What does early Christianity look like?

Mortuary
archaeology and conversion in Late Iron Age Scotland

ADRIÁN MALDONADO1

Summary
The study of the inhumation cemeteries of Late Iron Age Scotland tends to revolve
around the vexed question of whether or not they provide evidence for Christianity.
As a result, our approach has been to look for ‘Christian’ practices (lack of grave
goods, west-east orientation) that are expectations based on analogy with the more
standardised Christianity of the later medieval period. As these burial practices
originate in a Late Iron Age context, recent theoretical approaches from the study
of late prehistory also need to be applied. It is the emergence of cemeteries that
is new in the mid-first millennium AD, and this distinction is still under-theorised.
Recent theoretical models seek to understand the significance of place, and how
these cemeteries are actively involved in creating that place rather than using
a predefined ‘sacred’ place. By tracing their role in shaping and being shaped
by their landscapes, before, during and after their use for burial, we can begin
to speak more clearly about how we can use mortuary archaeology to study the
changes of c. AD 400–600. It is argued that the ambiguity of these sites lies not
with the burials themselves, but in our expectations of Christianity and paganism
in the Late Iron Age.
Keywords: Conversion, early Christianity, burial practice, Picts

Introduction
Students of early Christianity in Scotland have had to settle for less than our
counterparts elsewhere in Western Europe. We do not have the early conversion
narratives provided by Patrick for Ireland or Martin for Gaul, nor even the 8th
century retrospective provided by Bede in Northumbria. The earliest upstanding
churches belong to the 11th century or later, and recently excavated examples

1 Dept of History and Archaeology, University of Chester, Parkgate Road, Chester CH1 4BJ,
a.maldonado@chester.ac.uk

Scottish Archaeological Journal 33.1–2 (2011): 39–54

Edinburgh University Press
DOI: 10.3366/saj.2011.0023
© Glasgow Archaeological Society
www.euppublishing.com/saj
40 ADRIÁN MALDONADO

do not appear to be much earlier (cf. Carver 2008). But there is in fact enough
evidence, however circumstantial it may seem, for Christianity in Scotland from
almost as early as anywhere else in the British Isles. Much of this comes from
historical research, which has often directed the discourse on the Christianisation
of Scotland (e.g. Fraser 2008). Since the 1950s, the distinctive long cist and
platform cairn cemeteries have been used as material evidence for the presumed
early Christian populations, but debate over this continues and is unlikely to be
resolved. This paper will briefly review how this debate has developed in recent
decades, and highlight new directions using recent theoretical approaches and a
brief case study in Fife. We will see that the cemeteries are useful in other ways,
which must in turn change the way we understand the way early Christianity
arrived in Late Iron Age Scotland.

Previous Work
The modern study of long cist cemeteries in Scotland begins with Audrey
Henshall’s report on the excavation at Parkburn, Lasswade, Midlothian (1956).
While allowing for a local Iron Age origin for the burial rite, she attributes the
emergence of cemeteries to the conversion to Christianity, and in accounting for
their locations in the landscape (often far from existing medieval churches) she
posited that they were focused on lost Christian chapels, Dyet to be identified.
The identification of early burials focused on a post-built ‘shrine’ at Ardwall
Island, Dumfries and Galloway, led Charles Thomas to come to a similar
conclusion, which he later expanded into his seminal theory of developed and
undeveloped burial grounds (1967; 1971). Yet his notion of early cemeteries as
‘undeveloped’, or put simply, not churches yet, assumes their Christian nature;
this is perhaps justifiable on monastic sites like Ardwall, but not entirely so on
the field cemeteries of eastern Scotland. Thomas’ influential notion that these
cemeteries grew organically around ‘founder’s graves’ is based largely on analogy
with upstanding medieval Irish churches and references in legal texts, projecting
an image of sainthood from a later, more standardised tradition of Christianity
(O’Brien 2003; Ó Carragáin 2003, 133–139). While there is evidence for the
clustering of graves in many field cemeteries, it has since become clear that in
the majority of cases, burials do not radiate from a single ‘saintly’ focus, but are
instead multifocal, accruing organically in several zones at once (Haughton and
Powlesland 1999; Holbrook and Thomas 2005, 89–91; Rahtz et al. 2000; Webster
and Brunning 2004, 74).
New research into historical evidence has cast further doubt on the influence
of Christianity on burial rites: outside the precincts of churches, the clergy
had little or no real control over the way the majority of people were buried
until the Carolingian period (Effros 1997). Until then, Christians could and did
employ a variety of burial rites according to existing traditions (O’Brien 2003;
2009). Indeed, a recent close study of late Roman legal texts showing that
burial was not considered within the realm of religion at all; what mattered
was familial traditions and the demands of society, even across periods of
religious change (Rebillard 2003). In other words, vernacular burial practices
MORTUARY ARCHAEOLOGY IN LATE IRON AGE SCOTLAND 41

