Given the methodological constraints of the research agendas set by Sue Harrington and myself and the format of the ASKED database, a level of primary interpretation was required to simplify the dataset. All artefacts were divided into f.150 types defined on the basis of previous scholarship, excavation evidence and/or visual inspection (Appendix C). For the purposes of the latter, a reference handbook was developed to aid the on-site identification of over 6,000 objects, which allowed for existent artefact listings to be updated with new examples. These object types were then further discriminated within the database by artefact typology and provenance (Fig. 6.4).
Despite the theoretical critiques of past approaches to funerary behaviour, one of the primary products of Anglo-Saxon scholarship has been the establishment of fairly tight artefact typologies and relative chronologies. Developments in these traditional fields remains an important element of study within the discipline given interests in establishing archaeological material within the historicist framework of wider international developments and written sources (Jensen and Hoilund Nielsen 1997; Hines, Hoilund Nielsen and Siegmund 1999). Continental studies have been particularly successful in establishing the chronology of many individual artefact types, partly due both to the larger number of deposited coins {ibid) and the availability of much greater numbers of individual grave assemblages within excavated cemeteries for sériation. In the sense that these can provide absolute dates for associated assemblages, and in view of the large number of coins and other Frankish material in Kent, this region is perhaps uniquely suited in England to the establishment of a fine regional chronology (Hoilund Nielsen 1997; Brugmann 1999). Recent progress towards this goal has been made with Brugmann’s analysis of sixth-century female grave assemblages and the construction of a Kentish phase system related to the main continental chronologies {ibid) as well as the re-analysis of Conversion Period artefacts by Geake (1994).
As one of the primary aims of this study is an attempt to elucidate economic trends in various communities over the course of the Early Anglo-Saxon period, some effort has been made to place the available contextual material within a relative timeframe. The structure of the database defines individual entries according to datable artefacts and the overall date assignment of the burial complex based on artefact combinations. Wherever possible the date assigned in the original excavation report has been followed. Nevertheless, the inclusion of data from unpublished reports has required additional dating
of material. Relative dating of this sort is subject to the usual caveats of the manufacture and deposition date of individual artefacts within grave assemblages as outlined by Wilson (1959) and Steur (1977). In most cases it does not attempt to include additional relative dating evidence from horizontal stratigraphical means.
Past individual artefact studies remain the most important source of information for these entries. A number of difficulties are involved in this endeavour however. The chronology of Kentish material is closely tied to that of Continental phasing, with local absolute dates deriving from West European frameworks (Brugmann 1999, 51). So far, these Hnks have only been achieved from female graves however, as “weapons are not so closely datable as jewellery” and continental object-types in male graves are “generally limited to buckles and vessels” {ibid., 40). Thus, although female jewellery can often be dated to within a half- cenmry, the dating of most male weapon graves is much less well defined. This problem was particularly evident during the attempt at dating the two most common types of weapons encountered (i.e. shield and spears) on the basis of their established chronologies (Swanton 1973, 1974; Dickinson & Harke 1992). Wherever possible, spearheads were assigned to a type, following the series outlined by Swanton, whilst bearing in mind the critique of the typology by Harke (Swanton 1973; Harke 1992b, 85-7). Swanton’s spear classification was found to lack a certain transparency and provided Little dating evidence for many types. The Dickinson & Harke shield study, alternatively, is strictly-speaking valid only “for the Upper Thames region for the earlier types and for the south-eastern areas of England for the latter types” (Hoilund Nielsen 1997, 74), although a recent study has successfully re-evaluated by sériation the Kentish shield corpus (Spain 2000). In addition to these methodological constraints, close dating such as is outlined by Brugmann, is of limited value for the dating of poorly-furnished burials where diagnostic artefacts and combinations of artefacts are lacking. Unfortunately, the adopted typology for knives (the most common type of grave-good encountered) was that developed by Evison for the Dover Buckland cemetery, derived in turn from Bohner’s continental series (Evison 1987, 113-5; Bohner 1958, 214-5; Harke 1992b 90-1), which offers little chronological guidance in this respect.
