All those interested in the Roman/Saxon interface in Britain will welcome publication of the excavations conducted at Wasperton, Warwickshire, in the 1980s and Martin Carver, in particular, should be congratulated on bringing out this handsome volume. This was and is a complex, multi-period landscape, with features dating from the Neolithic onwards, but the volume under review focuses solely on ‘Dark Age’ archaeology, and, in particular, on a cemetery that was receiving burials by the fourth century (at the latest) and continued in use right through the sixth – so across the cultural divide from Roman to Anglo-Saxon. The cemetery is viewed as evidence of a local community who first emerge within the late Roman milieu but then continued and became ‘Anglo-Saxon’ in terms of burial practice and material culture before the cemetery went out of use in the seventh century. Its importance lies in this sense of continuity: the vast majority of late Roman cemeteries were abandoned by ad 500, at the very latest, while Anglo-Saxon cemeteries normally began on a site not recently used for burial, though not necessarily an un-used one in other respects.

The excavations revealed some 241 burials in total. Of these, two were very early ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cremations, radiocarbon dated to around 400; a further twenty-two cremations followed in the later fifth/early sixth centuries, accompanied by some fifty-three inhumations of characteristic ‘Anglo-Saxon’ type, which then continued later than the major phase of cremations. In the mid-sixth/early seventh centuries, earthen barrows were either re-used or erected around the periphery of the enclosed cemetery, covering further inhumations. ‘British’ burials ran through from the later fourth century to the early sixth, the latter clearly alongside ‘Anglo-Saxon’ burials in other parts of the enclosure.

Four different approaches were combined in the post-excavation phase: radiocarbon dating was used on fifteen human remains; stable isotope analysis was conducted on samples of the bone; the graves were analysed in terms of cultural associations via grave goods and in terms of their physical layout, intercutting, proximity to others and orientation. Strong cultural links were identified for the fifth/early sixth centuries with East Anglia and the Thames Valley, shifting in the later sixth century more towards the Thames Valley. Radiocarbon dating implied a continuous process of deposition but stable isotope analysis produced no evidence consistent with the arrival of intruders from further east, and suggested that the population was either local in origin or had migrated in from the West Country or the Mediterranean. Clearly, the contrasting outcomes of these several techniques has important lessons for our understanding of the British/Anglo-Saxon interface, and it was very much with that in mind that Carver has pushed publication forward.

There have been considerable difficulties, however: analysis was hindered by the long delay separating excavation of the site and specialist work beginning on some types of finds, with significant deterioration in, particularly, skeletal and textile remains. The publication also seems to have occurred in rather difficult conditions regarding its relationship with pre-existing work: although the cover names Carver as both editor and co-author alongside Scheschkewitz and Hills, neither of the latter two are credited with any part of the text beyond Hills’s oversight of the catalogue and artefacts, while Scheschkewitz’s contribution lies in his doctoral thesis in 2006, on which the book draws but to which it refers virtually all issues regarding the artefactual evidence. Given that this thesis was in German and submitted to a German university, this aspect of the analysis remains inaccessible. It would have helped if at least a substantial précis could have been included herein or hosted by the Archaeology Data Service, but there is a substantial and well-illustrated catalogue of all the graves (pp 142–360). While there are some textual problems, including inexplicable inconsistencies of tense in numerous places, and a degree of repetition that might have been reduced, all those interested in the period must excuse the minor shortcomings of this report and welcome a volume which brings into the light of day a site which many will have known a little about for a long time.