Aspects of burial: Four inhumation cemeteries in East Anglia

Norfolk Archaeological Unit
Kenneth Penn

Background.
The Project : Phase 1.
Summary and Assessment of the Results of Phase 1.
Problems with the Phase 1 Analysis.
Phase 2 Aims and Objectives.
Bibliography.

Background

Some of the items of from Grave 24 - Spong Hill
© Norfolk Museums Service & EAA No.21
Grave 24 Spong Hill - 2

During the 1970s excavations were carried out on four Anglo Saxon cemeteries in East Anglia. These sites, Morning Thorpe, Bergh Apton, Spong Hill and Westgarth produced a mass of evidence from nearly 500 inhumation burials. Twenty percent of the burials included weapons, 30% included dress fittings and other accessories while others contained little more than a pot or a knife and buckle. All four cemeteries appeared to have been well ordered and uniformly orientated. There was little evidence for recutting or inadvertent superimposition. A number of burials contained small amounts of residual prehistoric pottery from earlier activity on the sites. Each cemetery included evidence for barrow burial and some coffins, either or both of which may have indicated special status.

The dress fittings and other grave goods were broadly typical of 6th century East Anglia and fell into several familiar types:

The objects do not appear to have been made specifically for burial and the pottery contrasts strongly with the finely made pots from the large cremation cemetery at Spong Hill, which, it has been suggested, were made for mortuary use.

Following the completion of the excavations, catalogues were published in a standard format in East Anglian Archaeology. These included object catalogues and individual grave plans, but a wider consideration of the four sites was held over with the intention of producing a single discussion integrating the results of the analyses of all four cemeteries.

Morning Thorpe

The Morning Thorpe cemetery, as excavated, consisted of over 300 burials of 6th to 7th century date, with evidence to suggest that this represented less than half of the original number. The remainder were lost to quarrying. Although the cemetery had been carefully laid out, with burials respecting a common orientation, the denseness of the graves had led to some superimposition. There was evidence for small barrows and post settings, and, while the majority of the burials were inhumations, there were also nine cremations. The conventional chronologies date the latest ‘accompanied female’ burials to AD 570 / 580, but take the weapon burials into the 7th century. One of these was overlain by at least two later burials, indicating that male burial continued well into the 7th century. The apparent lack of female burials later than AD 570 / 580 remains unexplained, unless women were receiving ungendered burials, which, given the absence of skeletal evidence, remain unable to be assigned a sex.

Bergh Apton

Sixty three burials were excavated at Bergh Apton, representing the remains of a larger cemetery, lost, like Morning Thorpe, to quarrying. The burials were not as well furnished as those at the other cemeteries considered here. The cemetery seems to run up to the later 6th century, similar to that at Spong Hill.

Spong Hill

The only completely excavated cemetery, the site at Spong Hill actually consisted of two cemeteries, a large cremation cemetery and a smaller, 6th century, cemetery of fifty-seven inhumations. It is the latter which is considered here. Several of the graves were covered by small barrows and others were marked by the use of coffins.


Grave goods from Grave 40 Spong Hill
© Norfolk Museums Service & EAA No.21
Grave 40 Spong Hill - 1 Grave 40 Spong Hill - 2

Westgarth Gardens

Westgarth Gardens produced sixty-five graves of 6th to 7th century date, again the remnant of a much larger cemetery. The excavation took place in a salvage context, ahead of housebuilding. Although small, the group’s importance was enhanced by the unusually high quality of the surviving bone. The numbers of swords and two glass vessels indicated that a proportion of the inhumations had enjoyed some form of special status.

The project proceeded in two stages. Between 1993 and 1995 the author worked on an analysis of the cemeteries and a certain amount of comparative work. A draft text was submitted to English Heritage in the summer of 1995, which stood in need of further work. This summary contains the aims and provisional observations of the first phase of the study together with the revised aims and methodology adopted to take account of the critique produced by the English Heritage-appointed reader. These problems are set out below.

The project; phase 1

The aims and objectives, as originally conceived, were as follows:

These aims were supported by a series of specific objectives:

Summary and assessment of the results of phase 1

The project began with the intention of discovering associations within the cemeteries, between burial rites, grave structures, burial furnishings and biological identity. The results were based upon the major patterns of association noted within the four cemeteries. At the time of commencement the development of correspondence analysis was in an early stage and it was not thought appropriate or necessary to include provision for it in the programme of research, although a limited statistical analysis using the SOCISTAT package was undertaken towards end of phase 1.

