Talk:Burial in Anglo-Saxon England

Suggestion
I would suggest putting this article through GA review. A history reviewer could help alot in cleaning up the small stuff in this article we always need more reviewed articles that certify quality on History, esp. Anglo-Saxon History. Sadads (talk) 13:44, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Preservation
The article says that ‘many’ bodies were buried in soil alkaline enough to allow bones to come to us. This implies that most were in wetter, more acidic soils that rot bones within centuries (or even years). What might the ratio be? 1:2?

Resources on crime and funerals tend to say that bodies quite commonly rot away after a couple of decades, a couple of centuries in sandier ground, and can only be expected to last millennia in climates like Egypt's, or in extreme circumstances like the Pompeian eruption. However, I have seen people claim that uncremated bodies *normally* last millennia. Surely we would have hundreds of thousands of perfectly intact skeletons from each of almost every single place and time in history then. That doesn't seem to be the case. Going back to as far as Anglo-Saxon times, we seem to have random, luckily preserved skeletons. If rotting away were rare, I'd expect to have the skeleton of every king and bishop at least. I don't think we do. Correctrix (talk) 09:45, 10 June 2022 (UTC)