CHAPTER 2: THE MATERIAL CULTURE
INTRODUCTION
In the last chapter we saw that there is little literary evidence that is contemporary with the settlement of England by the Anglo-Saxons. Because of this lack of evidence, historians and archaeologists have to look at other material that is available from this period. Two of these are archaeology and place-name study. Historical geography gives some additional information by combining with them to produce the physical framework within which the people settled and lived. Geology of the region also provides information that is important. It determines the physical structure of the land and the natural vegetation that would occur within the region. By using this information, archaeologists and historians have to rely on the specialists of each of these fields. This chapter therefore relies on the work of others and acknowledges them in the appropriate places.
HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY
The sites that have been excavated by archaeologists studying this period are usually habitation sites or cemeteries. Other sites, such as fields or wetlands, with which prehistorians are familiar, have not been investigated in this region for environmental evidence. This is the largest single class of material absent from the study area, and its lack is much to be regretted.
Even where excavation has occurred, the work has not been sufficient and the usefulness of the finds is usually small. Only a small proportion of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, which are our main source of information for the earliest stages have been excavated under modern archaeological conditions. Most of the sites that have been examined were discovered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries during activities like ploughing or railway construction. They were recorded carelessly, with their grave goods scattered and with no attention being paid to anything not of intrinsic value. The mixed cemetery at Freeby/Saxby, Leicestershire, for example, was discovered in 1823 (See Gazetteer, 33-37). We are told that the site contained a large quantity of bones, brooches, shield-bosses, spearheads, arrowheads, buckles, tweezers, pins, bone combs, beads and small pots filled with little bones. The bones crumbled to dust and the grave goods were scattered to collectors (fortunately many have been recovered but they, or course, no longer have contexts or associations). Freeby/Saxby, like so many sites, has to be counted as an Anglo-Saxon cemetery because of the finds but little more can be said about it. Some of the nineteenth century excavations attempted to be more systematic and archaeological. Thomas Bateman, who opened most of the Derbyshire barrow burials, set himself high standards but even then Bateman arrived commonly after labourers had opened a barrow. He also had none of the techniques of scientific archaeology to record the artifacts and to preserve the more fragile material (Bateman, 1848a; Bateman, 1861).
CEMETERIES
Even in the twentieth century, few cemeteries have been totally excavated, so that questions still hang over the size of them, their overall layout and their use. Where controlled modern excavation has taken place as in Loveden Hill, Lincolnshire, it has changed our view of the Anglo-Saxon settlement. The estimates of the size of this cemetery between World War I and II were in the hundreds but have now been raised to some 3 or 4 thousand (Hills, 1979, 318). Loveden Hill has still to be published very unfortunately, however, and no reliable synthesis is available: even English Heritage cannot at present gain access to the material and records. With few cemeteries excavated under these modern conditions, it is very difficult to know whether some of the smaller finds of five or fewer graves recorded in Audrey Meaney's Gazetteer are isolated burials or the edge of a larger cemetery. It is also difficult to decide how many large cemeteries actually existed and what their average size was. Reconstruction based on museum collections and nineteenth century records has started to assemble fragmented material but this type of work still does not cover the whole region and will never recover all the information that was lost in the early excavations (Ozanne, 1962-3, 15).
Several Germanic cemeteries used established Roman cemeteries, such as Ancaster, Lincolnshire, and site reuse is common later such as at Caistor, Lincolnshire. Myres has stated that these burials may reflect the fourth century employment of north German troops as mercenaries to guard the northern Saxon Shore (Myres, 1969, 74; Myres, 1986, 138). The problem with this is that fourth century finds rarely occur within the towns themselves. Another suggestion is that early settlers may have been attracted to centres where British civitates were still administering the collection of taxes. By establishing the soldiers in the area, it minimized the problems of supply and offered the tribal council an advantage in their efforts to raise taxes from the peasantry. Early settlers in Britain were probably as independent in their attitude towards local authority as those who were settling in Gaul. Freedom from taxation was probably one of the agreements made between the British rulers and the Germanic settlers.
The distribution of these cemeteries suggests that the cremating Germanic population was small and scattered. They occupied territory on the Thames which overlapped with that of inhumation cemeteries. The density of the early cemeteries indicates that they were scattered among the dwellings of the less archaeologically visible people. It is accordingly difficult to imagine that an immigrant community was completely independent of the British.
