Reports and Pictures
Thursday 16th February – Bronze Age Burials
A talk by Sam Walsh
Ancient skull found on Ash Fell near Kirkby Stephen should have made more trips to the dentist !
Ever wondered who was buried in the ancient burial mounds found on our local hill tops? The study of human skeletons can tell us all sorts of things about the way local people lived and died in Prehistory. Information can be gleaned from the bones such as the age of a person when they died, their sex, height, diet and the diseases they may have suffered from, sometimes if they were right or left handed, what activities they may have undertaken during their lives and how they were laid to rest.
This may sound a bit morbid, but when you are trying to understand our four thousand year old ancestors, there is very little else to go on and it is quite fascinating to hear about a local Kirkby Stephen man who had bad teeth!
On Thursday 16th February, the Lunesdale Archaeology Society welcomed Sam Walsh, a final year PhD student from the University of Central Lancashire. Sam is a human bone specialist, or Osteoarchaeologist; who has been researching skeletal remains from Bronze Age burial mounds found in the NW of England dating to between 2200 and 800 BC.
During her research, Miss Walsh has so far examined eleven Cumbrian sites, at Aglionby, How Hill, Greystoke, Carrock Fell, Kirkoswold, Holmrook, Broomrigg, Moorhouse, Castle Carrock, Crosby Garrett and Ash Fell.
She noted that there should have been many more Cumbrian finds from burials excavated by antiquarians such as Canon William Greenwell during the late 1800’s but it seems they were either not kept or may have been re-buried. Often the only part of the skeleton that was collected was the skull; so much of the data has now been lost.
Then just as now, people were often either buried or cremated and their ashes were then placed in urns before they were buried in cairnsor barrows. Fortunately the burial practice of ‘excarnation’ has now fallen out of fashion. This was when bodies were left out on platforms to be de-fleshed by animals and carrion before any remaining muscle was cut away and the bones were carefully collected and then buried. Although this sounds alien to us now, she also explained how proof was collected from burial mounds in Forteviot, Scotland and Carmarthenshire,Walesof meadowsweet flowers being placed in the graves, so some practices have thankfully persevered.
It was particularly interesting to see how many women and children were represented in the collections, many of which are now held in local museums or at the British Museum. This has proven that the idea each barrow was solely the final resting place of an important man such as a chieftain or druid is an antiquarian and outdated notion.
Bronze Age burials or ‘inhumations’ are generally thought to be earlier than cremations which became more common in the mid to late Bronze Age. There was some overlap and at some sites where there were several burials in one cairn of different types, they may have been contemporary. Cremation of infants were usually placed in with adults, but adult males and females as well as adolescents were often buried separately, presumably they were thought of as adults.
One of the examples looked at was Green Howe in Yorkshire, where a total of fourteen individuals were found within one barrow. Many of these were secondary or ‘satellite’ burials added to the top or side of the barrow at a later date. The central grave pit contained what appeared to be a family grave of four burials. The earliest of these was an adult male whose remains were disturbed by the burial of the adult woman. Buried with them were a three year old child and a neonatal infant.
There are many different types of Bronze Age burial sites; mounds or barrows are constructed from soil and turf and burial cairns (not to be confused with later walkers cairns) are usually constructed from mounds of stones. Both types often contain a central stone lined cist in which burials are found, but often secondary burials, often in urns, were placed into the mounds at a later date. In addition, sometimes ‘natural’ geological mounds were used in the same way, as if they had been manmade or burials were placed in caves or ‘Flat’ burial sites such as those we use today.
Although they are not always easily classified, some smaller stone circles such as those found at Broomrigg, Moor Divock and Little Meg had cremation burials within them. This type of site often had a central stone cist and a mound of turf or stone within the ring of standing stones that has now been removed or eroded away. They are often referred to as kerbed circles or kerb cairns.
Some examples of rich burial sites were considered from the south of the country, such as the famous Amesbury Archer and his companion, found nearStonehenge. Their graves contained elaborate artefacts such as gold hair ornaments and bronze daggers. Most Cumbrian grave goods tended to be more functional, such as pottery, the occasional flint or boar’s tooth toggle and bone pins, thought to be hair or cloak fasteners.
In some cases, Miss Walsh closely re-examined cremated remains that had been held in museum collections for more than a century finding items such as bone beads, pins and cowry shells that had never been noticed before. One example was a bone pin, found in the cremation from Holmrook, which she has examined in minute detail via ‘scanning electron microscopy’ which has revealed the tool marks made during its manufacture.
