A high-status seventh-century female burial from West Hanney, Oxfordshire

Journal article

In 2009, a metal-detector find of a rare garnet-inlaid composite disc brooch at West Hanney, Oxfordshire, led to the excavation of an apparently isolated female burial sited in a prominent position overlooking the Ock valley. The burial dates to the middle decades of the seventh century, a period of rapid socio-political development in the region, which formed the early heartland of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. The de luxe brooch links the wearer to two other burials furnished with very similar brooches at Milton, some 10km to the east and only c 1km from the Anglo-Saxon great hall complex at Sutton Courtenay / Drayton, just south of Abingdon. All three women must have been members of the region’s politically dominant group, known as the Gewisse. The burial’s grave goods and setting add a new dimension to our understanding of the richly furnished female burials that are such a prominent feature of the funerary record of seventh-century England.

Authors: Hamerow, H; Byard, A; Cameron, E; Düring, A; Levick, P

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: Antiquaries Journal
• Volume: 95
• Pages: 91 - 118
• Publication date: 2015-03-04
• Acceptance date: 2014-10-29
• DOI: 10.1017/S0003581514000742
• EISSN: 1758-5309
• ISSN: 0003-5815
• Language: English