Chronology

The Morning Thorpe cemetery produced the best evidence for the dating of burials through the use of artefacts with established dates. This evidence was of considerable interest as it showed that dated, gender-specific, burial for men and women appears to have ended at different times. Female burials with dated brooches ceased around AD 580, while male burials with weapons continued into the 7th century. This observation, which is supported by data from elsewhere, may indicate that some of the dress fittings (such as annular brooches) continued in use to a later date. A second possibility, supported by data from European Merovingian cemeteries, is that there was a move from highly differentiated burial assemblages to smaller, gender-neutral, groups between the 6th and 7th centuries. The further consideration and assessment of this problem is likely to have considerable implications for other cemeteries elsewhere.

Discovery of cemeteries

Between 1840 and 1970 the rate of discovery of cemeteries was more or less uniform. Since 1970, with the widespread availability of metal detectors, the rate of discovery has increased dramatically. The increased size of the database has implications for our understanding of what burial within a cemetery meant and the proportion of the population who could expect to be buried therein.

Geography and location

The general distribution of cemeteries in East Anglia seems to be strongly related to rivers and streams. The effects of poor or heavy soils do not appear to be strongly marked and cemeteries are found within areas of Boulder Clay and also in the Breckland. Apparent correlations with parish boundaries appear to be coincidental and to relate to the common use of watercourses as boundaries and as a focus for cemeteries. Inconclusive evidence suggested that the locations of two of the cemeteries were connected with a contemporary territorial entity. The existence of prehistoric material as a residual element within the graves seems to fit a wider pattern in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in which they were located on sites with some pre-existing, possibly monumental, feature of prehistoric date. Such activity has been linked to the assimilation of pre-existing monuments and the legitimisation of presence.

Tabulation and grave lengths

A simple tabulation enabled the burials in each cemetery to be characterised according to sets of predefined criteria. These included the types of grave goods present and the length of each grave. The latter was used because of the extremely poor survival of bone which precluded the determination of the height of the individuals interred. At Morning Thorpe five groups were thus identified:

Graves and ‘burial groups’

Given the assumption of a correlation of grave length with age it would seem that ‘pot only’ burials were associated with children and juveniles (short graves). Weapon graves were associated with graves of over 1.5 metres while the ‘accompanied female’ graves were, in some cases, as short 1.0 metres, implying that children were also present in this group. Short graves were, in general, less well equipped and included all of the ‘beads only’ burials.

Knife and buckle burials

Within each group there were observable regularities in provision of grave goods. The category of ‘other accompanied burials’ for example were mainly characterised by the presence of knives and buckles. These appear to have been male graves as those burials which were demonstrably female included knives only as part of a girdle group, normally with a suspension ring rather than with a buckle. Conversely, knives found in the ‘weapon burial’ group were commonly found with a buckle, and not with a suspension ring.

Grave lengths as markers of age and sex

Given the poor survival of bone it was decided to tabulate the burials using grave length as a primary index. Although this was not initially envisaged as a tool for seriation, it quickly became clear that it was a useful analytical tool. A number of correlations were noted.

It was noted during this analysis that the graves at Spong Hill were on average longer than those at Morning Thorpe, which, in turn, were longer than those at Bergh Apton. Comparison with other cemeteries showed that the graves at Buckland near Dover tended to be longer than those at Spong Hill although they were dug into hard chalk, while those at West Heslerton in Yorkshire were shorter.

Knife blade lengths

Knife blades from the weapon graves were noted to be longer than knife blades from other groups. Comparison with the cemeteries at Buckland and West Heslerton showed that such variation, like that in grave length, occurred between cemeteries as well as between burial groups within individual cemeteries.

Children

Although no skeletal evidence survived at any of the four cemeteries, it was noted, using the length of the graves as a guide that both ‘bead only’ and ‘pot only’ burials were in the shortest graves. Some of the children had been intentionally marked as female while others (particularly those with pots) were apparently gender-neutral.

Pots and decoration

The pots found in the ‘pot only’ burials were uniformly plain and undecorated while those found with the weapon burials were mostly decorated.

