Feasting the Dead. Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon Burial Rituals (review)

Early Anglo-Saxon burials (450–750 AD) were accompanied by an impressive array of grave goods. Attention has understandably focused on the visible and showy artifacts, the weapons, and the jewelry, which has enabled scholars to construct chronologies and to infer cultural, social, and ethnic identities. The practice of depositing food in the graves of the period has attracted much less notice, largely because it is a difficult topic for researchers to tackle. The evidence, mainly animal bones and seeds, is poorly preserved, and unless there are special conditions it may have totally vanished from the archaeological record. The full extent of the practice will probably never be known. Nevertheless it was an important element of Anglo-Saxon burial, and the analysis of it should result in a clearer understanding of mortuary customs generally, while offering a perspective on the wider social, cultural, and perhaps even religious contexts that feasting and the deposition of food belonged to. It is a topic that is certainly deserving of scholarly attention.

Christina Lee's book is the first detailed examination of food and drink in Anglo-Saxon burial practice, and appears in the Anglo-Saxon Studies series by Boydell, which as the name implies, publishes multidisciplinary works on the period. Lee's study is just that: it draws on the archaeology (including the physical anthropology), history, and literature (Lee is a lecturer in English) to attempt to unravel the use and significance of food and feasting in mortuary practice from the fifth to eleventh centuries, arguing that the offerings were part of a complex system of symbols embodied with meaning. It is both an ambitious and important endeavor that attempts to place the evidence in its full context.

The book is organized chronologically, and this has resulted in a rough division between the archaeology and the documentary sources. Chapters 2–4 are largely concerned with the fifth to seventh centuries where archaeology is the main evidence. The documents come more to the fore in the final two chapters when Lee's attention turns to the later part of the period. In light of the fact that this reviewer is an archaeologist, the focus will fall mainly on Lee's handling of the material evidence.

Archaeology is not Lee's main discipline, but she has to be commended for her in-depth, and in places, authoritative analysis: the archaeology of the early Anglo-Saxon period is rich, but it is also very complex, and for the unwary traveller there are many pitfalls. The first chapter draws upon both archaeology and written evidence to provide the background to the study, providing an overview of agricultural technology and the food that was consumed by the living. Chapter 2 commences with a brief introduction to the burial data and although of value, especially to the nonspecialist, it could have been used more profitably. In particular this would have been an ideal place to draw together the more general information that crops up throughout the book, such as the problems caused by disturbance to archaeological features and the fragmentary condition of certain vessels. As it stands, this extraneous material diverts the reader's attention away from the main line of thought, ultimately weakening the overall structure and clarity of the text. Moreover, it would have been helpful at this point to sketch in greater detail the regional and chronological patterns that characterize burial in England during the fifth to seventh centuries, thus providing the contextual background to the cemeteries discussed in Chapters 2–4.

The main focus of the chapter is the evidence from the graves for food, and Lee gets underway with a consideration of the cremation rite. The evidence from the better known cemeteries is surveyed, especially Spong Hill (Norfolk), and the interpretations of Julian Richards, and more recently, Howard Williams are presented. As a summary this is fine, but it is surprising that she did not bring...