Hadrian's Wall © Brian Buchanan

About the project

The burial record for this era provides the richest evidence relevant to the study of migrations, identity and the reshaping of political structures.

Artefacts & Cemeteries

Artefact assemblages in early medieval graves provide insights into wealth, status, kin and family groups. Cemetery size and organisation, and grave form are equally valuable evidence for understanding communities.

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populations, mobility & health

New bioarchaeological methods allow assessment of health, welfare, diet and mobility. What do their skeletal remains reveal about the people of Northumbria?

people, space & place

Rivers, routes, and landscape features influenced burial activity and especially high status funerary events. Where were the dead buried and how did this help to define territories? 

People and Place will build on previous advances in early medieval cemetery studies by applying an aggregate of social and scientific approaches to the burial record for the kingdom of Northumbria AD 300-800. It will undertake a full reassessment of all known funerary evidence of early medieval date from the Humber to the Firth of Forth and from the North to Irish Seas.

The withdrawal of Roman authority in Britain along with changing climatic conditions and the influx of migrants from continental Europe contributed to the remodelling of social and political structures in this region. By the 8th century large kingdoms  formed from a coalescence of smaller groups and were in place across Britain and ruled by dynastic lineages of kings.The burial record for this era provides a rich dataset relevant to understanding the migrations, identities and political structures of society during this period.

The commemoration of the dead, in terms of funerary dress, grave goods and spatial location, was regionally and socially distinctive. Material culture and landscape were powerful media used to create and construct socio-political identities.

Recent advances in early medieval cemetery studies have yielded refined chronologies, new information about mobility and migration and new understanding of health, diet, and well-being.

Archaeologists from Durham University Archaeology Department will chart the burial record for the entire region and interrogate the data in terms of identity and wealth, health, ethnicity and lifestyle by situating and exploring burials and cemeteries in their landscape setting. The project will take account of all aspects of mortuary data in the kingdom of Northumbria using a comprehensive dataset drawn from published and grey literature, museum archives and sites and monuments records.

New osteological and paleopathological assessments combined with carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and strontium isotopic analyses and AMS dating will be added to create an integrated  comparative database.

This will allow us to revisit the chronology for funerary activity and to characterise the social composition of Northumbrian communities. The results will help us rethink current understanding of this important frontier region.

Northumbria encapsulates the tensions and questions posed by burial and documentary datasets in terms of migrations, ethnicities, early polities and heartlands.

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