Deconstructing Concepts of Deviance: Disgrace, Disability and Disease in Anglo-Saxon Burials

Abstract

Throughout this thesis, the modern understanding of concepts of deviance will be introduced, explained, and dismantled in reference to medieval Anglo-Saxon graves. Current archaeological and anthropological literature conceptualize deviance as reliant on the lived experience(s) of the deceased and the reaction(s) by the living community to that individual’s behavior or social status prior to or at the time of their death. That literature, however, presumes that certain lived experiences automatically imply a mortuary experience, and that mortuary experiences can be read backward to one specific lived experience allowing for a social reconstruction of historical beliefs based on that experience. By considering non-normative bodies in normative burials (the physically impaired or the diseased) and normative bodies in non-normative burials (the generally disgraced), it will become evident that these presumptions about the concepts of deviance, and its use as an umbrella term, are not only false, but they obscure pathways to true historical understanding of past populations.