Burial and social networks in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery
Anglo-Saxon cemeteries can be a key source of information about communities and settlements. But sometimes they have stories that are as curious c in their own right. Lisa Brundle introduces such a cemetery in Lincolnshire, still under u excavation cavati
What do we know about early AngloSaxon Lincolnshire ( ad410– 700)? The answer is: very little. Early medieval documents recount the historic kingdom of Lindsey emerging in the seventh century, but we have limited understandings of what happened during the previous two centuries of post-Roman power vacuum in the region. With few excavated early Anglo-Saxon settlements, we often rely on burial archaeology to piece together a narrative about communities.
Important recent studies including Kevin Leahy’s Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey (2007) and Caitlin Green’s Britons & Anglo-Saxons (2012) have provided new insights, but our knowledge is hampered by the scarcity of modern excavations. Despite 81 known early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in Lincolnshire, only one on the chalk wolds – Castledyke South – had been properly excavated.
The newly discovered site at Scremby is the first well-excavated cemetery since Castledyke (1998) and Cleatham (2007), and presents an exciting opportunity to closely investigate a previously unknown community who chose to bury their dead on a slope facing the Wash, overlooking East Anglia. Preliminary analysis is starting to reveal its secrets concerning burial behaviour, and how communities mediated social networks on the eve of the formation of Lindsey.
Chance discovery
Scremby is a picturesque, quiet hamlet which lies on the southern tip of the chalk wolds in the parish of Ashby with Scremby in the East Lindsey district of Lincolnshire. In 2017 a metal detectorist, Damien Neale, was searching cultivated private land with permission from the owner. The field was a virgin site – no known detecting had previously occurred, and it was not long before he found artefacts dating to the mid-fifth to sixth centuries. He reported his finds to Adam Daubney, the Lincolnshire finds liaison officer ( flo), and it was soon clear that the site warranted further investigation.
Archaeological fieldwork was arranged by Hugh Willmott at the University of Sheffield, in partnership with the Lincolnshire flo. Excavations in 2017–18 revealed a total of 23 graves: they contained the remains of 24 individuals, with eight male adults, ten female adults, an infant and five juveniles aged between ten and 20, clustered near a barrow raised over an unfurnished male burial. Radiocarbon dates place this cemetery firmly between the end of Roman Britain and the eve of the conversion to Christianity, ad425– 600.
As excavation got underway it quickly became apparent that the cemetery contained a rich array of objects interred with well-dressed females. They were garbed in the “Anglian”-style costume with peplos garments, body-length tubes, fastened by pairs of annular brooches; many also had pins fastening an outer garment. Among other dress accessories were wrist clasps, securing the opening in a sleeve, and strings of beads hung around the neck and chest area. Additional grave goods included girdlehangers and latch-lifters, both key-like possible emblems of female identity, and knives, chalk spindle whorls, a bone comb, a scutiform (shield-shaped) pendant and an animal-tooth pendant.
Not all of the women were buried with dress fasteners. The mortuary costume, for instance, of an adult female in Grave 20 included a necklet of six silver-sheet beads on a silver-wire loop, a silver mount or casing and a pair of copper-alloy tweezers suspended by an iron ring on the right side of the pelvis. Some dress accessories did not even form part of the mortuary costume; instead they were kept in a bag and placed on the body or loose in the grave during the closing of the burial. While men did not sport such a
rich variety of grave goods, there is some variation among the masculine graves at Scremby, including various combination sets of shields, spears, knives, a buckle, an urn and even “feminine” objects including a latch-lifter.
During the excavation, one grave in particular caused quite a stir: Grave 21, holding a female aged 17–25 laid out on her left side with her legs flexed to the left, her head carefully positioned to lean towards an infant cradled on her left arm. She wore an Anglian-style costume with brooches fastening a dress and cloak, and two pairs of wrist clasps. Festoons of beads around her neck, including a large crystal, draped over the infant. At the crook of her knee was an elephant-ivory ring presumed to have been around the mouth of a bag, which had contained a buckle, a latch-lifter and a single girdle-hanger. Girdle-hangers are often found within female graves of this age bracket, typically in pairs, forming part of a girdle group on the left hip or upper leg area with their terminals facing the feet. In Grave 21, however, the terminal of this single hanger faced upwards, pointing like a finger towards the heads of the adult and infant. This grave evokes an emotive response from a modern viewer, conjuring a mother protecting her child. Perhaps this was the desired effect. While it is difficult to pin down if they were in fact related or simply died at a similar time, we can safely conjecture that the buriers wished to communicate and recreate familial bonds.