During the fifth and sixth centuries, numerous new cemeteries were established in the area. Cremation was the dominant mortuary practice in eastern England above the Thames and inhumation was normal south of the Thames. Between them, there were many cemeteries which combined both, either successively or in several areas with early signs of mixed rites. Regionalism is recognized and well documented. This suggests that the habits established locally with the fifth century were often decisive in determining the rites used in the majority of graves within that cemetery throughout the pagan period. It has been suggested, though, that in Kent, for example, inhumation replaced cremation at an early stage. The rapid acceptance of this ritual makes it unlikely that new Germanic settlements was occurring on a large enough scale to entirely alter the pattern of deposition in any of the early areas of settlement. In which case, new settlement of Germanic colonies in Britain was by established channels of contact between Germany and England.
The widespread use of Anglo-Saxon mortuary rites and material culture continued until the seventh century and reflects the social, cultural and linguistic dominance that the communities using them had over the British lowlands.
The number of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in Britain is over 1500 and the number of burials must be in the region of several tens of thousands. But these burials must spread over at least 8 generations (c.450-c.650) which gives the buried population an average of only 3000-4000 per generation. One estimate suggests that we have identified the graves of only 1 percent of the population of lowland Britain. Also, there are large gaps, particularly in the fifth century, when some areas appear unpopulated (Campbell, 1982, 29). Estimates like this must represent very wild guesses. Yet, the land was kept comparatively clear of woodland so obviously, it is necessary to understand how these cemeteries represent the total population.
It has been shown that the indigenous elite of lowland Britain were susceptible to incoming funerary practices throughout the first half of the first millennium A.D.. In the fifth century, a set of social, linguistic and ideological barriers may have stood between the elite and the Germanic culture. Committed Christians fled and looked for social contexts which demanded less flexibility from them. However, others may not have been so severely inhibited. Some were already disadvantaged within the Roman system and links between Christianity and the repressive state of the later Roman period would have not made it very attractive to the British peasantry. There may also have been, among the peasantry of fifth century Britain, some who welcomed the arrival of the Germanic settlers and the security which they offered. Many people may have taken advantage of the changing pattern of social control to discard the peasant status and their only route towards this was to adopt the material, ideological and linguistic culture of the Anglo-Saxons. We should then assume that these were Britons accepting all aspects of the Anglo-Saxon culture and were being allowed into the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries by the later fifth century.
There have been attempts by some to identify a British element within Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, on the basis of the accompanying objects and of the orientation of the burial. It may be possible to argue on this basis that specific individuals were British and retained some British beliefs into the Anglo-Saxon world (Faull, 1977, 5-11). Some categories of British goods were deposited in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and this may reveal the cultural background of those buried. But, the list of these burials is not very convincing. Despite local peculiarities, such as crouched burials in the north-east which are likely to be indigenous, Anglo-Saxon burials do not usually contain individuals dressed or buried in a style which is specifically Roman or British. Coins were also used for purposes that are very different from traditional Roman rites (Eagles, 1980, 285-289; White, 1988, 100-101). It is difficult to argue on this basis that many Britons were buried in the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries (Rahtz, Dickinson and Watts, 1980). Arnold attempted to show a dimorphism between the racial origins of male and female burials of Romano-British and Saxon periods in central Southern England (Arnold, 1984, 129). His evidence, unfortunately, was minimal: if true he may be justified in his claim of male immigrants and female natives. Skeleton and DNA testing may demonstrate the point in due course. At present very little work has been carried out, none of it relates to Mercia, and so nothing to any point can be added. The balance of immigrants to natives cannot be established with this sort of reasoning and among the cremation burials, it is difficult to detect native influences at all.
High-status burials may have occurred in cemeteries where individuals of lower status were normally buried. Some accessories are exclusive to these types of burials, such as gold braids and glass claw-beakers. Across Britain, a small number of sixth and seventh century burials are unique because of their complexity of the rites used and the number and value of the objects deposited within the graves. These include the ship burials at Snape and the high-status cemetery at Sutton Hoo and other princely burials such as Benty Grange, Derbyshire.
The instances of this are few and are usually late in date. Most of the graves are difficult to distinguish by status. Early attempts to apply a system of numerical analysis to determine the status of the occupant has been refined by more detailed work, as at Sleaford, Lincolnshire but no simple interpretation of status can be found across England. Graves in areas such as Yorkshire have less grave goods than the graves in Kent or Sussex. There may be a link between the economic stability of the community and people burying valuable possessions with the dead. The lack of grave goods in some graves may be due to factors other than status, such as religious beliefs or specific social roles. Unaccompanied burials may not be those of the poor. The burying of possessions probably reflected the ambitions of those responsible for the burying rather than the social standing of the deceased. Also, this problem has a chronological aspect since many of the unaccompanied burials may belong to the Christian period.
