Published with my excellent colleagues Alison Klevnäs, Astrid Noterman, and Cecilia Ljung (Uppsala University)

Finally, even though these people had been separated from the objects they were buried with, copper staining gives some indication. Combined with the c14 dates, we can see that people were being buried with objects into the 12th and 13th centuries, later than expected
5/5

The population buried around these first churches were in good health, but there's some evidence of the use of teeth as tools, and some deliberately tooth filing. They were mostly female, and as they came from the north side of churches, this suggests sex segregation
4/5

C14 dates from each individual, corrected for marine fish consumption, show that these churchyards started to be used for burial in the first half of the 11th century, which matches historical records of Gotland's conversion.
3/5

We analysed antiquarian finds from around churches in Gotland. These were found by gravediggers and had been stored without much documentation, separated from the better recorded objects, but their newspaper wrappings provided some hints as to which sites they came from.
2/5

Those are the only ones I have in my database! Which isn’t definitely comprehensive, but it’s not too far off. I make it 10 in total.

All the code and data are included in the supplementary material, so it’s easy to update these models to take into account new dates as they come out #openscience

There’s also a more nuanced picture in the paper of regional variations and gender differences, as well as cemetery sizes. Some of my results directly contradicts stuff I’ve previously published! Which is a bit frustrating, but all part of the research process.

It also shows that there is some limited furnishing continuing into the 8th cent, possibly over-represented in the c14 dates, but very much real. Suggests other models of grave good change relied too much on artefact typologies, whereas c14 dates cover the full range of furnishing

Using a method of kernel density estimation (and correcting for any marine reservoir effects), this shows a peak in grave good use around 600AD. A point in time when other models have suggested there wasn’t much furnishing going on, outside very rich graves like Sutton Hoo

The principle of this method is that if you have enough c14 dates, you can use them as a proxy for past activity levels. Most commonly used for demographic studies, but here I’m interested in funerary behaviour. I’ve got nearly 1100 dates from burials from across the 1st millenium AD.