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Howard Williams is a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Chester, England, specializing in mortuary archaeology, and cremation in the early Middle Ages. His academic journey began at the University of Sheffield, followed by an MA in burial archaeology at Reading University, and a PhD focusing on early Anglo-Saxon cremation practices in southeast Britain.

In this episode we talk about:

• The recent book “Cremation in the Early Middle Ages,” which he co-edited. It provides a comprehensive look at cremation practices across Northwest Europe, using a unique structured interview approach with contributors.





• How contrary to traditional assumptions, new archaeological evidence shows that cremation practices in early medieval Europe were more diverse and widespread than previously thought, extending beyond pre-Christian or non-Christian contexts.





• How archaeological evidence challenges simple historical narratives about Christian conversion and burial practices, showing that local and regional variations in death rituals persisted despite church influence.





• That there’s no single “Viking funeral” type, contrary to popular media representations, and to be aware of oversimplified cultural attributions in archaeological interpretations.





• How new technologies and dating methods are revealing previously unidentified early medieval cremations, challenging assumptions about prehistoric cremation deposits.





• The challenges of addressing archaeological misinformation in social media and popular culture, while acknowledging the importance of public engagement.





• That mortuary archaeology is crucial for understanding the full scope of human interaction with mortality, from prehistory to present day, and can inform future deathways.





• The relationship between mortuary archaeology and forensic science, suggesting that forensics can be viewed as a specialized sub-field of mortuary archaeology, with both disciplines informing each other’s methods and perspectives.

Find more about Professor Howard Williams and cremation in the Early Middle Ages through:

• his blog, Archaeodeath: https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/





• his YouTube channel, Archaeodeath: https://www.youtube.com/@archaeodeath





• his TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@archaeodeath

Read and purchase the book, Cremation in the Early Middle Ages, via Sidestone Press: https://www.sidestone.com/books/cremation-in-the-early-middle-ages

You can also read the 2020 open-access edited collection Digging into the Dark Ages: https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781789695274m.ca/

Notes from the start

The taphonomic impact of scavenger guilds in peri-urban and rural regions of central and southern Alberta. Part I – Identification of forensically relevant vertebrate scavengers (Journal of Forensic Sciences 2023)

Get Memoirs of a Reluctant Archaeologist, the first Elise Marquette novel, here.

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Transcript

Yvonne Kjorlien: Thank you for coming on my podcast. This is a lovely, I guess, diversion from regular programming because I’ve been trying to get somebody on here to talk about mortuary archaeology and you are the man. Introduce yourself. Who are you? What’s your current role? And then we’ll get into your origin story and get into the nitty-gritty.

Howard Williams: Thank you so much, Yvonne. It’s lovely to be here. And yeah, my name is Howard Williams and I’m professor of archaeology at the University of Chester in England in the UK, but very much on the next to the Welsh border. I happen to live in Wales, just over… I see England every day. I cross the border. But the university is in England. and I live in Wales but I’m in that borderland. I teach at the university a range of topics and on archaeology programs to undergraduates, MRes masters by research and I supervise PhD students. I research a range of fields including mortuary archaeology, the early middle ages, and the history and theory of archaeology, and public archaeology. Death comes into all of those in one way or other. That’s who I am and that’s what I do.

Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah, I find UK and Europe archaeology fascinating because we don’t really have those Ages here in North America.

Howard Williams: No.

Yvonne Kjorlien: We have pre-contact, contact, and post-contact. That’s pretty much, the overlying timeline. It fascinates me about the ages. So I’m always having to consult some sort of reference material because that wasn’t the basis of my training. The basis of my training was all North American. So anytime somebody says Middle Ages or whatever, I’m like, Google it. What is that time frame?

Howard Williams: Yeah. Yeah. these frames of reference are a curse as much as a blessing. And they bracket people in terms of what they study, who they talk to, how they define themselves.  So, yeah, one level I’m a medievalist in terms of I do work with historical sources as well as archeological resources, but it’s a very early historical period, so I have dialogue and a lot of constructive dialogue with prehistorians and across disciplines with anthropologists and others as well.

So, it’s a really fun period and region to look at Northwest Europe in the early Middle Ages, sort of in popular terms, early medieval Wales, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, that kind of stuff. But it’s the period of time which has the most problematic and sketchy terms that get used and abused all the time. People are really interested in the early Middle Ages and not always for good and healthy reasons. But it is a time that is really fascinating because you have some historical sources, a lot of new archaeological finds. And so I’ve been interested in the history of that field and also the burials of that period in particular.

Yvonne Kjorlien: So, how did you get into it? Were you one of those people that kind of came out of the womb wanting to be an archaeologist or were you formed by other circumstances?

Howard Williams: I don’t know. I’ve often actually thought about what my origin story is and I’ve written it and told it in different ways when people ask it. So I’m probably sound, like I’m making it up because I keep changing my narrative because I don’t think there was a single moment I can’t recall. I was very much interested in deep time in natural history, in paleontology, in archaeology when I was very young and I suppose when I went to university I genuinely hadn’t a vision of a career in archaeology.  I just wanted to do a three-year subject. First generation going to university. I had an older brother who did physics with astrophysics and I thought what a subject would I like to do and I could actually maintain an enthusiasm with. And I say this to potential students as well because I think there’s a lot of perhaps hyperbole amongst people who do make it in the field that they choose and that somehow ‘I was destined to it’ and ‘I remember once my father said…’ or ‘my mother picked up a fossil and immediately I knew it’ was or that kind of thing but I don’t think… I just kept my options open.  I went on some few voluntary digs at the age of 16 18 went to university and did it at the University of Sheffield. I got a BSE archeological science in what was then a big thriving dynamic department of archaeology that sadly just closed. But in the 90s it was a real full of some of the big names in European and British archaeology. and then I went on and I just kept going with it really. So I did an MA in burial archaeology at the University of Reading with then professor Bob Chapman and Dr. Heinrich Härke, Professor Heinrich Härke and Professor Richard Bradl