Burial evidence has often been employed in discussions of Anglo-Saxon religion, although there is a distinct bias towards the better-preserved and archaeologically more visible burials of the Early Saxon period. At the same time, the widespread reliance on historical sources in studying the conversion has given rise to the belief that burial evidence has little to contribute to the debate. As we have seen, the historical evidence for conversion-period East Anglia is particularly sparse, but even on a national scale the historical record has little to say about the early Church's attitude towards burial. However, although the historical record is quiet on the subject, the burial record itself is very rich and we are fortunate in that we are able to study funerary material from before, during and after the conversion period. John Blair is firmly of the opinion that ‘burial practice offers our best hope of glimpsing religious attitudes among ordinary laity in the “age of conversion”’, and the East Anglian archaeological record clearly demonstrates that significant changes in burial practice occurred at the time of the conversion. These changes require explanation. In particular, inhumation was practised alongside cremation during the Early Saxon period, but by the mid-seventh century inhumation had become the sole burial rite. Furthermore, it is clear that the details of the inhumation rite changed considerably over time, particularly regarding the nature, quality and quantity of grave-goods deposited with the corpse.

Excavated Christian burials have demonstrated that unfurnished, supine, west–east burial was, and continues to be, the norm for Christian burial practice. With regard to recognising the conversion in the burial record, a simple model has developed in which Christianity was introduced and burial rites were immediately transformed from those of the Early Saxon period — characterised by the use of cremation and the deposition of Germanic grave-goods — to those in the Christian mould of the medieval period. In particular, studies have focused on the transition from furnished to unfurnished burial and the increasingly regular adoption of a west–east orientation, both criteria recently described in print as being among ‘the earliest tangible signs of the new religion in the archaeological record’.