Burial and Society

About the book

Archaeology today recognizes research in burials for its unique, highly informative, broad portrait of a society: the evidence which graves provide can clarify regional, ethnic, and political differences as well as the economic class of the individual. The evidence within a burial site clarifies the ritual life within a culture.

The contributors to Burial and Society are concerned with several trends in modern archaeology, such as computer analyses for the study of chronological, territorial and social structure; the current re-analysis of old excavations brought on by a renewed interest in artifacts; and the growing importance of the study of family groups, social organization, and political structures. These papers encompass theoretical and methodological aspects of burial archaeology.

Table of contents

Foreword

Claus Kjeld Jensen & Karen Høilund Nielsen, Introduction - towards a Danish Burial Archaeology?

Part I: Theoretical and Methodological Framework:
Heinrich Härke, The Nature of Burial Data
Claus Kjeld Jensen & Karen Høilund Nielsen, Burial Data and Correspondence Analysis

Part II: Chronological Case Studies:
Karen Margrethe Hornstrup, Chronological Problems. The transition from the Early to the Late Bronze Age in Denmark
Karen Høilund Nielsen, The Schism of Anglo-Saxon Chronology

Part III: Social Case Studies:
Karen Høilund Nielsen, From Society to Burial and from Burial to Society? - some modern analogies
Søren Diinhoff, The Custom of Sacrifice in Early Iron Age Burial Tradition
Jytte Ringtved, Family, Kin-group and Community. On the study of social structure in Iron-age cemeteries (Summary)
Heinrich Härke, Material Culture as Myth: Weapons in Anglo-Saxon Graves
Karen Høilund Nielsen, Animal Art and the Weapon-Burial Rite - a Political Badge?
Anne Nørgård Jørgensen, Scandinavian Military Equipment and the Weapon-Burial Rite, AD 530-800. Foreign influence and regional variation
Anne Christina Sørensen, Ladby: Ship, Cemetery and Settlement
Anne Pedersen, Similar Finds - Different Meanings? Some preliminary thoughts on the Viking-age burials with riding equipment in Scandinavia
Jakob Kieffer-Olsen, Christianity and Christian Burial. The religious background, and the transition from paganism to Christianity, from the perspective of a churchyard archaeologist
Heinrich Härke, Final Comments: Ritual, Symbolism and Social Inference
Karen Høilund Nielsen & Claus Kjeld Jensen, Post-Script