Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs

Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs PDF Author: Andrew Reynolds
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191567655
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs is the first detailed consideration of the ways in which Anglo-Saxon society dealt with social outcasts. Beginning with the period following Roman rule and ending in the century following the Norman Conquest, it surveys a period of fundamental social change, which included the conversion to Christianity, the emergence of the late Saxon state, and the development of the landscape of the Domesday Book. While an impressive body of written evidence for the period survives in the form of charters and law-codes, archaeology is uniquely placed to investigate the earliest period of post-Roman society - the fifth to seventh centuries - for which documents are lacking. For later centuries, archaeological evidence can provide us with an independent assessment of the realities of capital punishment and the status of outcasts. Andrew Reynolds argues that outcast burials show a clear pattern of development in this period. In the pre-Christian centuries, 'deviant' burial remains are found only in community cemeteries, but the growth of kingship and the consolidation of territories during the seventh century witnessed the emergence of capital punishment and places of execution in the English landscape. Locally determined rites, such as crossroads burial, now existed alongside more formal execution cemeteries. Gallows were located on major boundaries, often next to highways, always in highly visible places. The findings of this pioneering national study thus have important consequences on our understanding of Anglo-Saxon society. Overall, Reynolds concludes, organized judicial behaviour was a feature of the earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, rather than just the two centuries prior to the Norman Conquest.

Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs

Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs PDF Author: Andrew Reynolds
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191567655
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 340

Get Book Here

Book Description
Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs is the first detailed consideration of the ways in which Anglo-Saxon society dealt with social outcasts. Beginning with the period following Roman rule and ending in the century following the Norman Conquest, it surveys a period of fundamental social change, which included the conversion to Christianity, the emergence of the late Saxon state, and the development of the landscape of the Domesday Book. While an impressive body of written evidence for the period survives in the form of charters and law-codes, archaeology is uniquely placed to investigate the earliest period of post-Roman society - the fifth to seventh centuries - for which documents are lacking. For later centuries, archaeological evidence can provide us with an independent assessment of the realities of capital punishment and the status of outcasts. Andrew Reynolds argues that outcast burials show a clear pattern of development in this period. In the pre-Christian centuries, 'deviant' burial remains are found only in community cemeteries, but the growth of kingship and the consolidation of territories during the seventh century witnessed the emergence of capital punishment and places of execution in the English landscape. Locally determined rites, such as crossroads burial, now existed alongside more formal execution cemeteries. Gallows were located on major boundaries, often next to highways, always in highly visible places. The findings of this pioneering national study thus have important consequences on our understanding of Anglo-Saxon society. Overall, Reynolds concludes, organized judicial behaviour was a feature of the earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, rather than just the two centuries prior to the Norman Conquest.

Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs

Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs PDF Author: Andrew J. Reynolds
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191720390
Category : Anglo-Saxons
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description


The Archaeology of the East Anglian Conversion

The Archaeology of the East Anglian Conversion PDF Author: Richard Hoggett
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843835959
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The conversion to Christianity of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of East Anglia left huge marks on the area, both metaphorical and literal. Drawing on both the surviving documentary sources, and on the eastern region's rich archaeological record, this book presents the first multi-disciplinary synthesis of the process. It begins with an analysis of the historical framework, followed by an examination of the archaeological evidence for the establishment of missionary stations within the region's ruinous Roman forts and earthwork enclosures. It argues that the effectiveness of the Christian mission is clearly visible in the region's burial record, which exhibits a number of significant changes, including the cessation of cremation. The conversion can also be seen in the dramatic upheavals which occurred in the East Anglian landscape, including changes in the relationship between settlements and cemeteries, and the foundation of a number of different types of Christian cemetery. Ultimately, it shows that far from being the preserve of kings, the East Anglian conversion was widespread at a grassroots level, changing the nature of the Anglo-Saxon landscape forever. Dr Richard Hoggett is currently Coastal Heritage Officer with Norfolk County Council.

Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record

Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record PDF Author: Eileen M. Murphy
Publisher: Studies in Funerary Archaeolog
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
This edited volume contains twelve papers that present evidence on non-normative burial practices from the Neolithic through to Post-Medieval periods and includes case studies from some ten countries. It has long been recognised by archaeologists that certain individuals in a variety of archaeological cultures from diverse periods and locations have been accorded differential treatment in burial relative to other members of their society. These individuals can include criminals, women who died during childbirth, unbaptised infants, people with disabilities, and supposed revenants, to name but a few. Such burials can be identifiable in the archaeological record from an examination of the location and external characteristics of the grave site. Furthermore, the position of the body in addition to its association with unusual grave goods can be a further feature of atypical burials. The motivation behind such non-normative burial practices is also diverse and can be related to a wide variety of social and religious beliefs. It is envisaged that the volume will make a significant contribution towards our understanding of the complexities involved when dealing with non-normative burials in the archaeological record.

Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse

Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse PDF Author: Sarah Tarlow
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319779087
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon.

