(LENNON AND MCCARTNEY 1967)
As an individual’s identity changes as they move through the life cycle - daughter, wife, mother, grandmother - so does their relative status within their community, and also the identity of those who bury them. These changes in status are often, but not always, marked by rites of transition, and are also often marked by changes in material culture. These aspects of life provide many opportunities for archaeologists
to examine the relationships between material culture and identity, although this is not a straightforward process.
Sofaer notes that gender is fluid, due to the biological processes of human development and the cultural aspects of the skeleton’s life, but that biological anthropologists and archaeologists struggle to grapple with it (Sofaer 2006: 156). She is concerned about analyses where the sex and gender of a human skeleton are considered to be distinct, as well as those where they are considered inseparable (Sofaer 2006: 156). Sex and gender considered inseparably are critiqued elsewhere in this thesis, in the context of gendered grave goods ‘sexing’ a skeleton; while acknowledging that neither sex nor gender are bimodal concepts, it is true that the majority of humans fall into the two main categories of male/female and/or feminine/masculine, and that it is likely that people of the distant past, without education in biology or genetics, would perceive most people as fitting within these categories. With regards to the distinct categorisation of sex and gender, Sofaer suggests that without directly observing the interaction between the dead individual and the goods that they were buried with, archaeologists are liable to fall into the trap of ‘biological determinism’ (Sofaer: 157). This may be a risk, but surely it is better to attempt to examine the lives of people of the past through the remains they have left behind, whether in middens or in graves, than to discard any analysis by placing it in the biological deterministic hard basket.
Such relationships between material culture and the identity of its possessor in a mortuary context are symbolic and potentially an essential element of another symbolic ritual – funerary rites (Pader 1980: 143). Material culture, while having practical applications, also has symbolic purpose. When Pader (1980: 147-148) examined the age and sex distribution of artefacts from the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Holywell Row, Mildenhall, Suffolk, she recognised that male-female relationships were interdependent with age identity. The various age identities of the different sexes followed different pathways. For instance, gendered grave goods
(Pader 1980). Although her age relationships were simply those between adult and child rather than differentiation between various adult age identities, Pader (1980) was one of the first to examine the symbolism of material culture with age identity. In this paper and her further study (Pader 1982), where she examines such symbolism in the wider Anglo-Saxon framework, she can be seen in the process of throwing off the shackles of processualism (Hodder 1985: 14).
While processually citing ‘rules’ of domain and social structure, Crawford (1991: 18), when asking when Anglo-Saxon children count, she notes that children’s place in the community is anarchic, existing beyond adult law and convention thus providing a postprocessual element to her analysis. She notes children’s anarchic ability to bypass these normal rules and responsibilities is due to their dependence on adults, with the result that normal indicators of social identity or status which are applied successfully to adult graves cannot be relied upon to analyse dead children (Crawford 1991: 18). In addition, in Anglo-Saxon archaeology, infants and to a lesser extent children, are a largely invisible category, with few infants in Anglo-Saxon cemeteries (Great Chesterford is a notable exception). The reasons for this lack are explored, with shallow burial, taphonomy on young bones or little energy expenditure on a low status cohort being considered. In addition, Crawford (1991) highlights diverse definitions of terms like ‘juvenile’ or ‘infant’ found in different reports, which makes comparisons between cemeteries problematic (Crawford 1991: 20-21). Despite the above problems, Crawford (1991), like Stoodley (2000), also seeks age thresholds, using both Anglo-Saxon texts and burial evidence, with one of her findings being that individuals that we would regard as children are granted adult status at about the age of ten years.
While Crawford (1991) does not fall into this trap, Lucy (1997) deplores early attitudes to sex, gender and grave goods in Anglo-Saxon burial archaeology. She notes that the traditional and exclusive linking of particular grave goods (e.g. jewellery with females and weaponry with males) can be traced to nineteenth century antiquarianism and is unsuitable for twentieth (or twenty-first) century archaeology (Lucy 1997: 155). Exclusive linking of sex, or more accurately gender,
with particular grave goods also risks circularity in argument. Even though skeletal sexing suggests that these traditional linkages are true in most cases, it is more fruitful to examine burials and associated goods with relation to other aspects of an individual’s lived experience like social factors, kinship, lived experience and even perhaps age (Lucy 1997: 163-4).
