Medieval élite burials in eastern Mecklenburg and Pomerania

Abstract

High status burial remains one of archaeology's most evocative types of site – but it is not always easy to know why they were built, where and when they were. The author describes a group of élite burials that appeared in north Europe in the late eleventh-twelfth century in a historical context that is unusually clear, and proposes the rise of a pagan élite in the face of aggressive Christianisation from the neighbours.