were surprisingly resilient despite great changes in cosmological and social

structure.
For the crucial period AD 400–650 in Scotland, much of the evidence for
burial has only recently become available. The last 15 years have seen the
publication of a number of large-scale excavations of early cemeteries (Alexander
2005; Greig 2000; Proudfoot 1996; Rees 2002). Given the increasingly early
radiocarbon dates obtained, the excavators have had to step lightly among various
interpretive approaches, though ultimately most favour a Christian interpretation
while allowing for pre-Christian origins. To cite just one example, Greig
characterises the Lundin Links, Fife cairn cemetery (discussed below) to be part of
a tradition ‘strongly influenced by Christianity’ based on their west-east orientation
and lack of grave goods (Greig 2000, 611).
This measured approach is surely the way forward, but is still problematic. The
argument for the pre-Christian origins of a cemetery is often simply chronological,
but since the process of conversion in Scotland is so poorly understood, this cannot
be more than an assumption. The label ‘Pre-Christian’ still implicitly associates
them with a historical religion, which inevitably leads to a study bias: they are left
for medievalists to account for at the expense of prehistorian or Romanist interest.
As such, they are left out of important theoretical advances occurring in those
fields. Recent reassessments of Late Iron Age archaeology in Scotland either stop
soon after the Roman departure (Hunter 2007) or extend to the Viking period but
largely ignore ‘religious’ sites of the east in favour of settlement evidence (Harding
2006). Yet these cemeteries belong to a transitional period that can only be fully
understood by collaboration across this divide. Equating mortuary archaeology
with a religious label has perpetuated the idea that cemeteries can only be
understood in terms of medieval Christianity, without having first established that
these are Christian sites. We are still operating in the paradigm set by Henshall and
Thomas, formulated well before the publication of our most important cemetery
excavations.

The Problem of the Picts – and of the Britons and Romans

In order to understand the archaeological signature of Christianity, we first need to
be clear about what we are looking for. There is not enough room here to discuss
the problematic conversion period in Scotland, but we can highlight some key
points. The hagiographical narratives of St Columba and St Ninian, traditionally
the ‘apostles’ of Scotland, describe the conversion of the Picts and Britons from
an outside perspective. They are useful for studying the motives of their 7th and 8th
century authors but not for recreating historical events (i.e. Wood 2001). However,
close readings of such texts are beginning to show the active role indigenous voices
had in their creation, and we can glimpse the way they viewed their own pasts
(Clancy 2004). Among the most interesting insights gleaned from such material
include the possibility the Picts, like their fellow Britons (McCarthy 2009), began
the conversion to Christianity in the Late Iron Age as part of the wider pattern of
change across northern Britain (Fraser 2008, 68–115). Importantly, the evidence
of the Latin inscribed stones suggests the progress of Christianisation did not
diffuse neatly from south to north, as it would if it were spread by wandering
42 ADRIÁN MALDONADO