Many cemeteries were still in use in the period of the first written Anglo-Saxon law code of AEthelberht in Kent. This document states the presence in Kentish society of numerous classes below the rank of the ceorl in the early seventh century. There were female grinding-slaves of several different types which were part of the royal household and to some eorls and ceorls. The laets were dependent upon the free classes and had a wergild dependent on the status of their masters or landlords, and were probably the peasant farmers.
The continued acceptance of Anglo-Saxon burial rites spread into new areas, such as the Derbyshire Peak. In this area, the rites were adopted by a small elite group who emphasized their status by burying elaborate grave goods and reusing many of the ancient burial cairns (Ozanne, 1962-3, 15-52; Collis, 1983, 101-102). It is impossible to determine whether these graves contained the bodies of ethnic Anglo-Saxons or the bodies of an anglicized aristocracy from a British community, though current research by Howard Jones seems likely to emphasize the Roman elements of the assemblages, and to play down the intrusive or Germanic contribution (Jones, pers. comm.). In this context, the use of the term "Anglo-Saxon" is acceptable as an indicator of the cultural tradition but not the ethnic background of the individual. Even when the artifacts are identified, properly classified and contexts established, the information is still difficult to understand. The migration, which was, after all, a physical movement of incomers, has been mapped by historians and archaeologists by the finds of "Anglo-Saxon" material in graves such as pots, brooches and weapons of a "Germanic style". If a body is found with a brooch bearing Germanic ornament, is it the body of an Anglo-Saxon or is it a native Briton who adopted tastes which were fashionable at the time? Or is it some product of an intermarriage between the two races (Lethbridge, 1956, 114)? Fashions change over time and after the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlers arrived, Germanic styles may have had an impact on society, especially where the Anglo-Saxons became the new ruling group. During history, aristocracies and rulers have had an influence on fashion and style which is disproportionate to their numbers.
The revival in the study of cemetery material by physical anthropologists is unlikely to solve the problem of ethnicity, even when samples are drawn from the latest Romano-British cemeteries and the earliest Germanic burials. It is difficult to be certain what proportion of the genetic material in a Roman cemetery is British. This is because the late Roman cemeteries are found outside towns where the genes of immigrants from the rest of the Roman world are usually found. What is needed is a cemetery that was used exclusively by a rural community in late Roman Britain. Without this as a starting point, it is difficult to make any comparisons between skeletal remains in late Roman and early Saxon cemeteries or from different groups within an Anglo-Saxon cemetery. By the sixth century, it is possible that some cemeteries are Anglo-Saxon based on cultural material were predominantly British and others could be entirely made up of immigrants. In England there are not the distinctive skeletal deformities which scholars in Hungary used to positively identify fifth century Pannonians (Salamon and Lengyel 1980-1981, 99-103).
The study of fifth and sixth century cemeteries provides information on the society that used them and the distribution of the culture they represent. It does not provide the answers to the questions of ethnic continuity from the same period. The cultural unity may be an illusion created by high status sections of the community within many cemeteries and significant sections of the community may be under represented in these cemeteries. The search for these sections of the communities take us back to the landscape and the settlements.
SETTLEMENTS
What was the role of the eastern settlers? One suggestion has been that they may be "the raiders of 409 or 410 who had emigrated from the seaboard of western Germany under pressure from marine incursions and political conflict" (Hawkes, 1989). It has been suggested that a string of settlements on the terpen and wurten of the marshes of the Continental littoral were abandoned during the first half of the fifth century by groups whose material culture are similar to that of the early cemeteries in England. Many of these communities had already proved themselves capable of adapting to the changing sea levels (Brandt et al., 1984-85, 1-17). Around some sites, agricultural pollen does not reappear until the seventh century. This suggests that the environmental collapse identified in the Dutch Rhineland around 300 had spread northwards during the next century and a half and some of the communities may have fled from it.
However, this is presuming too much based on the evidence available. Only a small number of objects have been identified which indicate settlement in Britain before the middle of the fifth century. Many of the objects come from cemeteries which were used into the sixth or seventh centuries and were dispersed across a wide area of Britain. It is difficult to turn these early settlers into a mass migration based on the information we have now.
