A Key to Early Anglo-Saxon Identities? Girdle Hangers in 5th and 6th Century England. An Archaeological Contribution to the Anthropological Perspective on Material Culture

Principal investigator: Kathrin Felder
Level: PhD level research

My PhD study focuses on girdle hangers as a material means of constructing and representing early Anglo-Saxon female identity.

Girdle hangers are an early Anglo Saxon dress accessory of the 5th and 6th centuries. As decorated copper-alloy copies of functional keys, occurring exclusively in a number of wealthier female graves in the Anglian regions, girdle hangers have attracted special attention among scholars. It is commonly assumed that they played a significant role as material symbols of female social, cultural and gender identity, the most prominent being their interpretation as insignia of a woman´s household authority. This rests on a number of written sources from other periods which give clues on the symbolic significance of keys in women´s lives.

Up to the present day, this interpretation has not been the subject of an archaeological analysis, albeit the large number of contextual finds that have been excavated throughout England up to the present day. The purpose of the present PhD study is to provide such analysis. A systematic material and context analysis of girdle hangers based on the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery evidence is needed in order to explore the extent to which the material record itself can provide us with relevant data. Important observations on the finds material itself have been decisively brought forward by the growing number of metal-detected finds recorded through the PAS in recent years. Therefore the data collection will have to include this rich data.

Past approaches to the meaning of girdle hangers have shown that historical evidence does form an important and useful source of information. It provides perspectives that cannot be gained through the evaluation of the material record alone. However, historical and cultural analogies as a method of archaeological knowledge-building have to be critically assessed for their methodological limitations and problems. The existing body of material and historical sources will be integrated into anthropological theoretical concepts which aim to understand the principle mechanisms underlying the assignment of meaning to material culture, such as material agency, material engagement and materialisation. This approach, I believe, has the potential to overcome the methodological limitations which previous approaches entailed. It will allow for a more cohesive, sound interpretation of girdle hangers as material symbols of cultural, social and gender identity. Moreover, it will shed light on the significance of material culture in the structuration and change of early Anglo-Saxon society as a whole, forming an important case study in research on the wider transformation processes of acculturation and societal differentiation in early Anglo-Saxon England.

This PhD research is being conducted at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Dr Catherine Hills (Advisor: Dr Helen Geake).

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• Created: 13 years ago
• Created by: Daniel Pett