missionaries, but appears in pockets far beyond the Roman walls from the 5th
century as indigenous peoples accepted or rejected ideas from the wider Late
Antique world to which they belonged (Forsyth 2005).
The implications of this are a change in the way we think about conversion
in the early centuries of Christianity. Anthropological and historical studies stress
that conversion is rarely a single watershed event, but a long process, and one
which may well be archaeologically invisible in its early stages (Cannell 2006;
Comaroff and Comaroff 1991; Lane 2001; Muldoon 1997). Moreover, the role of
the convert in this process is never one of a passive acceptance of new rules and
worldviews, but active selection, rejection, and crucially, translation (Cusack 1998;
Richter 1995; Webster 1995). With regards to Late Roman Christianity, this was
still a religion that spread across the empire without a strong, centralised hierarchy
and was thus subject to local variations (in extreme cases deemed ‘heresies’) such
that in the early medieval period, variety of practice was the norm rather than the
exception (Brown 2003, 13–17, 355–379; Pluskowski and Patrick 2003; Rousseau
2008). It is perhaps more appropriate to say that in the first millennium AD, people
did not convert to Christianity, they converted Christianity. This was as true of
Scotland as elsewhere in Britain and Western Europe.
To find out how the Picts, Scots and Britons converted Christianity once they
chose to accept it, we need to be much clearer on the process of contact with
Roman culture than the evidence allows us to be. But a few important milestones
in Roman Iron Age archaeology can be mentioned. Firstly, it is clear that just as
there was no monolithic form of Christianity in this period (Brown 2003), neither
was there a single, unchanging definition of ‘Roman’ identity or culture (Mattingly
2004; Woolf 1997). Nor was the local response to the Roman presence a simple
choice between assimilation or resistance. For instance, Ireland’s ogham stones
creatively accept some Roman ideas (literacy, lapidary inscriptions) while rejecting
others (the Latin alphabet); the Pictish symbol stones may represent a parallel
response among the Picts (Charles-Edwards 1998; Forsyth 1998; Hunter 2007,
38–42). Nor is the influence only one-way: in the Roman provinces, ways of being
‘Roman’ change according to local factors (Collins 2008; Wells 1999; Woolf 1998,
1–23). A more dispersed pattern of cultural exchange has emerged, lasting much
longer than the military interludes of the 2nd and 3rd centuries (Cool 2000; Fraser
2008, 116–117; Hanson 2004). In short, the ‘Roman empire’ in the early centuries
AD is less of a single entity than a set of ideas that reverberated unpredictably
within the system of increased movement and economic entanglements it had
created (Pitts 2008).
This fluid, non-linear response to outside ideas forces us to reinterpret the
way we think about the spread of Christianity and how it would manifest itself
materially. We must allow that Christianity was one part of the Roman cultural
package at least since the 4th century AD; but we must also allow for the local
conversion of Christianity as it spread across Britain. Even within Roman Britain,
the regional variation in Christian practices is striking, and some have argued that
this disparity is due to strong continuities with pre-existing ritual and settlement
forms (Petts 2003, 170–171; Woolf 2003). Thus, before we can study this process
of local variations, we need to know what comes before Christianity in every case.
To do so requires a self-aware theoretical approach. Just as labels like ‘Christian’
MORTUARY ARCHAEOLOGY IN LATE IRON AGE SCOTLAND 43

and ‘pre-Christian’ can obscure our interpretation, the corresponding and

hazily-defined notions of ‘pagan’ or ‘Celtic’ religions should be avoided. Instead,
a methodology which describes the specific practices resulting in the creation of
the material record allows the archaeology to define the label, and not the other
way around (Goldberg 2009; Parker Pearson 2006; Williams 2006).

