Grave-mounds and Their Contents / A Manual of Archæology, as Exemplified in the Burials of the Celtic, the Romano-British, and the Anglo-Saxon Periods

by Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt

Fig. 18.

In No. 9, on [fig. 14], an interment of a mother and her child together is shown. Another instance is shown on the next engraving, [fig. 18]. In this instance the woman was laid in the usual contracted position, on her left side, with her head to the east. Close in front of the breast, lying in the arms in the same contracted position, lay the infant. Some flints and a fragment of pottery were found along with this touching interment.

CHAPTER III.

Ancient British or Celtic Period—Interment by cremation—Discovery of lead—Burial in urns—Positions of urns—Heaps of burnt bones—Burnt bones enclosed in cloth and skins—Stone cists—Long-Low—Liff’s-Low, etc.—Pit interments—Tree-coffins.

When the interment has been by CREMATION, the remains of the burnt bones, etc., have been collected together and placed either in a small heap, or enclosed in a skin or cloth, or placed in a cinerary urn, which is sometimes found in an upright position, its mouth covered with a flat stone, and at others inverted over a flat stone or on the natural surface of the earth. This position, with the mouth downwards, is, perhaps, the most usual of the two. In some instances the bones were clearly enclosed, or wrapped, in a cloth before being placed in the urn. The place where the burning of the body has taken place is generally tolerably close to the spot on which the urn rests, or on which the heap of burnt bones has been piled up. Wherever the burning has taken place there is evidence of an immense amount of heat being used; the soil, for some distance below the surface, being in many places burned to a redness almost like brick. Remains of charcoal, the refuse of the funeral pyre, are very abundant, and in some instances I have found the lead ore, which occurs in veins in the limestone formation of Derbyshire, so completely smelted with the heat that it has run into the crevices among the soil and loose stones, and looks, when dug out, precisely like straggling roots of trees.

Is it too much to suppose that the discovery of lead may be traced to the funeral pyre of our early forefathers? I think it not improbable that, the fact of seeing the liquid metal run from the fire as the ore which lay about became accidentally smelted, would give the people their first insight into the art of making lead—an art which we know was practised at a very early period in Derbyshire and other districts of this kingdom.[10] Pigs of lead of the Romano-British period, inscribed with the names of emperors and of legions, have occasionally been found; but much earlier than these are some cakes (if the term can be allowed) of lead which have evidently been cast in the saucer-shaped hollows of stones. Of these, which are purely British, some examples have fortunately been preserved.

But to resume. The positions I have spoken of in which the cinerary urns and heaps of burnt bones have been usually found, will be best understood by the accompanying engravings. The first ([fig. 19]) represents a section of a barrow in which, at a, is shown a sepulchral urn in an upright position, capped with a flat stone; and at b a heap of burnt bones piled up in the usual fashion, and first covered with earth and then with the loose stones of which the whole barrow was composed.

Fig. 19.

The next engraving ([fig. 20]) again shows, within a cist, in a barrow on Baslow Moor called “Hob Hurst’s House,”[11] two heaps of bones, the one simply collected together in a small heap, and the other guarded by a row of small sandstone “boulders” all of which had been subjected to fire. The next illustration ([fig. 21]) gives a section of the Flax Dale barrow at Middleton by Youlgreave, which shows the inverted position of the sepulchral urn. This barrow was formed on a plan commonly adopted by the ancient Britons, and will therefore serve as an example of mode of construction as well as of the inverted position of the urn. A circle of large rough stones was laid on the surface of the ground, marking the extent of the proposed mound. Within this the interments, whether in an urn or not, were placed, and the mound was then raised of stones to the required height, and afterwards covered to some thickness with earth, and thus the outer circle of the barrow was considerably extended, as will be seen by the engraving.