O G S Crawford Lecture 2025

The 2025 Lecture will be held in the Cinema, Hampshire Record Office, Winchester at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday 19th November.

'Professor Duncan Sayer - The early Anglo-Saxon Migrations; the implications of aDNA, isotopes and material culture.'

The nature, extent and even the existence of an early medieval migration has been debated by archaeologists for 50 years or more. Recent scholarship (Gretzinger et al 2022, Speidel et al 2025) have used ancient DNA to provide a new perspective on this position, and the genetic legacy of migration is undeniable. 75% of the ancient DNA from 5th-7th century cemeteries on the east cost of Britain is from continental northwestern Europe. Even more fascinating, this genetic legacy reveals a complex past, with individuals from Kent and Dorest, either side of the ‘early-Anglo-Saxon’ cultural zone showing ancestries that include west African origins (Sayer et al 2025, Foody et at 2025). This lecture will explore that data, supported by isotopic evidence, to look at the nature of migration, it will draw on the evidence of individuals, and regional differences to propose importance mechanisms for cultural change, including family and kinship networks which build new ways of doing things, establish or confirmed elite networks, and integrated Western British and Continental European communities within a dynamic and international culture of the early Middle Ages.

Professor Duncan Sayer is an archaeologist at the University of Lancashire. He led the excavations of the early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Oakington Cambridgeshire, Cammingham Lincolnshire, revisited the Northern gate house at Ribchester Roman Fort, Lancashire, and now directs the excavation of large early Anglo-Cemetery in east Kent. He is a collaborative scholar and has worked with DNA labs in Germany and the UK to bring new perspective to the understanding of early medieval Britian. He has featured on BBC2’s Digging for Britian and he is a regular speaker at the York Festival of Ideas. His publications include Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, community, kinship and family (2020 MUP) as well as journals including Nature, Nature Communications and Antiquity.

The lecture is free and the doors open at 7pm. Places can be booked EITHER via TicketSource OR by ringing Philippa Harrap on 02392 355331.