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An ambitious attempt to give precise dates to early Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods funded by English Heritage has thrown new light on the Christianisation of England, with fresh evidence implying that a transformation of burial customs was a major turning point.

Pre-Christian Burials Ended Abruptly

The research, undertaken by English Heritage experts in partnership with Cardiff University and the Queen's University Belfast, has revealed that the pre-Christian tradition of furnished burial for men and women, typically fully clothed with weapons, dress fittings, and other equipment, ended abruptly in AD 670s or 680s.

Using a new method to combine the radiocarbon dates on skeletons from graves with analysis of the typological sequence of their accompanying grave goods, a sample of 572 Anglo-Saxon burials from across England were put into a dated sequence. These included burials from famous sites such as Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, the site of a magnificent early 7th century ship burial whose finds are now at the British Museum.  The researchers were able to estimate their dates to within a few decades and concluded that the last such burials were all dated to AD 670s and 680s, suggesting an end for this burial tradition that was both more abrupt and considerably earlier than previously thought.

Linked to Theodore of Tarsus

Significantly, by comparing these precise dates with historical records of the time, researchers noted that the sudden end of furnished burial coincided almost exactly with the period when Theodore of Tarsus was Archbishop of Canterbury (AD 669 - 690).

According to the Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Theodore of Tarsus 'was the first archbishop whom the whole church in England agreed to obey'. He arrived in May 669 and swiftly visited all of the then English parts of Britain and issued instructions on orthodox Christian practices. It would now appear that burial rites were a main concern, something not recorded in historical sources.

Conversion of burial customs a "turning point"

Professor John Hines from Cardiff University said: "Over a period of at least a century starting in the second half of the 6th century, a series of radical changes in burial practice coincided with hugely important developments in social and political organization, economic life, and institutional religion in England. All of these must be interrelated. However, the exact contemporaneity of the end of traditional furnished burial and Theodore's reign as Archbishop of Canterbury is striking, and unlikely to be a mere coincidence. It sheds new light on how Christianity consolidated its hold over the lives and experiences of everyone in England, and how ideas and practices that have prevailed for centuries took shape in this turning point in our history.

"Theodore was remembered and admired as an outstanding executive of the early Church in England. If our interpretation of the abrupt and comprehensive change in burial practice which saw the final demise of the older tradition is correct, he effected a truly comprehensive shift which brought the lives of everybody in Anglo-Saxon England into a common framework defined by the anticipation of how their body would be treated in death, and not even the Viking invasions and conquests two centuries later would alter this." 

Breakthroughs in dating science have already revolutionised the understanding of prehistory. With this project, two types of evidence were used: radiocarbon dates of individual samples, and sequence of the burials obtained by examining their shared traits and the co-occurrence of similar types of artefacts. These two sets of information were cross referenced and combined using Bayesian statistics to yield high precision dates.

Precise Dating Makes History

Dr Alex Bayliss, English Heritage dating expert, said: "It is only through precise dating that historians can start to construct what happened at specific times. The who, what, and how suddenly come to life. This dating programme has considerable significance for the dating of other finds, such as those from the Staffordshire Hoard and also has far-reaching significance beyond Anglo-Saxon graves, setting the standard for understanding a wide range of newly excavated finds from different periods."