Chest burial: A middle anglo-saxon funerary rite from northern england

Chest burials, in which the body is interred in a wooden chest with a hinged lid, are one of the most characteristic funerary practices of the middle Anglo-Saxon period in northern England. The majority are dated to between the seventh and ninth centuries, and are found at 19 different sites located within the contemporary early medieval kingdom of Northumbria. The collation of a corpus of chest burials, and examination of their form, context and the identities of the individuals they were afforded to, have revealed that these interments seem to have been made in reused pieces of domestic furniture and provided to both sexes, but rarely afforded to infants or young children. The individuals buried in chests also shared an extremely physically active lifestyle and in some cases met a violent death, further distinguishing them from their contemporaries. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.