The Dictionary of Old English the Archaeology of Ritual Landscapes, and the Burial Ritual in Early Anglo-Saxon England

• Published in: Florilegium (Ottawa) 2009-01, Vol.26 (1), p.207-233
• Main Author: Crawford, Sally
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0709-5201; 2369-7180
• DOI: 10.3138/flor.26.010

Early Anglo-Saxon mortuary ritual may be seen as a repeated pattern of performances and actions in the landscape (from the place of death to the grave) and on and around the body before, during, and after death, where communally recognized movement, words, sounds, sights, and objects created what have been termed “technologies of remembrance,” through which the burial is both a reflection of the loss of an individual to the community and a familiar re-affirmation of the community and reenactment of its traditions. Only a small portion of the rituals attending the burial of the dead can be recognized in the archaeological record: specifically, the relationship between the final place of disposal of the body and features in the landscape such as settlements, geological features or ancient built features, the position of the body in relation to other burials, the layout of the body in the grave, and the presence or absence of archaeologically recoverable objects associated with the body. Studies of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries show that disposal of the body involved patterns of behaviour within a broad normative ritual, but the ritual was not static over time, nor do all graves conform to a single template. Burials were ritualized, but not to the exclusion of individual agency. Mortuary ritual, with its repetitive, ritualized “vocabulary” of behaviour and patterning, has been described as “an appropriate place to look for material manifestations of communicative action; it is arguably more semiotically charged than most archaeologically observable behavior.” It is not merely a handy metaphor that the construction and composition of the furnished burial ritual has often been discussed in linguistic terms. There is a “vocabulary” of grave goods together with a “grammar” of ritual.