Staff profile

I am currently employed as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, assisting Professor Sarah Semple with the advancement of new research projects. This is particularly focused on developing a research agenda, post-excavation analyses and new fieldwork at Yeavering in Northumberland, the site of an early medieval palace complex first excavated by Brian Hope-Taylor in the 1950s.

The monumental and landscape context of political assembly in the Danelaw comprised the focus of my PhD as part of The Assembly Project, an international project that examined the relationship between assembly practices and the territorial development of polities in early medieval north-west Europe. This work has latterly been developed into a co-authored article concerning the re-use of barrows in the Journal of the North Atlantic and as part of a forthcoming monograph. In addition to this I have held various roles in the commercial sector over the past decade, spanning field archaeology, buildings archaeology and consultancy, with particular emphasis on GIS and survey (earthwork, architectural, LiDAR, geophysics and photogrammetry).

Research Groups

Landscapes of Complex Societies Research Group

North East Research Group

Research Projects

Yeavering: A Palace in its Landscape

The Assembly Project

Sockburn Project, Co Durham

Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture

People and Place. The Making of the Kingdom of Northumbria

• Archaeology, text and oral tradition (cadastral surveys; legal culture; historical cartography; place names; folklore)
• Cultic activity (cultic practices and their material corollaries; political and economic relations)
• Experimental political landscapes
• Governance (materiality of assembly places, practices and related activities, rural vs urban governance structures and processes)
• Political economy (territoriality of jurisdictions, management of common resources)
• Structuring of space (vernacular and ecclesiastical architecture; settlement layout; settlement patterning)

Chapter in book

• Skinner, A. (2020). The Danelaw. In S. Semple, A. Sanmark, F. Iversen, & N. Mehler (Eds.), Negotiating the North: Meeting-Places in the Middle Ages in the North Sea Zone. Routledge

Journal Article

• Skinner, A., & Semple, S. (2016). Assembly Mounds in the Danelaw: Place-name and Archaeological Evidence in the Historic Landscape. Journal of the North Atlantic, 8, 115-133

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Skinner, A. (2014). The Kadhima Project: Archaeological Survey and Excavation of an Early Islamic Landscape on Kuwait Bay. Preliminary Report on the Fifth Season. [Dataset]
• Blair, A., & Skinner, A. (2012). The Kadhima Project: Archaeological Survey and Excavation of an Early Islamic Landscape on Kuwait Bay. Preliminary Report on the Third Season. [Dataset]
• Skinner, A., & Fitton, T. (2010). The Kadhima Project: Archaeological Survey and Excavation of an Early Islamic Landscape on Kuwait Bay. Preliminary Report on the First Season. [Dataset]

Other (Print)

• Skinner, A. (2010). Framing Yeavering: Views from the lost palace

Report

• Semple, S., Skinner, A., & Buchanan, B. (2019). Yeavering: A Palace in its Landscape: Resource Assessment. [No known commissioning body]