Cemeteries and State Formation in the Early-Medieval Northwestern Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

BASED ON A SIGNIFICANT REVIEW of the literature on early-medieval burials in the Northwestern Iberian Peninsula, this paper aims to offer, for the first time, a comprehensive interpretation of funerary practices and their transformations between the 8th and 10th centuries ad, and to discuss their role as useful indicators of the non-linear processes of state formation in this area. Despite some important regional differences, a general trend toward uniformity and centralised control of funerary behaviours can be detected during this period. However, cemeteries also inform us about the complexity and diversity of social agency at local levels behind the wider trend towards uniformity. It is argued here that both local and regional elites in the Kingdom of Asturias promoted this important change in funerary practices, as they did with the network of churches, given the importance of cemeteries as places of power, and the implications that lay behind the creation and control of a common place of inhumation for local communities.