Cremation in the Early Middle Ages: Death, Fire and Identity in North-west Europe

Cremation in the Early Middle Ages draws together the latest research and thinking on early medieval cremation practices. The book takes you on a journey through 19 chapters exploring cremation practices from the fifth to the eleventh centuries CE in Fennoscandia, the UK and Ireland, Frisia, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, and France. In this way, the book aims to be a central resource for anyone interested in early medieval cremations, or indeed funerary practices more generally. Notably, the structure and style of this book represent a departure from the norm. As well as a co-authored introduction, chapters constitute a conversation between the editors and key researchers captured via structured interviews, supported by a series of fact boxes highlighting key ideas, methods and techniques, sites, graves and discoveries.

Cremation was no single disposal tradition in the Early Middle Ages: it constituted but one dimension of local, regional and supra-regional deathways operating across different locales and with varying degrees of expenditure, meanings and materials, as well as involved a complex range of resources, environments, practices and performances both before, during and after the burning of the bodies. Where cremation is not the dominant burial rite, our authors reflect on the potential under-representation of cremation in our models. Ethnic and cultural labeling of the early medieval cremated dead are countered and critiqued by various authors.

Important themes that are touched upon are the long-term collectivity and longue durée of cremation depositions, variability within cremation practices, the pre-burial life of cinerary containers, ideas of personhood, the immersion of cremains in watery locations, the socio-political and economic context of burial rites, monumentalisation, the interpretation of mixed-rite (bi-ritual) cemeteries, the importance of human-animal entanglements viewed through the lens of cremated deposition, the potential for greater experimental and osteoarcheological, experimental, isotopic, radiocarbon, and genomic research, and the effect and usefulness of written texts as a window onto early medieval cremation practices, in particular regarding the relationship between cremation and Christianisation.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Death and Fire
Frans Theuws

Introduction: Death and Fire in Early Medieval North-West Europe
Femke Lippok and Howard Williams

Cremation in Finland
Anna Wessman

Western Slavic Cremation Practices:Past Work, Current Perspectives and Future Directions
Leszek Gardeła

Cremations in Central Sweden during the Vendel and Viking Periods
John Ljungkvist

Western Norwegian Cremation Practices from the Viking Age:Opulent Grave Goods, Absent Bones, and Elemental Archaeologies
Leszek Gardeła

Cremation in Southern Scandinavia: The Case of South-West Jutland
Sarah Croix

Cremation in Northern Germany: from the Bronze Age to the Viking Age
Helene Agerskov Rose

Early Medieval Frisia – Cremation Practices Alongside the southern North Sea Coast
Egge Knol

Cremation on the Frankish Northern Periphery
Rica Annaert

Cremation Practices in Early Medieval Southern Germany
Raimund Masanz

Cremation Practices in Merovingian and Carolingian Cemeteries from Northern France
Vanessa Brunet, Erwan Nivez and Astrid A. Noterman

The Bioarchaeology of Early Medieval Cremation Practices in England
Kirsty Squires

Potted Histories: Insights into Early Medieval Cremation Practices from the Study of Funerary Ceramics
Gareth Perry

Historiography and Archaeology, the Adventus Saxonum, and the Politics of the Early Middle Ages
James M. Harland

Isotopes and Halls of Marrow: Investigating the Viking Age Cremations at Heath Wood, Ingleby
Tessi Löffelmann

Cremation Practices from Early Medieval Ireland: Burnt Christians and Interpretative Paradigms
Patrick Gleeson

Burning Questions: Learning to See Cremation in the Long Iron Age of Northern Britain
Adrián Maldonado

Early Medieval Cremation Burials in Atlantic Northern Britain
Russell Ó Ríagáin

Cremation in Context: Scientific Applications Going from ‘Meh’ to ‘Yeah!’
Barbara Veselka

How to Build a Cremation Pyre: Insights from Experimental Archaeology
Austin Mason

Howard Williams is a Professor of Archaeology, University of Chester.

Femke Lippok is an early medieval archaeologist focused on changing burial rituals and ritual economies in early medieval North Western Europe. She is currently employed by the Mero-Jewel project as an academic researcher at the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels (KMKG/MRAH). She is simultaneously finishing her PhD dissertation at Leiden University.