This volume records the excavation of a former medieval parish church and graveyard with earlier Anglo-Saxon and Viking finds that suggests an early monastic settlement site. Excavations at the coastal headland site of Auldhame, East Lothian in Scotland, began in 2005 where earthworks, cropmarks, ‘ruins’ and skeletal material had been recovered over a long period. Historical evidence for a site of some importance had already been established by Hamilton’s fieldwork in the 1940s, which included the recording of a cist burial and the outline of a church building, depicted on sketch plans reproduced here. Between the seventh and ninth centuries, a religious community settled, probably revering the Anglian saint Balthere (or Baldred). A ninth- to tenth-century grave revealed a burial with Norse grave goods, which have been tentatively related to a Viking raid sometime before ad 941. Continuing in use as a parish church from the twelfth century, the site became a private estate chapel before finally going out of use in the seventeenth century.
The excavations revealed ditched enclosures, buildings and hearths, burials, pits and post-holes. Artefacts include an Anglo-Saxon cloisonné mount and fragments of a glass inkwell, perhaps indicating text production at the site. Radiocarbon dating establishes a chronology of the site from the seventh century comprising burials and settlement activity around a timber structure 1, ceasing around the late ninth century. A stone-footed building (Building 2) was enlarged during the mid eighth to ninth century and a significant Viking burial from this phase (SK 752) was recovered alongside five skeletons where life-ending trauma is visible on the bones. During phase 2 (ad 1000–1200), a timber nave was added to the building and burial evidently re-started. A rebuilding of the chapel in phase 3 (ad 1200–1400) saw increasing use of the graveyard until falling into disuse again sometime after 1400. The estate passed into the hands of the Otterburns, who rebuilt and established an estate chapel here in the early 1500s.
The excavation report is laid out in a clear and logical manner, with the first chapter covering the context of work and an outline of the excavation itself. Chapters 2–6 then address the material evidence including chronology, artefacts and osteological analyses of over 200 inhumations. The final discussion proposes a plausible and compelling context for the tradition of St Balthere, who is usually associated with Tyninghame: Woolf proposes Auldhame as ‘old Tynughame’, pointing out that Lindisfarne was, in fact, established at the time of Cuthbert’s birth, but not by him personally. This concluding section also examines the Anglian monastery, the parish church and Woolf’s study of the Viking-period activity and its significance.
The principal Viking grave was fully equipped with horse furnishings, clothing and weapons including spurs and a spear. Woolf notes the sacking of Tyninghame by Olaf Guthfrithson, of Dublin and Northumbria, shortly before his death in ad 941, but is rightly cautious of assigning this high-status grave to the Viking king (although perhaps he was associated with the expedition). Isotopic analysis from the osteological discussion was tantalising, allowing for broad similarities between Scotland and Scandinavia – there is more work to be done here.
The volume is of high quality, with useful contextual maps and plans, and is well illustrated throughout with thorough and useful appendices, bibliography and index. It also makes a significant contribution to the growing corpus of work on Early Medieval monastic settlements, and will be valuable to those studying the adoption and reinvention of such sites for Viking burials, the development of the parish church, and continuity and reuse by an emerging gentry class in the Post-Medieval period.
