The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

• 182 • Catherine Hills
Early maps show field boundaries, some still in existence, that underlie, and were therefore
earlier than, Roman roads, but which must have continued in use through Anglo-Saxon, medieval
and early modern centuries (Williamson 1993, Fig 2.1). If fields, plants and animals survived, so
must some of the people.
The question now is not whether any Britons remained to form part of the population of
‘Anglo-Saxon’ England, but whether immigrants arrived in significant numbers or just as small
groups of invading warriors who took over at the top, but did not replace the basic population
(Higham 1992). In the west, it was never thought that the Britons disappeared, but there were
Irish settlers in the south-west, and also the Scoti in Dalriada, more often interpreted as invading
war leaders than as a folk migration.
Cemeteries
Early medieval cemeteries have not been discovered in large numbers in western and northern
Britain (Edwards and Lane 1992). Known burials in those regions are mostly unfurnished
inhumations dated, often very approximately, by stratigraphy or radiocarbon. There is a variety
of associated structures: round or square ditched enclosures, stone cists or cairns, and some
evidence for reuse of prehistoric burial monuments. In as much as the limited evidence allows
for argument, it suggests long-term continuity of practice from prehistoric and Roman-period
burial ritual, consistent with continuity of population, and the gradual introduction of features
connected with Christianity, such as enclosed graveyards and churches.
Anglo-Saxon cemeteries (e.g. Scull 1992) are numerous, highly visible and apparently intrusive,
because they do not appear to be a development from past indigenous practice, but instead
resemble burials found on the other side of the North Sea where they form part of a long local
tradition of burial ritual. This has always seemed to be evidence for the immigration of large
numbers of Germanic peoples across the North Sea to Britain. However, it is not clear what the
native British burial practice was, since relatively few Iron Age or Roman burials have been
excavated in Britain, except for a few urban Roman cemeteries. The change may not have been so
complete. Many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, especially in Yorkshire, are associated with prehistoric
monuments such as Bronze Age barrows, and may represent newcomers laying claim to the
ancestors of the lands they had taken over. The phenomenon might also represent a continuing
veneration of monuments by people on lands that had always been occupied. All the same, there
are such similarities between English and continental burials that there must have been a close
connection between the respective peoples involved, and migration cannot be discounted as a
partial explanation. This need not mean that all the occupants of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ burials were of
Germanic ancestry. Britons might have adopted foreign customs through social or political
expediency, or religious conversion.
In the east, the majority of the earliest burials were cremations. One of the largest cremation
cemeteries excavated in England is Spong Hill, North Elmham, Norfolk (e.g. Hills 1976; McKinley
1994), where more than 2,000 cremations and 56 inhumations were excavated from a cemetery
used in the fifth and sixth centuries AD (Figure 10.3). The bones were contained in hand-made
pots, often elaborately decorated with incised, stamped or plastic decoration. It was possible to
identify groups of pots decorated with the same tool, and therefore made at the same time,
probably by the same person. Adults of both sexes and children had been buried there. Many of
the graves also contained cremated animal bones, some of which might have been food offerings,
but in many cases it seems that a whole animal, usually a horse, had been burnt on the pyre. These
were young adult animals which must have been valuable, so that their sacrifice was a significant
offering of wealth. The women buried had been laid out wearing their jewellery, glass beads and
bronze brooches, the melted remains of which were then put in the pot with the bones. Men were not