The first chapter, "Sources, approaches, and contexts", takes an interdisciplinary approach by examining the literary evidence from the Anglo-Saxon period regarding the execution and burial of those "individuals deemed social outcasts and even feared among the living for their malevolent qualities."
Chapter two, "Burials, bodies and beheadings", focuses on the archaeological evidence for deviant burials in Anglo-Saxon England, identifying eight specific causes for such funerary deposits: victims of battles, judicial executions, massacres, murder, plague, sacrifice and suicide.