Death in the Iron Age

Inhumation in pre-Roman Iron Age Scotland is no longer as rare as was once
believed (Whimster 1981), and the number of articulated inhumations dating from
this period is steadily increasing (Brady et al. 2007; MacGregor 2003). The Roman
incursions into Britain roughly coincided with a widespread change in attitudes
towards human remains, but it is also clear that these changes were already
occurring before the arrival of conquering generals (Armit and Ginn 2007; Hill
1997; Mulville et al. 2003). By the first few centuries AD, certain areas of Scotland
had developed local idioms of burial involving articulated inhumation in cists or
under cairns (Dalland 1991; Dunwell 2007; Neighbour et al. 2000), but these sites
do not seem to ‘develop’ into early medieval cemeteries as Thomas’ (1971) model
had proposed.
Rather than looking for a neat evolution from Iron Age to early medieval
burial, it is more important to study what the practice of articulated inhumation
might tell us about the people using it. Throughout the Late Iron Age and into the
centuries of Roman occupation, burial was not always a simple commemoration of
the dearly departed. Rather, the deposition of human remains, including articulated
burials, needs to be considered within the context of wider patterns of structured
deposition (Esmonde Cleary 2000; Harding 2004; Hunter 1997). In late prehistory,
the dead often show up as fragmented human remains in domestic contexts. This
practice extends down to the early first millennium AD, but is gradually replaced
by deposition of articulated inhumations. Because these articulated burials were
still being used in similar kinds of foundation and closing deposits, it is clear
that inhumation retained some of this apotropaic force (Armit and Ginn 2007;
Mulville et al. 2003). This period also sees an increase in the number of formal
burials in long cists and cairns, and these are generally found in or near abandoned
Iron Age settlements (Neighbour et al. 2000). The association of cemeteries with
recently-abandoned structures, like the souterrain at the Redcastle, Angus barrow
cemetery (Alexander 2005), and the use of prehistoric earthworks as a boundary
as at Thornybank, Midlothian (Rees 2002), may indicate that some link between
deposition of human remains with derelict settlements carried on into the mid-first
millennium AD. Instead of cemeteries as peripheral depositories for the dead, the
dead can be said to ‘inhabit’ the places where people once lived (cf. Williams 2006,
201–214).
This powerful, active use of human remains is not just a peculiarity of
Iron Age Scotland. A similar process can be seen in early medieval Ireland and
Anglo-Saxon England, where the use of barrow graves to mark estate boundaries
indicates a belief that the dead were still involved in the daily affairs of the living
(Charles-Edwards 1993, 259–273; Williams 1999). But the danger with making
such parallels is that we are only rejecting an untenable model of saintly ‘founder
44 ADRIÁN MALDONADO

graves’ with an equally untenable ‘living dead’ model from the ancient past.
However, since the burial practices used in the early medieval period were those
developed in the Iron Age, it is worth exploring the cosmological baggage they
may have retained. But if the burial rites are ancient, the emergence of cemeteries
is undoubtedly an innovation of the mid-first millennium, and indicates a certain
change in attitudes toward death. But is this solely due to the conversion to
Christianity?

Theoretical Advances: What can we do with Cemeteries?

The accumulation of graves in specific places is deceptively Christian-like, given
our modern experience of burial in graveyards. But as we have seen, the early
church did not bring with it any set policy on burial practice. In the general absence
of securely datable artefacts or architectural features, the burial evidence is our
only material bridge between the early and later halves of first millennium AD
eastern Scotland, and we can ill afford to ignore it. The question we need to ask
now is what, if anything, the use of cemeteries tells us about the ideology and
cosmology of the societies that used them, and for this we must take a close look
at the depositional practices involved.
Increasingly, scholars have become pessimistic about whether the early
medieval cemeteries can be used to describe any aspect of the identity of the dead,
especially religion (Schülke 1999), status (Samson 1987) or ethnicity (Brather
2002; Lucy 2002). What they can tell us is the way communities constructed
their own identities over the long term. Theories of social memory, or the way
societies remember and forget their pasts, have come to the fore and allow us
to analyse the way this material evidence was used to mediate the change of
relationships involved in death, from living friend or relative to venerated ancestor
(Parker Pearson 2003; Williams 2006). An important aspect of this approach
is the recognition that each new burial in a cemetery references the ones that
came before. Over time, manipulation of these memories in each new grave
leads to the formation of distinctive local variations that are specific to each
site and not necessarily due to the influx of new beliefs or migrants (Halsall
2003).
Application of such theories has led to a greater appreciation of landscape
location and the way the cemeteries are used to create special places (Härke 2001;
Williams 2002). The creation of symbolic landscapes is more complex than a
single act of appropriation, and involves the build-up over time of a number of
highly charged reference points (Lane 2001: 170–174). The problem with the study
of cemeteries (as opposed to individual burials) is that they tend to be dealt with
as a single entity that arrived fully made, instead of as a long process developing
over generations, even centuries. In order to study the emergence of a cemetery, we
need to track the use of the place before, during, and after its use for burial (Carver
2005; Carver 2008). This allows us to treat the cemetery as a changing entity over
the course of its ‘biography’ (cf. Gosden and Marshall 1999). To test this model,
this paper will now consider the settings of two contemporary cemeteries in the
coastal landscape of eastern Fife (see Fig 1).
MORTUARY ARCHAEOLOGY IN LATE IRON AGE SCOTLAND 45

