 is Katherine Miller and today I'll be presenting on my current PhD research, understanding Anglo-Saxon burial practice patterns from radio carbon dating, a case study of southern England. As this project is still ongoing, any feedback, questions during this session is very much welcomed. As I mentioned in the title, the time period for this project to center during the Anglo-Saxon period of England or maybe roughly between 450 to 800 AD. Much debate has had had concerning the extent of the migratory patterns of Anglo-Saxons into England. A more traditional view of this is when the Roman government and the army were pulling out of England around 410 AD and left England vulnerable. The estimated date of arrival for European factions began roughly around 450 AD. But as to how many entered and how violent this entrance was is one of the largest questions we early medievalists are trying to answer. The migration question has also been aided by the lack of first-hand accounts. Many of the contemporary individuals such as Bede and Gildus and were written generations after the arrivals of Anglo-Saxons. Much of what we know from this period is from the archeology, particularly in the southwest of England. In utilizing archeology and Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, we can begin to understand the cultural richness and diversity during this period. The cemeteries are one of the many features that cultural populations used to mark their existence in a region. Anglo-Saxons express their cultural and religious identity through burials of its people. Examining grave sites with mixed practices and rites will help to unravel the commingling of these many cultures that entered England. On the slide, I've listed a few of the many features, many burial styles that could be present within an Anglo-Saxon burial site. Two of the main time periods I want to focus on that are pertinent to my part. I'll discuss two of the main periods that I want to focus on in this project. The first being the sixth and sixth century. We mostly see field cemeteries that could contain trench burials with stone, as well as that contain probably a variety of burial position, grave alignments, and proportion of goods. The second being the seventh and eighth century, where burials are sometimes furnished with clothing, weapons, jewelry. When thinking of this, we can consider this maybe final phase. We think of places like Sutton Hoo, Priddlewell, those more lavish places. We also begin to see burial mounds, which are probably more than more wealthier people, kind of creating their monument in the landscape, as well as we see a stark contrast with some graves having no goods and quite plain overall. Although there is some pattern concerning chronology and burial practice, there is much more variety in commingling of practices within cemeteries. This thought is what ultimately sparked interest for my project. The cross for this project was to conduct a radiocarbon survey of three Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, Appledowns and Droxford from the Kingdom of the region of Wessex, or South Central England, and Pilgrim's Way from the region of Kent, or Southeastern England. By conducting a radiocarbon survey on individual cemeteries that contained a variety of burial styles, I wanted to see if there was any chronological sequence or pattern to the burying practices within one cemetery or population sample. In addition to looking at burial practices and chronology, I wanted to examine the relative dates from the archeological goods and how they fared alongside the radiocarbon dates, exploring that relative versus absolute. Thirdly, how did these dates fit into the historical accounts from Feed and Gildus and others, and how these somewhat contemporary sources fit into the archeological narrative? By utilizing osteology, chemistry, history, and archeology, I wanted to gain a better understanding of how cultural practices changed over time as the population was changing in England. I began my project by going through collection databases and reading through many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and burial sites. I ultimately chose cemeteries based on site, on their sites, on diversity of burial practices. With Apple Downs being on the larger sites and Dockstreet and Pilbombs Way being on the smaller end. After the selection of these three sites, I began choosing various burials for radiocarbon dating. I wanted to choose graves so we're overlapping each other in burying alignments, i.e. north, south versus east, west, to see if there was any sort of temporal difference between these features. In addition to differing alignments, I chose graves from across the cemetery rather than one locus point, as this would probably give a better timeline for the cemetery. Lastly, the amount of goods within the graves played into the selection. I chose graves that were in a range of riches. Some of the graves containing lots of graves, while some containing none. Having this amount of dateable good within graves is hadn't essential for the radiocarbon dating process in further interpretations. Last, as for my skeletal samples, I chose small fragments from long bones and the skull, as this contains the most compact, our hard bone. This compact bone thickness is crucial for gathering radiocarbon dates. I also chose fragments versus taking samples from long bones, as this is a destructive process and not wanting to further damage any further articulated bones. Finding fragments for sampling was fairly easy at Apple Downs and Brock Sturt, as they were buried in a more clay-like soil, which helped with preservation. While pilgrims' way was a much more chalky soil, which turned the bone into a chalk-like material, which kind of sucks out all the carbon and isotopes and stuff, making it difficult to sample. As for my radiocarbon method, I analyzed my samples at University of Bristol and I followed a very similar procedure to Oxford. Some background on how we can tell the age of an individual from carbon-14 levels is carbon is absorbed by an organism from the atmosphere, and once an organism dies, that level of carbon-14 begins to decrease. And thank you to some clever chemists, we know that rate of decay. And we can use, grab that sample, grab that level through graphitization and breaking down that bone sample and sending it through the accelerating mass spectrometer machine, which is a big fancy word for a magnet set. We programmed to pull out certain isotopes. And then we plug it into Oxfile, which is this kind of statistical program that Oxford came up with, and we can grab that level or that VP date and turn it into a cylindrical date. Thus, the cylindrical date you see a lot of time in radiocarbon process is actually the date of death rather than the date of living, because it's when that radiocarbon started to decay. Also, there is a large plateau in the radiocarbon curve during this period, which can make it quite difficult to get a narrow range of the death of an individual. Thus, Bayesian model