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Cruciform brooches were large and decorative items of jewellery, frequently used to pin together women's garments in pre-Christian northwest Europe. Characterised by the strange bestial visages that project from the feet of these dress and cloak fasteners, cruciform brooches were especially common in eastern England during the 5th and 6th centuries AD. For this reason, archaeologists have long associated them with those shadowy tribal originators of the English: the Angles of the Migration period. This book provides a multifaceted, holistic and contextual analysis of more than 2,000 Anglo-Saxon cruciform brooches. It offers a critical examination of identity in Early Medieval society, suggesting that the idea of being Anglian in post-Roman Britain was not a primordial, tribal identity transplanted from northern Germany, but was at least partly forged through the repeated, prevalent use of dress and material culture. Additionally, the particular women that were buried with cruciform brooches, and indeed their very funerals, played an important role in the process. These ideas are explored through a new typology and an updated chronology for cruciform brooches, alongside considerations of their production, exchange and use. The author also examines their geographical distribution through time and their most common archaeological contexts: the inhumation and cremation cemeteries of early Anglo-Saxon England. Dr Toby Martin is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University.

Brooches --- Anglo-Saxons --- Saxons --- Breastpins --- Broaches (Brooches) --- Pins (Brooches) --- Jewelry --- Fibulas (Jewelry) --- History --- Social life and customs. --- Anglo-Saxon Society. --- Archaeological Contexts. --- Archaeology. --- Chronicle. --- Cruciform Brooches. --- Dress Fasteners. --- Early Medieval England. --- Identity. --- Material Culture. --- Migration Period. --- Tribal Originators. --- Typology.

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"While traditional studies of dress and jewellery have tended to focus purely on reconstruction or descriptions of style, chronology and typology, the social context of costume is now a major research area in archaeology. This refocusing is largely a result of the close relationship between dress and three currently popular topics: identity, bodies and material culture. Not only does dress constitute an important means by which people integrate and segregate to form group identities, but interactions between objects and bodies, quintessentially illustrated by dress, can also form the basis of much wider symbolic systems. Consequently, archaeological understandings of clothing shed light on some of the fundamental aspects of society, hence our intentionally unconditional title. Dress and Society illustrates the range of current archaeological approaches to dress using a number of case studies drawn from prehistoric to post-medieval Europe. Individually, each chapter makes a strong contribution in its own field whether through the discussion of new evidence or new approaches to classic material. Presenting the eight papers together creates a strong argument for a theoretically informed and integrated approach to dress as a specific category of archaeological evidence, emphasising that the study of dress not only draws openly on other disciplines, but is also a sub-discipline in its own right. However, rather than delimiting dress to a specialist area of research we seek to promote it as fundamental to any holistic archaeological understanding of past societies"--Publisher description.

Clothing and dress --- Apparel --- Clothes --- Clothing --- Clothing and dress, Primitive --- Dress --- Dressing (Clothing) --- Garments --- Beauty, Personal --- Manners and customs --- Fashion --- Undressing --- History --- Social aspects --- Europe --- Antiquities. --- Identity (Psychology) --- Human body --- Material culture --- Social archaeology --- Archaeology --- Culture --- Folklore --- Technology --- Body, Human --- Human beings --- Body image --- Human anatomy --- Human physiology --- Mind and body --- Personal identity --- Personality --- Self --- Ego (Psychology) --- Individuality --- Methodology