Gender issues

Contemporary studies commonly stress the belief that, even if sex is biologically determined, gender by contrast is a social and cultural construct (Sofaer and Sørensen, 2012). Even biological sex entails varying degrees of male and female attributes in terms of chromosomes and DNA if not in terms of reproductive organs, so that, contrary to the bipolar model of sex, contemporary studies of gender tend to think in terms of a spectrum that includes composite gender or a third gender that is neither male nor female in what Arnold (2006: 155) described as ‘a suprabinary gender system’. In the case of the Byzantine eunuchs or the Indian hijra cited by Croucher (2012: 174–5), these could be regarded as socially constructed, and it is not here suggested that such categories existed in Iron Age Britain or Europe. It is important, however, to be clear that conventional western sexual stereotypes and conceptions of gender roles in child-rearing, food production, and warfare, for example, need not have pertained in non-classical societies in antiquity. Gender issues in the study of funerary archaeology have gained a prominence in the last twenty years not simply as a result of theoretical considerations but also because of more intensive interest in osteological research, as a result of which there has been a greater recognition of the fact that identifying sex may involve evaluation of a spectrum of criteria rather than simple bipolar options. Though pelvic bones remain crucial to assessing sex, the skull and other major bones can also be indicative, and not infrequently the evidence remains equivocal, even where the skeleton is reasonably well preserved. Accordingly, some of the skeletons from the eastern Yorkshire cemeteries were deemed to show ‘contra’ indications, that is male and female characteristics in equal measure, in a gradation of assessment that also included ‘definite’, ‘probable’, and ‘possible’ identifications (Stead, 1991). Furthermore, though sex is biologically determined, osteology may be affected by cultural factors such as the degree of physical exercise that the individual habitually engages in, so that the criteria observed by the osteologist may suggest a physique normally associated with the opposite sex.

Social and ritual violence and death

In recent years the issue of violence in Iron Age society has become polarized between those who believe that it was endemic and those who believe that it has been exaggerated, particularly by conventional stereotypes of ‘warrior Celts’ based on classical and Irish literary sources. Currently, the ‘postprocessual consensus that dominates academic archaeology in the United Kingdom retains, as its default position, a more or less pacifist view of the prehistoric past’ (Armit, 2011: 503). The conventional interpretation of ‘war cemeteries’ and ‘massacre sites’ in hillforts especially may have been unduly simplistic, and it is these therefore that we shall consider first. The archetypal Iron Age war cemetery was that excavated by Wheeler (1943) in the eastern entrance at Maiden Castle, Dorset, where several skeletons bore traces of physical trauma compatible with the sack of the hillfort by Vespasian’s Second Augustan legion. An adult male in grave P7A had an iron arrow-head buried in his spine, and another adult male in grave P7 had a small, square perforation through the left temporal bone, consistent with a Roman ballista bolt. In some instances there were multiple injuries, notably skeleton P12 whose skull bore at least nine sword cuts, a measure of ‘overkill’ that reflected either the ferocity of the attack or systematic degradation after death. In reviewing the physical evidence for warfare in Iron Age Britain Knüsel (2005) divided instances of weapon trauma into three principal categories, those inflicted with a sharp-bladed weapon, such as a sword, those resulting from crushing from a blunt instrument, and wounds from a weapon or missile that penetrated the skeleton. The first two are essentially the same classification as those offered by Wheeler (1943: 351) for the Maiden Castle war cemetery. He too had raised the question whether the peri-mortem injuries apparent on some of the victims were the cause of death, or were inflicted after death.

