ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the range of artefacts, including dress accessories, jewellery and coins, that have been recovered from burials of the later Anglo-Saxon period, c750–1100. Grave goods have traditionally been linked with paganism and their disappearance routinely ascribed to the influence of the Church. Although ecclesiastical pronouncements on appropriate forms of burial in later Anglo-Saxon England are sparse, occasional references to furnished burial suggest that this rite was not regarded as being inherently pagan. While lavishly furnished burial was understood as offering no guarantee of safe passage into the afterlife, nonetheless, for some members of the lay and ecclesiastical elite the grave remained an arena for displays of status, doubtless deriving not only from social competition among the mourners, but also from complex ideologies about anticipated fate in the afterlife. The importance of the deposition of artefacts with amuletic qualities in earlier Anglo-Saxon cemeteries has long been recognized, but the possibility that this practice persisted has seemingly not been en.
