Offa’s Dyke Journal: Volume 5 for 2023

Volume 5 of Offa’s Dyke Journal, a venue for the publication of high-quality research on the archaeology, history and heritage of frontiers and borderlands focusing on the Anglo-Welsh border.

This open-access academic venture has established itself as a distinctive venue fostering new research and public understanding regarding the complex global story of walls, barriers and frontier zones from prehistoric and ancient societies to the medieval and modern world. In doing so, the Offa’s Dyke Journal does not only present reliable peer-reviewed academic research in an accessible venue, it also critiques and combats both misinformation and disinformation shared about this aspect of the human past in popular culture and political discourse in today’s world. Promoting an informed and nuanced conversation about their stories and legacies and the positive dimensions of linear monuments is thus a key aspiration of the Offa’s Dyke Journal as both an academic and open-access resource. In doing so, we can learn about the human past, recognise how these material traces inform contemporary identities and society, and both recognise their legacies as well as celebrate their redundancies.

Linear Pasts and Presents: Researching Dykes, Frontiers and Borderlands - Howard Williams Insights from a Recent Workshop on Walls, Borders, and Frontier Zones in the Ancient and the Contemporary World - Gideon Shelach-Lavi, Tal Ulus and Gideon Avni The Olger Dyke: An Early Roman Iron Age Linear Earthwork in Denmark - Lisbeth Christensen The Current State of Research on Early Medieval Earthworks in East Central and Southeastern Europe - Florin Curta The Serpent Ramparts in Ukraine: Fifty Years of Archaeological Research - Florin Curta 'Cofiwn i Facsen Wledig/We remember Macsen the Emperor:' Frontiers, Romans, and Welsh Identity - Roger H. White The Linear Earthworks of Cornwall: What if They Were Early Medieval? - Erik Grigg Rethinking Offa's Dyke as a Hydraulic Frontier Work - Howard Williams Evaluating the Early Medieval Portable Antiquities Scheme Data for the Welsh Marches - Pauline Clarke Treaties, Frontiers and Borderlands: The Making and Unmaking of Mercian Border Traditions - Morn Capper Border Culture and Picturing the Dyke - Dan Llywelyn Hall, Gillian Clarke, Gladys Mary Coles, Menna Elfyn, Oliver Lomax and Robert Minhinnick Commentaries Reflections on Walking with Offa - Diana Baur The Past in the Time of Covid: The Art of Dan Llywelyn Hall - John G. Swogger Art on the March - Howard Williams,

Linear Pasts and Presents: Researching Dykes, Frontiers and Borderlands – Howard Williams

Insights from a Recent Workshop on Walls, Borders, and Frontier Zones in the Ancient and the Contemporary World – Gideon Shelach-Lavi, Tal Ulus and Gideon Avni

The Olger Dyke: An Early Roman Iron Age Linear Earthwork in Denmark – Lisbeth Christensen

The Current State of Research on Early Medieval Earthworks in East Central and Southeastern Europe – Florin Curta

The Serpent Ramparts in Ukraine: Fifty Years of Archaeological Research – Florin Curta

‘Cofiwn i Facsen Wledig/We remember Macsen the Emperor:’ Frontiers, Romans, and Welsh Identity – Roger H. White

The Linear Earthworks of Cornwall: What if They Were Early Medieval? – Erik Grigg

Rethinking Offa’s Dyke as a Hydraulic Frontier Work – Howard Williams

Evaluating the Early Medieval Portable Antiquities Scheme Data for the Welsh Marches – Pauline Clarke

Treaties, Frontiers and Borderlands: The Making and Unmaking of Mercian Border Traditions – Morn Capper

Border Culture and Picturing the Dyke – Dan Llywelyn Hall, Gillian Clarke, Gladys Mary Coles, Menna Elfyn, Oliver Lomax and Robert Minhinnick

Commentaries

Reflections on Walking with Offa – Diana Baur

The Past in the Time of Covid: The Art of Dan Llywelyn Hall – John G. Swogger

Art on the March – Howard Williams

Howard Williams is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Chester and researches public archaeology and archaeologies of death and memory. He co-edits the Offa’s Dyke Journal and writes an academic blog: Archaeodeath.

• Edited by Howard Williams

‘This volume of eleven articles and three notes adds significantly to the corpus of knowledge about international examples of linear monuments and their interpretation, based on historic and recent excavations, and on our understanding of the period in which they may have been constructed. … This discussion is delivered by a diverse authorship and provides a very different perspective on how monuments and borderlands can be perceived by modern societies, irrespective of their historical integrity.’ – Tim Malim (2024): Archaeologia Cambrensis 173

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