TY - JOUR AB - <p>In the early Anglo-Saxon period, dressing and displaying the body in life and death played an important role in shaping and reinforcing identities and ruling social norms. Studies of the past decades have particularly highlighted the social significance of dressing and staging the body for the event of the funeral. This paper addresses how the production of dress items, the daily act of dressing, and the individuals involved in these practices helped shape the same identities that were enacted in the funeral. It argues that we must consider more explicitly how certain elements of dress became objects of identification through the social dialogue between groups of people who engaged with such objects at earlier stages of their lifecycle. This must include not only those who used dress items as grave goods but also those who produced and wore them. It works towards a framework that captures more fully the social communication and exchange of ideas that shaped and transformed notions of identity. Using data from the author’s research on early Anglo-Saxon girdle-hangers, this paper addresses how different forms of socio-material communication, and different actors involved, can be addressed through the material record of burials. Together these formed the mental networks in which meanings and values were created.</p> AU - Kathrin Felder DA - 2015/2// DO - 10.5334/pia.478 IS - 1 VL - 25 PB - University College London (UCL) PY - 2015 TI - Networks of Meaning and the Social Dynamics of Identity. An Example from Early Anglo-Saxon England T2 - Papers from the Institute of Archaeology UR - https://student-journals.ucl.ac.uk/pia/article/id/506/ ER -