Chronology and Time

This chapter uses material culture, textual sources, and associated social practices to explore how cycles of time and memory influenced the development of coastal societies and their expressions of identity in northwest Europe, between c. 500 and 1050. There are three themes. First, how memories of earlier material culture traditions and social practices were used to create new identities in eastern and western maritime Britain, between c. 450 and 600. Second, how cycles of maritime orientation on the part of coastal societies in England and Denmark varied between c. 650 and 1000, despite situation next to the sea, maritime resources, and communications. And third, how social practices, representation, and memory were used in major port towns of Flanders and England, in emulative and competitive relations between seafarer-merchant-patricians and older landed elites, between c. 900 and 1050.