Mellitus was the first bishop of London in the Saxon period, the third Archbishop of Canterbury, and a member of the Gregorian mission sent to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism to Christianity. He arrived in 601 AD with a group of clergy sent to augment the mission, and was consecrated as Bishop of London in 604. Mellitus was the recipient of a famous letter from Pope Gregory I known as the Epistola ad Mellitum, preserved in a later work by the medieval chronicler Bede, which suggested the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons be undertaken gradually, integrating pagan rituals and customs. In 610, Mellitus returned to Italy to attend a council of bishops, and returned to England bearing papal letters to some of the missionaries.
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group that inhabited much of what is now England in the Early Middle Ages, and spoke Old English. They traced their origins to Germanic settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. Although the details are not clear, their cultural identity developed out of the interaction of these settlers with the pre-existing Romano-British culture. Over time, most of the people of what is now southern, central, northern and eastern England came to identify as Anglo-Saxon and speak Old English. Danish and Norman invasions later changed the situation significantly, but their language and political structures are the direct predecessors of the medieval Kingdom of England, and the Middle English language. Although the modern English language owes somewhat less than 26% of its words to Old English, this includes the vast majority of words used in everyday speech.
Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians ruled Mercia in the English Midlands from 911 until her death. She was the eldest daughter of Alfred the Great, king of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, and his wife Ealhswith.
Eorpwald; also Erpenwald or Earpwald,, succeeded his father Rædwald as King of the East Angles. Eorpwald was a member of the East Anglian dynasty known as the Wuffingas, named after the semi-historical king Wuffa.
Martin Oswald Hugh Carver, FSA, Hon FSA Scot, is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York, England, director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project and a leading exponent of new methods in excavation and survey. He specialises in the archaeology of early Medieval Europe. He has an international reputation for his excavations at Sutton Hoo, on behalf of the British Museum and the Society of Antiquaries and at the Pictish monastery at Portmahomack Tarbat, Easter Ross, Scotland. He has undertaken archaeological research in England, Scotland, France, Italy and Algeria.
Helen Mary Geake is a British archaeologist and small finds specialist. She was one of the key members of Channel 4's long-running archaeology series Time Team.
Sarah Rosamund Irvine Foot, is an English Anglican priest and early medieval historian. She has been Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford since 2007, and Dean of Christ Church, Oxford since 2023.
Barbara Yorke FRHistS FSA is a historian of Anglo-Saxon England, specialising in many subtopics, including 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism. She is currently emeritus professor of early Medieval history at the University of Winchester, and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is an honorary professor of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London.
The settlement of Great Britain by diverse Germanic peoples, who eventually developed a common cultural identity as Anglo-Saxons, changed the language and culture of most of what became England from Romano-British to Germanic. This process principally occurred from the mid-fifth to early seventh centuries, following the end of Roman rule in Britain around the year 410. The settlement was followed by the establishment of the Heptarchy, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the south and east of Britain, later followed by the rest of modern England, and the south-east of modern Scotland. The exact nature of this change is a topic of on-going research. Questions remain about the scale, timing and nature of the settlements, and also about what happened to the previous residents of what is now England.
Martin Biddle, is a British archaeologist and academic. He is an emeritus fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His work was important in the development of medieval and post-medieval archaeology in Great Britain.
St Oswald's Priory was founded by Æthelflæd, daughter of Alfred the Great, and her husband Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia, in the late 880s or the 890s. It appears to have been an exact copy of the Old Minster, Winchester It is a Grade I listed building.
Michael James Swanton is a British historian, linguist, archaeologist and literary critic, specialising in the Anglo-Saxon period and its Old English literature.
Helena Francisca Hamerow, is an American archaeologist, best known for her work on the archeology of early medieval communities in Northwestern Europe. She is Professor of Early Medieval archaeology and former Head of the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford.
Dame Rosemary Jean Cramp, was a British archaeologist and academic specialising in the Anglo-Saxons. She was the first female professor appointed at Durham University and was Professor of Archaeology from 1971 to 1990. She served as president of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 2001 to 2004.
William John Blair, is an English historian, archaeologist, and academic, who specialises in Anglo-Saxon England. He is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford. He gave the 2013 Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford.
Julian Daryl Richards is a British archaeologist and academic. He works at the University of York where he is Professor of Archaeology, director of its Centre for Digital Heritage, and director of the Archaeology Data Service (ADS). He is also co-director of the academic journal Internet Archaeology, and contributed to the founding of The White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities. His work focuses on the archaeological applications of information technology. He has participated in excavations at Cottam, Cowlam, Burdale, Wharram Percy, and Heath Wood barrow cemetery.
Susan Marian Oosthuizen is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. She specialises in examining the origins and development of early medieval and medieval landscapes, and in the evolution of systems of governance.
Vera Ivy Evison was a British archaeologist and academic, who specialed in Post-Roman Britain and early-Medieval England. She was Professor of Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Tania Marguerite Dickinson is a British archaeologist specialising in early-medieval Britain. Dickinson undertook undergraduate study at St. Anne's College, Oxford and postgraduate study at the Institute of Archaeology (Oxford). Her doctoral thesis, titled The Anglo-Saxon burial sites of the upper Thames region, and their bearing on the history of Wessex, circa AD 400-700, was supervised by Sonia Chadwick Hawkes and Christopher Hawkes.
Penelope Walton Rogers was a British archaeologist and expert in archaeological textiles.