Fig 1 Map of Fife and sites mentioned in the text

Case study: Lundin Links and the Isle of May, Fife

The Lundin Links cairn cemetery in Largo parish, Fife, with burials spanning the
period roughly 400–600 AD (Greig 2000), is set in a landscape of Pictish and early
Christian monuments (Graham-Campbell 1993; RCAHMS 2008; Ritchie 1993).
Antiquarian finds of long and short cists scattered across the village of Lower
Largo show this to be one corner of a much wider landscape of burial stretching
back to prehistory (Greig 2000, 585–587). The location at the apex of the sandy
Largo Bay, at the mouth of the Keil Burn, is also significant as it would have
made for an obvious landing place, and the adjacent village of Lower Largo was
an important commercial and passenger harbour until the 19th century (Eunson
and Band 2000). The excavated site consists of six round cairns, four rectilinear
cairns, and six other long cists, containing a total of 24 inhumations; some of
these cairns are adjoined, creating a distinctive ‘dumbbell-shaped complex’ and
a ‘horned cairn’ monument. Notably, the skeletal analysis showed that all the
interred were adults, and all seven skeletons from the horned cairn complex were
females (Greig 2000, 601–602). The date and shape of the cairns point to a Pictish
cultural outlook, although the layout of this site is wholly unique.
The large round kerbed cairns of Lundin Links strongly resemble Bronze Age
examples, and the coast near Largo has long been associated with prehistoric cists
and metalwork (Anderson 1884; Howie 1878). The graves at Lundin Links show
a concern for inhuming the dead in a standardised, repetitive way, indicating a
community of shared aspirations, but perform these rites in a distinctive local
manner, referencing past practices but making of them something entirely new.
Over time, this stretch of Largo Bay became a cemetery, before burials ceased in
the 7th century AD. After this, ritual activity in the area is diverted to the creation
46 ADRIÁN MALDONADO

