ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Wallingford before its emergence as a central place in the middle Ages. The origins of the name Wallingford are interrogated and this forms the backdrop to the first significant archaeology of the Wallingford site, namely the early, pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon cemetery outside the burh. In Wallingford's case, design and even outlook seemingly hark back to exploitation and contestation of the river, its ford and its terraces in both the Bronze Age and Iron Age: the Thames has frequently formed both a channel of communication and a demarcation of territorial space between groups. Elements of the prehistoric setting are reconstructed and then evidence for Roman activity at and around Wallingford addressed. There are several possible etymologies which may be suggested for the place-name Wallingford, all of them Old English. The location of the associated Anglo-Saxon settlement remains a matter for speculation, although the likelihood is that some form of occupation lies within a hundred metres of the cemetery.
