The Early Anglo-Saxon Period is characterized archaeologically by the regular deposition of artefacts in human graves in England. The scope for dating these objects and graves has long been studied, but it has typically proved easier to identify and enumerate the chronological problems of the material than to solve them. Prior to the work of the project reported on here, therefore, there was no comprehensive chronological framework for Early Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, and the level of detail and precision in dates that could be suggested was low. The evidence has now been studied afresh using a co-ordinated suite of dating techniques, both traditional and new: a review and revision of artefact-typology; seriation of grave-assemblages using correspondence analysis; high-precision radiocarbon dating of selected bone samples; and Bayesian modelling using the results of all of these. These were focussed primarily on the later part of the Early Anglo-Saxon Period, starting in the 6th century. This research has produced a new chronological framework, consisting of sequences of phases that are separate for male and female burials but nevertheless mutually consistent and coordinated. These will allow archaeologists to assign grave-assemblages and a wide range of individual artefact-types to defined phases that are associated with calendrical date-ranges whose limits are expressed to a specific degree of probability. Important unresolved issues include a precise adjustment for dietary effects on radiocarbon dates from human skeletal material. Nonetheless the results of this project suggest the cessation of regular burial with grave goods in Anglo-Saxon England two decades or even more before the end of the seventh century. That creates a limited but important discrepancy with the current numismatic chronology of early English sceattas. The wider implications of the results for key topics in Anglo-Saxon archaeology and social, economic and religious history are discussed to conclude the report.

Stephen Pollington is well known for his many works popularising scholarship and archaeology on Anglo-Saxon England. Here he turns his attention to probably the most famous aspect of early Anglo-Saxon culture, the spectular burial mounds, of which Sutton Hoo is the best known example. Here Pollington presents a detailed gazetteer of all known barrow burials across England including the latest findings such as the chamber burial at Prittlewell. Information regarding excavation, contents, dating and skeletal remains is accompanied by photographs and plans of the finest sites. The opening half of the book uses this information to outline the evolution of the barrow burial, its Germanic context, the symbolism of the burials and the contents of the tombs, and their physical construction. Old English and Norse literary references to the mounds are contained in appendices.

This book moves beyond the examination of grave goods to place community at the forefront of cemetery studies. It reveals that early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries were pluralistic, multi-generational places where the physical communication of digging a grave was used to construct family and community stories.

This study comprises a descriptive analysis of the entire range of Anglo-Saxon grave goods and an exploration of their causes and meanings from the 7th and 8th centuries, a time when kingdoms went through far-reaching changes in their ideologies, trade relationships and social structures. The first half of the book consists of discussion of identification of the data, the grave-goods types, the cultural affliations of grave-goods and interpretation of the data. The second half consists of a gazetteer of conversion-period Anglo-Saxon burial sites, numerous maps and pages of figures illustrating the artefacts. Geake concludes that the grave-goods from this period expressed a `pan-English neo-classical' identity, an Anglo-Saxon imperial ideology, drawing heavily on Roman prototypes and that this identity was promoted by the church and the state to legitimise the power of their hierarchies.

"Contents Include: An introduction to the grave, conservation, metallurgical and other analyses, a catalogue of organic and inorganic materials, and a discussion of dates and context."

"Anglo-Saxons were not only frequently buried with material artefacts ranging from pots to clothing to jewellery, they were also often buried with items of food; the funeral ritual itself was sometimes marked by feasting, even at the graveside." "Christina Lee examines the place of food and feasting in funeral rituals from the earliest period to the eleventh century, considering the changes and transformations that occurred during this time. She draws on a wide range of sources, from archaeological evidence to the existing texts; she is concerned particularly to look at representations of funeral feasting and how it functioned as a tool for memory, shedding light on the relationship between the living and the dead." -- Prové de l'editor.