Annotated Bibliography

Grave goods in early medieval burials: messages and meanings

HEINRICH HÄRKE Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, Reading, UK; Abteilung für Archäologie

des Mittelalters, Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

ABSTRACT Objects in graves have been a traditional focus of burial archaeology. Conventional

interpretations of their meanings revolved around religion (equipment for the hereafter, Charon’s

Penny), legal concepts (inalienable possessions) and social structure (status display, ostentatious

destruction of wealth). An interdisciplinary perspective drawing on archaeological literature,

anthropological evidence and sociological theory widens the range of possible interpretations. Textual

sources of the Roman and early medieval periods highlight the importance of gift-giving to the

deceased, but also to deities. Anthropology shows the importance of the disposal of polluted items in

the grave, and of protecting the living. Ethnographic cases also underpin theoretical considerations

concerning the role of biographical representations (metaphors) during the funeral, as well as

emphasising the desire and the need to forget the dead. Textual and archaeological evidence from

the Early Middle Ages suggest that these motives were not sharply separated, but that many of them

played a role during any one funeral. In addition, motives changed over time, and the associations

of particular grave goods (such as coins or weapons) varied across time and geographical regions.

Above all, multiplicity of messages and variability of meanings characterised the deposition of objects

in early medieval graves.

KEYWORDS: mortuary archaeology; burial rite; grave goods; continuing bonds; attachment

theory; reminder theory

Grave goods were deposited with the dead in many periods of the human past,

from the late Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages and the more recent past. Indeed,

we appear to be seeing a revival of this custom at the present time, with items of

sentimental value increasingly deposited particularly with children, possibly

reflecting post-modern sensibilities (see Harper, 2012). The term ‘grave goods’,

as used by archaeologists, simply denotes anything found in a grave in addition

to human remains and encompasses a variety of items, from the remains of dress

to deliberate depositions of objects in graves, as well as sacrificial offerings.

Such depositions have always been central to the pursuit of burial

archaeology. To European antiquarians of the eighteenth and nineteenth

century, the search for prehistoric cremation urns and the excavation of Bronze

and Iron Age barrows was primarily a treasure hunt. With the growth of

Correspondence: E-mail: [email protected]

© 2013 Taylor & Francis

Mortality, 2014

Vol. 19, No. 1, 41–60, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2013.870544

archaeology into a scholarly discipline in the later nineteenth century, grave

goods provided one of the most important means for constructing chronologies,

giving a temporal framework to a past of hitherto unknown depth (Gräslund,

1987; Klindt-Jensen, 1975). From the end of the nineteenth and the early

twentieth century, grave goods were increasingly used for ethnic and social

inferences: regionally different styles of artefacts were used to identify ‘tribes’

and ‘peoples’ in an attempt to write national prehistories (Childe, 1929;

Kossinna, 1911); and differential wealth in graves within the same cemeteries

or regions led to suggestions of social hierarchies (Reinecke, 1925; Veeck,

1926). While ethnic inferences have more recently become controversial, social

inferences have become part of the methodological canon of archaeology

(Härke, 2000a). Above all, grave goods have always suggested a religious

dimension, their very presence apparently implying a ‘pagan’ concept of an

afterlife where material goods were useful and important (Paulsen, 1967;

Reinecke, 1925).

Since the 1980s, there has been a shift, mainly in Anglophone burial archae-

ology, from the reconstruction of life in the past, to the inference of attitudes

and behaviour in the encounter with death (Härke, 2002; Parker Pearson,

1999). This has led to an archaeological concern with anthropological

perspectives (see overview in Parker Pearson, 1999, pp. 21–44), emotion

(Tarlow, 1999, 2000), memory (Williams, 2001a, 2001b, 2003, 2004, 2006)

and the construction of post-mortem identities (Ekengren, 2004). This, in turn,

is beginning to make burial archaeology – and grave goods – more interesting

for historians and sociologists of death, and a recent attempt at a grand

narrative of the history of death (Kellehear, 2007) puts much emphasis on

inferences from grave goods. Other sociologists have begun to explore the role

of material culture in relation to death and memory (Hallam & Hockey, 2001).

This may, therefore, be an opportune moment to provide an overview of the

possible meanings of grave goods from an archaeological perspective, and

discuss why they might have been deposited in the grave. This is approached

by an anthropological and sociological consideration of archaeological interpre-

tations of grave goods, and by an application of the resulting classification to

early medieval burials. In that sense, the present paper is an attempt at bridging

old and new perspectives. The emphasis here is on the Early Middle Ages

(broadly speaking, fifth–tenth centuries AD) because of the rich and varied

grave-goods custom practised in Europe at this time (but discontinued later),

and because the existence of (albeit sparse) written sources in this period

provides additional information which is lacking for prehistoric periods.