Since the settlers used cremation, they did not bury weapons with the dead. This practice had died out in Germany during the second and third centuries. Most of these settlers were probably families from free Germany and who used and possessed weapons so we can assume that there were warriors among them. They may have been an imposing force to their immediate neighbours who were the unarmed civilian gentry and peasants of the late Roman period. They settled in an area where no evidence of soldiers existed once the northern end of the Saxon Shore system had been abandoned and the garrison at Caistor withdrawn.
Their cemeteries are not distributed evenly across the landscape but this may be because of the problem associated with the discovery of sites. It is possible that the early settlers had a limited choice of settlement sites and were excluded from or excluded themselves from certain areas or they may have chosen to avoid certain areas and scatter themselves over a larger area. Much of this depends though on the view taken by historians and archaeologists on the social function of the immigrants. There appears to be a difference between different areas which is reflected by the later Anglo-Saxon hundreds. Blything Hundred, Suffolk is characterized by the lack of pagan burials and early Christianity while neighbouring Wickham Hundred, Suffolk has many pagan cemeteries which include Sutton Hoo which had evidence of dislocation provided by six late Roman hoards and had a very different pattern of hundredal organization (Warner, 1988, 9-34). These differences may be differences in the pattern of early settlement which means that British and Anglo-Saxon rulers had control over the geography of settlement.
Archaeologists of this period in Britain have benefitted by working with their continental counterparts. The evidence found in the areas occupied by the Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain and Germany seem to correspond to each other. Because of this, the homelands and the migration courses of those participating in the adventus have been established with the development of certain types of remains in England being traced from the pre-migration period. The development of the certain types of remains can be in the form of jewellery patterns, pottery shapes and decorations. This gives a better idea as to the approximate chronology for the migration and settlement of Britain. By looking at these developments, it has also filled in some gaps concerning this period which literary evidence leaves. A very important gap that has been filled is the part played by the Frisians during the settlement, who do not appear in Bede's History.
Archaeology gives scholars a better understanding of habitation in some of the areas during the early Anglo-Saxon period. This is important when using it with the examination of place-names which have been accepted as those from the earliest settlement sites. It is also important to remember that when plotting the cemeteries and burials on a map that these were not the habitation sites but rather proof of settlement in the surrounding area. The settlement was probably within a two to five mile radius from the cemetery and was probably on the same bank of a major river. The living probably felt they needed protection from the dead and found it by cremating the body or by mutilating the body for inhumation and placing it away from the settlement. The single burials and the isolated finds cannot be interpreted as evidence of a nearby settlement but they can be interpreted as proof of routes through that area. Those burials and finds that are found along the roads and trackways suggest to archaeologists and historians that they were still in use during the migration period.
ARTIFACTS
There are some problems in archaeology which might be caused by the nature of the evidence. objects found at sites must be dated as accurately as possible but dating the object can be difficult because of the material, the type, the place of manufacture and the function of that object. Because of this, the dates that are given to objects are usually approximate and also few of the objects, especially from the Anglo-Saxon period, were deposited as new. They were sometimes second-hand goods passed on from one generation to the next.
Another problem is survival of the object in the soil. Not many materials survive in all soil conditions. Pottery, metal and glass survive better than wood or textiles, which usually disappear and leave very small traces. Only because of some advances in science have they started being recovered in excavations. But this is still a problem when reconstructing daily life since much of the material was probably made out of wood, leather, cloth and bone.
TYPOLOGY
Because of this, typology has become a method of dating the Anglo-Saxon period and a series of typologies has been created by Salin (1904), Aberg (1920), Leeds (1936, 1949) and Myres (1969). Continental work by Boehme (1974) and others has helped to fill in gaps. Absolute dating for this period is lacking.
Dating of objects is important whether archaeology is to be used alone or to be used with written evidence to reconstruct changes in settlement patterns. Archaeologists use stratification as a dating tool and date finds in relation to other clearly datable objects, for example, coins found in the same excavation layer. This method depends on the ability to date some objects precisely and in the period between the fourth and eighth centuries, coins which the best dating objects available, are rare. A major problem with archaeology is that excavation is a destructive process. Digging down through the modern levels to earlier levels destroys the upper strata in which the finds must be linked to for dating. Excavation shows archaeologists the successive levels of a culture in reverse and this in turns helps to create a typological chronology of finds which may be used in other areas. Photography is useful because it records the exact position and strata where the finds are found. The finds can then be studied by succeeding generations of scholars. Each of these generations will in turn be using more sophisticated methods to examine the finds and hopefully will have more evidence to support their ideas. Excavation by modern techniques tend to give us more information than the earlier excavations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries uncovered.
