HOW we explain the origins and development of furnished burial rites in southern and eastern England dated to the fifth and sixth centuries AD is the focus of ongoing debate and controversy. Currently, archaeologists and historians have various answers to this question, from the adoption of Germanic ‘fashions’ by indigenous Britons to a mass-migration of Germanic settlers. Many scholars opt for different points on a spectrum between these extremes, including the settlement, accommodation and interaction of Germanic groups with Britons on a local level and the invasion and subsequent imitation of Germanic warrior elites. In contrast, some writers opt out of the debate by arguing that furnished burial is unequivocally ‘Germanic’, whether this be in terms of biological origins, linguistic connections, cultural affiliations or political hegemony. Yet even if archaeologists and historians sometimes have different answers, they share a common interest in the same question, but it is a question that has two sides. While traditionally we have used furnished graves to address the question ‘When and where did the Anglo-Saxons settle?’, the flip-side of the same question is ‘What happened to the Britons?’

As a contribution to this ongoing historical and archaeological research, this paper aims to return to the very origins of this debate: the study of early medieval graves by Victorian archaeologists.