of Pictish cross-slabs and the deposition of the Norrie’s Law silver hoard on the
higher ground overlooking the sea.
In a recent study of this site, Howard Williams reinforced the Pictish
connections of Lundin Links by arguing that the creation of a local identity
can be traced through the way the burials reference nearby Pictish monuments,
interpreting the dumbbell and horned cairns as ‘Pictish symbols rendered on a
monumental scale’ (2007, 156). Applying specific ethnic labels to the deceased
is always a bit of an interpretive leap (Brather 2002), but the area around Lundin
Links certainly becomes a highly charged Pictish and Christian landscape in the
mid-to-late first millennium AD. The location of the cemetery is bracketed by
two Pictish class II cross slabs, at Scoonie and Upper Largo; these combine
Pictish symbols with Christian crosses, and are broadly dateable to the 8th century
(RCAHMS 2008). Further down the coast, the Pictish symbols carved into the
East Wemyss caves are likely to be contemporary with the burial activity at
Lundin Links (Ritchie 1993), and these have close stylistic links with the Pictish
metalwork of the Norrie’s Law hoard, deposited in the late 7th century AD at the
north end of Largo parish (Graham-Campbell 1993).
The real importance of the Pictish monuments in the area is the wider contacts
they express. The Largo and Scoonie slabs bear similar motifs, but the latter also
has an ogham inscription reading EDDARRNONN (Forsyth 1996: 480–494). This
name refers to Ethernan (d. 669), patron saint of the Isle of May just off the coast
of east Fife, and home to another early inhumation cemetery contemporary with
Lundin Links (James and Yeoman 2008). Like Lundin Links, this site is on a raised
area just above a good landing place. The early settlement on the May seems to
begin with the revetment of a natural cobble beach using a drystone kerb; this was
then used for burial, effectively creating a massive platform cairn. The burial rites
are very similar to the ones used in Lundin Links: unfurnished long cists oriented
towards the east, sometimes lined with small pebbles or seashells; all 14 skeletons
retrieved were adult males. These early burials belong to a coherent phase relating
to the foundation a monastic settlement but before the construction of a church,
dating roughly AD 400–700 (James and Yeoman 2008, 15–19). By the time
St Ethernan arrived in Fife in the 7th century, he would have encountered a
cemetery already in use for generations.
The link between the community on the May and Lundin Links highlights
the diverging biographies of these two sites. Both sites belong to a new tradition
of inhumation in cemeteries that emerges in Fife in the 5–7th centuries. Unlike
other early cemeteries in Fife, these sites use large platform cairns containing
multiple inhumations. Lundin Links eventually becomes part of an undeniably
Pictish Christian landscape, with symbol-bearing cross slabs erected along the
sandy shores of Largo Bay and the prominent Bronze Age cairn at Norrie’s Law
reused for a hoard of silver bearing Christian and Pictish symbols. In contrast, the
cemetery on the May becomes an important centre of pilgrimage and focus for the
cult of a saint, and though there are no Pictish carvings on the island, Ethernan is
commemorated on various Pictish stones in Fife and beyond (James and Yeoman
2008). The sites are not intervisible, but the link between Largo Bay and the
Isle of May is evidenced by place-names and inscriptions to the saint (James and
Yeoman 2008, 3–4). The combination of Christian and Pictish symbolism on these
MORTUARY ARCHAEOLOGY IN LATE IRON AGE SCOTLAND 47

monuments shows that Pictishness and Christianity need not be at odds with one
another. Rather, it shows the multifaceted identities being expressed even within
this discrete area.
Although Pictish monuments are hard to date, it is significant that both the
Norrie’s Law hoard, with its symbol-bearing silver plaques, and the two cross-
slabs at Largo and Scoonie may date to the period after the cessation of burial at
Lundin Links. If the cairn complexes at Lundin Links represent Pictish symbols
on a monumental scale, then the Largo and Scoonie cross slabs are referring to the
cemetery, rather than the cemetery recreating any Pictish monument. Likewise, the
first phase of burial at the Isle of May would appear to end in the 7th century,
coinciding with the arrival of St Ethernan. The biography of both sites then
diverges: Lundin Links receives no more burials, while the May does, albeit in an
adjacent area and on a new orientation, presumably aligned on a newly built church
(James and Yeoman 2008, 32–33). This shows the way in which the cemeteries
could continue to be used by the living to reinforce their identities even after the
burial ground was ‘abandoned’. It also shows how the cemeteries helped create
these Pictish and Christian identities, not the other way around.

So what does early Christianity Look Like?

The methodology used here tracks the creation of a place, rather than taking for
granted that it has always been ‘special’ in some way. The biography of any site of
the first millennium AD must always begin with consideration of an extant, living
landscape, and crucially, it must include what happens to the place after its use as
a burial ground. This last point is rarely considered, yet this case study shows the
importance of the ‘multiple lives’ of these sites (cf. Clarke 2007). This showed how
the sites developed using existing mortuary rites, becoming the gathering places
of a select few (and all adult) members of the community, and finally helping
create an archaeologically visible Christian Pictish identity presumably embracing
the entire community. The first phase of burial at the Isle of May shows how a
‘Christian’ site developed along the same lines as a ‘secular’ cemetery at Lundin
Links.
In a recent review, Tomás Ó Carragáin identified segregation of burial by sex
as the clearest marker of a monastic site (Ó Carragáin 2009), but as we have
seen, sections of Lundin Links and the Isle of May were set aside for exclusively
male or female adults. The burial of infants is also taken to be an indicator of
Christianity (Watts 1989), yet no sub-adults appear in either site in this first phase.
It is interesting to note that our categorisation of Lundin Links as ‘Pictish’ is due
to the appearance of largely later Pictish stones in the area, while our labelling
of the May as ‘Christian’ is due to the appearance of a later church. Without
consideration of these later periods of use, the burial rites used by both sites are
basically identical, and are of no use for identifying religious beliefs.
Analysing the cemeteries from a landscape perspective – seeing them as
gradually constructed places instead of ‘sacred ground’ originally set aside for
burial – allows us to free ourselves from the notion that every cemetery clusters
around one ‘saintly’ founder or other venerated ancestor. The kerbed-cairn
cemeteries of both Lundin Links and the nearby Isle of May grow up organically
48 ADRIÁN MALDONADO