The early medieval grave-goods custom

In the fifth to seventh/eighth centuries AD, grave goods were deposited in

graves across Europe, from England to the Caucasus (Fehring, 1991; Halsall,

1995; Lucy, 2000; Steuer, 1982). There were regional exceptions from this

rule, primarily the Celtic-speaking areas of the British Isles and the

42 H. Härke

Mediterranean where only some immigrant groups of mainly Germanic stock

practised this custom. After the eighth century, grave goods are only found on

the northern and eastern fringes of Christian Europe, in Scandinavia, among

the Balts, and among the nomad societies from Hungary to the North Pontic

and Caucasian steppes; in these regions, the custom disappeared at various

times in the early second millennium AD, usually with the advance of

Christianity. However, the grave-goods custom was hardly ever uniform, and

even where grave goods were not the norm, some burials were singled out for

depositions. For example, croziers and pectoral crosses have been found in

some clerics’ graves in contexts where ordinary Christians were buried in

nothing more than a shroud.

Objects found in early medieval graves include a wide variety of artefacts, but

these occur in regionally distinct, gender-differentiated kits. Dress items and

jewellery are typical items in adult female burials, and much rarer in male adult

and children’s graves. Their appearance in graves is the direct consequence of

the custom of dressed burial in this period. Keys and knives were usually worn

on the body and may be considered part of the dress. Separately deposited

items, such as weapons, tools and drinking vessels, dominated in male burials.

Other separate depositions included cooking vessels, household items, boxes,

musical instruments, games and horse harness. By contrast, boats, wagons,

beds, other wooden furniture and textile coverings of walls and floors were rare,

and limited to burial chambers of the social elite.

Miniature copies of artefacts occur, for example, in Anglo-Saxon graves; made

specifically to accompany the dead, they were probably a pars pro toto. The deliberate destruction of artefacts before their deposition was rare in this period,

and mostly limited to Scandinavia. Animal and human sacrifices are a distinct

category of ‘grave goods’. Horses and dogs are found in, or next to, conspicu-

ously rich graves of northern Europe. Human sacrifice is documented for the

Viking period (ninth/tenth centuries AD), both in written sources (Ibn Fadhlan;

Jones, 1984, pp. 425–430) and in archaeology (Bersu & Wilson, 1966).

Grave goods are found not just in inhumations, but also in cremations

wherever this rite was practised in the Early Middle Ages (Scandinavia, parts of

England and much of Eastern Europe). In this case, grave goods could be

‘primary’ (i.e. put on the pyre together with the body) or ‘secondary’

(deposited complete with the cremated remains in the urn or grave pit).

Numbers and wealth of grave goods in any one grave varied markedly

although the picture of differential wealth is likely to have been affected by the

decay of organic materials (see below). There are also varying proportions of

graves without any archaeologically recoverable artefacts or other depositions.

Thus, in early Anglo-Saxon England where artefacts are found in virtually all

cemeteries of the fifth to seventh centuries, about 50% of male graves and 70%

of females contained the standard ‘kit’ (weapons and dress ornaments,

respectively; Härke, 2011, p. 101; Stoodley, 1999), but even those without this

kit would often have a knife or a belt buckle.

Grave goods in early medieval burials 43

The custom of depositing grave goods disappeared from the various regions

of Europe at different times and for different reasons. While this disappearance

often coincided with the spread of Christianity, it is by no means certain that

Christianity was actually the cause of its disappearance in every single case

(Schülke, 1999). Such a causal connection is widely assumed in the case in

Anglo-Saxon England where the spread of Christianity during the seventh

century coincided with a gradual decline in the provision of grave goods which

were finally phased out early in the eighth century (see discussion in

Boddington, 1990; Geake, 1992, 1997; Williams, 2010b). On the other hand,

grave goods continued among the Franks and in Greater Moravia for up to two

centuries after Christianisation (Gimbutas, 1971, p. 142, pl. 44; Koch, 1996).

Where grave goods were discontinued, they did not normally disappear

suddenly, but gradually and with social differences. For example, during the

decline of the grave-goods custom in Anglo-Saxon England, weapons

disappeared first from children’s burials in the early seventh century, from

adolescents’ burials in the mid-seventh century, and finally from adult male

burials at the beginning of the eighth century (Härke, 1992b).

The meanings of grave goods

The following is an attempt to present and discuss all possible meanings of

grave goods. The discussion starts with the oldest attempts to give meaning to

archaeological grave finds, and finishes with anthropologically derived possibili-

ties for which archaeological evidence is difficult to adduce. Wherever possible,

ethnographic or historical evidence is used to illustrate the various meanings.

It needs to be borne in mind throughout that the interpretation of artefacts

found in prehistoric and early historical grave contexts is anything but straight-

forward, and beset with problems which are mentioned below where necessary.

In addition, it needs to be stressed at the outset that archaeologists’ inferences

and reconstructions are based almost entirely on items made of durable

materials which have survived the centuries-long process of decay in the soil.

