Early Medieval Sculpture in Stone

Multidisciplinary scholarship showcasing innovative methods for working with sculptural material - with essays ranging from Merovingian funerary art to Old English and Scandinavian runic inscriptions.

The stone sculptures surviving across Europe from the early medieval period, such as the Ruthwell Cross, are an exceptional resource for understanding the communities that created them. Found at waysides, in architectural settings, and graveyards, standing crosses, inscribed stones, rune stones and grave-markers are just some of the highly varied forms that attest to the art, technologies and beliefs of both Christian and non-Christian societies. The new approaches to sculpture studies found in this volume range from rethinking late antique influences to exploring how sculpture was used and encountered in a variety of political and cultural contexts; contributors also draw out the dialogues inherent in form and decoration within and across temporal and national boundaries. These fresh perspectives on sculpture and nature, iconographies, narrative art and the power of sculpture in multi-media environments, alongside studies of sourcing, production and the portability of carved stone, and the afterlives of sculptures, reflect the vibrancy of current research in this area and the way in which it now integrates digital, experimental, scientific and spatial methods.

The introduction and chapters 26 and 27 are available as Open Access under the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND. This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AH/R003556/1] and the British Academy [AQ2324\240012].

Chapter 17 is Open Access under the Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND with funding from the Swedish National Heritage Board.