Fig. 7.—Section of Barrow at Grinlow, near Buxton.
Fig. 8.—Plan of Burial at Thirkelow, near Buxton.
During the period we are considering, both inhumation and cremation were practised, sometimes together. The placing of the interments was as diverse as the forms and construction of the barrows. For the moment we will confine ourselves to the inhumated class. In the simplest mode of burial, the body was laid on the ground and the mound heaped over it. But often, perhaps usually, something was done to fence it in, or to protect it from the material of the mound. The simplest fence consisted of a row of stones placed round the body (as in the plan of the interment of a barrow at Thirkelow, near Buxton, fig. 8[12]), and between this and the symmetrical enclosure, formed of flag-stones set on edge, has been found every transition. When it was desired to protect the body from the weight of the mound above, a simple device was to place it at the foot of a large stone or a ledge of rock, against which flat stones were reared pent-wise over it; or large stones were made to incline against one another from opposite sides, like a gable roof. From these simple devices we pass through another series of transitions to the box-like cist, formed of slabs on end and roofed with others. Then there was burial in a grave, shallow or deep, large or small, simply filled up with earth or stones, or roofed with one or more flag-stones to form a vault; and the vault, when lined with other flag-stones, became an underground cist. Examples of all these modes of burial have been found in Derbyshire, where, from the abundance of stone, cists are numerous. We know that timber was used for like purposes where stone is scarce, and there is indirect evidence for its occasional use in this county.
What has been said above, will apply in some measure to the cremated interments. Occasionally these are found in cists, graves, and other receptacles, as large as those containing unburnt skeletons; but more frequently they are smaller and better proportioned to the small compass of the remains. Probably the larger receptacles relate to the early days of cremation, when it was a new fashion; to-day, by force of habit, we occasionally transfer the few handfuls of ashes from the crematorium to an ordinary coffin instead of an urn for burial. Generally speaking, however, the disposal of the cremated remains differed considerably from that of unburnt bodies. When the funeral pile was raised on the spot where the burial was to take place, it was the common custom to collect the calcined bones into a little heap on the surface, or to place them in a shallow depression made before or after the burning. In either case, they were sometimes deposited on a flat stone, and there is reason to think that they were often first tied up in a cloth or placed in a basket. This would be especially convenient when they had to be transferred to a different site for burial from that where the body was burned, as seems to have been more often the case in Derbyshire. A more notable receptacle for the burnt remains was the cinerary urn, which may be regarded as the equivalent of both the cloth or basket and of the cist. The urn was usually deposited in a simple hole, and most often, in this county, upright, the mouth being nearly always covered with a thin stone. When reversed, the mouth usually rested upon such a stone.
The regard of the Derbyshire Bronze people for their dead sometimes—and perhaps more often than we suspect—went beyond the mere provision of a protection from the surrounding soil or stones. Occasionally the receptacle was paved, or it contained gravel, clay, or fine earth or sand, on which the body was laid, or in which it was embedded. On Stanton and Hartle moors several cists containing cremated remains were filled with sand, which in one rested on a bed of heather.[13] In a grave at Shuttlestone,[14] near Parwich, the body had been wrapped in a skin, and laid upon a couch of fern leaves. In another, near King’s Sterndale,[15] there was tenacious clay mixed with grass and leaves, which still retained their greenness. The presence of these perishable substances, which under ordinary conditions must have soon disappeared, may represent a general custom.
The dead were evidently buried or cremated, as the case may have been, in their wearing apparel, for the pins, buttons, studs, weapons, and the like, which are frequently found with the unburnt remains, are often in the relative positions they would occupy on the attire; and in case of the burnt, they have almost invariably passed through the fiery ordeal.
Fig. 9.—Dolichocephalic Skull from “Chamber” at Harborough Rocks. Side and Top Views. (Scale = ⅓.)