Grave goods made of perishable materials (wood, textiles, etc.) are only

preserved in rare cases, such as in the tombs under Cologne Cathedral where

the decorated wooden furniture supported the interpretation in terms of ‘royal’

burials (Werner, 1964). Even elaborately decorated wooden coffins can only be

found in exceptional circumstances (such as waterlogged conditions), the

carved log coffins of the Alamannic cemetery of Holzgerlingen being a case in

point (Veeck, 1926). Soil stains found in sandy soils sometimes suggest the

presence of coffins, chambers, biers or beams (see e.g. Scull, 2009), but rarely

allow a detailed reconstruction. Another problem is the occasional presence of

accidental inclusions in graves, such as pottery shards or animal bones from the

refuse of a nearby settlement, because they may be confused with deliberate

depositions of broken objects or, in the case of bones, with remains of food

offerings.

44 H. Härke

Equipment for the hereafter

This is probably the oldest interpretation of the grave-goods custom: items

were deposited in the grave to be available to the dead in the hereafter, and on

the journey there (Paulsen, 1967). Kellehear (2007) recently re-affirmed that

the manifest function of grave goods is to assist the dead on their journey. This

is, indeed, the purpose of grave goods and their symbolic representations in

China up to the present day (Habenstein & Lamers, 1963, p. 18). While some

actual objects valued by the deceased are put into the coffin, paper ingots of

gold and silver appearance as well as mock banknotes are burnt prior to and

during the funeral (in cremation rite); other paper models (watches, pens,

spectacles, finger rings, golf clubs, cars and even aeroplanes) are taken to an

open space and burned so that the spirit would have them in the afterlife

(Longuet Layton, 2001, pp. 46–48; for the context, see Watson & Rawski,

1988). This custom seems to have a long history in China: Marco Polo

reported that paper money was burnt at Chinese funerals in the late thirteenth

century. 1

Support for this interpretation of grave goods can be found in written sources

of the Early Middle Ages. The epic poem Beowulf (lines 40–42; Swanton,

1978) refers to equipment for the hereafter in the context of a funeral and the

Egil’s Saga (Ellis, 1943) mentions the possibility of providing in advance for

your own hereafter by burying the required equipment. Such a concept implies

a religious meaning of the grave-goods custom because it requires a specific,

‘pagan’ view of the afterlife. It would also explain why grave goods disappeared

in many (though not all) cases of Christianisation in the Early Middle Ages. A

problem for archaeologists is that even where objects are thought to be required

in the hereafter, they would not always be deposited in the grave. For example,

the Lober of Ghana do not bury the weapons of the dead with their former

owners; they only display them during the funeral, assuming that this makes

them available in the hereafter (Ucko, 1969, p. 266).

Inalienable property

In the 1920s, the German archaeologist Reinecke suggested that the deposition

of objects in early medieval graves was the consequence of property rights:

these objects were the inalienable part of the deceased’s property, hergewaete in

the case of men (weapons and war gear) and gerade in the case of women (jewellery and household implements). Reinecke (1925) borrowed the idea

from historians of early Germanic law who had noted that the tenth century

code Sachsenspiegel divided personal property into alienable and inalienable

parts, and Reinecke suggested that deposition in graves was the only means of

disposal of inalienable property which could not be inherited, sold off or given

away. Later, inalienable property was given to the Church when the owner

died.

Grave goods in early medieval burials 45

The idea has been widely picked up in West European medieval studies,

particularly by German archaeologists who have seen it as a logical and

coherent explanation of the wealth and gender patterns of early medieval grave

goods (see Fehring, 1991; Härke, 2000a). A late echo of the concept of

inalienable property may be found in late medieval England where occasionally

personal items (such as seals) were destroyed after the death of the owner

(Daniell, 1997, pp. 150–151). More recently, though, Kars has argued that the

assumption of inalienable personal property may be inappropriate for the Early Middle Ages; some objects may have been passed down the generations before

a situation arose in which they were deposited in the grave of the last owner,

forcing us to consider the possibility of inalienable collective possessions (Kars, 2011). Textual sources and artefactual evidence certainly demonstrate that in

early Anglo-Saxon England, some high-status weapons had circulated and been

owned by two or more individuals before accompanying the burial of the last

owner (Härke, 2000b), but it is difficult to say if the background was property

concepts or other ideas (see below).

Potlatch

The potlatch (or potlach) phenomenon was first described in a study of the

Kwakiutl of British Columbia (Boas, 1895) where the ostentatious destruction

of accumulated wealth confers prestige and influence in their society. Gordon

Childe, although he never used the term, used the same concept when he

suggested that the grave-goods custom is a form of social competition typical of

unstable societies where status positions may be achieved and maintained by

such means (Childe, 1945). This concept is also implied in the perspective of

the more recent ‘post-processualist’ (post-modern) archaeology which holds

that burial ritual and grave goods are not just passive reflections of social

structures, they are, or display, active claims to rank, status and identity (Parker

Pearson, 1982; Samson, 1987). A potlatch interpretation of grave goods would also make sense in a wider context: in European prehistory, phases of

grave-goods deposition alternated with phases of hoard deposition, and the

latter phenomenon was most likely a form of ritual destruction of wealth

(Bradley, 1982).

