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Book by Christopher Snyder
#1
Can I please have oppinions on this book?

"Sub-Roman Britain (AD 400-600),a Gazetteer of Sites"
Snyder,Christopher

Thanks

Conal
Conal Moran

Do or do not, there is no try!
Yoda
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#2
Quote:Can I please have oppinions on this book?
Reviewed in a journal called Arthuriana (vol. 8.2, 1998, pp.142f.) by Jeremy duQ. Adams, of the Southern Methodist University. Hope this helps.
Quote:Christopher Snyder's gazetteer of British sites inhabited during the Arthurian era will be welcomed by Arthurians at several levels of expertise and research orientation; it will probably prove most useful to the informed amateur traveler, but will also serve the serious scholar specializing in other fields as a reliable checklist for rapid reference. Although far from exhaustive, its authors gift for the concise entry makes it a genuine asset.
This book opens with a brief (pp. 6-13) but thoughtful discussion of the nature of archeological evidence available for this period of maximum transition. Part II, four fifths of the whole, consists of more than a hundred entries from five regions of Roman Britain, classified by Snyder as the East, the Southwest (the densest, with twenty-five entries), Wales, the Midlands (only twelve entries), and the North. The longer entries (such as South Cadbury and Tintagel) each occupy on the average a full, two-column, atlas-sized page. On South Cadbury Castle, Snyder offers his readers an eighteen-item bibliography, most of it by Leslie Alcock, precisely cited in thirteen endnotes. That entry surveys with commendable dispassion the issue of that sites identification with Camelot, from John Leland to Alcock and Ashe. Unfortunately, the ramparts are cited as examples of “murrus [sic] gallicus” construction, one of the infrequent misspellings in this carefully prepared edition. Would that the editors' care with typography had been matched by a modicum of imagination in visual design!
Tintagel, the subject of Snyder's 1994 Emory Ph.D dissertation, is treated more richly. Eight authors (Ian Burrow, Kenneth Dark, C.D. Morris, Jacqueline Nowakowski, Oliver Padel, C.A.R. Radford, Michael Swanton, Charles Thomas) figure in the bibliography, and Snyder's presentation of current theories (monastic center, royal fortress, long-distance trading port) is remarkably even-handed.
The numerous inevitable omissions from this selective list are occasionally regrettable. One misses some reference to the much-visited and somewhat controversial Chedworth villa, the latest wing of which has been claimed as late Roman. The excellent discussion of Late-Roman, Romano-British, and barely Roman Celtic evidence from Silchester, which Snyder sees as remaining the center of a 'Saxon free zone' well into the seventh century, makes all the more disappointing the lack of [p.143] reference to parallel evidence from nearby Dorchester-on-Thames, which Sonia Chadwick Hawes has proposed as the possible seat of a late Romano-British prince supported by Saxon mercenaries (see her Chapter 6 in “Archaeology of the Oxford Region”, eds. Grace Briggs, Jean Cook, and Trevor Rowley: Oxford U.P., 1986).
It is pleasant to reflect that the rapid progress of British archeology makes an occasional assessment of Snyder’s no longer accurate (certainly through no fault of his own). The most striking instance may well be the announcement in the summer of 1997 of the spectacular discovery of a hoard of fifth-century gold coins in Sussex, which requires emendation of his remark on p. 7 of the prolegomenous Part I that 'Britain betrays a unique pattern of hoarding, for gold coins are almost nonexistent, while silver and bronze boards are quite numerous/ It is safe to suppose that the author will amend that judgment soon in subsequent editions of this very handy compendium.
posted by Duncan B Campbell
https://ninth-legion.blogspot.com/
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#3
Thanks, very useful indeed :-)
Conal Moran

Do or do not, there is no try!
Yoda
Reply


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