Accepted Manuscript, forthcoming in Antiquity (2018). Please cite as J. M. Harland, ‘Memories of Migration? So-called “Anglo-Saxon” Burial Costume of the 5th Century AD,’ Antiquity 97 (2019). A link to the final publication at Cambridge University Press will be provided as soon as this is possible.

It is often alleged that wearers of the burial kit which began to appear in lowland Britain in the fifth century AD began to construct new forms of ethnic community by doing so. This article considers the empirical basis for this assertion, and assesses it in light of approaches to ethnic constructivism proposed by Rogers Brubaker (2004) and Andreas Wimmer (2013). The article finds the basis for such assertions lacking, and appeals for the development of new interpretative approaches to the study of early medieval mortuary archaeology in Britain.