The demographic composition of cemeteries, burial rites and mortuary behaviour are considered alongside the political and landscape context of burial. This volume brings together a series of studies concerned with aspects of the archaeology of burial in early medieval England and Wales during the period AD 400-1100.
This volume brings together a series of studies concerned with aspects of the archaeology of burial in early medieval England and Wales during the period c. A.D. 400-1100. The demographic composition of cemeteries, burial rites and mortuary behaviour are considered alongside the political and landscape context of burial, all topics which are recent developments in the field of burial archaeology in Britain. Students and researchers will find the theoretical and methodological approaches of use to their own studies, whilst those seeking an understanding of the trajectories of change in patterns of burial through the Anglo-Saxon period will find it the first summary of its kind. Besides offering individual studies, the volume reviews the early medieval burial archaeology of Britain and identifies areas of future research.
Preface and acknowledgements: List of contributors; Burial in early
medieval England and Wales: past, present and future; Cemeteries and
boundaries in western Britain; Remains of Pagan Saxondoms?; Burial practice
in early medieval eastern England: constructing local identities,
deconstructing ethnicity; Lies, damned lies, and the Curriculum Vitae:
reflections on statistics and the populations of early Anglo-Saxon inhumation
cemeteries; Multiple burials, multiple meanings? Interpreting the early
Anglo-Saxon multiple interment; Cross-channel contacts between Anglo-Saxon
England and Merovingian Francia; Reflections on the meaning of Anglo-Saxon
barrows; Persistent problems in the study of Conversion-Period burials in
England; The case of the missing Vikings: Scandinavian burial in the Danelaw;
Burials, boundaries and charters in Anglo-Saxon England: a reassessment;
Creating the sacred: Anglo-Saxon rites for consecrating cemeteries; Burial
practices in northern England in the later Anglo-Saxon period; Constructing
salvation: a homiletic and penitential context for late Anglo-Saxon burial
practice; Conquest, crime and theology in the burial record: 1066-1200.
Sam Lucy, Andrew Reynolds