Byways in British Archaeology

by Walter Johnson

Fig. 56. Roman coffin of lead, found at Colchester. Length 4´ 3´´; depth, exclusive of lid, 9½´´; width at head 15´´, at foot 11´´. The lid has overlapping edges. The decoration consists of scallop shells, concentric rings, and lines of beaded ornament.

and have been taken to indicate a Christian element among the population. In connection with the leaden coffins were found Roman coins, mainly, of the Constantine group, so that the burials were of late date. Yet, although there were probably many converts in that part of England by the time of the Diocletian persecution, A.D. 303, Mr Guy Maynard, who records the discoveries, admits that there is little corroborative evidence of the Christian character of the graves[668]. Looked at from either standpoint, the association of coffins and coins seems to show a period of transition.

We are able, however, to extend our view much beyond the Roman invasion, and to find the counterpart of the coffin in many primitive burials. Some of the stone cists which enclosed unburnt bodies of the older Bronze Age barrows are actually described as “coffin-shaped receptacles[669].” A Bronze Age barrow at Hove, Brighton, contained an oak coffin in which objects of bronze, stone, and amber had been deposited with the skeleton[670]. Belonging to the same period was the famous barrow of Gristhorpe, near Scarborough; in this example the interment had been made in a hollowed oak trunk, specially prepared for the purpose[671] ([Fig. 55] A). King Barrow, near Wareham, Dorset, was found to be raised over a coffin, wherein a cup of shale had been deposited with the body[672]. Mr J. R. Mortimer asserts that traces of wooden supports for protecting the body are often found. In a barrow at Easington, in Holderness, broad slabs, made from the trunk of a willow, formed the covering. It would be superfluous to continue the list, but should the reader desire to examine further material in justification of the plea of continuity, he will find ample opportunity in Mr Llewellynn Jewitt’s interesting volume[673].

The Roman and pre-Roman periods have been considered; we turn to the Romano-British burials, and proceed in the forward direction.

Gen. Pitt-Rivers discovered “dug-out” coffins at Woodyates, and other sites in Cranborne Chase, and he inferred the former existence of further specimens by the presence of nails which were associated with the burials. To ascertain whether the record can be extended into later historical times, we might turn especially to our Northern churchyards. Some examples of the stone cell, found at Alloa and elsewhere, are described by Sir Arthur Mitchell as being simply cists, enlarged so as to avoid doubling up the body[674]. Later stages of survival are witnessed by the rude box-shaped tombstones of many churchyards in Devonshire, Gloucestershire, and other counties[675]. Stone coffins have been dug up in the Dorsetshire graveyard of Worth Matravers, almost identical with those which have been unearthed from barrows in the surrounding Isle of Purbeck. In short, it is clear that the stone coffin and the table tombstone are derived from the ancient stone cist, and this, in its turn, bears some analogy to the chamber of the long barrow.

This endurance of custom becomes the more remarkable when we remember that great changes have occurred in the mode of treating the corpse at burial. At first there was inhumation; then we have a period during which inhumation and cremation were, to some extent, contemporaneous, while, as a variant, partial burning of the body was common. Cremation gradually becomes obsolete, and earth-burial again comes into vogue. If we carry back our thoughts to the advent of Christianity into Britain, we see that the trend of custom was the exact reverse of that which obtains in our day, when cremation is very slowly replacing earth-burial. The substitution of inhumation for the funeral pyre is one of the four chief distinctions drawn by Mr Romilly Allen between the burial customs of the Celtic pagans and the Celtic Christians[676]. Yet the change was a slow one; in the remote fastnesses of the country, the custom of burning bodies lingered for generations, though it was generally extinct in the fourth century of our era[677]. Indeed, Macrobius, the critic and philosopher, who wrote at the beginning of the fifth century, declared that cremation had been discontinued for so long a time that it was only from books that he could glean information concerning the custom[678]. Whether the turnover from cremation to earth-burial were always the result of religious or of racial influences is a moot point[679]. The evidence seems to prove, as already hinted, that in Britain the cause was mainly religious ([p. 263] supra), though one dare not assert that religion was the sole cause. Cremation must always have been a comparatively expensive process. Someone has well said, “To this day we speak of the ashes of the great, and the bones of the poor.” At all events, transitions may be noted, as in the case of the famous flat-earth burial-ground at Aylesford, which was referred to in the preceding chapter. The ashes of the “family circle” represented at Aylesford had been enclosed in urns, and then placed in pits, as before stated ([p. 261] supra). Sir A. J. Evans supposes that the variation of custom was due to the influence of Belgic conquerors. The urn-burials represented at Aylesford superseded the old skeleton interments of the late-Celtic peoples, as exemplified in the “chariot-burials” of Yorkshire, where the skeleton of the departed warrior is laid alongside the chariot[680]. In Scandinavia and Northern Germany there was a further intermediate stage, for the ashes were sometimes deposited in the grave without any enclosing urn. To such graves the Northern archaeologists apply the term “Brandgruben,” or cremation pits. This mode of burial is connected with the La Tène period of culture[681].

