I am Professor of Archaeology at the University of Chester. My archaeological research interests focus on death, burial and commemoration, particularly for the early medieval period (c. AD 400-1100) in Britain, NW Europe and Scandinavia. I am interested in the relationships between material culture, monuments and landscape in the construction and negotiation of memories, focusing on mortuary practices. I also explore the roles of portable artefacts, materials and substances, tombs, sculpture, architecture and settlements as media and environments for memory work and performance.
Mortuary Archaeology - Early Medieval
Halls of mirrors: death & identity in medieval archaeology (with Duncan Sayer), Mortuary Practices & Social Identities in the Middle Ages: Essays in Burial Archaeology in Honour of Heinrich Härke (2009)
A Viking boat grave with gaming pieces excavated at Skamby, Östergötland, Sweden (with Martin Rundkvist), Medieval Archaeology (2008)
Depicting the dead: Commemoration through cists, cairns and symbols in early medieval Britain, Cambridge Archaelogical Journal (2007)
Introduction: themes in the archaeology of early medieval death and burial, Early Medieval Mortuary Practices (2007)
Mortuary Archaeology - Themes
On display: envisioning the early Anglo-Saxon dead, Mortuary Practices & Social Identities in the Middle Ages: Essays in Burial Archaeology in Honour of Heinrich Härke (2009)
Digging for the dead: archaeological practice as mortuary commemoration, (with Elizabeth Williams), Public Archaeology (2007)
Death warmed up: the agency of bodies and bones in early Anglo-Saxon cremation rites, Journal of Material Culture (2004)
History and Theory of Archaeology
On display: envisioning the early Anglo-Saxon dead, Mortuary Practices & Social Identities in the Middle Ages: Essays in Burial Archaeology in Honour of Heinrich Härke (2009)
Anglo-Saxonism and Victorian archaeology: William Wylie’s Fairford Graves, Early Medieval Europe (2008)
"Burnt Germans", Alemannic graves and the origins of Anglo-Saxon archaeology, Zweiundvierzig. Festschrift für Michael Gebühr zum 65. Geburtstag (2007)
Forgetting the Britons in Victorian Anglo-Saxon archaeology, Britons in Anglo-Saxon England (2007)
Introduction: themes in the archaeology of early medieval death and burial, Early Medieval Mortuary Practices (2007)
Public Archaeology
Introduction: themes in the archaeology of early medieval death and burial, Early Medieval Mortuary Practices (2007)
Mortuary Archaeology - Iron Age and Roman
Ephemeral monuments and social memory in early Roman Britain, TRAC 2003: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (2004)
Potted histories: cremation, ceramics and social memory in early Roman Britain,, Oxford Journal of Archaeology (2004)
Objects without a past? The use of Roman objects in early Anglo-Saxon graves (with Hella Eckardt), Archaeologies of Remembrance: Death and Memory in Past Societies (2003)
Mortuary Archaeology - Medieval and Modern
Death and memory on the Home Front: Second World War commemoration in the South Hams, Devon (with Samuel Walls), Cambridge Archaeological Journal (2010)
Digging for the dead: archaeological practice as mortuary commemoration, (with Elizabeth Williams), Public Archaeology (2007)
Landscapes & memories (with Cornelius Holtorf), Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology (2006)