For much of the early medieval period, our knowledge is derived from material culture.
In England, the withdrawal of Roman troops in A.D. 410 took with it much of the infrastructure around reading and writing that had built up during the time of Empire. Apart from the writings of Gildas in the 5th century, which paints a pretty bleak picture, there are no contemporary sources until the mission of Pope Gregory the Great, through Bishop Augustine, which arrived on these shores in A.D. 597.
Hence the ‘Dark Ages’.
It is more difficult to see what was going on because we don’t have the wealth of written sources that built up in other historical periods.
More difficult - but not impossible.
The early medieval period, or early Anglo-Saxon period as it is referred to in the UK, is striking visible archaeologically thanks to the practice of furnished burial. When laying their dead to rest, mourners (who could afford to) dressed them in their finest clothes and laid objects with them to accompany them on their journey to whatever ‘afterlife’ they believed in.
This was a practice that had long been going on in England, but it intensified particularly during the 6th century and continued until the final quarter of the 8th century - long after the Christianization that was long thought to have put an end to furnished burial.
Furnished burial has taught us a tremendous amount about early medieval England that we simply wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Look at these collections, for example, discovered in a cemetery excavation in Kent. We see different styles of necklaces, perhaps showing changes in fashion or access to different materials and ideas. Comparison of the brooches reveals different influences on this settlement and the way that their clothing styles developed over time. See, for example, how the image on the LEFT contains a strand of beads attached to clothing by two pins, whereas the image on the RIGHT is of a necklace as we might traditionally conceive of one. Additionally, while both items of jewellery contain multicoloured beads, one is made up of silver rings and silver sheet embossed pendants, whilst the other displays circular pendants made from gold. There wasn’t the same differentiation between silver and gold that we have today: the necklace on the RIGHT was no less precious for being made in silver. So what might the different styles have meant to the wearers?
Without the so-called ‘relic-boxes’, or ‘workboxes’, photographed LEFT, we might not know about the remarkable transformation that women’s social contribution went through in the 7th century. Possession of these cylindrical copper-alloy boxes, often suspended on a chain and filled with scraps of fabric, needles, or animal bones, was not open to all women. Deposited in graves alongside a prescribed set of items that included amulets (pierced animal teeth, Roman or Merovingian coins) and exotic materials (amethyst beads, cowrie shells), they seem to have designated a particular role for these women. What this role was, however, remains something of a mystery.
These two pendants (LEFT) and brooches (RIGHT) demonstrate the skilled craftspeople that worked during this period. Each item is decorated with garnets inlaid into specially-prepared cells of gold, whilst the brooches also contain inlaid glass and shell alongside gold filigree work. Remember: this was a time before the availability of technology for magnification, and these items were small. Without these archaeological discoveries, we might have been tempted to think that the skills required for such artefact production left with the Romans.
These finds connect us directly with the past - and have its stories to tell.
This is exactly what Rebecca Stott has done in her fantastic book, Dark Earth.
You know Arthur and Merlin. Meet Isla and Blue.
AD 500. An island in the Thames. Isla has a secret: she has learned to make swords at a time when even entering a forge is forbidden to women. Her sister, Blue, has a secret, too: at low tide on the night of each new moon, she visits the bones of the mud woman, drowned for not holding her tongue. When Isla’s secret is discovered, there is nowhere for the sisters to hide, except across the water in the walled ghost city, Londinum, But trouble pursues them, even into this haunted place…
From the blurb
I shared a little about Dark Earth in my 2024 ‘Book of the Year’ post, which you can read at the link below.
In her historical endnote, Rebecca Stott reveals that the story of Dark Earth was inspired by an artefact she saw in the Museum of London:
I spotted a single frame hanging on the walls of the white corridor. It was so small that I had missed it the first time. Inside the frame there was a rusty, broken brooch, about an inch in diameter, the kind of brooch that Saxon women used to hold up their dresses, pinned at the shoulder. The sign underneath the frame said that a Saxon woman had dropped her brooch as she walked across the fallen roof tiles of a derelict bathhouse on the north bank of the Thames. It would have been lost forever if an archaeologist had not found it while digging the site of the bathhouse in 1968.
pp.339-340
What is remarkable about this is that the Roman capital city, Londinium, was thought to have been abandoned shortly after the withdrawal of Roman troops in A.D. 410 and only reoccupied some time in the later 6th century. That’s what the title hints at: a layer of ‘dark earth’ is archaeologically visible across the former city, evidence of its abandonment.
So what was a Saxon brooch doing there?
The find tells us that the city wasn’t quite as abandoned as we once thought. It doesn’t overturn all of the evidence; the ‘dark earth’ is, of course, still there and is an important piece of evidence in the history of the city. But there were, clearly, people interacting with the crumbling Imperial ruins in a way we might not have thought they were.
This is not part of a burial, as the finds above were. It’s a casual loss, dropped as someone moved through the city. Just as we might lose something today while we’re out and about.
If the city was abandoned, what was someone doing walking through it?
We will, of course, never truly know.
And that’s where historical fiction can come in.
The beauty of working with a time period that is so historically ephemeral is that there is a large amount of creative license available to writers. Rebecca Stott does not at any point claim to be writing history and her book should not be read as history.
But as an exercise in imagining the circumstances around the brooch’s loss, it creates a vivid picture of what life might have been like on the banks of the Thames in those early medieval years, full of change, uncertainty, and a clash of individuals vying for power.
Using an object as a starting point means that Dark Earth brings us tangibly close to those who populated this dark and murky time in a way that I’ve not come across before. Isla and Blue, the protagonists, feel real, their historical setting rich and realistic.
For me, at least, this is how we can bring to life a historical period that can feel inaccessible at best, and fantastical at worst. It’s an excellent model for aspiring writers and a thrilling read for historical fiction enthusiasts.
Do you ever read the historical endnote at the end of a fiction book?
What do you think about the approach of writing historical fiction from objects? Have you read Dark Earth, or are you tempted to? Join us in the comments, and make sure to share this with anyone you think would enjoy reading Dark Earth too!
I loved Dark Earth! I'm a grad student stuck in the early Middle Ages, so it was a perfect fiction read for me. I'm a firm believer in the power of historical fiction being used to capture people's attention and get them interested in history. I also think it can be used to teach history, if done well. I love the end notes of a historical fiction novel that goes into detail on what was fact and where they took creative liberty. I homeschool and one of the best ways I've seen my children learn is through 'living books' where time periods, biographies, even natural science come to life through story rather than a dry text book. They absorb so much more when they can enter into a narrative and experience what they're learning through the eyes of another. Grad school has taught me the importance of analytical and scientific methods to research, but I think the imagination is just as powerful a tool needed to bring history to back to life!
I really enjoyed Dark Earth. I was lucky enough to be taught by Rebecca at UEA, where she offered a module on historical fiction to students on the MA in Creative Writing. I would have said her best book was her memoir In the Days of Rain, which she was working on at the time, but Dark Earth in its own way is equally good. To imagine a whole past world based on such limited evidence and make your readers believe in it is a great achievement.