ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a personal view of the important discoveries and reassessments in the period up to the Norman Conquest. The term Early Medieval can denote a different time-span to different people, and differs also in usage on the continent. The significance of the grave-goods in these early cemeteries of the 5th to 8th centuries has been explored more widely in later and more extensive cemetery excavations, and there have been advances in seeing the cemeteries within their landscape, as well as more intimately related to their settlements. Archaeology in the landscape had been dominated by visible monuments, of all periods, whilst stone structures, Roman through medieval, were widely researched. Unlike the continent, no continuum of Christian use from Roman to Anglo-Saxon buildings has been credibly established in England, although some Roman buildings survived into the 5th century and many Anglo-Saxon churches occupy Roman sites.
