Early Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: Kinship, Community and Identity - Hardcover

by Duncan Sayer (Author)

Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are known for their grave goods, but this abundance obscures their interest as the creations of pluralistic, multi-generational communities. This book explores over one hundred early Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian cemeteries, using a multi-dimensional methodology to move beyond artefacts. It offers an alternative way to explore the horizontal organisation of cemeteries from a holistically focused perspective. The physical communication of digging a grave and laying out a body was used to negotiate the arrangement of a cemetery and to construct family and community stories. This approach foregrounds community, because people used and reused cemetery spaces to emphasise different characteristics of the deceased, based on their own attitudes, lifeways and live experiences. This book will appeal to scholars of Anglo-Saxon studies and will be of value to archaeologists interested in mortuary spaces, communities and social archaeology.

An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY) licence.

Front Jacket

Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are well-known for their rich grave goods, but this wealth can obscure their importance as a local phenomenon and the product of pluralistic, multi-generational communities. This book explores over one hundred early Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian cemeteries, seeking to understand them using a multi-dimensional methodology. The performance of mortuary drama was a physical communication, which means it required syntax and semantics. This local knowledge was used to negotiate the arrangement of cemetery spaces and to construct the stories that were told within them. For some families the emphasis of a mortuary ritual was on reinforcing and reproducing family narratives, but this was only one technique used to arrange cemetery space. The book offers an alternative way to explore the horizontal organisation of cemeteries from a holistic perspective. Each chapter builds on the last, using a variety of criteria - including visual aesthetics, spatial statistics, grave orientation, mortuary ritual, grave goods, skeletal trauma, stature, gender and age -- to build a detailed picture of complex mortuary spaces. This approach places community at the forefront of interpretation, since people used and reused cemetery spaces, emphasising different characteristics of the deceased because of their own attitudes, lifeways and live experiences. Proposing a way to move beyond grave goods in the discussion of complex social identities, this book will appeal to scholars of Anglo-Saxon studies and to archaeologists interested in mortuary spaces, communities and social differentiation.

Back Jacket

Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are well-known for their rich grave goods, but this wealth can obscure their importance as a local phenomenon and the product of pluralistic, multi-generational communities. This book explores over one hundred early Anglo-Saxon and Merovingian cemeteries, seeking to understand them using a multi-dimensional methodology.

The performance of mortuary drama was a physical communication, which means it required syntax and semantics. This local knowledge was used to negotiate the arrangement of cemetery spaces and to construct the stories that were told within them. For some families the emphasis of a mortuary ritual was on reinforcing and reproducing family narratives, but this was only one technique used to arrange cemetery space. The book offers an alternative way to explore the horizontal organisation of cemeteries from a holistic perspective. Each chapter builds on the last, using a variety of criteria - including visual aesthetics, spatial statistics, grave orientation, mortuary ritual, grave goods, skeletal trauma, stature, gender and age -- to build a detailed picture of complex mortuary spaces. This approach places community at the forefront of interpretation, since people used and reused cemetery spaces, emphasising different characteristics of the deceased because of their own attitudes, lifeways and live experiences.

Proposing a way to move beyond grave goods in the discussion of complex social identities, this book will appeal to scholars of Anglo-Saxon studies and to archaeologists interested in mortuary spaces, communities and social differentiation.

Author Biography

Duncan Sayer is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire