LONDON – Often referred to as the world’s most famous medieval artwork, the Bayeux Tapestry is both an intricate illustration of the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England in 1066 and a historical enigma. Several mysteries still surround the dazzling embroidery, including the identity of its maker, but new research may have found another piece of the puzzle. The 68.3-meter-long (224-foot-long) tapestry depicts William, Duke of Normandy, and his army killing Harold Godwinson, or Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, at the Battle of Hastings. While the embroidery’s portrayal of Harold pulling an arrow out of his eye may be a matter of debate, a team of archaeologists says it has confirmed a different detail from Harold’s tapestry scenes: the location of his residence in Bosham, England. The team used a combination of traditional and modern techniques to establish the site of the king’s palace, which appears twice in the artwork — once when Harold is feasting in an extravagant hall before setting sail to France and the second time on his return prior to the battle. The researchers reported their findings January 9 in The Antiquaries Journal.
“We often just think of (the Bayeux Tapestry) as a piece of artwork, but of course, it’s depicting events and places. And to be able to, with some certainty, locate one of those places from the tapestry on the ground in real life is really exciting,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Duncan Wright, a senior lecturer in medieval archaeology at Newcastle University in Newcastle, England. Archaeological remains from this period are hard to come by, said study coauthor Oliver Creighton, a professor of archaeology at England’s University of Exeter. The houses, even for those of high status, were made of timber, and the wood would not have survived. Also, the Norman Conquest likely eradicated most evidence of its predecessors, Creighton added. The discovery not only sheds light on the final Anglo-Saxon king, it also provides a rare window into a key turning point in history for England, researchers said. Bosham is named on the Bayeux Tapestry, but the exact location of Harold’s residence depicted on the embroidery has not been clear. Over the years, archaeologists had a hunch that a large house built in the 17th century, the focal point of the present-day village that exists there, sat on top of where the palace once stood. To confirm this location, researchers used a range of methods, such as analysis of standing structures within the current house, ground-penetrating radar to scan and map any buried remains of the medieval palace, and a review of evidence from a 2006 excavation inside the house and the garden. “People often think of archaeology as being all about digging, all about excavation,” Creighton said. “… But it’s a jigsaw puzzle. It uses lots and lots of different sources.” The surveys found two previously unidentified medieval buildings within the house and garden, but a vital clue that helped to date the site and identify the palace was a latrine, or a toilet, discovered in the 2006 excavation. Researchers overlooked the feature at the time; it’s only in the past decade that archaeologists have begun to see a pattern of toilets being placed in elite residences during the Anglo-Saxon period, Wright said.
Another indicator was the site’s proximity to a church. Elite Anglo-Saxon residences were often built near churches, according to the study, and the site of Harold’s palace was next to an important Anglo-Saxon church in Bosham. “These residences and churches together (around the year of 1000 ) are where the aristocracy start to kind of invest in their own kind of displays. They’re showing off to each other, really,” said Wright, who is the principal investigator of the Where Power Lies project, a systematic examination of power centers between the late Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods. “In England, loads of these places then become manor houses or castles … but their origins and how they emerge is pretty poorly understood,” he added. “And so the main aim of the project was really trying to sort of characterize the archaeology of these really early phases of these places starting out and how they evolve.”
archaeologists-uncover-lost-home-of-englands-last-anglo-saxon-king
www.nation.com.pk
NEWS WIRE
2025-02-05 00:23:38