Howard Williams (1)

In this refreshing look at the whole picture, Williams builds on the old archeological maxim "the dead do not bury themselves". Williams looks at burials in early medieval Britain as a whole package: not just a source of osteological information, but, as texts containing many meanings formed by the arrangement of objects and the body. Also coming into play is the siting of the grave in the landscape : the silhouette it forms against the sky, the view from the grave, even the very shape of the grave itself. Williams says "Graves, like poems, have the ability to shift between and sometimes conflate past, present and future, rendering temporal destinations ambiguous and transformed".

Williams looks at the whole picture geographically as well, including case studies from all over Britain and the Isle of Man.… (more)