Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain

Cambridge Studies in Archaeology

by Howard M.R. Williams

How were the dead remembered in early medieval Britain? Originally published in 2006, this innovative study demonstrates how perceptions of the past and the dead, and hence social identities, were constructed through mortuary practices and commemoration between c. 400–1100 AD. Drawing on archaeological evidence from across Britain, including archaeological discoveries, Howard Williams presents a fresh interpretation of the significance of portable artefacts, the body, structures, monuments and landscapes in early medieval mortuary practices. He argues that materials and spaces were used in ritual performances that served as 'technologies of remembrance', practices that created shared 'social' memories intended to link past, present and future. Through the deployment of material culture, early medieval societies were therefore selectively remembering and forgetting their ancestors and their history. Throwing light on an important aspect of medieval society, this book is essential reading for archaeologists and historians with an interest in the early medieval period.

Genres: Archaeology, Research, Social Science

268 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Howard M.R. Williams is a British archaeologist. He received his PhD in 2000 from the University of Reading for a thesis on Anglo-Saxon cremation burial. Most of his voluminous published work treats Early Medieval Britain, though he has also published on Scandinavia in the same period and on the history of scholarship in his field of study.

Reviews

[Duntay · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this refreshing look at the whole picture, Williams builds on the old archeological maxim "the dead do not bury themselves". Williams looks at burials in early medieval Britain as a whole package: not just a source of osteological information, but, as texts containing many meanings formed by the arrangement of objects and the body. Also coming into play is the siting of the grave in the landscape : the silhouette it forms against the sky, the view from the grave, even the very shape of the grave itself. Williams says "Graves, like poems, have the ability to shift between and sometimes conflate past, present and future, rendering temporal destinations ambiguous and transformed".

Williams looks at the whole picture geographically as well, including case studies from all over Britain and the Isle of Man.