V. The Shield in the Burial Rite

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.

III. Shield Technology

The following discussion takes account of recent work, published and unpublished, but is largely based on personal inspection of the remains of some 150 shields from Early Saxon burials (Appendix 5). Comparative evidence includes the well studied Sutton Hoo shield, essentially a Scandinavian shield in an Anglo-Saxon context (Bruce-Mitford 1978, 91), the Swedish parallels from Vendel Period burials at Valsgärde (seventh/eighth century AD), and the well preserved shield remains from Roman Iron Age bog deposits in the Continental homelands of the Anglo-Saxons (mostly third/fourth century AD).