through the continued use of a special place rather than the desire to be near any
single grave. The fact that the cemeteries are converted into expressions of later
identities implies a selective remembering and forgetting over time. The era of
saints comes only after the era of cemeteries has begun; it is possible, then, that
the repeated use of cemeteries helps foster the notion of the intercessory powers of
the venerated dead. What is clear is that these places of the dead are being actively
used by the living. They need not be strictly religious; whether ‘Christian’ or ‘pre-
Christian’, it is clear this distinction only becomes important to those who reuse
these sites, and those who study them later on.
Given the origins of many of our cemeteries in the early centuries AD, the
discussion of their origins can no longer begin by looking from the medieval
period back, but from the Iron Age forward. Graves are not statements of religious
affiliation, but they are useful in other ways. A fluid, case-by-case methodology
focusing on changing depositional practices will help avoid generalising into broad
categories, and show how regional differences inform the development of cemetery
sites. A more synthetic, comparative approach will help shed light on the way the
cemeteries did not just appear on the landscape, but actually helped create it over
time. The reuse of the Lundin Links area to express a distinctly Pictish Christian
identity, and the use of the contemporary burials on the May to express a Christian
identity without any overt Pictishness, tells us a great deal about the way early
Christians created their own self-image.
So what does early Christianity look like? Even if all the inhumation
cemeteries mentioned above belong to a period where the indigenous people
already considered themselves to be Christian, they did not express this through
burial. The fact that inhumation cemeteries appear across Britain and Europe in
the mid-first millennium AD shows that this is a wider trend, and not limited to
Christianised areas (Halsall 1995; Randsborg 1991). The emergence of cemeteries
is to be explained not by the conversion to Christianity, but by changing social
structures in which the ritualised deposition of human remains becomes a way of
creating and reinforcing communal identities in the 5–7th centuries (Halsall 1992).
As cemeteries gradually formed, the presence of these communities of ancestors
doubtless led to new perceptions of the past, by then reinterpreted along a now-
familiar Christian narrative.
On analogy with the regional Christianities emerging at this time across
Western Europe (Brown 2003), we can expect that early Christianity will look
different everywhere we go in contemporary Scotland. The question is no longer
about how these emerging societies convert to Christianity, but how they convert
Christianity, and how burial rites actively mediate this process. This may not be a
very satisfying answer to the question, but this paper only proposes a more nuanced
and complex approach, keeping early Christianity in its Late Iron Age context. A
methodology that does not just accommodate complexity, but anticipates it, is the
only way to maturely deal with the material record. The limits of archaeology
are starker than ever in the current academic climate. But the realisation that
archaeology cannot answer everything has freed us from imposing our biases on
the past. The point may not be to answer all the questions we have about the past,
but to be able to ask the right questions. If more questions are raised than answered,
it may be a sign that we are moving in the right direction.
MORTUARY ARCHAEOLOGY IN LATE IRON AGE SCOTLAND 49

Acknowledgements
This paper has derived from my PhD research, which has been made possible
by funding from the Overseas Research Scholarship Awards Scheme and the
University of Glasgow College of Arts. I am also indebted to my supervisor
Stephen Driscoll for his endless encouragement, Martin Carver for reading an
early draft, and Martin Goldberg for providing me with advance copies of his
unpublished work; any mistakes are of course my own. My sincere thanks to
Elizabeth Pierce and Daniel Sahlen for organising what is sure to be the first of
many successful STAG conferences.

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