Building blocks: structural contexts and carved stones

Abstract

Early medieval carved stones can be many things: landscape monuments, churchyard monuments or memorials, grave markers, architectural elements usually in churches or public commemorative statements to name a few (not exclusive) functions. However, there are also hints that carved stones could be part of settlement micro-landscapes built into or next to buildings or forts. This paper looks at a range of archaeological contexts for the use of early medieval carved stones in structural (non-church related) contexts in Britain. This small group of monuments includes both the more ‘public’ structural monuments on display and ‘hidden’ monuments built into structures and not visible. These monuments are explored in this paper in terms of memory, movement and performance – where engagement could be both habitual behaviour and part of specific events of social practice and memory. The spatial and depositional dimensions will be explored and how routine, even possibly mundane, engagement with stones in these settings may offer a different perspective on how monuments can be part of the process of memorisation and selective forgetting.