The occurrence sériation utilised for the dating of artefacts is outlined in Table 6.4 below. Comparative analysis with current chronological frameworks, such as those established by Evison (1987) and Bmgmann (1999), formed the basis of general phases adopted whilst
amethyst beads for example). In many cases a close date assignment was impossible due to the lack of any diagnosticaUy-datable material, however, and then only a general AD 500- 700 date has been ascribed.
6.2.2 Analysis by weight and count
Following the methodology outlined by Loveluck (1994) an attempt was made to quantify temporal changes in the raw material and artefact distribution throughout the East Kent study area. The “distributed raw materials only exist in artefact form - as finished objects or, very rarely, in intermediate forms of storage e.g. ingots of metal. Artefacts therefore provide the information on both distributions of raw materials and particular forms of artefact” {ibid., 50). In contrast to Loveluck’s methodology, in which counts of raw material components making up artefacts were made, two complementary methods were adopted in this study to attempt a quantification of raw material distributions. AU Anglo-Saxon artefacts with unambiguous contexts in the East Kent area were individuaUy entered within the designed database. This recorded their primary raw material composition, and their quantity, in the case of multiple items such as beads or keys. A natural by-product of this form of data management was a spatial distribution of aU artefacts by type over East Kent, aUowing for the creation of trend-surfaces of artefact density and displacement.
In addition, it was deemed prudent to attempt a quantification of raw material distribution by weight. This involved the individual weighing of 5,096 artefacts from a variety of contexts throughout the study area. To fulfil the aims of spatial analysis some attempt was made to select as many artefacts from as many contexts with the widest spatial distribution as possible, thereby circumventing problems of bias and/or under-representation. In practice, the statistical analysis of raw material density requires the weight of aU objects within a context for inter-site comparison, and this severely Limited the avaUable sample size primarUy to modern excavations. Further factors influencing the selection of artefacts for analysis were travel costs, the granting of access both to museum coUections and excavation unit stores, the completeness of the artefacts and varying states of conservation and preservation. As one aim of the survey was an inter-cemetery comparison by phase of raw material consumption, it was cmcial furthermore to include aU artefacts from all individuals within a phase to ascertain the relative proportion of community consumption. In order to compensate for social hierarchies within a community, relative community wealth is determined as the product of total weight of raw materials per phase divided by population.
Given the small numbers produced by this calculation, the absence of even one wealthy grave within a phase could seriously distort the shape of the sample. For example, if the rich early-sixth century female grave 20 was missing from the Dover Buckland sample, which contains nine other graves within the AD 475-525 phase, although there would be minimal difference in the derived local iron consumption per person, the phase would record no consumption of local gold or silver, no Kentish/Frankish silver, and a severely distorted picture of copper-alloy use, due to the omission of the copper-alloy bowl and so on. By the same token, graves with objects of extraordinary raw material weight, such as copper-alloy bowls, can be seen to distort the general wealth of a community during a particular phase. In the case of the DBU grave 137 bowl, the inclusion of the vessel (weighing a staggering 2,00Ig) within the computations meant that the community of 22 people comprising this AD 650-675 phase would average 93.12g of copper-aUoy each, almost ten times more than any other contemporary community in East Kent. Without that single vessel, the Dover group takes on a wealth profile in line with that of other communities with a paltry 2.2g of copper-aUoy per person. Such analysis raises a number of social issues to be discussed further below (Chapter 7). In a very small number of cases, it was considered desirable to ascribe a weight to missing artefacts on the basis of comparable material, size, illustrations, average object weight (see below) and so on in order to complete contexts.
The comparison of the raw material compositions of artefacts within the cemeteries of Kent presents a number of methodological problems. These include the differential degradation of the iron objects in particular. Antiquarian methods of conservation, including the ‘waxing’ of ironwork, are clear causal factors for the difference in weight of shield bosses from Faversham King’s Field, for example, and the weight of a similar type from modern excavations such as Ozengell. Moreover, the condition of much of the older material was found to have been in a generally better condition than that from more recent excavations despite more antiquarian methods of conservation. Most of the Kentish cemeteries are found on similar areas of chalk upland and are assumed to have been subjected to roughly similar forms of site-formation processes. Most of the modern excavated cemeteries have provided evidence for a generalisable pattern of deposition. Graves were cut into the chalk subsoils, and backfilled with a mixture of calcerous earth, fhnt and crushed chalk (Fiddler pers. comm. 2000), providing roughly similar forms of alkaline environment. This pattern of deposition does give rise to some variation in the
When antiquarian archaeologists discuss evidence of the grave-structures, it appears that fairly universal forms of site-formation processes are encountered across most of eastern Kent. Visual inspection of many of artefacts gained from pre-War contexts appears to suggest that, in particular, iron objects have undergone more serious degradation during the post-war period. This is possibly an effect of the increased use and draining down of pesticides and fertilisers into the buried mortuary structures. A comparison by weight of objects across Kent, therefore, suffers somewhat from problems of comparability.
