Students of late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts are fortunate to have recourse to a number of fundamental studies which chronicle changes in the various arts of manuscript production during the tenth and early eleventh centuries. These studies provide a background against which to assess the work of individual craftsmen (scribes, initiallers, illustrators) who produced English manuscripts of this period. In the attempt to date a manuscript, each of these studies provides a spectrum of changing practices against which one can measure the most probable date of execution for any aspect of the manuscript. Additionally, if we use these studies as a group rather than one by one, they have much to tell us about the chronological circumstances of the creation of an entire codex as a composite work of art produced by a team of craftsmen.