The Normans were a relatively short-lived cultural and political phenomenon. They emerged early in the tenth century and had disappeared off the map by the mid-thirteenth century. Yet in that time they had conquered England, southern Italy and Sicily, and had established outposts in north Africa and in the Levant. Having traced the formation of the Duchy of Normandy, Trevor Rowley draws on the latest archaeological and historical evidence to examine how the Normans were able to conquer and to dominate significant parts of Europe. In particular he looks at their achievements in England and Italy and their claim to a permanent legacy, as witnessed in feudalism, in castles, churches and settlement and in place-names. But equally he examines why such an energetic people disappeared so quickly from the political stage. The reality is that, even within this short time-span, the Normans changed as time and place dictated from Norse invaders to Frankish crusaders to Byzantine monarchs to Feudal overlords. In the end their contribution to medieval culture was largely as a catalyst for other, older traditions.
Author
Trevor Rowley is Dean of Degrees and an Emeritus Fellow of Kellogg College, University of Oxford, England. Trevor Rowley was educated at University College, London and Linacre College, Oxford. Although originally trained as a geographer, he moved his academic interests into landscape history and archaeology and promoted a flourishing programme of teaching, fieldwork, research and publication in these areas based in the Department for Continuing Education. He was for several years Honorary Secretary of the Council for British Archaeology and was a founding member of the Professional Institute of Field Archaeologists. He was closely involved with Rescue excavation, directing work along the line of the M40, in Dorchester on Thames and on Thames Valley gravel sites. For many years he directed a training excavation for continuing education students at Middleton Stoney in Oxfordshire. He was appointed Staff Tutor in Archaeology and Local Studies in the Department for Continuing Education (then the Delegacy for Extra-Mural Studies) in 1969, and until his retirement in September 2000 was the longest serving academic in Rewley House. In 1990 he was appointed Director of Public Programmes; he was twice Acting Director of the department. In addition to directing Public Programmes for over a decade he directed the Oxford-Florida Programme at Christ Church and established a national professional archaeology programme based at Rewley House. As Director of Public Programmes he was responsible for significant expansion of the Public Programme. He was a founding Fellow of Kellogg College and was Senior Tutor in 1993/4 and Vice President in 1994/5. He continues to teach regularly for OUDCE’s weekly class and certificate programme and summer schools as well as for Stanford in Oxford. He is the external examiner for the Historic Landscape Studies programme at the University of Wales Newport and is also a Vice-President of the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society. He has published extensively and his books include: The Shropshire Landscape( 1972); Landscape Archaeology (1974) with M. Aston; Villages in the Landscape (1978); The High Middle Ages (1984); The Landscape of the Welsh Marches (1986); Norman England (1997); The Normans (1999) and The 20th Century English Landscape (2006). He is currently working on A History of Oxford for Carnegie Publishing and a number of other major landscape history initiatives.
