文档介绍：Review article: Rethinking early
medieval mortuary archaeology
H W
Caring for Body and Soul. Burial and the Afterlife in the Mero-
vingian World. By Bonnie Effros. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania
State University Press. 2002. xiii + 255 pp., including illustrations.
ISBN 0 271 02196 9.
Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early
Middle Ages. By Bonnie Effros. Berkeley: University of California
Press. 2003. xviii + 272 pp., including illustrations. ISBN 0 520 23244 5.
Introduction
The study of early medieval mortuary practices across Europe has developed
as an important focus of research for both archaeologists and historians.
Since the eenth century, graves have been seen as a source of
evidence for Europe’s barbarians; the Germanic founders of the nation
states that supplanted the Roman Empire. Graves were regarded in terms
of race and religion. Out of these perspectives, social and economic
interpretations of early medieval cemeteries were developed through the
last century. However, in the last three decades, the role of graves as sym-
bolic and ideological in character has been emphasized together with a
critique of traditional approaches. Bonnie Effros’s two books on Mero-
vingian mortuary practices encapsulate many of the current themes and
debates in this field. Her studies move the debate away from traditional
approaches to funerary data centring on barbarian migration, kingdom
formation and conversion to Christianity, and instead draw on a range
of research over the last two decades to set a new agenda. Rather than
an index for ethnic groups and religious beliefs, mortuary practices are
seen as a means of generating and transforming early medieval society,
as rituals laden with symbolism, and as connected to the promotion
and legitimization of ideologies and social power. Regarding mortuary
practices as socio-political display also moves attention beyond the
Early Medieval Europe () –