The Origins of Political Order and the Anglo-Saxon State

Abstract

How do ordered political societies come about – and what can archaeology offer to the debate? New research by a team at the UCL Institute of Archaeology is investigating the origins of English governance by exploring the impact on landscape of legal structures, law and order, and places of political assembly. Far from being shadowy and elusive, we argue that there is much that land-scape archaeology can provide to understand the ways in which pre-modern societies were governed.