statistics utilizing artifactual dates, as they're known, have played an important role in these narrow, these large ranges. The relative dates that have been most useful have been the 9th typology by Eveson and Bruner, and the spearhead typology by Swanton, due to the plethora of these items at each site. The relative dates I am using were collected by the original excavators of each site and then comparing the originals with the original texts with Eveson and Swanton. Now that I've given a bit of background, my methodologies and a bit of history, I'll jump into the specific details of my site and project. The first site I chose was Apple Downs. Apple Downs was originally excavated by Downs in Welsh in the 1990s and is located near Compton in Chichester County. That's central England, London's out there. Apple Downs is comprised of two cemeteries that contain roughly 120 individuals between them. The first cemetery is kind of that more later Saxon period, rows of east-west alignment, little to no goods. While cemetery two, which is where I focus most of my efforts, has that those varying alignments ranging in richness, cremation, inhumations, and holding the bulk of all the individuals. This is the largest and most studied of the three cemeteries I will be examining. For example, Dr. Alice Bates and Dr. John Hines have published three radiocarbon dates along with Dr. May and Dr. Bevan who have done some stabilizing on those samples as well. This has been helpful because it's been provided almost a parameter for error for me to see where my data lies compared to theirs. As you can see, I have radiocarbon dated 10 individuals from this site. There is a both a mixture of males and females with mostly adults and one child and one adolescent. As you can see, they're dating mostly between the later 5th century and 7th century again based on varying relative dates like the 9th typologies and spearhead typologies. The second site I chose was Drogsburg which is located in Hampshire County on the River Mound again in South Central England. So, I'm sorry, I don't want it to be over here just to give you a graphical reference. This site was originally excavated by Dale in the early 1900s and then was re-escavated by Adelworth in the 1970s. Besides Dale's and Adelworth's account, it has also been thought that the current village of Drogsburg might have been the mid-to-late Saxon settlement of Drushenburg mentioned in the Doomsday book. The cemetery contained a total of 41 burials that is thought to be much larger but due to the large railway constructions that was happening in this area, much of it might have been destroyed. Again, I radiocarbon dated 10 individuals from this site. Like Apple Downs, there is a mixture of males and females except this sample seems to be on a much younger range mostly in their 20s with one child. Also, these individuals were found with a lot less dateable goods. But interestingly, Drogsburg-19 was found with a mixture of both Anglo-Saxon metalworks and rumen pottery. The last site I chose was Pilgrime which is closest to warm than Kent. So another geographic reference is one it would be worn to the west of this. Again, due to the chalky soil, I was only able to radiocarbon date six of the individuals. Unlike the other two, these are mostly males with one child and two possible females. Interestingly though, we do have several burrow burrow and one elite burial. As you can see on this map, the numbers you see here in the next graph are the burial numbers of the information and these are kind of the grave type numbers. But this one here is probably the most elite burial of all my surveys, 767, on the next slide, 768. And it contains a plethora of metalworks including weapons. And it's been really helpful for dating as well. Here are my individuals. My six individuals, mostly males, females, adults, one adolescent, again, mostly later, the fifth century, the seventh century. At this time, I have finished my radiocarbon dating with 26 individuals and I have re-branded samples with carbon 13 and nitrogen 15 to kind of discount the marine reservoir effect. When radiocarbon dating anyone or any sample, an individual's diet must be taken into consideration. If an individual consumes a lot of fish, those nitrogen levels that they would have gotten from the fish can alter the dates and actually make them look a lot younger or a lot older than they actually might be. Thus on my carbon 13 and nitrogen 15 readings, these individuals would not have consumed any fish. It would have probably eaten mostly terrestrial animals. As I mentioned earlier, due to the plateau and the radiocarbon curve during this period, a lot of my date ranges a lot longer than you might expect compared to other sample studies. So mine are usually between 100 to 150 years. As you can see on my table here, some of the relative dates are matching quite nicely to my radiocarbon dates, such as Apple Downs 18, Droxford 19, and Pilgrim's Way, 768 or Pilgrim's Way, 767. Got some really aren't. The Apple Down and Droxford samples on average are a bit earlier from what I was expecting due to the fact they're falling more in the transitional period between the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons. This was interesting because Pilgrim's Way is falling within that stereotypical period of the Anglo-Saxon period. But this dip in time in the Roman period could explain why there's Roman artifacts that Droxford and Apple Downs were falling rather than Apple Grim's Way. Here's a timeline I calculated on OxCal to demonstrate the kind of time difference. As you can see, Apple Grim's Way is on the top and far more to the right and that's 500 to 700 range, whereas Droxford and Apple Downs and the left hand are far more to the left hand side. As this project is still ongoing, I still have so many questions left. I'm hoping to discuss whether restaurantium oxygen would be helpful to understanding what's going on demographically. I wanna see if we can use any see any difference between individuals presenting earlier dates alongside the ones representing Anglo-Saxon dates. By using oxygen and strontium, this could help us better understand where these populations could have lived over their lives. As well as I'm interested in comparing Droxford and Apple Downs in contrast and more specific detail to Pilgrim's Way through their location in two different regions. Also, their close proximity to Apple Downs and Droxford in relation just to one another. As we can see, there's a relationship between these people and the Romans considering there being Roman artifacts at Apple Downs and Droxford in addition to their early dates. I wanna see how these sites could play into the discussion of the interaction between Anglo-Saxons and the Romano-British. A big thank you to the people I've listed about. They've done tremendous help on this project so far and I can't wait to see where it leads. I would love to hear your comments, questions, and concerns concerning this project. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to me.