“Though under Earth”: The Chthonic and the Monumental in Fifth-Century Britain

Over the course of the long fifth century in Britain (c.350-550CE), the standard grammar of burial practices was transformed by a myriad of cultural, religious, and economic factors. “Romano-British” inhumations were challenged by “Anglo-Saxon” cremations, and the organized, extra-mural cemeteries gave way to fields scattered with disorderly plots of graves. This historiographical division of burial practices according to periodization and material cultural-history, however, obscures an important shift happening during the fifth century. The inhabitants of Britain fundamentally changed their understanding of where (or whether) the dead belonged under the earth, within as well as outside of cemetery contexts. While Roman-period depositional practices of human and animal remains focused on what was below the ground, early medieval depositional practices centered on the structures above the earth. Chthonic depositions in deep Roman-period wells and pits stopped, and early medieval people placed similar depositions in the remains of their houses—which, in a manner relatively new to Britain, had their foundations dug deep into the earth.

In this paper, I will focus on case studies where this change in pattern occurs over time at the same site; rather than being linked to specific material cultures, ethnic identities, or religious practices, these examples will demonstrate that there is a larger shift in the relationship between the dead and their earthen receptacles at work. We therefore need to re-evaluate our ideas of standard funerary rites and depositional practices in Britain across the fifth century and reconsider what it means to be “buried.” This research has broader implications in other regions of the post-Roman West, particularly those areas of Europe from which some of the people living in Britain at this time had moved.