In the general lack of any ecofacts from Kent, this methodological problem is restricted to the buried iron objects, rather than those composed of, for example, copper-alloy, glass, amber or ceramic materials, which are not subject to the same degree of corrosive factors, and have been assumed to be roughly comparable in terms of weight across the area under investigation. Certainly, although copper-alloy objects do undergo some chemical corrosion, usually in the form of powdery green chloride products and patchy crystalline red oxide, these are not seen as substantial enough to alter the either the weight of the artefacts, nor to justify treating copper-alloy objects differently in different areas.
Iron corrosion on the other hand is prevalent on all recovered iron and steel artefacts, and objects are recognised to have undergone substantial deformation and degradation due to the oxidation of the constituent iron oxides. These artefacts therefore often appear blistered and cracked and are particularly fragile. Despite the prevalence of corrosive factors, however, it is argued that comparisons by weight still represent a sound methodological practice, as some evidence exists that this pattern of degradation is roughly similar throughout the majority of Kentish contexts. Although it could be argued that differential artefact decay reflecting the soü chemistry could bias inter-cemetery analysis of this kind, in practice little differentiation in the preservation of the material was noted either visually or by weight. Artefacts showing some form of standardisation, such as spearhead, shield-boss or sword types for example, can be seen to correspond closely in both dimensions and weight irrespective of point of origin or depositionary conditions. Thus, for example, the very similar sized and shaped Type 3 shield-bosses from Broadstairs Bradstow School 66, Dover Buckland 96/a and MiU HÜ1 Deal 17 can all be seen to weigh within 4g of each other at around 350g despite being geographically separated by over 26kms. Similarly, other iron objects such as the Evison Type 1 knives of MHD 66, BBS 51, BSP 319/158/165, OZE 118 and DBU 1/6 all weigh 16g despite the variable geographical and geological situation. Further examples could be cited for other object types, and it is generally assumed on this basis, that a comparison of the material from the more recent
excavations at least offers a sound sample for comparison. A partial explanation of this phenomenon could be suggested by the geographical siting of many of the Kentish burials on visible spurs, usually made up of Upper Chalk soils. Therefore, despite originating from a sizeable geographical setting, the examined artefacts had all undergone similar post- depositionary processes as a consequence of the common geological distribution. In comparison, a number of objects weighed as a control sample from the anerobic marsh conditions found at Faversham (FAV) revealed visibly different preservation and weight ranges. Thus, although a discrepancy in artefact preservation and associated weight can be seen in a few cases, the provenance of the utilised sample, the geological setting and consequent modes of conservation are not deemed to have altered the weight of the artefacts significantly from one site to the next.
Further considerations were made to incorporate composite constructions and partial artefacts within the sample. As it was not possible or desirable to destroy artefacts to weigh component raw materials individually, the few composite artefacts were weighed in entirety with percentage allocations of weight accordingly distributed amongst the constituent raw materials. Similarly, partial artefacts were gauged against known complete examples and multiplied proportionately. On this basis, although the corrosion of iron objects in particular has meant that they are usually incomplete artefacts, mention was made in the ‘Comments’ field of the database of the approximated percentage of the total object represented. This approximation, allowed for the later conversion of measured weights to assumed total weights for incomplete artefacts. Though neither technique is in any way an exact representation, the derived weights were aU ascertained using standardised visual and comparative criteria. As the ultimate function of the weighed raw materials is a relative comparison between sites rather than an absolute derivation of raw material consumption, this methodology could be deemed satisfactory if universally applied. Thus, a form of subjective coherence encompasses the whole dataset, which naturally records both tme weight and subsequent amendment.