Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited is an academic anthology edited by the British archaeologists Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark and Sarah Semple which was first published by Oxbow Books in 2010.

The origins for Signals of Belief in Early England came from a conference held in 2005 at the University of Oxford; based around the subject of "Paganism and Popular Practice", it had been organised by Sarah Semple and Alex Sanmark, two archaeologists who would go on to edit the volume.

Price had previously been involved in the investigation of the pre-Christian religious beliefs of northern Europe, authoring the influential book, The Viking Way: Religion and War in the Later Iron Age of Scandinavia (2002).

"[3] Ultimately, Price writes, Signals of Belief in Early England "simply represents the state of the art, with supporting references to the work on which it builds, and summarises with admirable caution and sensitivity most of what we currently know about the intricate mental world of the pre-Christian English.

"[5] In the first paper of the anthology, written by Martin Carver of the University of York, the author opens with a discussion of the work of Neil Price in his book The Viking Way (2002), which explored the existence of female shamans in pre-Christian Scandinavian society.

[6] He proceeds to note that the work of Price and other academics has enabled contemporary scholars to understand historical paganism far better than ever before because they are "better equipped in that triad of disciplines"; archaeology, anthropology and history.

Carver expresses his opinion that both Lewis-Williams' theories and his multidisciplinary approach (using methods drawn from disciplines like anthropology, psychology, art and ethnology) can be employed in order to shed light on the world of Anglo-Saxon paganism.

[10] "I would suggest that if we are to make progress in the understanding of the early Anglo-Saxon mind we should exercise three principles: first we must study the period as a continuum with prehistory, since there is little doubt the Anglo-Saxons could see prehistory all about them; second, we should adopt the premise that monumentality was the result of agency – showing us what local people were thinking and where their allegiance lay; and thirdly, perhaps most important, we are never entitled to assume, in the 5th-8th century, that this monumentality refers to an institutional religion, either pagan or Christian in persuasion, since we have no reliable evidence that there was one."

[16] Initially describing "natural places" in the landscape, Semple discusses how the pagan Anglo-Saxons may have understood their surroundings, looking at the manner in which fields and groves were devoted to deities.

Proceeding to discuss the role of rivers in the Anglo-Saxon cognitive landscape, it examines the archaeological evidence for votive deposits placed into them at this time, noting the wide array of weapons, but also jewellery and tools, which have been found.

Proceeding to discuss inhumation burials, Williams once more argues that there would have been a series of different ritualised scenes as the corpse was prepared, laid in the grave, and then covered in soil, rather than simply one singular layout of the dead.

[20] The fifth paper of the anthology, authored by Jenny Walker, a graduate of the University of York's Department of Archaeology, explores the role that the great wooden halls served as "ritual theatre[s]" in Anglo-Saxon paganism, using the Northumbrian site of Yeavering as a case study.

Referencing the theories of sociologist Anthony Giddens, Walker maintains that the role of both human agency and ideology in constructing the halls "as a political act" must be taken into account by archaeologists adopting a post-processual approach.

[21] Aleks Pluskowski – an Archaeology Lecturer at the University of Reading – offers the anthology's six paper, an exploration of the role that non-human animals played in pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon religion.

Proceeding to look at horses featured in documents from the period, Fern discusses the mythological figures Hengist and Horsa who appear in Bede's 8th-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, as well as the role that the former played in the epic poem Beowulf.

[23] The penultimate paper in the anthology, "Living On: Ancestors and the Soul", is authored by Alexandra Sanmark, then a post doctoral Research Associate at the Millennium Institute Centre for Nordic Studies and Lecturer at the University of Western Australia's Department of History.

[24] The final paper of the anthology, "Creating the Pagan English: From the Tudors to the Present Day", is the product of a collaboration between Howard Williams and Sue Content, a doctoral student at the University of Chester's Department of History and Archaeology.

[25] "This is the best kind of edited collection of scholarly essays, with a firm focus on a subject, a common purpose in tackling it, and a clear division of the material according to theme, between authors with a proven expertise in each area and comparable ability.

Although she believed that there was much to commend in the anthology, she was wary that words like "superstitious", "magical", "numinous", "sacred", "sanctified" and "supernatural" had been used in a loose way as if they were synonyms despite the fact that they have distinct meanings.

[28] Robert J. Wallis reviewed the book for Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture, noting that it would be enjoyed by those who liked the theoretical positions adopted in the 1990s, and that much of the language used is similar to that which has been employed in Bronze and Iron Age Studies.

Expressing that its post-processualist angle has given Anglo-Saxon archaeology "a sharper edge", he opines that it constitutes essential reading for those interested in this area, but that a greater attention to anthropological theory, particularly regarding concepts of animism, shamanism, and totemism, needs to be developed.