The distribution of the deceased’s property to the mourners and its con-

sumption during the funeral, both well documented in ethnographic literature

(Ucko, 1969, p. 266), may well be part of the same phenomenon. It was

noted by the tenth century Arab writer Ibn Fadhlan in his description of a

Viking funeral on the Volga: the property of the deceased was divided in

three parts – one for the heirs, one for the clothes in the grave and one for

making intoxicating beverages for the funeral (Jones, 1984, pp. 425–426).

There may be psychological as well as social reasons for this custom. The

religious scientist Jon Davies has suggested that the distribution, burning or

burying of the deceased’s property may be a symbolic ‘dismembering of the

46 H. Härke

dead person whose death has so terrified and therefore angered us’ (Davies,

1994, p. 30).

Indicators of rank, status and identity

It has long been thought by archaeologists that the quality and numbers of grave

goods reflect the social status of the deceased. In addition, specific indicators of

rank and identity may figure in the funerary proceedings and may, in some

cases, be deposited in graves. A modern example is provided by the military

custom to include in the funeral procession of cavalry officers a horse carrying

reversed boots in the stirrups; this was done during Churchill’s televised funeral,

and more recently during that of King Hussein of Jordan (see photograph in

Daily Telegraph, 9 February 1999). The so-called ‘heraldic funerals’ of the Late

Middle Ages and the Early Modern period in England provide an historical

example, with closely prescribed details covering number and status of

mourners, signs of rank and status to be displayed, and so on, depending on the

exact aristocratic rank of the deceased; some of the rank and status indicators,

including weapons, were hung in the church after the funeral (Gittings, 1984,

pp. 166–187; Houlbrooke, 1996; Wagner, 1967; Woodward, 1997).

A specific social and marital status was indicated by the funerary crowns

which were placed on the coffins of unmarried adults in many German-speak-

ing areas from the High Middle Ages to the modern period (Segschneider,

1976); in some cases, such crowns were buried with the deceased (see e.g.

Härke, 1981). Early medieval cases of rank indicators may be the signet rings

in Frankish royal graves (e.g. in the grave of King Childeric, d. AD 481;

Werner, 1964), and the ‘standard’ and ‘sceptre’ found in the, probably royal,

burial at Sutton Hoo (early seventh century; Bruce-Mitford, 1975–1983, vol. 2,

pp. 311–431). During the same period, burial with weapons seems to have

been an indicator of ethnic and social identity of Germanic groups who had

recently settled in formerly Roman territories, such as the Franks in the Rhine-

land, Belgium and northern France (Böhme, 1974) and the Anglo-Saxons in

England (Härke, 1990, 1992a). A particular socio-economic identity may have

been expressed by the inclusion of tools, often entire tool chests, in the numer-

ous ‘smiths’ graves’ of the Early Middle Ages, most of them from Scandinavia

(Müller-Wille, 1977, 1983).

A peculiar expression of religious identity is found in European Jewish

funerals up to the present day: a handful of earth from the Land of the Fathers.

First, a cloth bag is filled with soil from the grave and put as a pillow under the

head of the corpse; the pillow is then sprinkled with the earth from Israel

(de Vries, 1986, pp. 273–274). This case is also a perfect illustration of the

kinds of depositions and inclusions in the grave that archaeologists are

virtually unable to find or identify. More tangible expressions of religious

identity seem to be the seventh-century sheet gold crosses (Goldblattkreuze) found in Lombard burials in northern Italy, and less frequently in Alamannic

burials of south-west Germany (Hübener, 1975).

Grave goods in early medieval burials 47

Metaphor

The Norwegian archaeologist Solberg has suggested that grave goods may be

metaphors for the life, or specific events in the life, of the deceased (Solberg,

2004). Anthropologists and sociologists have known for some time that funerals

in some societies may be, or include, a representation of the deceased’s

biography. In a sense, this includes the biographical comments in Christian

funeral services, and even more so the increasingly popular remembrance

services and meetings where stories of the deceased’s life are told and swapped

(Walter, 1996). This biographical element may take on a material form: a

Second World War flying ace, Terry Prendergast from Dorset, was recently

buried in a cardboard casket in the shape of his beloved Hawker Hurricane

fighter plane painted in camouflage colours and carrying on the side the

number of the plane he flew in the war (Daily Telegraph, 11 May 2007).

