The Avon Valley in the fifth to mid-seventh centuries : contacts and coalescence in a frontier polity?
The study of bounded polities is dominated by research which focuses on those landscapes and those sites believed to lie at the territorial core, often overlooking the 'bounded' nature of these units. This research, in contrast, advocates that for a new perspective on the development of socio-political units, studies which concentrate on frontier zones should be prioritised. Consequently this thesis refocuses attention on the frontier zones between polities, proposing a methodology for working in and identifying frontier zones and promoting these areas as dynamic landscapes, integral to the emergence, development, and maintenance of socio-political units during the early medieval period. This methodology combines investigation of the distribution of distinct material culture, burial practices, and patterns of landscape use with an approach more frequently used by anthropologists ĂąÂÂ the identification of processes characteristic of frontier environments. The Avon Valley, the landscape through which the historically attested 7<sup>th</sup> century frontier between the Hwicce and Mercia ran, provides the ideal environment in which to explore the origins of early medieval polities. A dataset of 58 sites within
Tompkins, Abigail
The Avon Valley in the fifth to mid-seventh centuries : contacts and coalescence in a frontier polity?. The study of bounded polities is dominated by research which focuses on those landscapes and those sites believed to lie at the territorial core, often overlooking the 'bounded' nature of these units. This research, in contrast, advocates that for a new perspective on the development of socio-political units, studies which concentrate on frontier zones should be prioritised. Consequently this thesis refocuses attention on the frontier zones between polities, proposing a methodology for working in and identifying frontier zones and promoting these areas as dynamic landscapes, integral to the emergence, development, and maintenance of socio-political units during the early medieval period. This methodology combines investigation of the distribution of distinct material culture, burial practices, and patterns of landscape use with an approach more frequently used by anthropologists ĂąÂÂ the identification of processes characteristic of frontier environments. The Avon Valley, the landscape through which the historically attested 7<sup>th</sup> century frontier between the Hwicce and Mercia ran, provides the ideal environment in which to explore the origins of early medieval polities. A dataset of 58 sites within
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