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My paper on grave good decline in early medieval Europe is published today in @AntiquityJ
https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.153
Summary below
https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.153
Summary below
I wanted to compare the transition from furnished to unfurnished burial across western Europe, specifically England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. So I created a database of over 33,000 graves, from 237 securely dated cemeteries.
I created a series of heat-maps showing how the density of grave good use changed over time. Yellow
red = low densityhigh density, squares are statistically significant hot-spots, triangles are statistically significant cold-spots.
red = low densityhigh density, squares are statistically significant hot-spots, triangles are statistically significant cold-spots.
Side-note: the above video took literally months of sitting in a computer room in the basement trying to persuade ArcGIS to do what I wanted, and I'm very pleased with the end results
Key points from the heat maps: the first decline in grave good use is visible in England from the mid-6th century onwards. It takes a bit longer before the decline is visible on the continent, it's not until the late 7th century that you really start to see changes.
By the mid-8th century, there are very few objects being put in graves. Although the fact that England is showing as a cold-spot at this point suggests that the abandonment of grave goods is more complete than elsewhere.
But I don't think that this means that the decline started first in England. I also looked at some individual cemeteries, and in almost all of the continental ones I chose, you can see grave goods start to decline from the mid-6th century as well (late-6th century in a few cases)
The nature of the chronological studies done in England comapred to other regions means that when you're looking at the broadest scale, change is more obvious than elsewhere. But the decline in grave good use starts in the mid-6th century in most areas.
That the changes are simultaneous across such a broad area is surprising! But this is also a time period when long distance trade networks were picking up, providing a mechanism for the exchange of ideas across the continent.
So the decline in grave good use is evidence of the contact and interconnectivity that existed across early medieval Europe, part of early processes of globalisation.
