page_title: Polhill Anglo-Saxon cemetery
section_title: Cemetery features
hierarchical_section_title: Polhill Anglo-Saxon cemetery / Cemetery features
caption_attribution_description: English: Burial mound 2 at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, UK. The photo was taken close to sunset on 21 June 2006 (day of the Summer Solstice). This mound has been reconstructed to its supposed original height. Deutsch: Grabhügel 2 von Sutton Hoo, England.
context_page_description: Polhill Anglo-Saxon cemetery is a place of burial that was used in the seventh and eighth centuries CE. It is located close to the hamlet of Polhill, near Sevenoaks in Kent, South-East England. Belonging to the Middle Anglo-Saxon period, it was part of the much wider tradition of burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England.
  Polhill was an inhumation-only cemetery, with no evidence of cremation. An estimated 180 to 200 graves were placed there, containing between 200 and 220 individuals. The cemetery was on a false crest on the hill, having wide views of the surrounding landscape, and was roughly 1 ha in size. Many of the dead were interred with grave goods, which included personal ornaments, weapons, and domestic items, and some had tumuli erected above their graves.
  The central area of the cemetery was sporadically excavated from 1839 to 1964 during the course of road building. Specific archaeological excavation of the west area of the site took place in 1967 under the directorship of Brian Philp, and continued in 1978. In 1984, Philp led the excavation of the east end of the cemetery in response to the expansion of the M25 motorway.
context_section_description: The 1984–86 excavation revealed that the cemetery had followed clearly delineated limits, and that while a large space of hillside had been available, all of the burials were located within the 112- to 118-metre contours. Only inhumations were found at the site, with no cremation burials. 73 graves had been excavated from the Western Area, 52 from the Eastern Area, 4 to the left of the main cemetery, and an estimated 53 from the Central Area: a total of 182 graves has been established for the cemetery. Taking into account potential further isolated graves outside the main area of the cemetery, Philp suggested that there might be between 180 and 220 graves at the site, containing between 200 and 220 individuals. Based on the idea that the cemetery was used for a century between 650 and 750 CE, Philp suggested that there would have been an average two burials at the cemetery per year. Taking this and the average life expectancy of 26 into account, he suggested that the cemetery served a local community of around 70 to 90 people, making it the largest known community in West Kent at this period. The majority of skeletal remains had survived well due to the well-drained chalk geology, although in a number of graves, particularly those of children, they have almost entirely eroded. Based on the 1984–86 excavation, archaeologists noted that 4 infants were buried alongside the 48 juveniles and adults. The site therefore does not reflect the high levels of infant mortality that local communities would have faced.
  The main cemetery is approximately 210 metres in length from west to east, with a north–south width of 50 metres, although it appears to taper at both ends. Its interior totals around 10,500 square metres, about one hectare or 2½ acres. The graves were not evenly spaced in the cemetery, but often clustered together in what excavator Brian Philp suggested might have been family units. Most of these burials were on the southern side of the cemetery, and the site was more densely crowded in the west than the east. From the 1984–86 excavation, 50 of the graves contained a single skeleton, with the only exception being Grave 19, where two individuals had been buried together. In keeping with many Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, most of the inhumations were broadly aligned east to west. Philp considered it significant that 66% of the 51 burials excavated from 1984–86 were orientated between 70 and 109 degrees.
  Of the 51 inhumations excavated in the 1980s, 36 were found to contain grave goods, and 14 were not. One burial had been partially destroyed, meaning what excavators did not know if it had once been accompanied with grave goods. Around 140 artefacts were uncovered from this excavation, most of which were personal ornaments, weapons, or domestic items. Philp believed that those inhumations containing spearheads, seaxes, or a shield would have been high status burials at the time. Only one burial, designated Grave 1 in the 1984 excavation, contained a shield. Also containing a spear, it was located at the far east of the cemetery, leading Philp to suggest that it might have had particular significance.
  8 of the 51 inhumations excavated between 1984–86 were enclosed in small penannular ditches, indicating that they had probably been covered by small tumuli. Evidence for a further six tumuli were uncovered in the 1967 excavation, meaning that there was at least 14 tumuli across the cemetery. It is possible that other burials at the site were also covered by barrows, but that these have been eroded by ploughing in later centuries, leaving no archaeological trace. The known barrow burials were spaced evenly throughout the cemetery, and were between 4 and 5½ metres in diameter. All but two of those recorded have eastern entrances through the penannular ditch. Most of these barrows covered single inhumations, although one tumulus covered both Graves 94 and 95, and another contained no inhumation at all. Of the individuals buried beneath the 14 identified tumuli, 5 have been identified as male, 5 as female, 1 as an unidentified adult an
caption: Small tumuli would have covered a number of the burials at Polhill. This is a larger example from Sutton Hoo in Suffolk.
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