V. The Shield in the Burial Rite

Abstract

Shields are among the more common grave goods in Early Anglo-Saxon burials. In the investigated sample of forty-seven cemeteries with a total of 3,814 inhumations, 317 burials (8·3 per cent) in forty-three cemeteries contained a shield (Appendix 3). The frequency of shields becomes even more apparent if it is translated into percentages of weapon burials: in England, just under half (45 per cent) of all inhumations with weapons had a shield. This proportion is significantly higher than in the contemporaneous weapon burials of Continental Saxons (18 per cent), Franks (16 per cent) and Alamanni (24 per cent; Härke 1989, table 4.2). Excavations of cremation cemeteries in England do not seem to have produced unambiguous remains of shields: the Anglo-Saxons, in contrast to the Continental Saxons, appear to have put shields only into inhumation burials.