Current Research Postgraduates
Miss Sira Dooley-Fairchild
Research Topic
Material Belief: A critical history of archaeological approaches to religion and religious change in Anglo-Saxon England.
Abstract
My Ph.D research aims to provide an historiographical analysis of past representations of the Anglo-Saxon Conversion. To this end, I am performing a critical reading of the antiquarian and archaeological studies of early medieval religious change in Britain. The Conversion is a topic with a long history, and one which is still being studied to this day. In the context of our current emphasis on the history of archaeology, this study aims to answer the following questions: how have scholars answered the question of "why convert"? What contemporary political and religious factors have been influential to past understandings of the Conversion? How have past representations influenced our view of this period? What has the relationship been between text and archaeology on this subject, and what is it currently?
