history of anglo-saxon england - Sources
There is a wide range of source material that covers Anglo-Saxon England. The main narrative sources are Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A range of laws are available back to the reign of Aethelbert of Kent, though they become far more numerous after the reign of Alfred the Great. Charters (usually land grants) provide us with a wide range of evidence across the period. Other written sources include hagiography, letters (often between churchmen, but sometimes between political leaders e.g. Charlemagne and Offa) and poetry.

Complementing the written sources is a wide range of non-literary evidence. Archaeology has provided much food for thought in early Medieval scholarship in the last 50 years. More traditionally the study of place names has been used to demonstrate social and political trends in settlement, while linguistics, most relevantly the contribution of Old English, Old Norse and Celtic to modern English, gives clues to wider social and cultural trends.

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