Some grave goods are, thus, likely have served as material reminders of events

in the life of the deceased. Roman funeral processions included representations

and objects which gave an account of the deceased’s life and achievements (von

Hesberg, 1998, p. 23). Grave goods may also be metaphors of the origins of peo-

ple; this would explain the early medieval phenomenon of ‘burials out of place’:

individuals buried with items which belong to different regions or countries.

Examples are the ‘Lombard princess’ buried in Cologne cathedral (Werner,

1964), and the markedly Scandinavian character of the Sutton Hoo ship burial

in eastern England (Bruce-Mitford, 1975–1983). Thus, ‘foreign’ objects and

burial rites may be meant to express a distant origin, real or imagined.

A possible context for this biographical concern during the funeral may be

found in Attachment Theory (Bowlby, 1969; Sharer & Tancredy, 2001). This

holds that the death of an individual creates in the minds of the mourners a dis-

crepancy between their internal model of the world which incorporates the

deceased, and the real world in which the deceased is no longer present. The fun-

eral is therefore more than just a ritual way of coping with death: it is also a rec-

onciliation of the internal model with the real world. Grave goods (which do not

figure in Attachment Theory) may be a direct, material way of including aspects

of the deceased in the experience of the mourners, thus helping the process of

reconciliation between model and reality. Another explanation of the biographi-

cal role of grave goods may be provided by the ethnographic observation that

some societies locate memory not in the mind, but in objects, believing that the

mnemonic properties of objects are activated by their display (Battaglia, 1992).

The metaphor idea can be linked to the anthropological concept of artefact

biographies. Artefacts, in particular valuable objects, acquire their own

biographies by association with people and events of the past, and by the stories

told about them (Gosden & Marshall, 1999; Hoskins, 1998; Kopytoff, 1986).

This, however, is difficult to demonstrate with archaeological evidence alone;

usually, this will require textual evidence. Thus, the heroic poem Ilias suggests

that some craters (large bronze vessels) could achieve particular importance

because of their biographies (Whitley, 2002). For the Early Middle Ages, the

48 H. Härke

Beowulf poem demonstrates that swords and chain-mail corselets were in

circulation over several generations and that their previous owners, and the

manner of their mostly heroic deaths, were remembered throughout that time

(Härke, 2000b). The deposition of such items in a grave would link two

biographies, the object’s and the deceased’s, and give the latter additional

status. There are, indeed, observations of old and repaired objects in rich, even

royal burials of the Early Middle Ages, which may best be explained in terms

of circulating prestige objects. A case in point is the bronze cauldrons and the

boat in mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, but even less exalted burials of the early

Anglo-Saxon period may contain swords which clearly had been in circulation

for some time (Härke 1992a, p. 88 footnote 106, 2000b, p. 392).

Gifts to the deceased

This category of grave goods is well known from descriptions of Roman funer-

als where gifts from the mourners were carried in the funeral procession, with

some of them being deposited on the pyre or in the grave (von Hesberg, 1998,

pp. 22–24). Similar gifts have been documented in ethnography, although

reports show that the display of gifts to, and property of, the deceased is often

more important than their deposition in the grave (Battaglia, 1992). The

status-enhancing function of depositing such gifts in the grave would not seem

to be any different from that of potlatch depositions (see above), but in contrast

to the latter which tend to relate to the status of the surviving family, gifts

would be more directly linked to the status of the deceased (and to that of the

givers, of course). King (2004) has observed that the numbers of grave goods

in early Anglo-Saxon graves are correlated with the sizes of the respective

cemeteries, and therefore the size of the potential audience at a funeral in the

respective community. He has suggested that this correlation is best explained

in terms of gifts being brought by the mourners and deposited in the

graves – an interesting argument although it cannot be reconciled with patterns

in all Anglo-Saxon cemeteries.

An historical example of a gift to the deceased is found in the account of the

funeral of a young German officer on the Western Front in the First World War.

‘The regiment’s commanding officer put his own Iron Cross on the coffin, stat-

ing by this symbolic act how much the young hero himself would have deserved

it’ (Schönburg-Waldenburg, 1929, p. 238). At the same time, this story is a

warning against ‘straighforward’ interpretations of objects found in graves. Japan

provides a modern example of funerary presents: it is customary for attending

mourners to give money as a present to the family of the deceased; this will later

be returned in the form of a present of equivalent value (Hendry, 1995, p. 144).

Gifts to a deity

The best example of this category of depositions is the obulus intended for the ferryman across the river Styx, Charon, who in Roman mythology provided

Grave goods in early medieval burials 49

passage for the souls of the dead. It was placed in many Roman graves in the

mouths of the deceased, or in the case of cremations, in or next to the urn

(Toynbee, 1971, pp. 44, 49, 119). Coins are also found in some graves of the

Early Middle Ages, but not in the mouths of the dead; it is therefore uncertain

if they were intended as payment during the journey, although this may well

have been the intention of coins placed in a hand of the corpse. Thus, three

coins were found in the hand of a skeleton in the Alamannic cemetery of

Grimmelshofen-Stühlingen (Southwest Germany); the grave dates to the

transition period from paganism to Christianity. 2

Only some objects can ever have been meant as an obulus, and they should

be identifiable by their standard deposition or uniform distribution. At the same

time, the case of Charon’s Penny highlights that there may have been, in the

concepts of some societies, a distinction between goods specifically for the

journey and goods meant for use in the afterlife.