Germanic styles may be difficult and conclusions about their date and developments may distort the picture of the earliest Anglo-Saxon settlements. Two categories of Germanic material have been used extensively in discussing the settlement of Britain by Anglo-Saxons. One category is a series of buckles and belt fittings which have been identified as Germanic, military and early with examples of them from Clipsham and Leicester, Leicestershire, and Lincoln and Sleaford, Lincolnshire. These have been suggested by some to show that there was a Germanic military/mercenary presence in the East Midlands from as early as the fourth century (Hawkes and Dunning, 1961, 23 and 32). But it is very difficult to prove that these belts are Germanic, military or that they are worn exclusively by the males (Hills, 1979, 299-300). Even if they were exclusively military and male, they may have been issued within the Roman army and may indicate the presence of Roman troops or civilian officials.
The other category is Romano-Saxon pots, such as those found at Great Casterton, Leicestershire, which may also indicate the presence of Germanic mercenaries in eastern England in the fourth century. These pots were produced at fourth century Roman potteries but manufactured to suit Germanic tastes (Myres, 1969, 67-68). But the dimpled decoration which has been assumed to be a sign of Germanic style is not found in purely Germanic areas before the late fourth century so it probably indicates a Roman style which affected Germanic tastes around 400 (Gillam, 1979, 108; Hills, 1979, 309). Therefore, the Romano-Saxon pots could not have been produced to appeal to a Germanic taste which had not existed by this time.
The drinking sets and other expensive grave goods which are found in some graves imply that there was a wealthy group within the frontier society and which differed from Romano-Judaism in its use of burial ritual and in its view of the afterlife. These burial rites occurred when many provincials were still pagan and when Frankish influence within the Rhine army may have been hostile to Christianity. The presence of these graves outside some of the Rhineland forts implies that some of their occupants were soldiers. The ethnic origins of any individual grave must remain in doubt but we can assume that the majority of those buried were German in origin. The graves are probably Frankish, since they were the earliest settlement in Gaul north of the Loire. What may have been happening in northern Gaul is the emergence of a mortuary rite which combined elements from three traditions, Christian, Roman pagan and Germanic and was adapted to suit the social and ritual needs of the warrior class of this community (Boehme, 1974; James, 1977, 179-185).
The type of burials found in England probably show the presence of soldiers who were recruited from northern Gaul or the Rhineland at the very end of the fourth and early in the fifth century. On the basis of the metalwork that accompanied the burials, it has been suggested that these soldiers included Franks, Alamans, East Germans, Saxons and Angles and that all of them could have been recruited from the northern frontiers of the western Empire, for military service in Britain (Clarke, 1979). But individual ethnic origin is not related to the metalwork among their belongings. Many of the objects may have travelled as gifts or plunder. If this is true then it is not clear if the warrior graves of the Rhineland frontier spilled over into nearby parts of Britain in the late fourth and early fifth century.
It has been suggested that the graves are Frankish but there is no literary evidence of Frankish settlement in Britain and it is best to think of these settlers as merely Germanic, rather than of any specific tribal group and bringing with them the ideas of mortuary practice which were developed in the Rhineland. The quoit brooch style was derived from late Roman motifs but uses northern German annular brooch styles. The presence of this type of metalwork may imply the presence of Germans from further north who had experienced Roman employment at first or second hand.
The presence of some of these graves, scattered in very small numbers, suggests that the British aristocracy were recruiting what they thought were Roman soldiers. They were recruiting from northern Gaul which was the only group of equipped and trained men available to them. Recruitment may have been continuous because there is no evidence of a break between the years before Constantine III and the 420s. Excavators at some sites in England have argued that the location of their sites reflect the strategic values of the British employers rather than the choice of the soldiers.
Within the first half of the fifth century, early cruciform brooches, equal-arm brooches, composite saucer brooches and supporting-arm brooches began to reach Britain with most of them found in an area centred on East Anglia. This material culture and the cremations which accompanied it were characteristic of areas in southern Denmark and north west Germany where Angles and Saxons originated.
During the second half of the fifth century, brooches which were typical of manufacture in north-west Germany spread throughout the upper Thames valley and into the southern Midlands, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire areas. Similar pieces which were characteristic of Anglian or Jutish manufacture and associated with cremation had spread into an area around the Wash and into eastern Kent, with outliers in Yorkshire and they reached the Tyne by around 500 (Hawkes, 1989). Along the Thames, the inhumations were filled with rich Frankish grave goods and this suggests that links between the Rhineland and southern England continued.
