ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a new material approach to the Norman Conquest, which has often been defined by its documentary narrative and conceptualised as a singular event at a national scale. It is argued here that the Conquest should instead be understood as a process with distinct regional variations, which were profoundly affected by localised socio-cultural dynamics and material traditions. Focusing on case studies of churches, landscapes and commemoration drawn from northern England, this chapter shows how both Normans and natives used material culture to tap into regionally valued modes and places of power, and to position themselves in the eventual Anglo-Norman society that emerged. It demonstrates that material culture provides a much more complex and nuanced story of the process of conquest than the primarily antagonistic account told in the chronicles, and highlights the necessity of regionally and locally contextualised archaeologies of ‘national’ and ‘international’ events.
