This year’s keynote takes us to the farthest reach of the archaeological pro-cess: the point where finds and findings are presented in museum exhibi-tions. Søren Sindbæk presents a critical review of two major new exhibitions on the Viking Age which have recently opened at two of Scandinavia’s most prominent museums, the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm and the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. Both museums aim to at-tract increased tourist numbers, an appeal which Sindbaek suggests leads paradoxically to more culturally conservative and nationally focused ex-hibitions. Responses by Håkon Glørstad, Caroline Owman, Fredrik Svan-berg, Matthias Toplak, Chris Tuckley and Howard Williams explore con-straints and opportunities in displaying the Viking Age internationally.

The Early Middle Ages have provided material for imagining selves and groups in a wide range of contexts since the earliest beginnings of the historical and archaeological disciplines. Considerable recent research has shown how modern political conflicts and regional-national identities have crystallized in this period in particular. This essay traces ways in which early medieval remains, mainly from the richly furnished cemeteries, have been brought into play in developing scholarly and popular accounts of the history of France. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the recovery of considerable numbers of finely worked grave goods from the large rural cemeteries provided material for studying and reevaluating Merovingian-period societies, previously only glimpsed in written sources and largely out-competed as national ancestors by the popular appeal of Gaulish warriors. Yet paradoxically, another form of discovery in the same burial grounds seemed to place them back in the Dark Ages: many graves were found to have been ransacked and robbed soon after burial, making the communities of the time appear lawless and barbarous. Archaeological attitudes towards excavated early medieval graves, and in particular the many thousands of graves already reopened in antiquity, not only highlight key aspects of the development of the discipline, but also reveal ways in which the remains of the dead may be integral to processes of national identity construction.

From the collapse of Roman power to the spread of Christianity, most of what we know about the lives of people across Europe comes from traces of their deaths. This is because written sources are limited, and in many areas, archaeologists have only found a few farmsteads and villages. But thousands of grave fields have been excavated, adding up to tens of thousands of burials.

Buried along with the human remains, traces of costumes and often possessions, including knives, swords, shields, spears, and ornate brooches of bronze and silver, have been found by archaeologists. There are glass beads strung as necklaces, as well as glass and ceramic vessels. From time to time, they even find wooden boxes, buckets, chairs, and beds.

Yet since the investigations of these cemeteries began in the 19th century, archaeologists have recognized that they have not always been the first to reenter the tombs. At least a few graves in most cemeteries are found in a disturbed state, their contents jumbled and valuables missing. Sometimes this happened before the buried bodies were fully decomposed. In some areas, whole cemeteries are found in this state.

The disturbance has been termed grave robbery and lamented as a loss for archaeology in the removal of hoped-for finds and data. For example, the digger’s reaction to the discovery of one disturbed burial recorded in excavation notes in Kent, England, in the 1970s is typical: “The big event—and disappointment of the day.”

Is the Disturbance of Merovingian Burials ‘Elementary’ in Archaeology? New Views on the Reopening of Tombs in theEarly Middle Ages in Europe. The reopening of Merovingian burials with the removal of objects is a practice well known to archaeologistsand historians. Recent studies highlight the extent of this phenomenon across a Europe with rich and varied funerary practices.It began during the 6th century, particularly in its second half, and reached its peak during the 7th century. The concerned sites belongto the Reihengräberfelder horizon (row grave necropolises) and are characterised by the use of clothed inhumations and the burialdeposits. They spread over a large part of Europe, from the south-east of England to Romania. The removal of objects is selective andanswers to considerations that cannot be systematically linked to a search for beautiful objects motivated by greed. The chronologyof intervention is similar between sites with ancient reopenings, contemporary with the use periods of the cemeteries. Archaeothanatologicalstudy shows that disruption typically occurs after the decomposition of the bodies, but before the complete disappearanceof the container and the obstruction of the burial. Considered for a long time as transgressive acts, reopenings appear today more as acomplex community practice, weaving a close link between the world of the living and that of the dead.

Across Europe early medieval archaeologists have long recognised significant numbers of graves displaying evidence for the intentional post-burial disturbance of skeletons and artefacts. The practice of reopening and manipulating graves soon after burial, traditionally described—and dismissed—as ‘robbing’, is documented at cemeteries from Transylvania to southern England. This article presents a synthesis of five recent regional studies to investigate the evidence of and the motivations for the reopening of early medieval graves. From the later sixth century AD, the reopening of individual graves and removal of selected artefact types rapidly became part of the shared treatment of the dead across this wide area.