Mortuary practices, problems, and analysis

Archaeological investigation is sometimes likened to opening a window on to the past. The problem is that, except in cases of unexpected and sudden disaster, for example where a shipwreck has been preserved untouched or a town was engulfed by volcanic ash, the archaeologist never examines a site as it was in its living heyday, only as it was after it had been abandoned, leaving only what survives of what its occupants chose to leave behind. Burials likewise represent only what communities chose to deposit for whatever reason, modified by taphonomic factors that determine the state of surviving evidence. Other ephemeral forms of disposal, and any elaborate or protracted rituals that preceded the final act of deposition that did not involve substantive structures, will pass unremarked in the archaeological record. It has been suggested in Chapter 1 that human remains may have been buried either in a dedicated cemetery where the dead were segregated or confined, perhaps in the equivalent of consecrated ground, or integrated within the environs of settlements, whether as complete or near-complete bodies or as fragmented parts or individual bones. A third option, of course, and one which would certainly contribute to the difficulty of tracing a regular burial rite archaeologically, would be segregated burial on an individual basis rather than in a community group, however small or selective. The concept of a cemetery assumes a degree of social cohesion in Iron Age practice which may not have been universal. An obvious question must be why should there have been these alternatives, and what might have governed the decision as to which alternative should be adopted? Ethnographic analogies suggest that the spirits of the dead could have been regarded as malevolent, more especially during the interim phase between death and completion of decomposition. So it might make sense to consign the dead directly to a dedicated cemetery that was detached from the settlement, or to confine them initially within a secure location, such as a hillfort, for excarnation or interim burial, before final disposal.

Communities of the dead

Burial monuments of the Neolithic and Bronze Age, individual or in cemeteries, were often located in topographically prominent positions, or in zones of concentration that might qualify as ‘sacred landscapes’. In the Iron Age by contrast it is not obvious what governed the choice of location for cemeteries and smaller burial grounds, whether they were sited in relationship to settlement or whether there were traditional locations dedicated to burial. For some of the eastern Yorkshire square-ditched barrow cemeteries Bevan (1999: 137–8) considered proximity to water may have been a factor. Dent (1982: 450) stressed the siting of Arras type barrows and cemeteries adjacent to linear boundaries and trackways, a factor that is very apparent in the linear spread at Wetwang Slack. Though we may distinguish burials that are integrated into settlements from those that are segregated into cemeteries, therefore, there is no implication that cemeteries were remote from settlements. In fact, the contrary is often demonstrably the case. There is some evidence that small cemeteries or burial grounds were located immediately beyond the enclosure earthworks of hillforts. At Maiden Castle, Dorset (Fig. 3.1; Wheeler, 1943), the picture is prejudiced by the dominance of the ‘war cemetery’ in the eastern entrance, but the reality is that there had been a burial ground just outside the ramparts well before the conquest. A possible parallel is Battlesbury, where Mrs Cunnington (1924: 373) recorded the discovery of human skeletons from time to time in a chalk quarry just outside the north-west entrance to the camp. Some of these were contracted inhumations, and apparently included one instance of an adult and child buried together. The attribution of a ‘war cemetery’ (Pugh and Crittall, 1957: 118 evidently refers to this external burial site, which should be distinguished from the burials excavated more than a century earlier by William Cunnington within the hillfort at its north-west end (Colt Hoare, 1812: 69). Iron Age inhumations were also found, just within the rampart circuit, at Grimthorpe in Yorkshire (Mortimer, 1905: 150–2; Stead, 1968: 166–73). One of these was the well-known warrior burial, found in 1868.

Conclusions

Most studies of Iron Age burial practices in Britain begin by recognizing that, with a few notable but limited exceptions, there is no recurrent and regular form of disposal of the dead for most of the first millennium BC. We have questioned whether this is a reasonable expectation, that there should be a regular funerary rite, or whether this is simply conditioned by contemporary religious or secular standards. More specifically, our expectation of a regular funerary rite involving the intact inhumation of the dead or the deposit or disposal of the cremated remains as an entity may not conform to regular Iron Age practice, in which it seems that fragmentation and dispersal may have been common. Is there any reason why a diversity of practices, more difficult to recognize archaeologically, should not have been deployed in prehistory, already perhaps long before the Iron Age when the absence of recurrent and regular cemeteries happens to register archaeologically as a conspicuous omission? The fact that in certain regions at certain times one particular mode of disposal predominates, or happens to leave conspicuous archaeological traces, may lead archaeologists to expect a measure of standardization of practice that does not represent the actual diversity of prevailing rites. The real issue, therefore, is not to explain the absence of a conspicuous or recurrent rite, but the basis of choice that made communities adopt various practices, burying some individuals or groups in graves or cemeteries, others in re-used grain storage pits, and disposing of the disarticulated remains of others in various locations around a settlement. A second question, however, is when did the disposal of the dead in Britain first take the form of cemeteries, the recurrent and regular form of which might encourage us to believe that the majority of the population was disposed of in this way? It would be easy to respond by saying that there are formal cemeteries in Neolithic long barrows and chambered tombs, but sacred landscapes like the Boyne valley in County Meath or the Kilmartin valley in Argyll suggest that these special tombs may have been for much more than disposal of the dead.

