Community and belief: the development of Anglo-Saxon Christian burial practice, AD 700-1066

The central aim of this thesis is to reveal patterns about burial practices over time and across the physical space of Anglo-Saxon England between 700 and 1066. This integration of geographical and chronological distribution analysis is achieved through bringing a breadth of unpublished Anglo-Saxon-period archaeological data to the fore that is now available due to advances in digitisation. It is argued that middle and Late Anglo-Saxon burial practice highlighted different levels of communities visible through burial practices: the family, who choose to overlap their graves to be together; the village community, which chooses to include the poor or ill and the dangerous in their midst; the region, in which the community travels or trades, and share the same custom of grave types; the religious community, which, in teaching about the Day of Judgement, leads the ‘little community,’ and fuses local practice, religious identity, and social rank. This is demonstrated through a combination of examination of the literary sources and both simple and statistical analysis of a broad sweep of new archaeological material. This thesis hopes to provide a typology and chronology for mid- to late Anglo-Saxon burial practice, creating a systematic, clear view of the consolidation, then diversification, of Christian burial practices in and across Anglo-Saxon England before the Conquest on a regional and national level