good on the logic of burial locations. not my cup of tea, though a great source for surprising medieval death facts (Richard Boyle, the suicide saint; St Bees man; burial under the eaves of church so as to be continually cleansed by the church's blessed rain run off; Romuald, the saint who nearly became the Swamp Thing; the existence of several relatively well-preserved medieval human brains; members of Christian hierarchy buried with elaborate grave goods, particularly shoes, or monastic cowls, giving lie to notion that 'grave goods' were a pagan practice exclusively [and note that Vikings seem to have thrown the swords of their dead into rivers]. key argument is that changing burial practices in England due to spread of importance of purgatory. Location and treatment of corpse mattered a great deal, in order to attract prayers to speeds souls on to heaven. Smaller arguments include notion that in narrative, only non-Christians drown or die by falling.

Calls Christine de Pisan [sic] an "authoress."
and despite something like 95% mortality from disease in the New World, calls "The Black Death...possibly the worst catastrophe that the human population has ever suffered." Not even close. ( )

The author is a researcher for the York Archaeological Trust, so it makes sense that the strongest parts of this book are those which deal with the evidence provided by skeletal remains from medieval England. Daniell synthesises a lot of information from dig reports, arguing for instance that we can tell something about changing religious beliefs in medieval England from changes in inhumation patterns—so in early medieval England, bodies are routinely buried with their heads resting on "pillows" made of stones or grass, the better to see Jesus on Judgment Day; in later medieval England, after the emergence of the doctrine of Purgatory, that practice disappears. Whether or not there is such a direct connection between the two things is perhaps still up for debate—I think it might well be too simplistic a reading—but it's certainly suggestive. Sadly, most of the rest of the book is not so successful. It's jumbled and lacking in any real structural framework, so Death and Burial in Medieval England, 1066-1550 is really more A Grab Bag of Some (Interesting) Facts about Death and Burial in 14th and 15th Century Medieval England. One of those books to mine for its bibliography, but not really to read in search of any great insight, or even cover-to-cover. ( )