Staff profile

I am currently employed as a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, assisting Professor Sarah Semple with the advancement of new research projects. This is particularly focused on developing a research agenda, post-excavation analyses and new fieldwork at Yeavering in Northumberland, the site of an early medieval palace complex first excavated by Brian Hope-Taylor in the 1950s.

The monumental and landscape context of political assembly in the Danelaw comprised the focus of my PhD as part of The Assembly Project, an international project that examined the relationship between assembly practices and the territorial development of polities in early medieval north-west Europe. This work has latterly been developed into a co-authored article concerning the re-use of barrows in the Journal of the North Atlantic and as part of a forthcoming monograph. In addition to this I have held various roles in the commercial sector over the past decade, spanning field archaeology, buildings archaeology and consultancy, with particular emphasis on GIS and survey (earthwork, architectural, LiDAR, geophysics and photogrammetry).

Research Groups

Landscapes of Complex Societies Research Group

North East Research Group

Research Projects

Yeavering: A Palace in its Landscape

The Assembly Project

Sockburn Project, Co Durham

Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture

People and Place. The Making of the Kingdom of Northumbria

• Political economy (territoriality of jurisdictions, management of common resources)
• Governance (materiality of assembly places, practices and related activities, rural vs urban governance structures and processes)
• Archaeology, text and oral tradition (cadastral surveys; legal culture; historical cartography; place names; folklore)
• Cultic activity (cultic practices and their material corollaries; political and economic relations)
• Structuring of space (vernacular and ecclesiastical architecture; settlement layout; settlement patterning)
• Experimental political landscapes

• Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture
• People and Place: The Making of the Kingdom of Northumbria AD 300-800
• Sockburn Project, Co Durham
• The Assembly Project
• Worked in Stone: Completing the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture
• Yeavering: A Palace in its Landscape

Chapter in book

• Skinner, A.T. (2020). The Danelaw. In Negotiating the North. Assemblies in the Political Framework of Europe. Iversen, F., Mehler, N., Sanmark, A. & Semple, S.

Edited Sources, Research Data Sets and Databases

• Skinner, A.T. (2014). The Kadhima Project: Archaeological Survey and Excavation of an Early Islamic Landscape on Kuwait Bay. Preliminary Report on the Fifth Season. National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (Kuwait).
• Blair, A. & Skinner, A.T. (2012). The Kadhima Project: Archaeological Survey and Excavation of an Early Islamic Landscape on Kuwait Bay. Preliminary Report on the Third Season. National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (Kuwait).
• Skinner, A.T. & Fitton, T. (2010). The Kadhima Project: Archaeological Survey and Excavation of an Early Islamic Landscape on Kuwait Bay. Preliminary Report on the First Season. National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (Kuwait).

Journal Article

• Skinner, A.T. & Semple, S. (2016). Assembly Mounds in the Danelaw: Place-name and Archaeological Evidence in the Historic Landscape. Journal of the North Atlantic 8: 115-133.

Newspaper/Magazine Article

• Skinner, A.T. (2010). Framing Yeavering: Views from the lost palace. Archaeology in Northumberland (20): 41.

Report

• Semple, S., Skinner, A.T. & Buchanan, B. (2019). Yeavering: A Palace in its Landscape: Resource Assessment. Durham University and The Gefrin Trust.