3 p.m. Early Career Lectures from University of Leicester and University College Galway: (Abstracts at https://www.royalarchinst.org/2019-2020-lecture-programme)

• 'Fantastic Beasts and a Bovine Resurrection’ by Dr Emily Banfield (University of Leicester)

• '"On Monday last, a curious relic was discovered”: archaeology in the nineteenth-century provincial press' by Heather Keeble (University of Leicester)

• 'Material Culture and Castle Studies: is there a methodological problem?' by Dr Karen Dempsey (University College Galway)

5 p.m. 'Hydraulic Borders? The Ebb and Flow of[Wat’s Dyke and Offa’s Dyke'
by Professor Howard Williams
This talk presents new thinking and observations on the archaeology of Britain’s largest early medieval monuments – Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke. I show how these linear earthworks interacted with water on multiple scales and in contrasting fashions. From their placement in relation to watersheds, streams and rivers, to their landscape contexts of wetlands, estuaries and seas, the monuments have much in common, but also significant hydraulic differences in their design and placement. In understanding the military, territorial, economic and ideological functions and significance of these middle Anglo-Saxon (late 8th/early 9th-century) ‘Mercian frontier works’, I argue we must approach them with ‘fluid’, not land-locked, perspectives.