Introduction – early medieval landscapes

In studies of burial in its landscape setting, there continues to be a schism. As it has developed in Britain, landscape archaeology has been closely connected to discussions of monuments, their distribution and their topographical location in prehistory. Yet for historic periods, landscape studies have tended to be affiliated with settlement archaeology, in which burial sites may provide the indirect evidence for nearby habitations. Consequently, burial sites tend to be considered a second-rate means of charting the distribution and evolution of settlements, rather than a feature of interest in themselves (e.g. Brown & Foard 1998; Hooke 1999; Rippon 2000). This chapter sets out to explore the potential for developing an understanding of the landscape locations and environs of cemeteries at a variety of scales. The particular focus will be upon the significance of landscape and burial location for constructing social memories, links both to the past in a general sense and to the ancestors in particular. In order to achieve this, it is first necessary to review previous approaches to the location of burials and cemeteries and explore recent studies of early medieval mortuary topography before considering the relationships between cemeteries and social memory. The chapter culminates in a discussion of the interaction of texts and landscape in constructing links between the early medieval past and the social histories (real or imagined) of individuals, communities and kingdoms.