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: CPAT
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Offa’s Dyke: built by multiple kings?
The first radiocarbon dates ever obtained from Offa’s Dyke have revealed new evidence to suggest that its construction may have begun as much as 200 years before the reign of the Mercian king that gave it his name, and continued for years after his death.
As most of the 285km monument – the longest linear earthwork in the UK – is Scheduled, opportunities to examine its deeper construction layers had previously been limited. But when the section near Chirk was vandalised last summer, the resulting rescue excavation allowed Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust to take nine samples from two areas some 20m apart.
The dyke has traditionally been associated with Offa of Mercia (r.757796), thanks to a single reference by the 9th-century Welsh monk Asser, who wrote in his Life of King Alfred that ‘there was in Mercia, in fairly recent times, a certain vigorous king called Offa, who terrified all the neighbouring kings and provinces around him, and who had a great dyke built between Wales and Mercia from sea to sea’. The Trust’s new findings suggest a longer and more complex history for the earthwork, however.
Analysis of a layer of redeposited turf within the bank, thought to represent an early construction phase, yielded a date of c.AD 541-651, while samples from contexts immediately above and below this were dated to c.430-643 and c.475-652. The lower levels of the other sampled section produced a much later date, however, ranging between AD 887 and 1019.
‘These new dates throw the association with Offa into question, indicating that the dyke was a long-term project by several rulers of Mercia, rather than the work of a single king,’ said Paul Belford, Director of Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust. ‘We now have a much more interesting story about the people living on both sides of this border – it was clearly a contested landscape for a much longer period than was previously thought, likely reflecting the after-effects of a post-Roman rebalancing of power.’
a contested landscape for a much longer
‘Offa was undoubtedly a very important king, who certainly consolidated this border and would have wanted to be associated with it, but we should see be associated with it, but we should see
ABOVE Not by Offa alone? Radiocarbon dates from Offa’s Dyke suggest that the famous earthwork may have developed over the reigns of multiple Mercian monarchs rather than solely that of the 8th-century ruler to whom it is traditionally credited. BELOW A silver penny of Offa of Mercia (r.757-796), found in Surrey.
the dyke’s construction as a piecemeal development rather than a single act,’ he added. ‘We now need to look at the dating evidence in more detail; there is much more research to be done before we can say with any confidence who built this monument, and why, and when. Given its protected status it is unlikely that permission will be granted to take more samples, but we hope that with all these new possibilities opening up, we might be able to put together a research project that could look into it.’
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: Surrey
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December 2013 |
June 2014 |
