New Light on Literacy in Eighth-century East Anglia: a Runic Inscription from Baconsthorpe, Norfolk

An object inscribed with Anglo-Saxon runes recently found in East Anglia is tentatively identified as an artefact associated with the use of manuscripts: a page-holder or page-turner. The well-formed and elegant inscription allows us to identify a hitherto unrecognized runic graph in the Anglo-Saxon tradition as well as a previously unrecorded inflected form of the Old English verb cunnan. The find constitutes rich and special evidence of the development of a literate culture in Anglo-Saxon England, and in particular of the relationship between runic and Roman literacy in the later eighth century.