Staked to the ground, posthumous decapitation, tongues replaced by stone, face-down burials and hands tied. In this talk, archaeologist Andrew Reynolds uncovers how people who transgressed social norms in Anglo Saxon times were treated, sometimes in an extreme fashion in both their execution and style of burial.

Drawing upon written evidence in the form of charters and laws paired with the corporeal corroboration of excavated bodies, Andrew will reveal a startling, and at times gruesome, picture of a society whose world view was conditioned by a mixture of age-old custom and changing religious beliefs, and how it posthumously marked out people who were excluded from mainstream society.

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Andrew Reynolds
Andrew Reynolds is Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL. He has written books and articles and appeared in TV programmes relating to archaeology and history. He has a long running interest in the archaeology of London, having excavated a Soho townhouse and recorded various buildings in the city, including Westminster Abbey, the London Guildhall and St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street. He is the author of Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs (2009)