BURIAL RITES
The diversity of burial rites of the in England can be confusing when we look at the context of the finds. This confusion can occur whether the burials are cremation, inhumation, mixed cemeteries or the East-orientated burials. The importance of the various burial rites is argued about constantly by scholars such as whether they relate to the race and the place of origin of the settlers or to the impact of the native culture or to the date of the burials themselves. The geographical distribution of the different rites and the varying degrees of wealth found within the graves at the different cemeteries is difficult to interpret. To get a better understanding of the distribution of the different rites, an understanding of where they started from on the continent, where they first occurred in England and what they meant to the people practising them is the first place to start.
The amount of influence by Germanic inhumation rites to the Roman ritual was great. Although orientation alone is not sufficient to establish the religious opinions or ethnicity of an individual, the majority of Anglo-Saxon inhumations are orientated in such a way that would not be out of place in a Christian churchyard (Faull, 1977, 7-8). The use of barrows for burials was not necessarily an import since it was used in Britain during the Roman period and was still in use in Wales by the sixth century. Many ancient barrows formed the nucleus of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries which they did in Germanic cemeteries on the continent. This may have been important in determining the location of a cemetery and even the settlement.
Links between British and English burial practices are not uncommon since while inhumation may have come over with the troops from the Rhineland, the rites used were not very different from those practised within the late Roman community in Britain. A shift by Britons from one to the other is entirely possible and it would be difficult to identify the burial of a Briton who had adopted Anglo-Saxon styles of dress and ornamentation.
The ritual of burial was a public event, as can be seen in Beowulf. It would not be surprising if the people responsible for the burial took the opportunity to make a statement about the status, gender, age and religious beliefs of the individual. Computer analysis of the characteristics and associations of a large group of urns has suggested that the urn design was not completely decorative in nature but may have been related to certain aspects of the individual that the relatives wished to stress, such as age, sex and status (Richards, 1987, 206-207). This makes it difficult to reconstruct chronological typologies for funerary pottery which are meaningful. Scholars will find it difficult to understand the meanings which underlie these burial rituals.
Anglo-Saxon burial rites may have communicated various messages, some of which are very subtle. The main purpose of the complex group of rites may have been to establish the social position of the deceased and his heirs. This display for social purposes may have been caused by stresses that were occurring within the society during the phase of transition between Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England. But to announce the ethnic origins of a Briton in a society that was dominated by Anglo-Saxons probably lead to the decrease in the social power of his or her heirs. When they were buried in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, the British burials were probably as similar to ethnic Anglo-Saxons as possible. Where we can distinguish Britons from Anglo-Saxons, it is possible that the local knowledge of Anglo-Saxon rites was inadequate and the entire social hierarchy was predominantly British and not very acculturated to Anglo-Saxon ways. This can be seen in the crouched inhumation cemeteries of Yorkshire.
Were the agricultural workers and slaves buried with their social superiors or even in the same cemeteries? Early interpretations of cemetery material shows that the question was irrelevant because Anglo-Saxon society seemed not to be very hierarchical. Writing about the great square-headed brooches, Leeds saw them as "the ornaments of peasant agriculturists among whom, too, grades of status and wealth must have existed" (Leeds, 1949). This view was supported by the historical tradition that the Anglo-Saxons were an egalitarian folk. These historical assumptions on which this view was based can no longer be accepted. The extent of cultural contacts between the English and Continental cemeteries is remarkable and implies that there was a close link maintained over two centuries or more. The peasant communities probably did not have the network of wide and repeating connections with the continent. These connections were probably found within the upper tiers of a social hierarchy which had numerous young men of high status but without substantial lands. These young men choose armed service as an alternative to farming and entered into the household of a powerful man as a gesith or an armed retainer (Wormald, 1978, 34).
Weapons, even including spears, are not usually found with low status and the objects which were the normal grave goods of women of comparable status should also be viewed in the same way. These objects were high in value and were probably the exclusive domain of kings, eorls and maybe the wealthier ceorls and their households.
