This paper advances understanding of rulership over the fifth to the ninth centuries AD, drawing upon a category of elite settlement from southern Britain known as the great hall complex. Guided by a practice-based conceptual framework, we connect these sites with the embodied regimens, rituals, habits, and activities through which rulership was constituted in the early medieval world. Harnessing recent expanded datasets, we generate insights in three key areas. First, by documenting the significant and sustained antecedent occupation attested at great hall sites, we reveal how rulers exploited the complex multiple pasts of these places to advance symbolic and worldly agendas. Second, we reframe understanding of hall construction as a strategy of elite legitimation by focusing attention on the agency of the skilled practitioners who created these innovative architectural statements and, in doing so, recognize these hitherto neglected specialists as ‘crafters’ of rulership. Third, we use proxies from recently investigated great hall complexes to reconstruct the networks of dependency and interaction which enmeshed these centres. A concluding comparative discussion of southern Britain and Scandinavia contributes shared perspectives on rulers’ residences as a prime arena for the orchestration and creative renewal of early medieval sovereignty.

本文借鉴了英国南部被称为大厅建筑群的一类精英聚居地，促进了对公元 5 至 9 世纪的统治的理解。在以实践为基础的概念框架的指导下，我们将这些遗址与中世纪早期统治制度形成的具体制度、仪式、习惯和活动联系起来。利用最近扩展的数据集，我们在三个关键领域产生了见解。首先，通过记录在大厅遗址证明的重要且持续的先行占领，我们揭示了统治者如何利用这些地方复杂的多重过去来推进象征性的和世俗的议程。第二，我们将大厅建设的理解重新定义为精英合法化策略，将注意力集中在创造这些创新建筑陈述的熟练从业者的代理上，并在这样做时将这些迄今为止被忽视的专家视为统治的“工匠”。第三，我们使用来自最近调查的大厅综合体的代理来重建这些中心的依赖和互动网络。对不列颠南部和斯堪的纳维亚半岛的总结性比较讨论提供了关于统治者住宅作为协调和创造性更新中世纪早期主权的主要场所的共同观点。我们使用来自最近调查的大厅综合体的代理来重建这些中心的依赖和互动网络。对不列颠南部和斯堪的纳维亚半岛的总结性比较讨论提供了关于统治者住宅作为协调和创造性更新中世纪早期主权的主要场所的共同观点。我们使用来自最近调查的大厅综合体的代理来重建这些中心的依赖和互动网络。对不列颠南部和斯堪的纳维亚半岛的总结性比较讨论提供了关于统治者住宅作为协调和创造性更新中世纪早期主权的主要场所的共同观点。