Over my dead body : the early Anglo-Saxon mortuary assimilation of previous cultural landscapes

Abstract

The early Anglo-Saxons had a tendency to locate burials and cemeteries in association with Roman and prehistoric sites. In a time span nestled between the withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain and the complete conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, this thesis analyses this practice in the English landscape, focusing on two study areas, the counties of Wiltshire and Kent. Using a geographical information system (GIS) and statistical analysis, the overarching theme for the early Anglo-Saxon re-use of earlier sites is divided into two parts: first, a review of the evidence suggests that previous mortuary sites were somehow suitable to be re-used as burial sites. Buildings may also have been seen as potential mortuary sites, particularly if the structure itself was in ruin. A type of ideology that revolved around death is in evidence. This thesis has found that the dead were considered to be powerful features in the landscape and showed their power within it, especially in terms of liminal places. The dead were also seen to have had an influence over the living and similarly, the living disposed of and arranged the corpse as to gain influence over the afterlife of that person. This finding contributes to the idea that ancestor worship formed a large part of Anglo-Saxon paganism. This leads into the second theme for the re{u00AD}use of sites, the idea that Anglo-Saxon burials can be correlated with boundaries and therefore had political connotations. A third major question that this research attempts to answer is if there were any differences in early Anglo-Saxon re-use between two regions in England; two 'local' areas defined in these regions; and local areas and their respective regions. This study showed that detailed regional analysis should not be rejected in favour of purely local ones. If possible, both should be used together to successfully tease out patterning in an area.