Timothy Insoll has recently described the relationship between archaeology and religion as having been ‘predominantly one of neglect’. As is explored in this chapter, archaeologists have generally considered religion and religious conversion to lie at the limits of archaeological knowledge. Although the processualist movement went some way towards challenging this assumption, in the end its efforts had very little effect, while the post-processualist movement has also done little to address the archaeological study of religion. Greater hope is offered by ‘cognitive archaeology’, an amalgamation of the more successful aspects of both schools of thought, although this approach too has yet to achieve its full potential and is not without its own flaws.

This chapter also examines religious conversion as a process and considers the different approaches which might be taken to its study. As is discussed below, the archaeological record is particularly well suited to the study of conversion as the material traces of changing religious practices are made manifest in a number of different ways and on a number of different scales, ranging from individual artefacts to entire landscapes. Comparative studies demonstrate that the highly adaptive nature of Christianity means that any given conversion episode can only really be understood and appreciated within its own, highly regionalised, terms. To this end, the chapter concludes with a consideration of how we might attempt to recognise conversion in the archaeological record of Anglo-Saxon East Anglia.

Archaeological approaches to religion

Religion is an abstract concept, concerning individual experience, faith and spirituality, and existing only in the minds of its subscribers; it cannot in itself be preserved in the archaeological record or accessed materially. Sometimes dubbed ‘the numinous’, this abstract element is only one aspect of religion, and, fortunately, there are many other aspects, such as the rituals enacted as a part of religious observance, which can and do leave strong material traces. Archaeologists study the material traces of religious acts: the artefacts created for and used in them, the places in which they were enacted and the deposits which resulted from them. From such evidence we may attempt to reconstruct something of the religiously motivated practices which produced it, although this is by no means an easy task to accomplish.