A Study of the Relationship between Style I Art and Socio-Political Change in Early Mediaeval Europe

Description

This work examines the use of the multivariate Principal Components Analysis technique to determine how design motifs might be grouped and distributed, and expressed in graphical and geographically distributive formats. The results from such an experiment are here used to define and explain the evolution, geographically and culturally, of Style I ornament. A limited range of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic motifs are plotted across eastern England, and suggestions made concerning the nature of exchange between contemporary folk groupings. The period of utilisation of these motifs is then discussed in relation to prevailing cultural indices drawn from archaeological, historical and ethnographic evidence. Their distribution is considered in a broader European perspective, and suggestions are made to explain the nature of some of these distributions. A model is finally proposed which seeks to relate the emergence of Style I symbolism with the contemporary evolution of a form of pagan kingship in north-west Europe.