The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

The Earlier Bronze Age
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buttons (of material from Whitby, Yorkshire), the East Anglian flint dagger and the Wessex chalk
artefacts found with the body of the adult male in the main burial (Figure 5.1 0b) indicate the
range of these extensive social contacts. Additionally, his bones were disarticulated and his mandible
was missing, suggesting that the body had not been buried until long after death. When buried in
the mound, his remains were placed in a wooden chamber with evidence of a timber superstructure,
possibly a shrine or viewing platform. A second burial of an adult (also probably male), in a
separate primary grave, was equipped with only a bone needle (Figure 5.10c).
In the Irthlingborough barrow, the man’s Beaker, knife, arrowhead, wristguard, jet buttons,
amber ring and assortment of other artefacts support the evidence for a very large funeral that
might be accorded to a man of considerable standing and a family or kin group of substantial
influence. Yet not all archaeologists would consider this burial to be the most affluent Beaker
grave so far discovered. Others, such as the burial at Barnack, Cambridgeshire, or that from
Culduthel, Inverness-shire, are associated with small items of goldwork, such as buttons and
basket-shaped earrings, stone wristguards with gold studs, daggers with gold pommels, or stone
battle axes. How we avoid imposing our own values about precious metals is, of course, problematic.
A small amount of goldwork has come from a group of burials from 2200–1900 BC mainly from
the Wessex area, known as Wessex I (separate from the later Wessex II group of 1700–1500 BC
which is also associated with bronze daggers, stone battle axes and beads of amber and faience
but not with gold), and first described as the ‘Wessex culture’ by Piggott in the 1930s. The most
impressive of the Wessex I burials are the Norman ton Down group, just south of Stonehenge,
especially the Bush Barrow with its gold lozenge, stone mace, three large bronze daggers (one
with a pommel inlaid with thousands of tiny gold pins) and a ‘baton’, all associated with the
corpse of an adult man. Other assemblages containing gold artefacts are known from over 25
locations, notably the Clandon barrow in Dorset, and the Lockington barrow in Leicestershire (a
large bronze dagger, two gold armrings and two pots found without human remains on the edge
of an empty burial mound). There are close similarities with the Kernonen burial and others
across the Channel in Brittany (Clarke et al. 1985, 129–135). For many archaeologists, these
assemblages indicate the existence of chiefs; the Bush Barrow man was even suggested as the
architect of Stonehenge until the monument was redated. However, other interpretations are
possible. The burying of this personal wealth may actually have prevented the accumulation of
hereditary power, and funerals such as Irthlingborough may have acted to disperse and destroy
wealth, represented by cattle, in return for personal or family honour and prestige. Perhaps the
point was not to keep wealth but to be seen to dispose of it in extravagant gestures at funerals
and other ceremonies. Whereas certain archaeologists have considered these burials to have been
the products of chiefdom societies in which hereditary elites coerced tribal groups into erecting
monuments like Stonehenge (Fleming and Renfrew in Renfrew 1973), there is an equally plausible
case for a kin-based, broadly egalitarian yet competitive society, ordered by fine gradations of
rank and status and motivated by honour and self-aggrandizement, in which heredity played a
less significant role (Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998, 322–3).
Other inferences about social structure from funerary deposits can be made from grave goods
and from the relative placing of human remains in burial mounds. Some of the grave goods can
be divided on gender lines to suggest that there was a certain division of labour between men and
women, symbolized in death. Whilst male graves contain arrowheads, daggers, wristguards, belt
rings, amber buttons, flint or stone axes and fire-making tools, female graves are associated with
shale and jet beads and the majority of awls and antler picks or hoes; certain items (flint blades,
earrings and pebble hammers) are equally shared. Whereas daggers, ornaments and small tools
were regularly placed in graves, other items were generally deposited elsewhere. Metal axes,
spearheads and halberds are found invariably in boggy contexts as hoards or single finds. These