If this society had a similar wealth and status gradient to that of Roman Britain or medieval England, then the rural workforce should have outnumbered the gentry and aristocracy by about 10:1 but this is not usually found within Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. Some low status graves can be identified in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries but usually only where they occur in direct dependence on a small scatter of affluent burials. There are a few examples of double burials, where an individual of low status was buried with one of high status or even buried alive or killed for the purpose. A series of unusual graves at Sutton-Hoo contained bodies in different postures and nine of the ten graves excavated around the high status burial within "mound 5" have been interpreted as sacrificial victims (Carver, 1989, 150). One of these burials was equipped with a plough and another was a double inhumation. All of them probably contained farm or household servants or slaves rather than the local farming population, dispatched to the next world in attendance of their patron or owner.
It seems probable that many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries contain the remains of the households of the social elite which are distinguished by their freedom at law and possession of a free wergild. These burials included the kings and aristocracy and the warrior class and perhaps their dependents and household staff. There is nothing to suggest that the rural communities outside these households were buried beside their social superiors. An increase in "Anglo-Saxon" type burials in the sixth century does not mean anything more than the integration of surviving Britons into the Anglo-Saxon legal and social system and into the culture. In late anglicized Bernicia, the presence of a small number of high status burials may imply that an Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was still culturally and socially distinct from the rest of the society until the conversion to Christianity in the seventh century.
These communities probably represented an influx new material culture combined with some adaptation in burial rites. These changes reached Britain along the same routes as the Roman Conquest of Britain had. The burial rites may have been viewed in Britain as an adaptation of existing practices where employment of mercenary soldiers was routine. This is consistent with the view that these graves reflect deployment of a small number of soldiers equipped and recruited on the Continent but under Roman or Romano-British control.
INHUMATION
The practice of inhumation was introduced in Germany during the later Roman period. Germans serving in the Roman army before around 350 and who died within the Empire were buried according to Roman rites and it is difficult to separate them from other Roman soldiers. Ammianus recorded that the Gothic Chief Athanaric of the Greuthungi died at Constantinople and was buried in the Roman way some time after 369. Inhumation burial was probably taken back to Germany by soldiers retiring from mercenary service but it was still uncommon in Germany before the end of the fourth century.
There are numerous furnished inhumations in northern Gaul from the late Roman period where they have been described as "warrior" or "Germanic" graves. The rites used in these burials are a combination of late Roman and barbarian practices. They are oriented in a way which would be common in a purely Roman cemetery. The main feature that distinguishes these graves from "Roman" ones are the grave goods which included pottery, glass and jewellery as well as weapons. Objects from both Roman and Germanic manufacture lie side by side in the graves.
CREMATION
Cremation was the normal method of disposal in the Roman world but was abandoned by the second and third centuries. Cremation remained common throughout Germany where its origins can be traced back to the Bronze Age. The vast urn fields of the pre-Roman and Roman Iron Ages demonstrate the popularity of this rite, particularly in northern and western Germany where it lasted into the post-Roman period. The ritual was very important to Germanic society and therefore it did not change much. Of the changes that did occur in Germany, several of them did not reach Britain. Some cemeteries of the Roman period in Germany show distinctive features such as sexual segregation which are not found in England.
The arrival of urned cremation and jewellery characteristics from north west Germany demonstrates the earliest archaeological evidence of cultural contact between Britain and a part of Germany not affected by cultural contacts with Rome. Germanic immigration was probably the most likely way for this material to arrive in eastern Britain.
This material is first found at the northern end of the old Saxon Shore fort chain. This suggests that the settlers followed the European coastline to the Channel and crossed from the mouth of the Rhine and landed in Essex or Suffolk. Once there, they went northwards up the North Sea coast as well as inland to the middle Thames. The variety of grave goods that have been found indicate that the settlers were of both sexes. Their burials have been dated without examining the literary sources. Only a few objects from the fourth century have been identified other than occasional finds in later graves but several cemeteries were in use before the mid-fifth century. The lack of Roman goods in the large cremation cemeteries of eastern England may imply that they belong to the decades following the breakdown of the Roman economic system around 420. This does not support the idea that they could have been the mercenary forces of the late fourth century. The difference between the early inhumations of southern England and the cremations of the east is clearly seen.
Myres stated in 1969 that the majority of all urns found in Britain come from just ten cremation cemeteries (Myres, 1969, 18). The large number of urns found has increased since then, with the total number of urns from Spong Hill being well in excess of the 3000 burials found at Loveden Hill. Whether these large cemeteries were used by single settlements or by dispersed communities is difficult to comprehend. Recent excavations have identified early Anglo-Saxon settlement near the Spong Hill cemetery which may be responsible for some of the burials there. Cemeteries and settlements are found at other places but it is possible that these large cemeteries accommodated many individuals from a distance away.
