دانلود کتاب The Framework of Anglo-Saxon History to A.D. 900

What were the systems of dating during the various stages of early English history and how accurate were the dates assigned to events? In this study, Kenneth Harrison discusses these fundamental questions which have long occupied and puzzled historians.
During the early Middle Ages there was no universal method of dating historical events, no framework about which everyone in Western Europe could agree. In their pagan days, the Anglo-Saxons reckoned time on a luni-solar calendar (which poses problems for the archaeologist). Later, although they did not invent the Christian era, much less the Julian calendar on which it is founded, they were the first to make use of it in charters and for the writing of history, and this reckoning by 'Annus Domini', based on attempts to calculate the festival of Easter by means of a luni-solar calendar, has now spread over much of the world. After a detailed examination of time-reckoning and Easter tables, Mr Harrison suggests ways in which Bede and the compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle were able to arrive at a series of dates and thus demonstrates the significant part played by Anglo-Saxons in the development of historical writing.
This lucidly-written account of complex technical problems will be of particular interest to Anglo-Saxon scholars, historians studying Irish and Welsh annals and continental sources, and to archaeologists of the period.