Animal burials and animal symbolism

Animal remains may be deposited archaeologically in a great variety of circumstances, many of which must reflect their role in the domestic and agricultural economy of Iron Age communities, and result from normal disposal of the residues of butchery or consumption. In some circumstances the reason for disposal will have been death through disease or misadventure. The case of the cow in pit 61 of the phase 3 settlement at Gussage All Saints (Wainwright, 1979) that apparently died in calving is a case in point, though it is not clear why this animal was not processed for consumption, and we may suspect that an inauspicious omen was inferred that may have resulted in some special act of deposition. Ritual killing of animals, nevertheless, has been attested throughout Europe from earliest prehistory to the medieval period (Pluskowski, 2011). In reviewing animal sacrifices among the Gauls, Méniel (1992) divided the evidence into three principal categories of deposits found in habitation sites, in cemeteries, and in sanctuaires. The special character of those found on sanctuary sites, or accompanying human burials, individually or in cemeteries, is implicit from context, but animal burials that may have been deposited ritually on habitation sites are more difficult to distinguish from other forms of domestic or agricultural discard. The key problem, of course, is distinguishing ‘special deposits’ from normal butchery waste, which itself may have been disposed of in a systematic but not ritually significant fashion, a notion that was first advanced by Maltby (1985b) in the context of the Winnall Down animal remains. Despite interest generated by the Danebury project in special treatment of animal remains, the majority of faunal material from the 1985–6 excavations at Maiden Castle (Sharples, 1991a) was interpreted as the product of animal husbandry for domestic consumption or secondary products. Even in the few instances in which a possible ritual dimension was conceded, the animal remains showed evidence of butchery, involving removal of skins and flesh and disarticulation of the skeletons. Special treatment in particular may have been accorded to dogs (Smith, 2006).

Focal and signal burials

The term ‘focal’ burial refers to burials that appear from spatial distribution within a cemetery to have acted as a focus for subsequent burials. They may be distinguished by their larger size or by the fact that they contain more lavish grave-goods. The term was used by Fitzpatrick (1997) to highlight certain larger or better-equipped graves at Westhampnett, though there was no unequivocal spatial relationship between the supposed ‘focal’ burials and others. At King Harry Lane, Verulamium (Fig. 3.18), Stead and Rigby (1989: 83) had identified several larger graves of phase 1 with more notable assemblages as central to ‘family’ clusters defined by their enclosure. The concept of family groups was challenged by Millett (1993), who nevertheless saw these ‘focal’ graves, whether enclosed or unenclosed, as potential ‘founders’ graves’ in socially allied units. There is no doubt that graves 241, 299, and 325 of phase 1, and possibly grave 148 of phase 2 and grave 41 of phase 3, stand out as candidates for founders’ graves within their compounds, whilst graves 272, 309, and possibly grave 93 could have been focal to unenclosed groups, or groups where the enclosure has not survived. It has to be acknowledged, however, that there are other larger or better-provided graves that stand in relative isolation and do not appear to have attracted subsequent satellite burials, though this hardly invalidates the concept in principle, especially in what must have been a period of social and political instability. The notion of a focal burial seems equally applicable to the late pre-Roman Iron Age cemetery at Owslebury (Fig. 5.1; Collis, 1968, 1994), where the burials were principally grouped within two adjacent enclosures. The central burial of the earlier of the two (grave 39) was the largest, and contained an extended inhumation with full warrior panoply of sword, spear, and shield, dating around the first half of the first century BC. The focal burial of the second enclosure (grave 10) was a cremation in an urn with lid and six accessory vessels.