CULTURE
The spread of Germanic equipment may indicate the arrival and dispersal of incoming settlers from communities which were scattered across north-west Europe, from the Rhineland to southern Scandinavia. It is difficult to argue against the possibility of new settlements occurring throughout the late fifth century and probably into the early sixth century. But there are some problems of interpretation when we start to look at the migrations.
The most important problem is the confusion in the archaeological record between two processes, immigration and acculturation. Both of them are represented archaeologically by material in groups which are comparatively consistent. How can we distinguish between migration and other forms of cultural contact?
Within the Germanic context, this problem has been highlighted by the discussion of Scandinavian input into the Anglian areas of eastern England (Hines, 1984). An examination of the material culture has identified a series of artifacts (square-headed brooches, bracteates and sleeve clasps) which are common to Anglian England, south-west Norway, Denmark and the Swedish Upland. Similar developments in the grave construction and the rituals have also been identified. From this evidence, Hines has argued that there was continuing and complex forms of contact, including material exchange, two-way migration and ideological links across the North Sea (Hines, 1984). He has argued that how this was done is not very different from how the material and ideological culture of Roman Britain was tied to that of the Empire. Trade probably played a significant role in Roman Britain while gift exchange was common in Anglo-Saxon England, as young men sought patrons in distant lands or some inherited a tradition of family contacts from earlier kinsmen.
The grave goods used to show contact between Scandinavia and East Anglia in the sixth and seventh centuries are found in the same context and the same quantity as those used to confirm the migration from north Germany to eastern England in the fifth century (Carver, 1989, 148). What has changed is not so much the material found but the standpoint of the investigator, who challenges the idea that almost any imported grave good represents an immigrant. This has given way to a more complex view of cultural contact and exchange.
It is sometimes possible to show that an import probably did not come with an immigrant. For example, the Frankish jewellery found in Kentish graves is associated with Anglo-Saxon styles of dress and were not always worn in the Frankish style (Owen-Crocker, 1986, 55-63; Huggett, 1988, 92-94). These observations place discussion of immigration and ethnic origin in context. At other places, the mixture of Anglian, Saxon, Celtic and antique Roman grave goods is such that the finds themselves give us no clue to the ethnic background of the individual, outside that which we describe as an Anglo-Saxon culture.
The problem of acculturation can not be solved easily and should not be ignored. We are faced with two cultural and ideological traditions, one of which was spreading and encouraged the burying of artifacts with the body and the other was geographically in retreat and had inherited ideologies which discouraged furnished burials. It is difficult to identify British graves whether they are in the Celtic west or the English east of Britain. Historians and archaeologists can not make any statements about the probable survival of British culture on this basis.
It is easier to examine population levels than ethnicity, although the two subjects are linked. The rate of burials in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries rose in the early to mid-fifth century to a large amount in the late sixth and seventh centuries, when new cemeteries of accompanied inhumations came into use at the beginning of the Christian era. At Buckland, burials occurred only about once every four years in the late fifth century, compared with every two or three years around the late sixth century which is a significant increase (Evison, 1987).
The traditional explanation of this is to propose an increase in the immigrant population through either fresh immigration or through an internal excess of births over deaths. However, it is doubtful that migration was very significant by the mid-sixth century and it was probably not the cause in the increases of the seventh century. It is also unlikely to have increased the population of individual settlements of the kind associated with the Buckland cemetery at Dover.
If fresh immigration was not responsible for the rise in the numbers of burials in the sixth century, was it the result of population increase within Anglo-Saxon society? This possibility has been discussed but the palaeobotanical evidence is against a massive population increase in lowland Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries as well as the massive collapse in the fifth century (Arnold, 1984, 48-49). This questions is being considered but will have to wait until better evidence becomes available.
The other possibility is that the increase was a result of acculturation by local Britons who were integrated into the Anglo-Saxon social and cultural system through a process of recruitment in the local community.
CONCLUSION
One thing that must be remembered in dealing with the archaeological evidence from this early period is that the literary evidence represents the total available and that the archaeological evidence will increase over time. An example of this is the discoveries of Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England which are reported in the press. The existing evidence that we have is what has been found and recorded to date since many of the sites have been destroyed without any record. For this reason, the evidence for any area is incomplete and therefore the evidence will not be uniform across the country. New evidence can cause changes of interpretations of older evidence. Because of this, we have to turn to place-names to help fill in the gaps left by archaeology.
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