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. In particular, this chapter is interested in family, household and kinship, themes that have cropped up throughout this book. It situates the detailed explorations presented in each of the previous chapters alongside an exploration of Anglo-Saxon historical information, with a particular emphasis on contemporary (seventh-century) law codes. After all, the people buried in these sites were alive when the laws were first spoken about and written down, and as a result they were constructed from the same Zeitgeist , the same blood, sweat and attitudes of the
because people’s multi-faceted identities were intertwined with material things, visual experiences, spaces and landscapes (Gosden, 2005 ). Moreover, objects are part of how people define themselves and each other, and are central to how people interact. How a person looks will influence how someone responds to them within a specific cultural setting, because objects are situated intermediately in relationships and act as fulcrums for interpersonal interactions. The aesthetic of relationships reinforces perception – for example, some of the earliest law codes
stria who is proven to have eaten a man is liable to a fine of 8000 denarii.7 In later law codes, it was rather the belief in such creatures that was more often condemned, with women who were accused of being monstrous witches frequently entitled to compensation. The continuing presence of such laws testifies to the durability of the belief that certain women could be strigae in fact, as do similar entries in early-medieval penitentials and the later exempla of preachers, and this popular belief existed side by side with the educated, clerical position approved by the