ABSTRACT
The relative paucity of burial evidence from churchyards and monastic cemeteries dating to the period is considered against predicted levels of burial intensity, and methodological problems in the identification and dating of 16th-century cemetery contexts. Burial practices arising from the Reformation are appraised, including the treatment of Catholics, and the development of new urban burial grounds. Central to the Reformation were transformations in religious belief that brought about profound changes in the treatment of the dead. Changes in the treatment of the dead have been explained variously as evincing new religious beliefs, reflecting levels of mortality, the development of social structures, the spread of literacy, and the rise of the individual. The absence of pathological markers in the female skeletons ‘indicates that females were unable to survive the episodes of stress and died before insult could permanently scar the skeletal tissue’.