Remains of the funeral feast

Feasts have been an essential part of funerals in many societies. It is, therefore,

conceivable that some of the items found in graves, such as cooking pots, food

offerings and animal bones, were part of a funeral feast, their deposition

symbolising the inclusion of the deceased in the feast. Food offerings are partic-

ularly frequent in Roman graves, both cremations and inhumations (Härke,

1980), but they are also known from early medieval graves (Lee, 2007;

Pluskowksi, 2010). Usually these survive as animal bones, but other foodstuffs

such as wild apples (Musty, 1969) and a chicken egg (Jankuhn, 1969) have also

been found in sixth/seventh century-graves. The feast is an important occasion

for expressing social status and social relations, and symbols of the feast (drink-

ing horns, ‘buckets’, cauldrons, etc.) are therefore found in many rich graves of

early medieval Europe (e.g. at Sutton Hoo; Bruce-Mitford, 1975–1983).

The funeral feast specifically serves to reaffirm and re-establish social

relations disrupted by the death of a member of that society, and it continues as

such in a muted form (funeral reception, funeral dinner, etc.) in modern

industrialised societies, although it may turn quite raucous in some countries

(rural Ireland being one of them). The deposition of food offerings in the grave

may, thus, be a way to include the deceased in this social process which in some

cases continues beyond the funeral. In Russia, for example, a Sunday picnic at

the family grave is a frequent sight, and many grave plots in Russian orthodox

cemeteries feature a small table and bench for this purpose.

Disposal of polluted items

The idea that contact with a dead body pollutes people and objects is widely

documented in anthropology (Douglas, 1988). Polluted items can be prevented

from doing damage by depositing them in the grave; this is particularly impor-

tant if they had been used for witchcraft (Ucko, 1969, p. 267). The Akikuyu of

50 H. Härke

East Africa avoided contact with the property of the deceased, and both,

property and other objects polluted by contact with property were deposited in

the grave of the respective deceased (Routledge & Routledge, 1910, pp.

168–170). The Bantu of South Africa held very strong views on pollution, and

personal property which was too big for deposition in the grave was destroyed,

such as the hut of the deceased (Schapera & Eiselen, 1937, p. 248).

Similar ideas about the dangers of pollution by the dead or their property are

known from European and Jewish ethnography. English Gypsies used to include

the favourite possessions of the deceased inside the coffin, and destroyed all

personal effects and the home (i.e. waggon or trailer) of the deceased because

‘the death of a Gypsy is a polluting event’ (Okely, 1979, p. 87). In some parts

of Germany, up to the nineteenth century, the personal toilet items of the

deceased and the washing utensils used for cleaning the dead body were put

into the grave (Müller, 1970, p. 170; Zender, 1959, p. 41). And in some

present-day Jewish communities, the earthenware bowl used for the ritual

washing of the corpse (Tahara) is smashed and the sherds put into the grave;

however, a metal bowl used for this purpose is neither destroyed nor put into

the grave (de Vries, 1986, p. 275). It has been suggested that toilet implements

were included in Anglo-Saxon cremation vessels to prevent sorcery against the

dead (Lethbridge, 1951; see Richards, 1987), but the motive may well have

been fear of pollution from items of personal hygiene of the deceased.

Protection of the living (and the dead?)

Fear of polluted objects has its counterpart in the widespread fear of revenants

and vampires, of dead returning from the grave, and such fear has often led to

countermeasures to prevent their return, including the deposition of certain

objects in the grave. In early modern Pomerania, such feared dead would have

been accompanied into their grave by a fishing net, a piece of paper with an

incomplete song, prayer or quotation from the Bible, or similar means of

keeping the dead body in its grave (Zender, 1959, p. 39). A variation of this

superstition is found among the Nankanse of Ghana who believe that the soul

of a living person may, during a funeral, be caught in the grave; if this is sus-

pected, the countermeasure is to put some favourite things of that living person

into the grave because that person cannot die as long as the objects remain

there (Ucko, 1969, p. 265).

Identifying such apotropaic grave goods may be difficult, but they may

include incomplete or broken objects, or objects which look out of place in the

context of a particular grave. An example may be the occasional occurrence of

a broken mirror in Alanic graves of the early medieval North Caucasus (e.g.

Härke & Belinsky, 2000). And while it has been suggested that amulets in

Anglo-Saxon graves had been deposited for the protection of the dead

(Meaney, 1981), they could also have been meant for the protection of the

living from the dead (Zeiten, 1997).