Concealing and curating
We know very little about the events that surrounded funerals in early AngloSaxon England. We do know from excavations that bodies were carefully dressed for the mourning community to look at, before the graves were closed. Everything about the dead communicated something to the living, from the arrangement of jewellery, to the positioning of the body. Yet some objects were concealed from view, safely tucked under the body or clothing. Did these have particular significance or meaning? Or were they simply hidden because of the physical layout of the grave? Likewise, some graves contained old, curated objects – some perhaps 50 years old at the time of burial, and others several centuries. Careful analysis of these practices at Scremby gives us important insights into how the mourners wished to remember and commemorate the newly deceased.
Mnemonic strategies entailed highly conspicuous displays and the concealment of lavish grave goods. In Grave 17, for instance, a pair of silver spiral finger-rings were found under the right lower arm, hidden underneath a sleeve. This lady was well-dressed with fasteners and fittings and a necklace of bucket pendants underneath a festoon of beads with a central animal-tooth pendant. Objects on display include a chalk spindle whorl and a comb at her feet, and an ivory-ring bag at her left femur (thigh). Might the finger-rings
and bucket pendants have been concealed in fear of grave robbing at a later date? This does not appear to be the case. A pair of silver spiral rings adorned the fingers of the female adult buried in Grave 12, clearly visible. Might this indicate that her mourners could only muster two rings for the burial, and carefully posed the body to show them off? Again this was not the case: Grave 12 has a similar grave assemblage to Grave 17, with only subtle differences – Grave 12 includes a pair of girdlehangers and no bucket pendants.
Girdle-hangers, antique objects and even fire steels were also hidden. Grave 1, with a well-furnished ten–12-year-old female, demonstrates a careful layering and concealment of objects under the body and within layers of garments. The brooches and beads on her shoulders and chest area and the clasps on her wrists draw attention to her upper body, while other objects were concealed under her lower body. Underneath the pelvis on the left side was a Roman harness fitting; an iron fire-steel nearby was probably also placed under the body, as we found a pair of girdle-hangers partially underneath the fire-steel and the left femur.
The single hanger in Grave 21 was also hidden, bundled in an ivory-ring bag. Yet, for two other adult females (Graves 2 and 12) their buriers ensured the girdle-hangers were clearly visible to those at the graveside, with the pieces hanging over the ivory-ring bag on their left upper leg. Interestingly, the concealed girdle-hangers in Grave 1 and Grave 21 are not completely whole. A terminal head of the pair in Grave 1 is missing and only a single hanger was in the bag in Grave 21. Was this simply a matter of careful positioning so that the fragmented state of the objects was not on display, or was there some kind of symbolic language behind the concealment of girdle-hangers and other objects?
Similar concealing behaviour was also appropriate for males. Notably, in Grave 15 a shield with a crouching birdof-prey mount was placed underneath the upper part of the body, which was
laid out on top of the reversed shield. This type of shield ornamentation is incredibly rare and, oddly, the ornamentation was hidden from view. Other shields without ornate decoration were positioned in the typical Anglian position – on the chest and head area, covering their faces (Graves 11 and 14). It is extremely rare to find shields under the body – the nearby cemetery at Sleaford demonstrates a similar practice, perhaps implying an intercommunity burial behaviour. Other weapon graves include Grave 6, which contained a spear. It had been laid on the chest area
after the grave was partially filled: was it an afterthought during the closing of the grave? However, in Grave 20 (with an adult female) a well-worn single copper-alloy annular brooch was found in the grave fill immediately above the woman’s jaw. This provokes multiple questions. Might the worn condition of the object and its placement imply that it had been curated and “gifted” during the grave closure? Why were some rare or unusual items concealed under the body? Did all those present at the funeral view the concealment of items, or were only a few select individuals privy to such acts?
Healing and divining
Females buried with bags and workboxes containing small fragments, and who wore objects like bucket pendants and girdle-hangers, are closely associated with “cunning women” (as defined by Audrey Meaney and Tania Dickinson) – specialists involved in healing, divining and the supernatural within families and communities. Markedly, there is an unusually high number of women buried at Scremby with girdle-hangers, ivory-ring bags and bags containing small material fragments. Three graves demonstrate burial with bucket pendants (Graves 2, 7 and 17). Grave 17 was particularly notable – furnished with beads, a chalk spindle whorl, a bone comb and an ivory-ring bag containing an iron rod some 10cm long. Grave 12 also had an ivory-ring bag, containing small amulet objects including a mount with repoussé decoration, a knife and, like
Grave 17, an iron rod (12cm long) and a pair of girdle-hangers dangling over the mouth of the bag. Grave 1, with the ten–12-year-old, is well-furnished with a necklace of hundreds of beads, dress fasteners and fittings, a fire-steel, Roman antiques and a pair of girdlehangers. Although well-furnished tenyear-olds are quite rare, they might have been perceived as adults. For this time period, females were furnished with dress fittings from this age, corresponding with the biological ability to give birth.
