Overview: craft production and technology

A growing battery of analytical techniques now exists for determining the chemical or elemental composition of an object to source its raw materials. The developing relationship between craft specialization and political centralization can be traced with some clarity during the mid Saxon period. The tenth and eleventh centuries presented the beginnings of a radical shift in the location of craft production from the countryside into the urban sphere. Workshops in the service of the late Anglo-Saxon Church were no less innovative than urban ones supplying the lay market. The ninth-century plan...

A growing battery of analytical techniques now exists for determining the chemical or elemental composition of an object to source its raw materials. The developing relationship between craft specialization and political centralization can be traced with some clarity during the mid Saxon period. The tenth and eleventh centuries presented the beginnings of a radical shift in the location of craft production from the countryside into the urban sphere. Workshops in the service of the late Anglo-Saxon Church were no less innovative than urban ones supplying the lay market. The ninth-century plan of the Carolingian monastery of St. Gall suggests that the more formalized layout of reformed institutions may have had a constraining effect on the spatial setting of craftwork activity, in contrast to the more generalized spread seen on mid Saxon sites.