Age and its representation in the Early Anglo-Saxon burial rite was examined by Stoodley (2000). His study used a sample of 1,230 undisturbed aged burials from across Anglo-Saxon England, examining relationships between grave goods and various age categories ranging from infants (0-1 years) to the ‘mature’ (over 40 years) (Stoodley 2000). He attempted to find thresholds in the construction of life cycles, finding the first change in the burial rite at about the 2-3 year age mark (Stoodley 2000: 459). He found other age thresholds, but noted that the construction of the lifecycle was a two-tiered system, differentiated by gender as well as age, and that an individual could have two separate identities (Stoodley 2000: 466). While this study provides many insights into Anglo-Saxon lives and lifecycles, its major shortcoming is the oldest age category of 40+ years. Although this category is out of Stoodley’s (2000) control, it does contribute to the invisibility of elderly Anglo- Saxons.
Like Crawford (1991); Gowland (2002) notes that age identity of the past is not the same as we see today, and that failing to recognise this means that interpretation is likely to be flawed. Gowland’s (2002) thesis examines age as an aspect of social identity in fourth to sixth century England, examining late Roman and early Anglo- Saxon cemeteries. Age is not the sole signifier of identity, and therefore can and should be examined alongside other identities like gender, ethnicity and class, as these entities both affect each other and are affected by them. Age and gender are both related to biology to a greater or lesser extent, and are inextricably linked as an individual moves through the life course (e.g. Roksandic and Armstrong 2011; Bogin and Smith 1996). Thus, it is also essential to examine both osteological and
Biological and physical fundamentals interact with social and political constructs to create a society and the individuals within that society.
While not having an obvious focus on osteology or age identity, Martin (2012) gets close to the early Anglo-Saxons and their behaviour when he examines the repair, customisation and re-use of brooches largely found in Anglo-Saxon grave contexts. He contends that brooches were the inalienable possession of their owner and must therefore be repaired when broken and not passed on to someone else on death. There is justice in this conclusion, but it does not take into account the fact that the number of brooches buried with individuals peaks during young adulthood, then declines with age which suggests perhaps that a woman gave away brooches during her lifetime, or even on death, perhaps to daughters or daughters in law, but retained some for her burial (see Chapter Five, Cave and Oxenham forthcoming). He also notes that brooches that have lost all decorative and fastening function have still been repaired and found in the ‘correct’ position, suggesting that it was the particular brooch that was important. This may be so, but it also may be that it was important to wear a brooch as a signal of status or identity, even if broken, no longer decorated, and unable to fasten clothing. Martin’s paper (2012) does not discuss unusable brooches found in purses or bags in graves. Indeed, the fact that these brooches were kept, even if not on display, suggests they retained importance to the individual who owned them. An example of this is the elderly woman (over 65 years) buried in Grave 95, Mill Hill, Deal in Kent (Parfitt and Brugmann 1997), who was buried with an unwearable worn and broken quoit brooch; this individual is discussed in more detail in Chapter Seven of this thesis.
Felder (2015) focused more on the archaeological, than the osteological evidence in her study of girdle hangers, where she examined the social dynamics of identity through these articles. Girdle hangers are symbolic objects, probably based on keys, but without apparent use other than as a body adornment and status indicator (Felder 2015:2-3). They are comparatively rare items, almost always found with adult women, and while they have been theorised as reflecting household responsibilities and economic authority (e.g. Hirst 1985: 38-43; Smith 1856: xli), Felder (2015: 4-5)
examines these artefacts as part of the discourse on ‘dressing and wearing as a social field of action’ (e.g. Martin 2011; 2012). Anglo-Saxon burial sites demonstrate diversity in their socially identifying, gendered material culture across regional, local and household and family constructs. Multiple meanings and multiple identities are displayed in the performance of wearing items, creating links and cementing relationships. Felder (2015: 14) attempts to follow these associations across time and space, finding that while keys were related to economic and household authority, girdle-hangers were associated with specific bags and amulets, linking their wearers with birth and death, pregnancy and conception, death and funerals. Rather than symbols of household management, she sees these items as objects symbolising the power to oversee the disruptive events of birth and death while protecting the wearers (Felder 2015: 14).
Items like girdle-hangers, tweezers and weapons can illuminate aspects of symbolism and identity for their wearers, but such aspects of an individual’s identity are specific to the time that they are wearing or carrying the item, even in death. Examining identity through items, as in these cases, highlights the symbolism and meaning of
the item, it is also possible to examine items with regard to the identity of the wearer.
This is largely the approach taken in this thesis: examination of the items linked to wearers of a grand old age.