Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Sites in South-western Britain: their dates, characters and significance

Abstract

This paper considers the historical, topographical, and morphological characteristics of burial sites in south-western Britain betweenad400 and 1000, looking for evidence of patterns of Christian development across the region. The study concludes that there is no one simple set of characteristics that exclusively identifies sites of this period. It demonstrates the very considerable complexity of the long, slow cultural shift that turned a pagan society into a Christian one, and it draws attention to the range of place names, morphologies, dedications and traditions that mark the surviving evidence.