ABSTRACT
Assemblies varied in size and purpose. There is striking evidence presented here for early and collective origins. Assembly traditions relating to dispute settlement are almost certainly ancient and took many forms. The thing has many northern European cognates and at the root of all are some basic principles and ideas that demonstrate little ethnic association. In time, the thing was exported to new areas by the Norse, to Iceland, Greenland, Scotland and the Faroe Islands, the Danelaw, Ireland and to the Isle of Man. Thing organisation was thus far from stable although some rural unitary systems appear to have had long lives. The movement of elites and kings around their territories seems to have stimulated new architectural forms connected with public performance and the ancient past. Chris Gosden has described archaeology as ‘a perilous, but necessary search for the things that bind and divide human groups locally and globally’.
