Staff Profile:Dr Gabor Thomas

Name:

Dr Gabor Thomas

Job Title:

Associate Professor

Responsibilities:

• Social Archaeology Research Group Leader;
• SAGES and Archaeology Library Officer;
• Joint Organiser (with Aleks Pluskowski) of Archaeology Seminar Series;
• Archaeology representative on Reading Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies (GCMS)

Areas of Interest:

• Early medieval artefacts, with a particular interest in ornamental metalwork and dress accessories
• Early medieval art and iconography
• Cultural identity in Viking-age England
• The archaeology of early medieval rural settlements
• The archaeology of the early medieval church and monasticism

PhD Supervision:

I have supervised two PhD students to completion, both AHRC funded: Alex Knox: 'The Sacred in the Secular: Investigating Anglo-Saxon Ritual Action and Belief Systems through a Holistic Study of Settlements and Cemeteries in the 7th-9th Centuries AD (currently Post-doctoral Research Assistant on the Lyminge Project) and Rosie Weetch: 'The Brooch in Context: Costume, Culture and Identity in Late Anglo-Saxon England' (Project Curator of Early Medieval Collections at the British Museum).

I am currently joint/lead supervisor for three doctoral students, all of whom have been successful in gaining AHRC funding: Zoe Knapp 'A Zooarchaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Conversion' (with Dr Aleks Pluskowski), Simon Maslin: 'The Ecology of the Anglo-Saxon Conversion: A Multi-Proxy Geoarchaeology of the Anglo-Saxon Monastic Landscape of Lyminge, Kent' (with Prof Martin Bell), and Matthew Austin: Centrality in Early England: the development of central places in early Anglo-Saxon England and their North-West European parallels AD 400-700.

I am happy to discuss proposals for postgraduate research in areas concerned with the material culture, landscape and settlement archaeology of the early medieval period. Please contact Dr Thomas.

Research groups / Centres:

Social Archaeology Research Group

Profile:

I joined Reading as lecturer of Early Medieval Archaeology in 2007 having previously been based at the department of Classical & Archaeological Studies at the University of Kent 2003-7. Prior to my first academic appointment, I worked as Research Officer of the Sussex Archaeological Society (2000-2003) and Finds Liaison Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Suffolk (1999-2000).

I have two strands to my research. The first involves the large-scale excavation of Anglo-Saxon settlements preserved under modern village cores in south east England. This methodology is being used to generate new insights into how daily life in rural communities responded to major cultural transitions of the early medieval era, a paramount focus being the process of Christianisation mediated through the establishment of monastic institutions. My previous project at Bishopstone, Sussex (2003-5), was published by the Council for British Archaeology in 2010, and I have since shifted my attention to the Anglo-Saxon royal centre of Lyminge, Kent, the current phase of which (2012-15) is supported by a major grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council: www.lymingearchaeology.org

Hear me and Lyminge project staff talk about the exciting discoveries made in the latest campaign of excavation in 2013

Alongside my fieldwork, I have maintained a long-standing interest in early medieval artefact studies with a particular focus on ornamented dress accessories of the later Anglo-Saxon and Viking periods, the subject of my original PhD research at the Institute of Archaeology, London. Much of my published work in this area exploits mass data generated by the Portable Antiquities Scheme to explore the link between dress and cultural identity, in particular how new identities were forged in England and the wider North Sea World under the influence of culture contact, long-distance interaction and evolving socio-political structures over the 8th-11th centuries A.D.

Academic affiliations:

I am a fellow of the Society of the Antiquaries of London (2009), a member of the Sachsensymposion (2012-) and currently sit on the Research Panel of the Staffordshire Hoard. I have previously sat on the Councils for the Society of Medieval Archaeology, the Medieval Settlement Research Group and the Medieval Finds Research Group.

Publications:

Y

Jump to: 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008

Number of items: 11.

2013

• Thomas, G. (2013) Life before the minster: the social dynamics of monastic foundation at Anglo-Saxon Lyminge, Kent. Antiquaries Journal, 93. pp. 109-145. ISSN 1758-5309 doi: 10.1017/S0003581513000206
• Knox, A. and Thomas, G. (2013) Excavating Anglo-Saxon Lyminge. In: Harrington, D. and Carr, J. (eds.) Lyminge: A History. Lyminge Historical Society Publication, Lyminge. (In Press)
• Thomas, G. (2013) A casket fit for a West Saxon courtier: the Plumpton Hoard and its place in the minor arts of Late Anglo-Saxon England. In: Reynolds, A. and Webster, L. (eds.) Early Medieval Art and Archaeology in the Northern World: Studies in Honour of James Graham-Campbell. The Northern world (58). Brill, Leiden, pp. 425-458. ISBN 9789004235038

