Vital to our understanding of the history of the Welsh language and the early centuries of Christianity in the British Isles and Ireland, the inscribed and sculpted stones of early medieval Wales represent the largest body of evidence for Welsh history in the period between the Romans and the arrival of the Normans. Over the last half century a lively scholarship on inscribed stones from all over Wales has thrived, along with the related study of the early ‘Celtic Church’. During these years twenty new monuments from south-west Wales itself have been discovered. Nevertheless, the Welsh material remains pretty well marginal to larger discussions of the insular world in archaeological, palaeographic, historical and art-historical scholarship, and, despite the presence of important sites such as Llandeilo Fawr and St Davids, the stone sculpture of south-west Wales has had very little research. This excellent book does a great deal to help fill in the gaps.
Firstly, it will be indispensable to scholars of inscriptions and stone sculpture in its meticulous organization and thorough discussion of the known examples. The second volume of what began as a revision of Nash-Williams Reference Nash-Williams1950, it is modelled on the British Academy’s Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture but with additional emphasis on inscriptions and language. Nancy Edwards, together with Patrick Sims-Williams and Helen McKee, provides in the book’s introductory chapters analytical discussions, accompanied with clear, useful tables, figures and diagrams on all aspects of the ogam and Latin inscriptions. Sims-Williams’s chapter on the Brittonic and Irish inscriptions is particularly useful, teamed with the contextual, epigraphic and palaeographic chapters on inscriptions by Edwards, and McKee’s section on the later inscriptions. Edwards also provides full art-historical, typological analyses of the sculptures as a group, laying out the various forms of the monuments, their types of ornament and iconography, and regional and local groups, generously illustrated with drawings, tables and maps. The catalogue entries consistently refer back to these analyses and the chronologies.
Edwards has also been careful to emphasize context to a greater degree than has been done in the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, and this enhances the book’s usefulness for archaeologists, historians and art historians. Specifically contextual chapters – such as Chapter 1 on the historical and archaeological background and Chapter 6 on distribution, context and function – are augmented with contextual sections in other chapters, including short discussions of literacy, gender and audience. Throughout the eleven introductory chapters a consistent effort is made to place the Welsh material in relation to that around the Irish Sea and farther afield in Anglo-Saxon England, Pictland and on the continent. Furthermore, Heather Jackson has contributed a chapter on geological sources and selection of stone, as well as brief sections on stone type in each catalogue entry, all of which will be helpful to specialists across the disciplines.
The need for a comprehensive modern book on the sculpture and inscriptions from south-west Wales is made clear in Chapter 2 on earlier research. Edwards surveys the literature and documentation and gives special attention to the antiquarian Edward Lhuyd’s important early systematic recording in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. She continues from there through most of the twentieth century, with the work of Richard Fenton, Samuel Rush Meyrick, J O Westwood, John Rhys, J Romilly Allen, George Eyre Evans, R A S Macalister, V E Nash-Williams, Kenneth Jackson and others. Pointing out scholarship’s continuing emphasis on early inscribed stones over the last forty years, Edwards summarizes advances in the understanding of ogam inscriptions, Brittonic and Old Irish linguistics and phonology, epigraphy and archaeology, which hold promise for the study of inscriptions from south-west Wales. She rightfully emphasizes the lack of research on the south-western inscriptions and stone sculpture, citing three ‘notable exceptions’. Little is said about art-historical studies of the sculpted stone’s decoration and iconography because few have been published, although Edwards presents in Chapter 7 an interesting and succinct discussion of the seemingly unpromising iconography of cross symbols which comprise the main iconographic category. Moreover, she has done much analysis of the interlace patterns and other types of ornament, presented here with typological diagrams and drawings from individual examples.
The catalogue entries are consistently clear and well illustrated, with drawings and good-quality photographs. They present valuable information, with dates where possible, on the movements of the stones, often around various local farmhouses and yards, as well as geological identification of the stone type. The inscriptions are discussed in detail, some with important revision to earlier interpretations. Decoration and forms are related to the broader early medieval context, in particular to Irish material, and there is succinct, careful description of the physical context. Each piece is given a date range, usually one or two centuries, and where appropriate dating by others is given. Pertinent studies are cited within the text and a list of references ends the entry.
It is hard to find fault with this volume, which will surely take its place as a standard reference on early medieval Britain and Ireland. Since its publication a few important articles and books have appeared which could not have been included in the comprehensive bibliography, for example, Williams Reference Williams2006 and Jankulak and Wooding Reference Jankulak and Wooding2007. The years of labour which Professor Edwards and her colleagues have put into the volume will be much appreciated by all who research the early Middle Ages of Wales and beyond.