Several Cumbrian sites were described in detail; a flat cemetery containing the cremations and burials of a minimum of 16 individuals was found in 1926 during sand quarrying on Waterloo Hill, Aglionby near Carlisle. This is the largest number of Cumbrian human remains studied from one site during this research. Artefacts accompanying the burials included a small ‘incense’ cup, part of a quern and a Neolithic polished stone axe. Three ‘collared’ urns, decorated with zig-zag lines impressed with a twisted cord in which cremation remains were found are currently on display at Penrith and Eden museum.
A cobble lined burial cist was reported to have come from within a stone circle at Moorhouses near Penrith. It contained the burial of a young female adult discovered during ploughing in 1869 and typically for an antiquarian find, only the skull was retained. There was an urn full of fragments of burnt bones which are yet to be analysed but the interesting thing about the skull is that the roof of right eye socket shows signs of little holes and lesions. This condition is called ‘cribra orbitalia’ and it may be caused by nutritional or metabolic problems. In this case it looks like it had mostly healed but is seems that during her life she suffered a few harsh winters when food was scarce.
One fascinating find was a skull excavated by Canon Greenwell in the late 1880’s from a barrow on Windy Hill, Ash Fell near Kirkby Stephen. It belonged to an older male (probably about 40, which was old in prehistoric times) and is now held by the British Museum. He was found on his right side with his head to the south and his right hand under his chin, in a grave cut into the limestone beneath the barrow. Although he had no cavities, it was clear that he had lost several teeth during his lifetime. The bone where he had lost one of the teeth showed that he had suffered a painful abscess. This bone had healed but as he had obviously spent years only eating on the pain-free side of his mouth, a thick crust of plaque has built up on the teeth surrounding the hole left by the abscess.
On the conclusion of her talk, Miss Walsh was thanked for delivering such a thought provoking and insightful talk about the burial practices of our Bronze Age ancestors.
The next meeting will be held at Tebay Methodist Hall at 8pm on Thursday 29th March.
Mrs Hamilton-Gibney will give a talk about the last year of research undertaken by the Lunesdale Archaeology Society, entitled Prehistoric Orton and Roman Tebay.
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Saturday 3rd September 2011
A huge thanks to all those people who donated items and who came along on the day to help out at the ‘car boot’ sale in Tebay.
In the end, thanks to rain once again, we ended up in doors – this time inside the beautiful church where we set out our stalls and managed to generate another £90 to go towards activities for the society. A big thank-you also to the Friends of Tebay Church group who joined us in this venture with the sale of teas & coffee and to those stall holders who supported the day by taking tables to sell their own wares.
If only the weather had been a little kinder to us! Maybe next time!
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Wednesday 20th July 2011
A fieldwalk took place near Tebay.
In the rain showers that varied in intensity from Grade 1 (light showers) to at least a Grade 5 (can we go to the Pub yet Jan?) a few of us walked a muddy field on the road between Tebay and Gaisgill. Amongst the saturated soil we found lots and lots of pottery, a few claypipe fragments (stems and bowls) and 3 flints. After a decent amount of time, we decided to stave off the effects of pneumonia and take a repast of pie and ale in the nearby inn. Much welcome it was too.
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Saturday 16th July
After a lot of hard work by a small group of members, the LAS table sale at Shap was a great success.
The weather was terrible with heavy rain keeping many people indoors – but we still managed to raise over £200 to go towards the upcoming dig.
Many thanks to all that made this possible.
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Sunday 26th June 2011 Field Walk – Tebay
Initial report of the day:
The 1st field by the motorway yielded little but pottery bits, the next produced a coin (to be identified) and a couple of flints (Annie’s eagle eye at the end of the walk). The 100 acre field in front of John Dunning’s produced an unexpected bonanza, everybody found lots and lots! Numerous (dozens) of flints , including scrapers, cores and microliths as well as cherts and other bits including someones’ false teeth. A highly successful stroll in the sun much to everybody’s surprise. Look forward to a long session of cleaning and cataloguing.
Thanks to Frank Addis for the above. I am sure more information will follow once we have had enough time to look through the finds – interestingly though it does seem as if the last field yielded many objects – one to think of in the future if possible. (Photos)
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Sunday 19th June 2011 Practice Dig
I do hope that all those members who managed to attend our practice dig at Raisbeck had an enjoyable day. The morning was spent learning the correct way to complete various essential pieces of paperwork to record our dig and after a swift lunch (and the rain ceasing) we got out onto the site to put in a couple of trenches. A few interesting finds – mostly pottery, a nice worked core (possibly agate) and a clog iron that had rusted away into the soil.
We will put up a more detailed description of the day when we have had time to look through all the information.
Thanks to Annie and Kelly for all their expertise; Rod for his metal detecting skills, Julie for the biscuits and Jan for just about everything else (I hope that Romney managed to get clean again!).