Bodies, Beings, and the Multiple Burial Rite of the Western Viking World

Bodies, Beings, and the Multiple Burial Rite of the Western Viking World PDF Author: Claire F. Ratican
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040051057
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
This book explores multiple burials, the presence of more than one individual within a grave, within the Viking Age mortuary landscape throughout Scandinavia and the lands of their westward diaspora. Even though a number of spectacular examples have captured the imagination of professionals and the public alike, multiple burials have not been the subject of dedicated and systematic archaeological investigation. By adopting a perspective grounded in relationality and an analysis that centres on three types of beings—humans, animals and things—this book explores the ways in which each being entered into entangled relationships with the other, thereby mutually constituting the nature of their existence in Viking Age minds. For the first time, the corpus of Viking Age multiple burials located across the lands of the Western Scandinavian diaspora and their counterparts in the urban trading centres of Kaupang (Norway) and Hedeby (formerly Denmark) is synthesised into a single study, firmly situating the multiple burial rite within the wider suite of normative burial practices observed across the Viking World. The book meaningfully engages with a developing discourse in the Scandinavian tradition increasingly revealing the fluidity of being across human, animal and thing bodies in Iron Age mentalities and material culture. Ultimately, it poses the question: are humans, animals, and things similar forms of bodies and beings in the Viking World? This book will appeal to students and researchers of death and burial in the Viking World.

The Archaeology of the 11th Century

The Archaeology of the 11th Century PDF Author: Dawn M Hadley
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315312921
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
The Archaeology of the 11th Century explores this formative period of English history and in particular the impact of the Conquest of England by the Normans. The volume examines how the Normans contributed to local culture, religion and society through a range of topics including food culture, funerary practices, the development of castles and their impact, and how both urban and rural life evolved during the eleventh century. Through its nuanced approach to the complex relationships and regional identities which characterized the period, this collection stimulates renewed debate and challenges some of the long-standing myths surrounding the Conquest.

Danes in Wessex

Danes in Wessex PDF Author: Ryan Lavelle
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1782979344
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
There have been many studies of the Scandinavians in Britain, but this is the first collection of essays to be devoted solely to their engagement with Wessex. New work on the early Middle Ages, not least the excavations of mass graves associated with the Viking Age in Dorset and Oxford, drew attention to the gaps in our understanding of the wider impact of Scandinavians in areas of Britain not traditionally associated with them. Here, a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to the problems of their study is presented. While there may not have been the same degree of impact, discernible particularly in place-names and archaeology, as in those areas of Britain which had substantial influxes of Scandinavian settlers, Wessex was a major theater of the Viking wars in the reigns of Alfred and Æthelred Unræd. Two major topics, the Viking wars and the Danish landowning elite, figure strongly in this collection but are shown not to be the sole reasons for the presence of Danes, or items associated with them, in Wessex. Multidisciplinary approaches evoke Vikings and Danes not just through the written record, but through their impact on real and imaginary landscapes and via the objects they owned or produced. The papers raise wider questions too, such as when did aggressive Vikings morph into more acceptable Danes, and what issues of identity were there for natives and incomers in a province whose founders were believed to have also come from North Sea areas, if not from parts of Denmark itself? Readers can continue for themselves aspects of these broader debates that will be stimulated by this fascinating and significant series of studies by both established scholars and new researchers.

Burying the Dead

Burying the Dead PDF Author: Lorraine Evans
Publisher: Pen and Sword History
ISBN: 1526706695
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
An archeological study of burial grounds across England, shedding light on pagan executions, the Black Death, and much more. In the heart of North Yorkshire, at a place called Walkington Wold, archeologists unearthed twelve skeletons—ten without heads. Later examination revealed the place to be a cemetery for ancient Anglo-Saxons who had been sentenced to death. In the Middle Ages, those who committed suicide were subjected to desecration, a practice that went largely unrecorded. While plague pits, mass graves for victims of the Black Death, have only recently started betraying their secrets. Although unpalatable to some, these burial grounds are an important record of cultural history and social change. Burying the Dead explores how these sites reveal the attitudes, practices, and beliefs of the people who made them.

Truth Is Trickiest

Truth Is Trickiest PDF Author: Jennifer Neville
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487552556
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
At the end of the tenth-century English manuscript the Exeter Book, there is a collection of almost one hundred riddles. They are notable for many reasons, but one feature in particular has challenged modern readers: their lack of solutions. In Truth Is Trickiest, Jennifer Neville argues that the absence of solutions, rather than being an unfortunate accident, uncovers an essential quality of these texts. In opposition to the general expectation that a successfully solved riddle will have one correct answer, Neville argues that the Exeter Book riddles are written to generate multiple solutions. The correct response to an Exeter Book riddle is not a single, elegant solution but instead an ongoing process of interpretation that leads readers to question what they think they know. Truth Is Trickiest contextualizes its readings within the larger field of Old English poetry, early medieval material culture, and Anglo-Latin riddles. The book pursues the central issue of interpretation in relation to social values, craftsmanship, hierarchical social structures, violence, irony, humour, and sexuality. It concludes with a full list of previously proposed solutions to document the history of the ongoing argument that the Exeter Book riddles have provoked.