Living with One Foot in the Grave: the elderly in Early Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract

Although historical documents and texts tell us otherwise, it is generally believed, not only by people without the expertise to know better, that nobody lived to what we would consider to be old age in the distant past. While it is certainly true that fewer individuals reached their allotted three score years and ten, most communities would have had people who lived to their seventies, eighties or even nineties. It is not that the elderly didn’t exist, it is that the methods used to identify and age people in the past, combined with current attitudes, have rendered them invisible. This thesis seeks to examine the implications on life, both social and physical, of living to old age in Early Anglo-Saxon England. To do this, elderly individuals first need to be made visible and identified. For this purpose then, an approach that identifies the invisible elderly in a cemetery context is proposed, illustrated with an Anglo-Saxon cemetery example. Subsequently, the elderly in three Early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries are examined: Great Chesterford, Essex; Mill Hill, Deal, Kent; Worthy Park, Kingsworthy, Hampshire. The graves of the individuals buried in these cemeteries, their grave goods and their skeletal remains are discussed and elderly people are compared to those younger to determine whether old age increased their relative status, decreased it, or whether it remained the same. Whether sex or its close relative gender had an effect on these determinations is also explored. A case study involving two elderly women concludes this thesis. In general, it is found that while the elderly are not a homogenous group, some evidence for respect is found, as well as some lesser treatment, and that the elderly are treated similarly in death to younger cohorts. In contrast, when examined through the lens of sex, it was found that males, fewer of whom reach the oldest age categories, tend to increase their status with age, while the status of females appears to decline from about the age of about thirty. The two women in the case study, who were given somewhat less than average burial treatment, may have been the last pagans in the community.