THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

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INHUMATION, CREMATION, AND THE SOUL. 499
breadth and depth. These contained unbnrnt remains, and
when a single skeleton was found it
always lay with its feet to
the east^ In the Bronze period inhumation seems likewise to
have been the prevailing usage, but in a cemetery at St Prex
where thirty skeletons were found deposited in free earth,
and associated with some ornaments of the best period
of the Bronze Age, in the very same place and almost alternating
regularly with the free burials were urns containing
ashes and charcoal-.
Indeed M. Heierli has made it probable that even as early
as the transition period from Stone to Bronze cremation had
already come into use''.
Tacitus says that the Germans had no pomp
in their
funerals; "they simply observe the custom of burning the
bodies of illustrious men with certain kinds of wood. They do
not heap garments or spices on the funeral pyre. The arms of
the dead man and in some cases his horse are consigned to the
Hre. A turf mound forms the tomb. Moruiments with their
lofty elaborate splendour they reject as oppressive to the dead.
Tears and laments they soon dismiss: grief and sorrow but
It is held becoming for women to bewail, for men to
slowly.
remember the dcad^."
Modern discovery cori'ohoi-ates Tacitus, for though inhumation
was the custom of the Stone Age, cinerary urns have been
found ill numrrous localities in all
])arts of (jlermany''. We
know fiotii
Pi-ocopius" that the Heruli were civmating their
dead in the sixth centuiv A.D., and l)urning seems to have been
practised b\- tln' ( )lil Saxons till tlio r]\il of the ciglith ccntui'v,
for it was ])i'ohil)iti'(l ])y
an (Mlict of (
'harlemagne, A.D. 7So.
In Dcniiiaik, the land of the ('ind)i-i, inhumation seems to
ha\(' been invariable in the Stone Al;c. the body being bui'ied
in a coiitracteij |(osture.
Thus in Jutland the skeleton of a
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500 INHUMATION, CREMATION, AND THE SOUL.
woman was found with its legs bent up, its arms crossed, and
the head towards the west But cremation seems to have been
by far the most frequent, if not the universal practice, during
the Bronze Age\
In the early Iron Age of Denmark inhumation had steadily
reasserted itself
Cremated remains are never found in gravemounds,
as in the preceding age, but in the sides of old
barrows and natural eminences. Yet common cemeteries with
urns containing burnt bones are not uncommon, as in
Germany
and Anglo-Saxon England at the same period. The urns
discovered in one near Schleswig were like those found in
Anglo-Saxon cemeteries'-.
In one cemetery where forty graves contained skeletons,
the dead had been laid at full length from south to north, the
heads being to the south-'.
Prof Montelius holds that the Bronze Age of northern
Europe began about B.C. loOO, and that the oldest bronze
objects are always found in graves with unburnt bodies, whilst
those of the later part of the same period are always associated
with cremated remains.
That the graves with unburnt bodies are earlier than those
with burnt bones is
probable from the fact that " when, as
fre(|uently happens, both occur in the same barrow, the former
are always found at the bottom, while the latter occur higher
up and nearer the edges of the barrow: they nnist therefoi-e
have been placed there later'*."
As Montelius dates the end of the Bi-onze and the beginning
of the Iron Age in the North at about ]'..('. 500, it is probable
that cremation must have l)egun in at least some parts of that
area i'-.c
by 1200.
But we shall soon see that in Swede'U cremation was
])ractieallv contiiieil to the nobles, tlu' mass of the people always
inhuming
theii- dead. The eenu'teries of J'^rieslaiid yii'ld cinerarv
urns similar to those of Denniai'k and (^'ruiany.
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