2012

• Thomas, G. (2012) Carolingian culture in the North Sea world: rethinking the cultural dynamics of personal adornment in Viking age England. European Journal of Archaeology, 15 (3). pp. 486-518. ISSN 1741-2722 doi: 10.1179/1461957112Y.0000000018
• Thomas, G. (2012) The prehistory of medieval farms and villages. In: Christie, N. and Stamper, P. (eds.) Medieval Rural Settlement: Britain and Ireland, AD 800-1600. Windgather Press, Macclesfield, pp. 43-62. ISBN 9781905119424
• Thomas, G. and Knox, A. (2012) A window on Christianisation: transformation at Anglo-Saxon Lyminge, Kent, England. Antiquity Bulletin, 86 (334). ISSN 0003-598X

2011

• Thomas, G. (2011) Overview: craft production and technology. In: Hamerow, H., Hinton, D.A. and Crawford, S. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. Oxford University Press, pp. 405-422. ISBN 9780199212149

2010

• Thomas, G. (2010) The later Anglo-Saxon settlement at Bishopstone. A downland manor in the making. Research Report (RR163). Council for British Archaeology, York, pp280. ISBN 9781902771830

2009

• Thomas, G. (2009) The strap-ends and hooked-tags. In: Evans, D. H. and Loveluck, C. (eds.) Life and Economy at Early Medieval Flixborough, c. AD 600-1000: The Artefact Evidence: Excavations at Flixborough. Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp534. ISBN 9781842173107
• Thomas, G. (2009) The symbolic lives of Late Anglo-Saxon settlements: A timber structure and iron hoard from Bishopstone, East Sussex. The Archaeological Journal, 165. pp. 334-398. (2008)

2008

• Thomas, G., Payne, N. and Okasha, O. (2008) Re-evaluating base-metal artefacts: an inscribed lead strap-end from Crewkerne, Somerset. Anglo-Saxon England, 37. pp. 173-181. ISSN 0263-6751 doi: DOI:10.1017/S0263675109990196

This list was generated on Tue Apr 22 16:32:48 2014 BST.

Earlier Publications

Thomas, G. (2006) Refining the biography of a market-place tenement: a recent excavation and archaeological interpretative survey at The Marlipins, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, Sussex Archaeological Collections 143, 173-204.

Thomas, G. (2006) Reflections on a 9th-century Northumbrian metalworking tradition: a silver hoard from Poppleton, North Yorkshire Medieval Archaeology 50, 143-164.

Thomas, G. (2005) Brightness in a time of dark": the production of secular ornamental metalwork in 9^th century Northumbria, in De Re Metallica: the Uses of Metal in the Middle Ages (Ed. R. Bork) AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, Volume 4, Ashgate Press, 31-48.

Thomas, G. (2005) In the Shadow of Rookery Hill: Excavations at Bishopstone, East Sussex, Current Archaeology vol.196, 184-190.

Thomas, G. (2003). An Early Medieval Insular Buckle, in: Hardy, A., Dodd, & G. D. Keevill, Aelfrics Abbey: Excavations at Eynsham Abbey, Oxfordshire, 1989-1992, Thames Valley Landscapes Monograph 16, Oxford Archaeology, 251-54.

Thomas, G. (2003) Hamsey near Lewes, East Sussex: the implications of recent finds of Late Anglo-Saxon metalwork for its importance in the Pre-Conquest period, Sussex Archaeological Collections 139, 123-132.

Thomas, G. (2001) Strap-Ends and the Identification of Regional Patterns in the Production and Circulation of Ornamental Metalwork in Late Anglo-Saxon and Viking-Age Britain, in Pattern and Purpose in Insular Art, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Insular Art held at the National Museum & Gallery, Cardiff 3-6 September 1998 (Eds. M. Redknap, N. Edwards, S. Youngs, A. Lane & J. Knight), Oxbow Books, Oxford, 39-49.

Thomas, G. (2001) Vikings in the City: A Ringerike-style buckle and related artefacts from the London, London Archaeologist 9, no. 8, 228-230.

Thomas, G. (2000) Anglo-Scandinavian metalwork from the Danelaw: Exploring Social and Cultural Interaction, in: Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Eds. D.M. Hadley J. D. Richards), Studies in the Early Middle Ages, Brepols, Turnhout, 237-255.

Qualifications:

BA (London), MA (London), Ph.D. (London)