Audrey Meaney facts for kids
Audrey Lilian Meaney (born March 19, 1931 – died February 14, 2021) was an important archaeologist and historian. She was an expert in the study of Anglo-Saxon England, which is the history of early England. She wrote several books, including Gazetteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites (1964) and Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones (1981).
Her Life and Work
Audrey Meaney was born in England in 1931. She studied English at Oxford University. Later, in 1955, she went to Cambridge University for her PhD. Her research looked at how archaeological finds and old writings could help us understand Anglo-Saxon beliefs. This way of combining different types of evidence was very important in her work.
After finishing her PhD in 1959, Meaney moved to Australia. She taught English at the University of New England. In 1968, she joined Macquarie University in Sydney, where she taught until she retired in 1989. She managed to balance her work with raising her family. In 1984, she became the first professor from Macquarie University to be chosen as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Audrey Meaney helped shape the teaching programs at Macquarie University. She also worked to support women in academia and studied the role of women in Anglo-Saxon culture. She was a key person in starting groups for medieval studies in Sydney and across Australia and New Zealand.
One of her major books was A Gazetteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites, published in 1964. This book listed many early Anglo-Saxon burial places. Even while teaching in Australia, she often returned to the UK to take part in archaeological digs. In 1970, she helped publish a report on the excavation of two Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Winnall, England.
In the 1980s, Meaney started to focus more on old written texts. She developed her research on amulets and wrote many important articles about Anglo-Saxon medicine. Her work made her a leading expert on the history of early medicine in Western Europe.
Audrey Meaney was recognized for her contributions. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1977 and to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1984. After she retired, she moved back to Cambridge, England.
Her Impact
Audrey Meaney's retirement from Macquarie University was marked by a special issue of the journal Parergon in 1992. This issue, called Essays on Early England in Honour of Audrey Meaney, celebrated her work.
In 2010, a book titled Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited was published in her honor. This book was a collection of essays by archaeologists, showing their appreciation for her studies of Anglo-Saxon beliefs. The archaeologist Neil Price wrote in the book's introduction that much of what we know about Anglo-Saxon beliefs comes from Meaney's "monumental" (meaning very important and large) work. He noted that the book honored her many years of patiently exploring Anglo-Saxon ideas.
