rather than circa 680, maybe we see something different. Once again, as in all of this, we are groping in the dark and from various possible rejections, but I hope that what I've said at least puts a little bit more possible context to the world in which the horde was deposited.