#bc it means that not all queer ppl were despised and put on the fringes. It didn't stop some from being highly respected and wealthy

[queers4years]

"The occupant of "Grave 30" was between 35 and 40 years old, buried around AD600, and was designated "definitely male" in the excavation report, based on their skeletal features.

At a depth of 0.61 meters, Grave 30 is especially deep for this period. This suggests they were a person of high status, as the energy expended digging a person's grave reflects the regard in which they were held by their community...

In the grave was a bone comb, a silver-gilt brooch, a silver pin, 84 beads, a silver pendant, a buckle, a knife and a set of iron keys—a rich collection which emphasizes their high status...All of these items are associated with femininity and are anticipated finds in cisgender female graves...The brooch and pin, for example, were both parts of seventh century feminine clothing."

The burials that could challenge historians' ideas about Anglo-Saxon gender

There are a significant number of Anglo-Saxon burials where the estimated anatomical sex of the skeleton does not align with the gender implied by the items they were buried with. Some bodies identified as male have been buried with feminine clothing, and some bodies identified as female have been found in the sorts of "warrior graves" typically associated with men.

In the archaeology of early Anglo-Saxon England, weaponry, horse-riding equipment and tools are thought to signal masculinity, while jewelry, sewing equipment and beads signal femininity. And, for the most part, this pattern fits.

So far though, no convincing explanation has been put forward for the burials which appear to invert the pattern. My Ph.D. research asks whether looking at these atypically gendered burials through the lens of trans theory and the 21st-century language of "transness" has the potential to improve historians' understanding of early Anglo-Saxon gender. Read more.