Christian S Lewis (University of Southampton, UK)

In a seminal paper published in the journal American Anthropologist, Christopher Hawkes discussed the problematic nature of archaeological data and the difficulties faced by researchers attempting to understand religion in the archaeological record (Hawkes 1954). It is now more than fifty years since the publication of this paper and archaeology has changed. New ideas and exciting technologies have transformed the discipline and the ways in which we might interrogate the past. The question is: are we any closer to reaching the highest rungs of Hawkes’s, dare I say it, infamous ‘inferential ‘ladder’ (1954)? Certainly, ritual remains one of the most interesting questions we might ask of archaeological data; particularly when combined with experience. How was a monument, for example, or indeed landscape read and understood? Has experience remained firmly fixed within the realm of cognitive theory or can it be quantitatively explored? Conscious of the adv ice given by Howard Williams in the introduction to the proceedings of the Early Medieval Archaeology Student Symposium (Williams 2007) that good research has at its core three elements: data, method and theory, this paper aims to offer an alternative exploration of environmental perception.

Drawing upon my current doctoral research examining the wider social impact of early medieval mortuary practice and its role in the creation of a culturally constructed landscape (or ‘Umwelt’), this paper will explore Anglo-Saxon funerary ritual from a range of scales. Using the Isle of Wight as my study region; I will begin by considering the location of the island cemeteries and the contribution that burial sites might have made within the landscape. Moving further up the scale, I will discuss spatial distribution, and further still, the potential significance of the island in respect to both mainland England and early medieval Continental Europe.

Hawkes, C. 1954. Archaeological Theory and Method: some suggestions from the old world. American Anthropologist 56: pp.155-68.

Williams, H. 2007. Introduction, in Review of the Early Medieval Archaeology Student Symposium, held at Cardiff University May 2007, Cardiff Studies in Archaeology Specialist Report 30. Edited by Seaman, A. Cardiff: Cardiff School of History and Archaeology.