Given its inherent nature as fiery transformation, the archaeological traces of past cremation practices are always partial and fragmentary. However, recent advances in archaeological excavation and osteological analyses, and novel theoretical investigations of cremation’s variability, character, and context, have enriched and developed the archaeology of cremation in prehistoric and early historic societies (for a review, see Chapter 1, this volume; see also; Williams 2008, 2015b; Wessman 2010; Cerezo-Román and Williams 2014). For the later first millennium AD, archaeologists persist in underestimating the potential for investigating cremation practices, and this is particularly true of the study of mortuary structures and monuments associated with cremation burials (see also Chapter 4, this volume; Chapter 13, this volume; Williams 2013, 2014a). To some extent, the impoverished archaeological investigation of the architectural dimensions of cremation in particular is understandable. Archaeologists are well acquainted with the fact that burial monuments can be multiphased and become subject to uses and reuses over millennia, and indeed, many early medieval cemeteries focus on, reuse, and adapt, far older monuments (Williams 1997;Wessman 2010). There are also examples of large monumental barrows built over cremation burials, as in the late sixth and early seventh centuries at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, showing that cremation ceremonies could be utilized to make enduring, prominent monuments to commemorate the dead and project remembrance down the generations (Carver 2005). However, the more ephemeral mortuary architectures of the late first millennium AD which characterize the majority of cemeteries in most regions—mounds, ring-ditches, stone-settings, post-holes, and the like—are often damaged or destroyed by postdepositional processes. When burial monuments are identified they often appear to have been inherently modest structures that defy familiar explanations as status-markers and landmarks to project the commemoration of the dead across the landscape and through time. It is often all too tempting for archaeologists to dismiss these structures and refer to cemeteries in which cremation burials occur as ‘flat cemeteries’ or else to kaleidoscope these monuments into a single chronological phase and portray them as ‘collective’ structures. Hence, many archaeological accounts, emphasizing the spectacle and fragmentation of open-air cremation in the human past, wrongly imply, or explicitly stipulate, that cremation is counter-architectural.
Chapter 1. The Dead Bridegroom Carries Off His Bride: Pejoration and Adjacency Pairs in ATU 365
