Anglo-Saxon Context Matters

West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village © David Gill

I had a meeting at West Stow Anglo-Saxon village today with Dr Ian Baxter and Alan Baxter. We were looking at the way that finds from grave-groups were displayed in the site museum. Alan Baxter then showed us a display of similar material and explained that it was thanks to the contextualised funerary finds that it was possible to make sense of the decontextualised ones.

It was a timely reminder that there are intellectual consequences for "portablising" buried archaeological objects.