This book sets a new agenda for mortuary archaeology. Applying explicit case studies based on a range of European sites (from Scandinavia to Britain, Southern France to the Black Sea), 'Mortuary Practices and Social Identities in the Middle Ages' fulfills the need for a volume that provides accessible material to students and engages with current debates in mortuary archaeology's methods and theories. The book builds upon Heinrich Härke's influential research on burial archaeology and early medieval migrations, focusing in particular on his ground-breaking work on the relationship between the theory and practice of burial archaeology. Using diverse archaeological and historical data, the essays explore how mortuary practices have served in the make-up and expression of medieval social identities. Themes explored include masculinity, kinship, ethnicity, migration, burial rites, genetics and the perception of landscape.
Author(s): Duncan Sayer (editor), Howard Williams
Series: Exeter Studies in Medieval Europe
Edition: 2
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Year: 2010
Language: English
Pages: 320
City: Liverpool
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of figures
Preface
Chapter 1. ‘Halls of mirrors’: death and identity in medieval
archaeology
Chapter 2.
Working with the dead
Chapter 3.
Beowulf and British prehistory
Chapter 4. Fighting wars, gaining status: on the rise of Germanic elites
Chapter 5.
‘Hunnic’ modified skulls:
physical appearance, identity
and the transformative nature
of migrations
Chapter 6. Rituals to free the spirit – or what the cremation pyre told
Chapter 7.
Barrows, roads and ridges
– or where to bury the dead?
The choice of burial grounds in
late Iron Age Scandinavia
Chapter 8.
Anglo-Saxon DNA?
Chapter 9. Laws, funerals and cemetery organisation: the seventh-century Kentish family
Chapter 10. On display: envisioning the early Anglo-Saxon dead
Chapter 11.
Variation in the British
burial rite: ad 400–700
Chapter 12.
Anglo-Saxon attitudes: how
should post-ad 700 burials be
interpreted?
Chapter 13.
Rethinking later medieval
masculinity: the male body in
death
Bibliography
Index
Contributors
