Anglo-Saxon warrior burial in Berkshire

[Anton]

Of course, unless you die at home, you have to be on the winning side to get buried at all.  Otherwise corpse looted and wildlife fed.  A lot of gear must have changed hands post battle.

Inevitably. So what you were buried with might tell the archaeologist more about the culture of your defeated opponents than about your own 

Though we might be cautious about treating all things are culture-neutral.  There are hints that styles of dress could be cultural identifiers.  If you were a Jute, it might be important that you wore a Jutish brooch, rather than a Saxon one, as a symbol of belonging.  Whereas a nice spear might be just a nice spear.  Not really studied this but use of styles of dress or ornament as a cultural identifier has a solid social anthropological pedigree.

Absolutely, Cynan returns with 18 Irish battle coats whatever they were they were distinctive of Brychienog's elite warriors. The deed was worthy of Bardic mention and that's how we know.

On the other hand if you killed a particularly formidable enemy warrior you might well wear his personal bling.  Not to ape him, or his culture, but more to remind everyone of the deed.

[aligern]

Or just not have your cloak fall off.
I thought that archaeologists had rather backed away from the idea of culturally definition by grave goods.  It might make sense to say that there might  be a relationship between two groups that  had similar brooch styles, but was this  a  matter of  brooch makers travelling, of merchants following a trade route or the same group moving with its style going with it? Some of the Danubian style accoutrements said to be definers  of ethnicity are  actually manufactured within the Roman Empire to service a market in and across the Danube.
Is it true that finds in Britain do not reflect direct contact  with continental styles  that are from areas thar ought to ndicate where the invaders came from. So if the grave goods represent ethnicities we should be able to plot migration...but I understand that its all my much more complex and difficult and it may be that when a chap was interred his burial party were not  thinking about declaring their nationality to future generations?
Roy

[Imperial Dave]

very true Roy. Latest thinking is that it was a blend especially in frontier areas

[Anton]

There's always utility.

[Erpingham]

There's always utility.

Yes, always start from utility.  Then there is fashion.  Then there is identity.  Are those football fans all wearing those replica kits because they happened to be in the drawer, or because they are trendy or because they support the team, and the name and the number on the back is the hero they particularly root for?   In this picture of teenage girls from the early 70s, are they wearing tartan scarves because their necks are cold, because they Scottish, because they follow the Bay City Rollers or a combination of the above?

I'm no fan of material culture defined divisions in archaeology but nor should we assume that what is in a grave is random or insignificant to the deceased or, perhaps more significantly, to the funeral party.

[Imperial Dave]

It is really difficult to separate specific items and classify them as x culture or y culture but I guess the total sum points the way on balance

[aligern]

I think it was Guy Halsall who pointed out that grave goods varied according to the context at the time of burial.  Thus , in stressed times, and when the ceremony was in the community rather than 'We the extended family of X can afford rich accoutrements to put into a grave and the slaughter of horses and or slaves and so on. That might include a marker of ethnicity which claimed the support of a wider group or a relationship to the mystic power of Rome . I recall that Prof Halsall tied the burials into the historical context and that it was an act of show by the heirs and associates. 
So it's what the burial means in immediate context that is important.  It might be important that there is something that  looks like a marker of ethnicity in order for the group to state a connection with a powerful group, or it might be a case of burying the deceased with that brooch ge took in a raid on Kent ten years ago. Its going to be much easier to paint a picture of the context if there are many graves with a dateable sequence tgat enable us to estimate the pressures on the group performing the burial when it was actually occurring. So the man by the Thames might be relatively ordinary, but buried prominently so his group can make a point, or pretty important but buried rather privately abd modestly  on family land because his relatives were not making a public statement.

[Imperial Dave]

I think you are right re it being Guy Halsall and the context of the burial with the goods and accoutrements etc especially in stressed times. As you say, the ideal would be a series of burials across a time period in the same vicinity to 'track' the progression and flux of outward trappings and socio-political affectations

[Anton]

Didn't Peter Heather comment on GH's funeral research and link some of the practice under the dominance of the Huns?

I would have thought the funeral as public spectacle would relate not just to asserting identity but also status within that identity.  Legal rights probably.

[Erpingham]

Influential, that Guy Halsall paper.  It transformed my thinking on burial archaeology - that it wasn't just about the afterlife but the ongoing position of those left behind. 

To go back to the original report, they don't mention detecting a barrow.  High status burials of the time often had a barrow as a memorial .  While it may have been ploughed out, traces usually remain.

[aligern]

Agreed Stephen, status and legality are very important to Early Medieval people and in a  largely non literate society people have to be shown who owns what and who is a power in the land, at least in part because the legal system is jury based and you need worthwhile and trustworthy  people to attest to your inherited rights and duties.  A funeral is a potential big occasion for displaying wealth and power and having clients turn up.  As is a weddibg, of course, but then the evidence doesn't get preserved in the ground.
We still do not understand what the motivations for the selection of particular grave goods are and have thebproblem that , fery often there is not the density and continuity of sample that would tell us something. Does burial with two spears tell us that this was the norm weapon set? Does  a heavier spear in richer graves tell us that the better off had heavier kit and fought closer  or just that poorer families could not afford to  waste the iron?
The great service archaeologists have done is assert that the reasoning behind grave deposition  is  to do with what the people at the time wanted to show, not what the diggers hoped we would be told.
Roy