The king’s death. Funerary rituals
and royal commemoration in the Early Middle Ages
The article reviews the historiographical and archaeological
debate about the transformations of funerary
rituals between Late Antiquity and Ealy Middel Ages in
Western Europe, focusing especially on the diffusion of
grave-goods in burials and the role of Christianity. The
center stage is taken by the discussion of the different interpretative
models used by historians and archaeologist,
working especially on royal funerary rituals and burials
in the post-Roman kingdoms, as well as the material «discoveries
» of «royal» burials in Tournai, St. Denis in Paris
and Sutton Hoo. The last part of the article is dedicated
to the reconstruction, using written data and material evidence,
of the strategies of commemoration of the rulers
of the Italic kingdom from the Gothic kingdom in the
sixht century through Lombard and Carolingian Ages,
and ending with the Ottonian dynasty at the beginning of
the eleventh century. The emphasis is on the progressive
structuring of the imperial funerary rituals in the Ottonian
Age and the «invention of tradition» of Early Medieval
royal burials in the following centuries.