The power of the past: materializing collective memory at early medieval lordly centres

The repurposing of earlier sites and monuments is an enduringly popular theme in early medieval archaeology, but in England it has attracted little interest among Late Saxon and early post-Conquest studies. From the tenth century, however, an increasingly prevalent pattern is discernible of secular lords locating their power centres in relation to earlier features. A variety of evidence for such correlations is presented here, demonstrating reuse as an explicit strategy of aspirant lords who developed their private complexes with reference to a wide range of prehistoric, Roman, and earlier medieval antecedents. It is argued that the tumultuous political conditions around the turn of the first millennium intensified elite engagement with material signatures of the past, which they curated in efforts to shape collective memory and buttress their authority.