Grave goods in early medieval burials 51

Forgetting

Finally, objects may be buried precisely because they would be reminders of the

deceased. Such objects could be their personal property, but also other objects

associated with the deceased in some way. Some North American Indian tribes

used to destroy the house and the property of the deceased (Walter, 1999,

pp. 26–28). The motive of forgetting (rather than fear of pollution) is highlighted

by the ban on mentioning the names of the dead among the Apache, Navajo and

Jivaro (Taylor, 1993). 3 Archaeologically, this motive may be difficult to prove,

but Williams has pointed out that many of the grave goods found in Bronze Age

barrows had been laid out in such a way that they would not have been visible to

the mourners, with the exception of the large pottery beaker usually included

in graves of this period. He has suggested that this may have been an attempt

to start the process of forgetting with the funeral (Williams, 2001a). In early

medieval graves, this argument might apply to highly personal items which are

unlikely to be status indicators. In the Anglo-Saxon cemetery of Stretton-

on-Fosse II, a shield with an idiosyncratic shield boss had been buried in the

grave of a male adult whose corpse had been subjected to post-mortem decapita-

tion (Ford, 2002; Dickinson & Härke, 1992, p. 62) – itself an act of final insult

or an attempt to ward off evil (Harman, Molleson, & Price, 1981), so very likely

from a dead whom the community wanted to forget rather than to remember.

In less dramatic cases, the attempt at forgetting may be explained with the

Reminder Theory according to which the process of mourning is made more

difficult by the presence of too many reminders of the deceased (Walter, 1999,

27, 65, with further references). The burial of such reminders may therefore be

a means of severing the ties in order to get on with life. Exactly this motive has

been reported for the users of a pet cemetery in England who frequently

disposed of such reminders by putting them into the graves of their pets (Ucko,

1969, p. 265). But again, this cannot be a general explanation of grave goods

because not all non-western societies tie memories to material objects or

monuments (Forty & Küchler, 1999, pp. 4–5).

Mixed messages and shifting meanings

The distinctions made above have been made for analytical purposes, but it

should not be assumed that the meanings of grave goods are strictly separate

categories. Descriptions of Roman funerals make it clear that different objects

were displayed and/or deposited in the grave for different reasons (von

Hesberg, 1998, pp. 23–28). For the Early Middle Ages, this is highlighted in

the descriptions of funerals in the epic poem Beowulf (lines 26–52, 1107–1124, 3137–3182; Swanton, 1978; see Owen-Crocker, 2000). In other words, any set

of grave goods is likely to be based on a composite of motives. It is worth

noting that in modern Catholic funerals, too, symbols have to relate to three

different spheres in order to be effective: the world of the deceased, the world

of religious inheritance and the world of the mourners (Quartier, 2009).

52 H. Härke

An archaeological illustration of these ‘mixed messages’ is provided by the

probably royal grave of Sutton Hoo mound 1 (Bruce-Mitford, 1975–1983;

Carver, 2005). The coins in the grave are a collection from various Frankish

mints, likely to have been either tribute or some other gift to the deceased. The

weapons in the grave may be seen as hergewaete, the ‘sceptre’ and ‘standard’ as

indicators of rank. The boat in which all the grave goods had been arranged

under a barrow was probably equipment for the afterlife, as well as a religious

symbol of the journey to the hereafter.

Accepting the composite nature of grave goods, and the ritual context in

which they were deposited (Härke, 1997), only leads to further questions. What

was the difference between objects burnt on the pyre and undamaged objects

buried with the cremated remains? Williams (2010a, pp. 7–75) has suggested

that careful distinctions were made between these two categories in the

Anglo-Saxon cremation ritual. Was there a difference between objects displayed

merely during the funeral, and those eventually deposited in the grave? If the

meaning was the same, that message would be accessible to archaeologists only

where the objects had been buried with the deceased. Was the representation

of objects on Roman and late medieval tombs the same as depositing them in

graves? And did it make a difference where exactly grave goods and sacrifices

were deposited, inside or next to the coffin or grave? In the cemetery of

Klin-Yar (fourth–seventh centuries AD, North Caucasus, Russia), horses and

‘heads-and-hooves’ (horse skins with skulls and long bones) had been deposited

in and on top of access corridors of underground burial chambers, in separate

horse burials, and on the surface between the graves (Härke & Belinsky, 2000).

Which of these horses were personal property, equipment for the hereafter, gift

to a deity or remains of a funeral feast? Sacrifices well after the funeral, be they

animal sacrifices, food offerings outside the grave or (as in Roman cemeteries)

libations poured into the grave (Walker, 1985, pp. 10–11), may be explained as

a ‘top-up’ of the equipment for the afterlife, or manifestations of continuing

bonds (Klass, 1999; Klass, Silverman, & Nickman, 1996 for an archaeological

application, see Jefferson-Jones, 2000). Again, archaeologists may approach

such questions by detailed analyses, but more often than not, uncertainties will

persist.

