A meeting of peoples: PAS metalwork, material, and documentary evidence for cultural exchange in Anglo-Saxon Shropshire and the Mercian West Midlands

Abstract

This paper analyses the intractable and fragmented history of Shropshire from c.500–1050. The written sources for this period are extremely poor in Shropshire’s case but are now being enriched by excavations and, more widely, by PAS finds and sculpture. The concept of ‘persistent places’ in the landscape is used to pursue key sites through specific episodes in Anglo-Saxon Shropshire’s history that can be established by reference to the wider historical events within the emerging kingdoms of England. Through this mechanism, a more detailed picture emerges of how Mercian Shropshire gradually came together so that by the eleventh century, the new shire had been created as a stable entity with rich cultural relationships in the face of external threats from its surrounding polities: Welsh, English and Viking.