6 - The End: Death

Summary

Abstract

This chapter sets out the importance of death in Anglo-Saxon society, especially when it comes to the reproduction of the ruling class. The main argument is that rituals of death change over time in the long eighth century, but they continue to represent a class apotheosis, since they converge all the aspects of aristocratic life mentioned in the earlier chapters.

Keywords: mortuary practices; rites of death; class reproduction; female (in)visibility; aristocratic women

She's realized the real problem with stories – if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.

Neil Gaiman, Sandman 6: 24 Hours

Introduction

Just as in any society, death was a matter of worry and wonder for the Anglo-Saxons. At the same time, the end of life in Anglo-Saxon England has also raised questions and answers for scholars who choose this society as the object of their studies. One of the main reasons lies in the nature of the extant evidence, and how this type of evidence reveals possibilities that are not necessarily present in written sources. In other words, skeletons, burials and cemeteries are some of the best types of archaeological evidence with which to understand the historicity of the body, burials practices and rites, diet habits and gender relations.

Death is connected to power and class relations; Harke called cemeteries ‘places of power’. Modern historiography on Anglo-Saxon England has developed a better understanding of everyday life facts and events as well as the aspects of ritual and performance that go along with the expression of power. The progress that has been made is impressive, considering the scarcity of information that we can collect from written sources. However, death is such an important event that the passing of the powerful is relatively well recorded, as explained below. The social process of remembering and forgetting is vital to the construction of identities, whether they are ethnic, gendered, class-based, or with some other basis. Since this research is based on the analysis of class distinctions, this element will be the focus of this chapter on death.

The underlying hypothesis of this chapter is that forms of death and burial are expressions of wealth, status and power in life. These expressions are not purely ‘material’, but are accompanied by a ceremony and a performance.