Historical and geographical context is another issue since the same practice

can mean different things in different periods and places. Coins were deposited

in graves in Classical antiquity, in early medieval Europe and early modern

Germany. But while this had religious motives in Classical times, it was meant

as payment for the deceased’s property in early modern Germany (Zender,

1959, pp. 44–45); the early medieval motive is uncertain because of the lack

of textual references. Weapons are found in Anglo-Saxon graves of the

fifth–seventh centuries (Härke, 1990, 1992a); they are shown on crosses of

the Viking period in England (Bailey, 1980); they are represented on high and

late medieval effigies and grave brasses in English churches (Kemp, 1980;

Norris, 1988; Tummers, 1980); and during the ‘heraldic funerals’ in the Late

Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, weapons were carried in the

Grave goods in early medieval burials 53

procession and hung in the church afterwards (see above). It is quite conceiv-

able, and even likely, that the symbolic meanings of the grave goods or their

representations changed over time.

Last not least there is the question of who actually selected the objects for

deposition. Gender is an example of the uncertainties this issue can introduce

for archaeologists trying to make inferences from grave goods about the dead

themselves. An anthropological survey has shown that women tend to express

emotions of grief and mourning in more pronounced and explicit ways than

men in most societies, and vice versa in none (Rosenblatt, Walsh, & Jackson, 1976). This might impact on the choice of grave goods where women are

involved in their selection. Cannon (2005) has argued that in nineteenth-century

USA, the surviving partner chose the gravestone; thus, ‘typically male’ grave-

stones would have been chosen by women, and vice versa. This may well be an explanation of some of the rare cases of cross-gender grave goods in early medie-

val burials where biological sexing and gendered grave goods appear to be at

odds (Härke, 2011; Lucy, 1997; Stoodley, 1999; see also Williams, 2005).

Conclusions

Reasons for the deposition of grave goods comprise a wide range of possible

motives, with marked regional differences and with considerable changes over

time. While not all of these motives can be identified in the evidence of early

medieval burials, the composite character of the grave goods sets found in graves

appears clear enough. Even particular items (e.g. a coin) may be included for

more than one reason, and these reasons may change over centuries or decades.

But it should be borne in mind that such inferences are difficult to make from

the archaeological evidence, and archaeologists are better at inferring broad pat-

terns than identifying individual motives. The surest means of identifying

motives for the deposition of grave goods are textual sources from the respective

period. Where these are lacking (as they are for most of human prehistory, and

for much of the Early Middle Ages), the best approach is a careful contextual

analysis of all correlations: what was deposited, when, where, with what, with

whom and how does it vary across geographical regions and chronological peri-

ods? The emerging patterns may then be used to suggest interpretations of grave

goods, but such inferences are only ever likely to apply to a particular society, or

even community, at a particular point in time. Whatever their background in

specific cases, grave goods were not simply intended to help the dead on their

journey to the hereafter and in their afterlife (pace Kellehear, 2007), nor are they

mirrors of life in the past (pace Haffner, 1989).

Acknowledgements

The ideas set out in this paper were developed in a seminar paper given in 2007

at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath. One of the key

54 H. Härke

inspirations for the approach adopted here was classes of the Interdisciplinary

MA in Death and Society at the University at Reading (now taught at Bath),

and I am indebted to my colleagues Tony Walter, Clare Gittings, Ralph

Houlbrooke and Bob Chapman for helping to make this the most stimulating

course I have ever contributed to. Further inspirations were provided by a num-

ber of conference sessions at the Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference,

Oxford 2000, and the Society of American Archaeology Conference, New

Orleans 2001. I am grateful to the British Academy and the University of Read-

ing for travel grants to attend the latter conference. Tony Walter, Eva Thäte,

Duncan Sayer and Howard Williams took the time to read, and comment on,

various drafts of this paper. Tony Walter kindly suggested it for publication in

Mortality; I am very grateful to him for his persistence and encouragement.

Notes

[1] Exhibition ‘Marco Polo: Von Venedig nach China’, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover, 23 September 2011 – 26 February 2012.

[2] A. Bräuning, Forschungen zum alamannischen Gräberfeld Stühlingen, public lecture 26 January 2012, Universität Tübingen.

[3] My attention was drawn to this by a Death & Society seminar paper given by C. M. Parkes at the University of Reading in 2001.

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Biographical Notes

Heinrich Härke studied at the universities of Göttingen, Edinburgh and Oxford. He held lecture- ships in archaeology at Queen’s University Belfast from 1984 to 1989, and at the University of Reading from 1989 to 2007, with his research focusing on the Early Middle Ages and burial archaeology. He now does archaeological fieldwork and research in Russia and Kazakhstan, and contributes to teaching at Tübingen University (Germany).

60 H. Härke

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