Honorary Treasurer


Duncan Sayer PhD FSA MCIfA

Reader in Archaeology, University of Central Lancashire

email: dsayerATuclan.ac.uk

Duncan Sayer is Reader in Archaeology at the University of Central Lancashire and associate researcher at the University of Bath’s Centre for Death and Society. He is a burial archaeologist with research interests in the Post Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Post Medieval Periods. Duncan is interested in how people interacted, how culture was transmitted and how society was organised though key social institutions like gender, age, kinship and the plurality of identity. He is particularly interested in how social performance was imbedded into the funerary spaces of early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. Duncan excavated Oakington early Anglo-Saxon cemetery and the project was run without barriers allowing for an interaction of the ancient dead with the contemporary community. He has written extensively about ethics and the excavation, display, reburial and the repatriation of human remains.

Duncan’s Key publications include:

Sayer, D. & Williams, H. (eds) (2009, 2013). Mortuary Practice and Social Identities in the Middle Ages. Liverpool, University of Liverpool Press [paperback].

King, C. & Sayer, D. (eds) (2011). The Archaeology of Post-Medieval Religion. Woodbridge, Boydell.

Sayer, D. (2010) Ethics and Burial Archaeology. London, Duckworth.

Sayer, D. (2014) Sons of athelings given to the earth’: infant mortality within Anglo-Saxon mortuary geography. Medieval Archaeology 58: 83-109

Sayer, D. & Dickinson, S.D. (2013) Reconsidering Obstetric Death and Female Fertility in Anglo-Saxon England World Archaeology 45(2): 285-297

Sayer, D. & Wienhold, M. (2013) A GIS-investigation of Four Early Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: Ripley’s K-Function analysis of spatial groupings amongst graves. Social Science Computer Review 31(1):70-88

Sayer, D. (2010) Who’s Afraid of the Dead: Archaeology, modernity and the death taboo. World Archaeology 42(3): 481-491

Sayer, D. (2010) Death and the family: developing a generational chronology. Journal of Social Archaeology 10(1): 59-91

Sayer, D. (2009) Is There a Crisis Facing British Burial Archaeology? Antiquity 83: 184-194.

Sayer, D. (2009) Medieval Waterways and Hydraulic Economics: Monasteries, towns and the East Anglian fen. World Archaeology 41(1):132-147