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Burial Practices in Northern England C. AD 650-850: A Burial Practices in Northern England c. A.D. 650-850: A Bio­ Cultural Approach Elizabeth Flora Craig PhD Thesis Volume 2 Department of Archaeology University of Sheffield September 2009 IMAGING SERVICES NORTH Boston Spa, Wetherby West Yorkshire, LS23 7BQ www.bl.uk THESIS CONTAINS VIDEO CD DVD TAPE CASSETTE CHAPTER6 BIO-CULTURAL ANALYSIS In this chapter, a bio-cultural analysis of burial practices at the six case-study sites is presented. This builds upon patterns identified in the burial rites in the previous chapter by considering whether aspects of an individual's identity were related to the manner in which they were treated after death. First, bio-cultural methods by which identity can be investigated through an analysis of osteological data and burial practices are considered. Second, three aspects of individual and group identity are outlined, highlighting the theoretical and methodological background to their investigation through funerary practices. Third, demography, health and disease prevalences of the individuals from the case-study sites are characterised. This is followed by a consideration of correlations between all aspects of an individual's identity - represented by osteological data for age at death, biological sex, stature, health, activity and disease - and the funerary rite - divided here into spatial location of the grave, form of the grave, disposition of the body, grave elaborations and grave goods - in order to investigate the provision of different forms of burial. Most of the results are discussed in their wider context in this chapter, however, some of the more significant patterns in the expression of individual or group identity in burial practices are discussed further in the next chapter. 268 6.1 Bio-cultural methods Previous studies that have termed themselves "bio-cultural" have sought to provide an integrated approach to the characterisation and contextualisation of evidence drawn from human remains and the archaeological record. Helen Bush and Marek Zvelebil (1991: 8) defined the bio-cultural methodology as follows: An investigation of the dynamic relationship between population, culture and the environment, with a greater emphasis placed on individuals, social groups and populations. It was emphasised that this rejected the traditional mode of palaeopathological study, which focused on the individual and single case-studies of unusual cases, in favour of understanding of the populations to which the individuals belonged. In Bush and Zvelebil's volume (Health in past societies: bio-cultural interpretations ofhuman skeletal remains in archaeological contexts), the focus ofbio-cultural studies was health of past populations, as tends to be the case in much research that can be termed bio-cultural (e.g. Cook 1984; Goodman et al. 1984; Privat et al. 2002; Robb et al. 2001). In this study the bio-cultural approach to funerary practices is defined broadly as a method that seeks to combine evidence from human remains with their archaeological context. A bio-cultural analysis is intrinsically an integrated and interdisciplinary analysis, drawing on diverse strands of evidence to build up a deeper picture of the beliefs and actions of past societies. It is both a multipurpose analysis and a method employed to answer multiple questions. It therefore has the potential to be much more than a means of investigating health in past populations. Bio-cultural methods provide an ideal basis for studies that seek to investigate concepts such as identity, social categories (such as rites of passage, 269 gender, liminality and exclusion), belief, memory and familial relationships. Heinrich Harke (2002) has characterised modern, interdisciplinary approaches to funerary contexts as involving sociological, anthropological and historical viewpoints to focus more on the experience of death rather than life. The experience of death is described as "natural and cultural roots of grief, about rites of passage and the nature of liminality, about attachment and continuing bonds, remembrance and forgetting, individual and social memory, afterlife beliefs, pollution and superstition" (HArke 2002: 341 ). He contrasts this with previous uses of archaeological and skeletal data to interpret burial practices in terms of social structures and status in the past. I argue that the exploration of the experience of life naturally compliments investigation of the experience of death in a modem bio­ cultural study. The broadening of focus to incorporate the experience of death predisposes, or at the very least is complimented by, a certain understanding of the experience of life. For example, consideration of rites of passage as Harke suggests is predicated on our understanding of the age at death of individuals who received certain socially sanctioned forms of burial treatment. Bio-cultural methods therefore have the potential to provide a means by which the experience of life and death in the past can be investigated. Through the holistic integration of all aspects of burial ritual with diverse evidence for the individual for whom it was provided, context can become key, and the active and multi-dimensional nature of burial acknowledged. In this study the bio-cultural methodology is utilised to provide an integrated study of individual and group identity, burial rites and cemetery topography. Evidence for identity is drawn from osteological and palaeopathological analysis of cemetery populations, including evidence for age at death, biological sex, stature, 270 health and lifestyle. Archaeological evidence regarding all aspects funerary rites including burial orientation, grave form. burial position, elaborations and grave goods is included in the analysis. Additionally, the topography of the cemetery is considered in order to investigate the use of space in burial grounds. All of these strands of evidence are drawn together to investigate the provision of burial rites in middle Anglo-Saxon northern England. 6.2 The investigation of identity using bio-cultural methods Bio-cultural methods seek to integrate osteological and pathological data with all aspects of funerary practices to provide a deeper understanding of who was afforded which forms of provision and commemoration in death. However, not all characteristics identified by osteological and pathological analysis have the potential to be related to identity. For example, there are many examples of conditions commonly recorded in osteological assessment that are idiopathic (have no known cause) or asymptomatic, and therefore cannot be related to lifestyle. Examples include spina bifida occulta, supernumerary vertebrae or ribs, and most non-metric traits such as wormian bones, additional articular facets or sutures. Those skeletal characteristics that do have known aetiologies and/or do result in physical manifestations can provide evidence of biological identity including biological sex, age at death and aspects of health/lifestyle. Biological identity has a complex relationship to aspects of social identity and in the following discussion the connection between biological and social identity is explored through a consideration of biological sex and gender, age at death and rites of passage, health and social status, and kinship and familial relationships. 271 The correlation of burial treatment and biological sex is a common means by which social identities are investigated from funerary practices. However, it has only been in the last three decades that the theoretical underpinnings of such methods have been developed to incorporate theories of gender. The data produced by osteological assessment are a measure of biological sex, the pre-determined genetic expression of maleness or femaleness, whereas gender is a socially­ constructed identity developed in response to wider characteristics of masculinity and femininity (Conkey and Spector 1984: 16; Rubin 1975: 179). Archaeological theories of gender have added that gender is an acquired product of the social relations of sexuality that is negotiated and maintained through material culture (Smensen 1991: 122). As a result, gender need not necessarily be a binary opposition of male and female, but can incorporate multiple different or intermediate categories ( Gilchrist 1994: 6; Nordbladh and Y ates 1990). The assessment of biological sex using osteological methods does not ideally compliment this socially-constructed reading of gender. Osteological methods assign a biological sex based on a suite of masculine and feminine skeletal traits. Intermediate categories can be identified, but these relate to biological variation in expression of sex characteristics that may be completely independent of the experience of gender. Biologically inter-sex individuals do occur as a result of genetic or hormonal abnormalities, however they are rare (Rega 1997: 242). Furthermore, it is unclear how, if at all, such individuals could be identified in the osteological record (Mays and Cox 2000: 125), and thus, for all intents and purposes, the osteological record produces a binary opposition of male and female. In the theoretical and methodological approaches to funerary archaeology prior to the 1980s, gender was equated with biological sex, and the interpretation of 272 gender was heavily determined by stereotypes of"natural" gender roles (Conkey and Spector 1984: 3-14; S0rensen 1992: 32). Antiquarian scholars assumed a direct link between grave goods and sex/gender to the extent that skeletal sexing was often considered unnecessary where
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