Though this question of cremation may appear to have slight connection with the use of coffins, a little study will show that there is a bond of association. The ashes of the dead were, it is true, usually enshrined in a cinerary urn, and this vessel was often placed in a chamber specially constructed for the purpose. But it was the coffin which was essentially a receptacle for preserving the entire body, and which therefore became the sign of earth-burial. Dr Rock lays down the rule that bishops, kings, and persons of rank were interred in stone coffins, while the bulk of the people had coffins of wood. Whenever the receptacle was made of wood, and not of stone, one might have supposed that it would readily become an accessory in the rite of cremation. This was apparently not the case, though, obviously, proof would be difficult to obtain. The body seems to have been burnt in an open pyre, not enclosed in a chest. Contrariwise, in a Saxon cemetery at Sibertswold, in Kent, ninety-nine of the coffins had been “submitted to the fire,” the bodies themselves being unburnt. Again, in the early Christian burials a cist of stones, instead of a coffin, was sometimes placed around the corpse[682], but there was no reversion to the funeral pyre. Yet, as already noticed, the employment, in isolated instances, of rude coffins, to say nothing of the cists by which they were foreshadowed, was probably in some measure contemporary with the general pagan custom of burning the dead. There was an overlapping of custom. Such seeming anachronisms, while they puzzle, do not greatly surprise the archaeologist, to whom such occurrences are no new feature. He frequently sees remote traces of the beginnings of a practice of which the general adoption was long delayed; he observes rites and customs overlapping in time and struggling for victory; and, in his own day, he is a witness of extraordinary vestiges and of ceremonies which must be deemed reversions or “throw-backs.” The overstepping of one burial rite by another of older origin is not a whit more inexplicable than the contemporaneous use, by man, of diverse kinds of clothes or of varying types of habitation. It is perhaps the more difficult problem to determine, in the absence of additional data, why, at a particular period, one group of men is found dwelling in pile-houses on the margins of lake or mere, while another class frequents caves and rock-shelters, and a third prefers the wattled hut with sunken floor, and roof of reeds or heather. Convenience was doubtless a partial cause of these diversities, just as belief was the great regulator of burial customs, but this is not the full answer. We must look to primary race distinctions, in which were the germs of the variations, and to the fact that human immigrations to Britain occurred at intervals, so that mental as well as physical territories were invaded and transgressed.

A remarkable instance of anticipation will illustrate, to some extent, what has just been said. The antiquary is well aware that, during the Stuart period, in order to encourage the woollen industry, statutes were passed (A.D. 1666, 1678, 1680), which made it compulsory to bury the dead in woollen shrouds. An interesting chapter of burial-lore might be written on this curious subject, for the Acts, though they had long been in abeyance, were not repealed until late in the reign of George III. (A.D. 1814)[683]. The practice is recalled in our own day when, by request of the dying person, the body is enfolded in some special garb, usually of wool, before being committed to the earth. The strange circumstance, however, is that such a custom should have been foreshadowed in the far-away past. In Danish burials belonging to the earliest Bronze Age, the bodies are sometimes found to have been placed in hollowed tree trunks, and the remains show that a woollen shroud had been used. Skeletons wrapped in a woollen textile have likewise been discovered at Rylston, in the Western Riding of Yorkshire[684]. I have provisionally regarded these instances as revealing anticipations rather than origins, but it is possible that many intermediate examples could be supplied. One of these gradations is perhaps traceable in the custom of burying a person in his ordinary dress. If these links were complete, there would obviously be entire continuity, but if we encountered a gap, it is probable that the eighteenth century practice would have to be considered as a “throw-back.”