Pots and their completeness

The degree of completeness of pots varied between the four cemeteries. The pots from Westgarth Gardens were complete whilst those from Bergh Apton were mostly deposited as broken sherds, a phenomenon also seen elsewhere.

The ‘non-gendered’ accompanied burials

Although knives formed a minor component of the burial deposit, other work on Saxon burials (notably by Heinrich Härke) has suggested that knife size may reflect age / sex / status identities and may thus be significant in constructing individual identity. The ‘knife and buckle’ burials at all four cemeteries could certainly be characterised as a distinct group, characterised by their relative poverty and uniformity. The association with buckles suggested that these individuals were likely to have been male.

The bodies

The virtual absence of bone from three of the cemeteries inevitably precludes a number of useful avenues of study, although the position of the accompanying objects might give some indication of the position of the body. Associations with particular types of grave goods can, as has been described, indicate something about the age and gender of the buried individual. The significance of the Westgarth Gardens cemetery, where bone survival was good, is clearly enhanced by the general absence of skeletal material.

Problems with the phase 1 analysis

As noted above, the draft text outlining the results of the first phase of analysis was a limited account and interpretation of the cemetery data. A number of specific problems were identified:

As a result of this a revised research design was formulated aimed at revising the existing work and carrying the analysis forward to incorporate explicit theorisation of the burials and the methods and assumptions used to interpret them.

Phase 2 Aims and objectives

The second phase of the project was designed to build upon the results of phase 1, to devise the theoretical basis and to redraft it in accordance with the requirements of English Heritage.

The specific aims were:

The revised programme of work will place the four cemeteries more explicitly in the context of funerary practice as part of ‘social theatre’, a concept embracing much of human activity and through which individuals and groups acquire and construct identities as part of social activity. The use of material culture in this regard is both instrumental, in that it is deployed as part of practice, and is also reflexive in that it is active in the creation and definition of these identities. Burial practice can be regarded as a deliberate statement bearing an ideological message and a cemetery can be seen as a theatre in which each act of burial or commemoration is, potentially, a fossilised ‘political’ event. Burial can, from this perspective be regarded as part of the dramatised ritual on the occasion of a funeral.

Four particular characteristics of burials have implications for a theoretically informed archaeological practice:

Funerals may be considered as events in which the action within the social theatre is heightened and in which particular actions may have a greater then normal significance. The traces of the actions which are recovered archaeologically may have formed only a small part of the wider event. This fact must inevitably restrict or qualify what we can infer from the archaeological evidence. This having been said, burials represent a rich archaeological text and it may be possible to infer ideological messages of various sorts and to begin to recognise a symbolic grammar within the burial deposits. It is important to distinguish the possible levels upon which this may work in relation to the deceased:

With respect to the ‘ideal’ identity, it may be that some idea of negotiation is pertinent to the situation. Such a notion will draw in the identity of the living, who will have been actors in the funeral ceremonies and whose roles may have been redefined by the death of one of their number. The rank and role of the dead may have been transferred or have become available at this time and the consequent changes may have involved the redefinition of the roles of the living as well as the dead.

There appears little doubt that in the Anglo-Saxon context the burial deposit as a whole reflected the identity of the dead individual in life and that the grave goods had distinct associations with sex and age. The is also a common assumption that the grave goods provide some measure of the wealth of the individual in life, or at least the wealth of the kin-group from which s/he came. The latter point is not without its problems and, as Halsall has noted

Wealth, class and rank distinctions are not easily traceable from the grave goods without analysis of other variables (1995:109)

The survival of the evidence at the four cemeteries discussed here imposes its own limitations on the potential of the sites and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. It is particularly unfortunate that bone survival was so poor and that age and biological sex have thus vanished from the record. This precludes the use of methods of comparing age/sex with grave goods and the positions of the grave goods. Similarly methods involving pottery, body position, age/sex and their associations are likewise restricted.

The revised project design incorporated these more sophisticated concepts and a stronger element of statistical analysis based upon a programme of correspondence analysis and comparison with other cemeteries where similar types of analysis had already been performed.

Bibliography

Halsall, G. 1995 Settlement and social organisation: The Merovingian region of Metz Cambridge.
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