Professor Helena Hamerow

Professor of Early Medieval Archaeology, Director of the Institute of Archaeology

+44 (0)1865 278245

helena.hamerow@arch.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests

The archaeology of northwest Europe from AD 400-1000; Early medieval rural settlements and economy; The archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England; Links between England and mainland Europe c 400-700.

Research Profile

Research activities

My research focuses on the archaeology of early medieval NW Europe. I am especially interested in the impact of lordship, monasteries and towns on rural producers and the agricultural economy. I am also interested in what female burials of the seventh century and reveal about the position of women in England and the Frankish world during the Conversion period.

I am PI of a major ERC-funded project, ‘Feeding Anglo-Saxon England. The Bioarchaeology of an Agricultural Revolution’ (‘FeedSax’; http://feedsax.arch.ox.ac.uk). Using preserved cereal grains, faunal remains, pollen and other data, FeedSax is tracing the emergence and spread of innovations that enabled medieval farmers to increase cereal yields and feed rapidly growing populations: systematic crop rotation, widespread adoption of the mouldboard plough, and low-input, extensive, cultivation.

I am also interested in the earliest stages of the formation of the kingdom of Wessex, whose origins lie in the Upper Thames Valley and have been involved in a range of fieldwork in this region (www.arch.ox.ac.uk/wessex).

I also co-Directed excavations, now concluded, at the Roman small town of Dorchester-on-Thames (www.arch.ox.ac.uk/DOT1) and am PI of the AHRC-funded Novum Inventorium Sepulchrale, an on-line database of Anglo-Saxon graves and grave-goods from Kent (https://sds.web.ox.ac.uk/novum-inventorium-sepulchrale).