The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca
The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca
The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
<strong>The</strong> Neolithic period<br />
• 67 •<br />
time. From the Middle Neolithic, more frequent single burials, under small mounds or in small<br />
enclosures, are encountered in certain regions. At Radley (Oxfordshire), a man and a woman<br />
were buried flexed in a pit within a ditched rectangle, which may have bounded a low barrow;<br />
they were accompanied by a shale or jet belt-slider and a partially polished flint knife respectively<br />
(Bradley 1992) (Figure 4.2). Other pre-Beaker Late Neolithic single burials include the successive<br />
inhumations within a deep grave pit, which was <strong>ca</strong>pped by a round barrow, at Duggleby Howe,<br />
Yorkshire (Kinnes 1979). Beaker funerary rites thus continued existing indigenous practice.<br />
Cremations are found throughout the Neolithic, <strong>from</strong> within the Etton <strong>ca</strong>usewayed enclosure to<br />
the first phase <strong>of</strong> Stonehenge.<br />
Human remains occur in other contexts, including the ditches and pits <strong>of</strong> <strong>ca</strong>usewayed<br />
enclosures, and later in henges. <strong>The</strong> ex<strong>ca</strong>vated 20 per cent <strong>of</strong> the inner ditch <strong>of</strong> the Hambledon<br />
Hill <strong>ca</strong>usewayed enclosure, for example, revealed the remains <strong>of</strong> some 70 people. <strong>The</strong>se were<br />
incomplete, including skulls lacking lower jaws and one trun<strong>ca</strong>ted torso. <strong>The</strong> dead may have been<br />
exposed, or buried then ex<strong>ca</strong>rnated, before being redeposited in signifi<strong>ca</strong>nt places or circulated<br />
among the living, as tokens <strong>of</strong> indissoluble links with their ancestors.<br />
Something <strong>of</strong> this kind permeated the use <strong>of</strong> long barrows and chambered tombs. Rites were<br />
very varied, and funerals as such formed only part <strong>of</strong> them. In some, perhaps many, instances<br />
they certainly began with fleshed, recognizable individuals: witness the complete skeleton <strong>of</strong> an<br />
adult man inside the entrance <strong>of</strong> the north passage <strong>of</strong> Hazleton (Saville 1990). In others, corpses<br />
may, after initial treatments as discussed, only secondarily have been redeposited singly or together<br />
within the monuments (Whittle 1991). <strong>The</strong> end result was collective deposits <strong>of</strong> varying size,<br />
generally comprising the disarticulated and skeletally incomplete remains <strong>of</strong> a few or tens <strong>of</strong><br />
people (and exceptionally more, as at Quanterness on Orkney). Monuments may not have been<br />
final resting places for all these remains. Some <strong>of</strong> the incompleteness (for example, too few skulls<br />
and longbones) may be accounted for by their successors’ circulation through and movements<br />
<strong>from</strong> such monuments (Thomas 1991). In some instances, the emphasis seems to have been on<br />
the accumulation, perhaps by successive rites and depositions, <strong>of</strong> an anonymous mass <strong>of</strong><br />
intermingled white bone, representing the collectivity <strong>of</strong> the ancestors. In others, for example in<br />
transepted chambered tombs in the Cotswold-Severn area, as at West Kennet long barrow (Figure<br />
4.3), or some <strong>of</strong> the Or<strong>ca</strong>dian stalled <strong>ca</strong>irns, including Midhowe, attention was certainly given to<br />
the placing <strong>of</strong> individual remains. At West Kennet, the basis <strong>of</strong> arrangement seems to have been<br />
gender and age: males in the end chamber; a predominance <strong>of</strong> adult males and females in the<br />
inner pair <strong>of</strong> opposed chambers; and principally the old and young in the outer pair (Thomas<br />
1991).<br />
<strong>The</strong> structures in which these remains were temporarily or permanently stored may have<br />
stood for other ideas and associations than with the ancestral dead alone; some had only token<br />
human deposits or none at all (Bradley 1993). <strong>The</strong> terminology that has traditionally labelled<br />
them ‘tombs’ or ‘graves’ is unhelpful.<br />
All these monuments comprise a mound, <strong>ca</strong>irn or platform, either housing or supporting<br />
ro<strong>of</strong>ed structures <strong>of</strong> wood or stone. <strong>The</strong> actual constructions <strong>from</strong> region to region and indeed<br />
within regions were very varied. Portal dolmens around the Irish Sea had large, stone, box-like<br />
chambers, some surrounded by low stone platforms. Court <strong>ca</strong>irns in Ireland, and Clyde <strong>ca</strong>irns in<br />
western Scotland, in essence elaborate this form, with larger <strong>ca</strong>irns and divided chambers. Stone<br />
chambers set in the ends and sides <strong>of</strong> long barrows and long <strong>ca</strong>irns occur in many areas, <strong>from</strong><br />
southern England to the north <strong>of</strong> Scotland. Round <strong>ca</strong>irns were a mainly northern form, with<br />
some in the west and some round barrows in Yorkshire. Many internal chambers or structures<br />
were single, and approached directly <strong>from</strong> outside the monument. In other instances, there was a<br />
connecting passage, with the chamber housed well within the mound. Internal spatial complexity