Burial in Anglo-Saxon England

The early Anglo-Saxon period in England lasted from the fifth to the eighth centuries CE, during which time burial was the common custom for disposing of the dead.

[citation needed] The Anglo-Saxons brought with them their own heterogeneous forms of burial practice, which were distinct from those of the British peoples living in western and northern Britain during the Early Medieval,[6] having more in common with those of pagan continental Europe.

[12] In many cases, alkaline soils have led to the good preservation of the skeletal remains, enabling archaeologists to excavate inhumed corpses and gain "a great deal of information" from them.

Data that can be gathered or inferred from Anglo-Saxon inhumations includes the biological sex or age of the individual, as well as information about their health or lifestyle.

[20] Here, several burials containing the corpses of individuals who had been hanged, beheaded, or in other ways mutilated were placed around Mound 5 on the eastern side of the cemetery.

[21] Later examples of probable Anglo-Saxon execution cemeteries that date from the tenth or eleventh centuries have been found at Five Knolls in Dunstable[22] and Bran Ditch in Fowlmere.

[30] Similarly, four Anglo-Saxon burials have been excavated where it appears that the individual was buried while still alive, which could imply that this was a part of either a religious rite or as a form of punishment.

"[34] Archaeological understandings of the Anglo-Saxon cremation processes have been largely reconstructed from an osteological analyses of the cemeteries at Spong Hill, Sancton, Elsham and Cleatham.

[41] The most notable of these motifs was the swastika, which was widely inscribed not only on crematory urns but also on certain pieces of weaponry, various brooches, and other forms of (often female) jewelry.

Archaeologist David Wilson remarked that the swastika "undoubtedly had special importance", suggesting that it was the symbol of the pagan god Thunor.

In Suffolk however, ships were not burned, but buried, as is the case at Sutton Hoo, which, it is believed, was the resting place of the king of the East Angles, Rædwald.

[70] The archaeologist Helen Geake noted that the burials of this period could be analytically divided into four groups: furnished, unfurnished, princely, and deviant.

[71] The documented conversion of Anglo-Saxon England to Christianity, which took place during the seventh century, was used by earlier archaeologists to explain many of the changes in burial practices during this period.

[71] For instance, the gradual decline in the appearance of grave goods and the increasing use of inhumed bodies located in a west-to-east orientation have been attributed to Christian beliefs about the afterlife.

[78] Women's graves typically consist of pins, chatelaines with such accessories as purse-mounts and workboxes, and necklaces containing small, monochrome beads, gold pendants, and slip-rings made of silver or bronze.

[81] A third explanation could be found in a growing desire to conserve limited resources and keep them within the circulation, rather than removing them from social usage through burial with the dead.

[81] The spatial patterning of grave good types also differs from those of the Early Anglo-Saxon period, as smaller regional distributions were replaced by larger ones.

[86] "A man may bury his brother with the deadAnd strew his grave with the golden thingsHe would have him take, treasures of all kinds,But gold hoarded when he here livedCannot allay the anger of GodToward a soul sin-freighted."

In nearby Francia, Charlemagne's ordinances of parish rights – issued in 786 and 810/3 – prohibited the continuing use of earlier, non-Christian cemeteries, emphasizing the need for churchyard burial.

[89] Clergy increasingly developed a financial interest in having individuals buried within their churchyard, because they would receive a fee for both the burial and masses to be performed for the dead.

[89] Christian teaching held as a basic tenet the belief that after bodily death the human soul would be judged according to their behavior in life.

Those who had been baptized kept faith performed good deeds, and had intercessory prayer could be permitted to Heaven, while those who did not do such things would go on an afterlife of torment in Hell.

[90] Texts from this period reflect that there was a division of opinion about the clergy as to whether judgment followed immediately on from death or whether all deceased souls awaited Judgement Day before being sent to either Heaven or Hell.

[93] Typically made of wood, in a number of excavated cases – for instance at York Minster – they also included metal fittings and locks.

Describing these finds, Browne related that "In a Field of old Walsingham not many months past were dug up between forty and fifty urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, not far from one another... some containing two pounds of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jaws, thigh-bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion".

Following his death in 1776, Faussett's notes were written up and published in 1856 as the Inventorium Sepulchrale by Charles Roach Smith, who added his own commentary to the work.

Due to the Society of Antiquaries' inability to act on the situation, in 1843 Charles Roach Smith and Thomas Wright – both keen Anglo-Saxonists – founded the British Archaeological Association (BAA), which held its first conference the following year in Canterbury.

When the British Museum refused to purchase Faussett's collection of Anglo-Saxon artifacts following his grandson's death in 1853, Roach Smith complained that "not only does the Government begin with gathering the monuments, ancient and modern, of all foreign countries, but it ends there also.

"[103] In September 2020, archaeologists announced the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery with 17 cremations and 191 burials dating back to the 7th century in Oulton, near Lowestoft.

The graves contained the remains of men, women, and children, as well as artifacts including small iron knives and silver pennies, wrist clasps, strings of amber, and glass beads.