Our newest spotlight is by placement student Bertie Armstong, who is studying his MA in Museum Studies at Newcastle University. He has done some amazing work already for us including some incredible illustrations for our new exhibition, Here Be Dragons: Anglo-Saxon Influence on Fantasy. Recently, he has been researching Anglo-Saxon burial practices.
During my placement, I got the chance to spend time researching various items in Jarrow Hall’s collections. One item that fascinated me was this stone, carved with a rune. Archaeologists found this with a grave in Jarrow. The object’s true meaning is unknown. One likely explanation is that it is a grave marker, meant for identifying the burial.
Spending time with this object led me to think deeper about the variety of burial practices in Anglo-Saxon England, and what they tell us about the period.
Changes in burial practices throughout the Anglo-Saxon period highlight the ever shifting socio-political and cultural landscape of the time. The variety of burials practiced throughout Anglo-Saxon England from the 5th to the 8th centuries illustrate shifts in religion, and the influence of various cultures.
The scope and variety of burial practices across this period is too large for me to outline comprehensively. I will instead give a brief overview, outlining a few of these practices and what they can tell us.
The withdrawal of the Romans in the 5th century led to great changes in burial practices in Britain. It became much more common to bury the dead alongside grave goods such as personal objects or even weapons. This “suggests that non-Christian burial rites were in use, marking a major shift away from the official religion of the late Roman Empire”, namely Christianity (Lucy, 2012). The prominence of these pagan burial practices likely stems from not only from the incoming Anglo-Saxons, but also from indigenous burial practices that “survived the upheavals of the Romano-British period” (O’Brien, 1999). The evidence suggests an intermingling of cultures: rather than a dominant Anglo-Saxon culture replacing the culture of the indigenous Britons, instead “Britons survived […] under Anglo-Saxon rule and […] adopted Anglo-Saxon practices such as clothed burial”.
These Britons assimilated into Anglo-Saxon society while also continuing to practice their own burial traditions, such as the use of chamber graves (Ibid.). Interestingly, O’Brien claims that “in much of Northumbria and parts of western England, British [burial] practices remained dominant” for much of the Anglo-Saxon period (Ibid.). At Yeavering in northern Northumbria, there is even evidence that Ango-Saxons “may have conformed at an early stage to local British burial practices” (Ibid.).
Famous Anglo-Saxon burials in East Anglia such as the boat burial at Sutton Hoo also reflect pagan elements in burial ritual. The prominence of elaborate grave goods, including the famous helmets, and the use of the boat itself, all point towards links with Scandinavian paganism (Price and Mortimer, 2014). The use of boats and the raising of mounds show that there were strong links with Scandinavia. This style of burial, and the style of the grave goods are strongly paralleled in sites such as Vendel and Valsgärde in Sweden (Lucy, 2000).
The Sutton Hoo burial also reveals a diverse and widely connected culture. The grave goods show evidence of “a wide range of contacts from across Europe and North Africa” (Ibid.). The various elements of the Sutton Hoo burial act as “deliberate statements made [about] different aspects of their society: in their references to warfare, to feasting, to overseas links, they seem to tie themselves [to ideologies] opposed to the spreading sphere of Christianity which was starting to dominate lowland Britain in the seventh century” (Ibid.).
One fascinating Anglo-Saxon burial practice is the ‘chest burial’. This practice, which we see almost exclusively in northern England and particularly in the North-East, involves burying the deceased in a wooden chest. While similar to coffins, the chests used for these burials differ in their shape, and in the presence of a hinged lid and often locking mechanisms (Craig-Atkins, 2012). The chest could have been specifically made for burial or may have been repurposed domestic items. Examples of chest burials have been discovered at Monkwearmouth as well as in an early medieval cemetery at Newcastle Castle (Ibid.). These burials are relatively rare and only make up a very small percentage of burials.
This rarity, alongside the material wealth and craftmanship needed for the creation of such chest seems to imply that they were reserved for certain members of society, most likely those of higher status. The reason chests were used in this way may be discovered when looking at early Christian symbolism and beliefs. Locks and keys have a strong symbolic role. They are closely linked with St Peter “the keeper of the gates of heaven and the guardian of the dead” (Ibid.). Doors also symbolised the gates of heaven and hell. Chests contain all elements of this symbolism, with a hinged door-like lid, and a lock or the ability to be locked with a padlock. Perhaps these chest burials represented a passing into heaven.
References
Lucy, S. (2000) The Anglo-Saxon way of death : burial rites in early England. Stroud: Sutton.
O’Brien, E. (1999) Post-Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England : burial practices reviewed. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.
Williams, H. (2011) ‘Mortuary Practices in Early Anglo‐Saxon England’, in David A Hinton, Sally Crawford, & Helena Hamerow (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. [Online]. Oxford University Press.
Marafioti, N. (2014) The king’s body : burial and succession in late Anglo-Saxon England. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Lee, C. (2007) Feasting the Dead: Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon Burial Rituals. NED-New edition. Vol. 9. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
Buckberry, J. & Cherryson, A. (2010) Burial in later Anglo-Saxon England c. 650-1100 AD. Oxford, England ; Oxbow Books.
Craig-Atkins, E. (2012), Chest burial: a middle Anglo-Saxon funerary rite from northern England. Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 31: 317-337. https://doi-org.libproxy.ncl.ac.uk/10.1111/j.1468-0092.2012.00391.x
Price, N. & Mortimer, P. (2014) ‘An Eye for Odin? Divine Role-Playing in the Age of Sutton Hoo’, European journal of archaeology, 17(3), pp. 517–538.