This article concerns the practice of bed burial, a rare funerary custom found in some sixth- to early tenth-century ad graves ranging from southern Germany to Scandinavia and England. Existing research has often overlooked the diversity of bed burials, focusing mainly on the reconstruction of the beds, their style, the status of the deceased, and the objects associated with them, without examining the broader implications of the ritual. Here, the author explores the variations in bed burials, their relationship to the deceased, the artefacts linked with them, and the surrounding contexts. Her study is based on a new assessment of every aspect of the ritual, including the location of the graves, the biological and social identity of the deceased, the burial assemblage, and whether the beds were complete. This approach aims to demonstrate that the practice of bed burial should be addressed in the plural.

Cet article concerne la pratique d’inhumation des défunts sur un lit, une coutume funéraire relativement rare observée dans certaines tombes datant entre le VIe et le début du Xe siècle apr. J.-C., et réparties dans le sud de l’Allemagne, la Scandinavie et l’Angleterre. Les études menées jusqu’à présent ont souvent négligé la diversité des sépultures dites à lit, ayant surtout porté sur leur reconstruction leur style, le rang social des défunts et les objets qui leur étaient associés, sans considérer les implications plus amples de leur présence au sein du rituel funéraire. Dans cet article, l’auteure examine les variations parmi les sépultures à lit, leur rapport avec les défunts, le mobilier funéraire et le contexte environnant. Elle s’appuiesur une nouvelle évaluation de tous les aspects de cette pratique, y compris l’emplacement des sépultures, l’identité biologique et sociale des individus, le mobilier, et si les lits étaient entiers ou non. Cette approche vise à démontrer que cette pratique funéraire devrait être abordée dans toute sa pluralité. 

Dieser Artikel betrifft die Bettbestattung, ein relativ seltener Bestattungsbrauch, der in einigen Gräbern des 6. bis frühen 10. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. in Süddeutschland, Skandinavien und England vorkommt. Die bisherige Forschung hat die Vielfalt der Bettbestattungen oft vernachlässigt und hat sich hauptsächlich auf die Rekonstruktion der Betten, ihren Stil, den sozialen Rang der Verstorbenen und die Grabbeigaben konzentriert, ohne die weiteren Auswirkungen des Rituals zu berücksichtigen. Die Verfasserin untersucht die verschiedenen Erscheinungen der Bettbestattungen, ihren Zusammenhang mit den Verstorbenen, die damit verbundenen Artefakte und die Umgebung der Gräber. Ihre Studie stützt sich auf eine neue Auswertung aller Aspekte der Grabsitte, namentlich die Lage der Gräber, die biologische und soziale Identität der Toten, die Grabbeigaben und die Vollständigkeit der Betten. Dieser Ansatz soll darauf aufmerksam machen, dass die Bettbestattungssitte eine vielfältige Tradition darstellt. 

Broken Bodies, Places and Objects demonstrates the breadth of fragmentation and fragment use in prehistory and history and provides an up-to-date insight into current archaeological thinking around the topic.

A seal broken and shared by two trade parties, dog jaws accompanying the dead in Mesolithic burials, fragments of ancient warships commodified as souvenirs, parts of an ancient dynastic throne split up between different colonial collections… Pieces of the past are everywhere around us. Fragments have a special potential precisely because of their incomplete format – as a new matter that can reference its original whole but can also live on with new, unrelated meanings. Deliberate breakage of bodies, places and objects for the use of fragments has been attested from all time periods in the past. It has now been over 20 years since John Chapman’s major publication introducing fragmentation studies, and the topic is more present than ever in archaeology. This volume offers the first European-wide review of the concept of fragmentation, collecting case studies from the Neolithic to Modernity and extending the ideas of fragmentation theory in new directions.

The book is written for scholars and students in archaeology, but it is also relevant for neighbouring fields with an interest in material culture, such as anthropology, history, cultural heritage studies, museology, art and architecture.

This introduction provides an overview of fragments and fragmentation in archaeology, aiming to map out a field that has rarely been subjected to synthesising efforts. First, it presents a background, taking John Chapman’s publication of ‘Fragmentation in Archaeology’ in 2000 as a starting point. It then moves on to explore issues within the wide range of perspectives on fragmented materials and fragmentation that have emerged during recent decades. Four themes where the archaeology of fragmentation has proven particularly creative are discussed: the ontological and existential character of fragments; fragmentation and the human body; methodological considerations regarding fragmented materials and their properties; and finally, the links between fragmentation studies and relational perspectives currently influencing many areas of archaeological thinking. Overall, it also gives an approach to the other contributions in this volume and places them in their theoretical and methodological context. Concluding reflections highlight some wider aspects of fragments as part of ever-changing assemblages, as well as the role of fragmentation as a means of embracing the complexity of past remains.

This paper presents osteological analyses and radiocarbon dates from human remains found in early churchyards on the Baltic island of Gotland. Graves from the first phases of burial have been discovered beside churches on Gotland on many occasions since the late nineteenth century, usually during preparations for new interments. Previous work has focused on the artefacts found with many of them, which suggest that the early churchyard dead were buried in costume closely resembling that worn in the last phases of the traditional grave fields. These finds have been a key source for research into the chronology and process of the Christianization of Gotland during the late Viking Age and early medieval period. Neglected, however, are the human remains which were sometimes recovered alongside the artefacts, but until now escaped research attention. Here we present analyses of the remains of 26 individuals recovered from Garda churchyard, with smaller numbers from Stånga, Havdhem and Fardhem. The results contribute osteological characterization of the early adopters of churchyard burial, along with new absolute dates for the establishment and use of the new Christian burial sites, and demonstrate that the practice of furnished burial was maintained in churchyards for an extended period.

Across early medieval Europe, furnished graves have been regularly found in a disturbed condition, their contents missing or scattered, occasionally broken and thrown into intrusive cuts. Deliberate damage to objects has been suggested, in line with the established idea of violence associated with these post-burial intrusions. However, a close look at the process – type of object broken, sampling of only a few pieces – suggests another reality, challenging the assumption that any break is necessarily the result of a negative intention. Alongside the intentional fragmentation of contents, missing bones characterise a significant number of reopened graves – taphonomy or voluntary destruction during the intrusion are usually proposed as (unsatisfactory) explanations. In fact, this issue has been little considered in the research, and very few in-depth analyses have been carried out so far.

This chapter explores the theme of incomplete and fragmented Merovingian reopened graves, not as a testimony to disrespectful practice but as an integral part of mortuary customs where the dead and their belongings played an active role in the lives of the living. It opens the discussion on the meaning of these specific gestures towards two very different kinds of remains: objects and human bones.

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.”

Human remains buried in graves do not always ‘rest in peace’ eternally. Throughout the world, graves are often reopened1 as part of funerary or post-funerary rituals (Hertz, 1960; Danforth, 1982; Verdery, 1999; Aspöck, 2005; Kümmel, 2009; Weiss-Krejci, 2011; Aspöck et al. 2020). Possible motivations for reopening graves are manifold. In many instances, the reopening may not be sacrilege but actually form part of ritual practices. These could include the removal of grave goods or body parts for symbolic reasons, such as for use as relics (Geary, 1986), the manipulation of the body in the context of beliefs in revenants (Barber, 1988), or when mortuary practices are thought 278to have failed (Goody, 1962: 151; Aspöck, 2011). Other causes of post-funeral ‘disturbances’ of graves may include ancestral rites and ancestral appropriation, veneration and commemoration of important individuals, political disputes, looting, desecration, as well as curiosity and scientific research.