Was ten or 12 years enough time for an individual to obtain the correct knowledge and skill sets of a specialist? Perhaps the concealment of the girdlehanger and its fragmented state refer to an inherited status of healer and caregiver of children, who died too young to fulfil her specialist role. Latchlifters are another type of pendant object, again perhaps symbolising a key. Generally these are found in female burials, but here at Scremby a single male grave contained a complete example (Grave 13) – other grave goods included a shield. This individual demonstrates an unusual, and for this cemetery unique, bodily posture – his legs were tightly flexed to the right so that his lower legs were under his bottom with his feet together. The gentleman in Grave 13 also seems to
have been isolated from the rest of the cemetery, adding another layer of intrigue. Like the cunning woman, perhaps this individual was marked out by his assemblage and body posture as a male specialist, who shared a similar status or role as the women with g girdlehangers and amulets, and whose distinctive grave was also set apart by its isolation.
There are many oddities at Scremby: why was the gentleman in Grave 6 buried with his knee raised up on an earth bank, and why did the buriers choose to lay down a spear after depositing a layer of soil on his body? They were certainly generating very memorable and distinctive personas within the cemetery. A study of Grave 12 might offer an insight into objects thrown into the grave as it was closed over.
Isotopic analysis revealed that the woman in this grave was likely to have grown up in Kent, yet her mortuary costume is of the Anglian style with annular brooches, sleeve clasps and a girdle-hanger set. Other accessories include a belt buckle and a pair of silver spiral rings found wrapped around the fingers of her left hand – both of these object groups are found widely across early y Anglo-Saxon g England. g
Interestingly, a belt buckle and a buckle fragment, both of Type 1.6a, were found in the grave’s upper fill; this type has a south coast distribution. It seems that this Kentish lady traversed the landscape and coastline, perh perhaps haps dressed in the southern fashion, bringing her worldly possessions and d gifts. It seems it was not deemed d appropriate for r these southern n belt buckles to form part of her immediate mortuary ensemble. Rather, they were kept, perhaps treasured and curated.
It is not difficult to imagine why the Anglo-Saxon community chose the site for their dead at Scremby
Perhaps the later additions of a spear in Grave 6, a brooch in Grave 20 and the buckles in Grave 12 added another layer of drama during the funeral.
Emotive landscapes
It is not difficult to imagine why the Anglo-Saxon community chose the site for their dead at Scremby. The cemetery is on the crest of the southeastern tip of the Lincolnshire Wolds, commanding extensive vistas over the northern Fens to the south, and across the Lymn Valley to the south-west. Beyond the valley, the view takes in the eastern edge of the southern wolds as it rises up towards Raithby and Hagworthingham. Mourners could gaze across the Wash towards Norfolk, and over to neighbouring communities at Sleaford.
Interestingly, the type of girdlehangers in Graves 1, 2 and 21 are generally clustered around the fringes of the Fens in East Anglia. Might this shared girdle-hanger type reflect an inter-cultural zone? It is possible that the location – close to the Wash – enabled access to East Anglia, perhaps on small dug-outwooden dug-out wooden boats. boats Yet, Yet the burial practices at Scremby share similar peculiarities with Sleaford (such as throwing in objects after the grave had been partially filled). It seems that the community at Scremby networked at a local and inter-regional scale with visitors from at least as far as the south coast. They shared cultural connections with East Anglia, and were intimately linked with the neighbouring community at Sleaford. It is perhaps then no wonder that the community at Scremby wished to invest in their dead, creating memorable, emotive mortuary topographies.
Excavation continues in 2019 with four weeks of digging. We hope to find the western limit of the burial ground, and to uncover the chronological relationship between the unfurnished male barrow burial and the surrounding flat graves.
Lisa Brundle is the author of Image & Performance, Agency & Ideology: Representations of the Human Figure in Funerary Contexts in Anglo-Saxon Art, ad 400–680 (2019). She is currently Lincolnshire finds liaison officer, writing up the Scremby cemetery report with Adam Daubney and Hugh Wilmott