Graves and grave-goods

It has been stressed that the archaeological remains of the dead in a formal grave represent only the final stage in what may well have been a protracted and complex series of stages in funerary ritual. From this final stage, however, the archaeologist is potentially able to make an informed assessment of several aspects of the prevailing funerary practice, notably: • the context of burial, whether individual, grouped, or collective; • its structure, whether simple pit, with or without coffin, cist, or more elaborate tomb with the provision of additional space for accompaniments; • the placement of the remains, whole or part, cremation or inhumation, in the latter case including factors such as orientation and posture; • the presence or absence of grave-goods, their intrinsic character, and their choreography within the burial area; • any adjacent features, such as remains of pyres or related structures that might reflect pre-depositional stages in funerary ritual; • any secondary episodes of activity, such as subsequent burials or ‘grave robbing’. There is an implicit assumption that cemeteries should be relatively compact groups of graves, with or without a defining enclosure boundary. In the case of a larger cemetery, it might even be possible from grave associations to determine that it expanded over time in one particular direction, as in the case of Wetwang Slack or in the classic instance at Münsingen. Some graves in larger cemeteries were collectively ordered in regular ranks, as at Rudston or Harlyn Bay, implying an informed rather than random pattern of expansion. Smaller burial grounds, however, perhaps used over a shorter period of time, may be dispersed, or in small clusters over a wider area, as at Adanac Park, Cockey Down, Melton, or Little Woodbury, making their recognition more difficult in the absence of widespread stripping. This pattern could arise if a family group, for example, was segregated from the next allowing for infilling over time, which may not have happened if the settlement served by the cemetery for some reason was abandoned. In present-day western society a grave is simply a place of burial, designed for the disposal and commemoration of the dead.

Dead among the living landscape

The discovery of human remains in both hillforts and settlements has a long archaeological history, whether whole or partial skeletons or simply individual bones and fragments, though the former were often dismissed as the atypical disposal of social outcasts or malefactors, and the latter were never satisfactorily explained as casual discards. The fact that complete or near-complete skeletons were found in pits that evidently had been designed for another purpose, together with the absence of grave-goods, militated against their interpretation as formal burials, and set these apart from those grouped burials in pits that we have treated as small cemeteries. As regards fragmentary remains, the idea that the dead were exposed for excarnation, possibly over a protracted period of time, is now well established in Iron Age studies. What happened after excarnation is less clear, whether the skeleton was reassembled and buried, either in a formal cemetery or in a settlement context, or distributed as body parts or individual bones in pits, ditches, entrances, or other locations around settlements. Alternatively, in ethnographic contexts it is not unknown for the dead to be interred in a temporary burial ground for a period of months or even years, whilst the process of decomposition took place, before exhumation and re-burial following a final funerary feast. That final stage of re-interment in the British Iron Age likewise could have involved complete or near-complete re-burial, or separation of body parts and their distribution into liminal locations, as a means of incorporating the benign dead into the living community. And hillforts might well have served as the location, not only for excarnation platforms, but for temporary burial as well. We should not, however, exclude other possible interpretations. As Duday (2006: 30) warned, ‘one must not presuppose a funerary context of all such deposits because certain intentional deposits of human remains have nothing to do with burial’. Necessarily, of course, researchers are dependent upon the quantity as well as the quality of the excavated data-base, particularly in terms of statistical assessments, and for this reason Danebury has tended to dominate recent studies.

Defining issues

The universality of human mortality is the commonest of truisms, but the prospect of mortality evidently has weighed differently on different societies over the course of human history, from the oppressive burden of the later Middle Ages to the more relaxed live-for-the-present-ism of the current generation. The disposal of the dead is at basis a hygienic necessity that is recognized in all but the most socially disrupted circumstances, but the manner of disposal may reveal attitudes of society towards death and the concept of afterlife, or the role of the dead in the continuing life of the community. Even in our contemporary secular society, relatives of the victims of murder or abduction or of death in foreign parts crave the recovery of bodies for due burial, without which they apparently cannot ‘achieve closure’, a condition of grace that might have been considered essential to the dead, but which evidently matters equally to the bereaved. The discipline of archaeology is methodologically disposed to distort the reality of the past in that it seeks to recognize ordered patterns where in reality diversity and apparent irrationality must have been inherent. The keystone of Childe’s approach, the identification of archaeological cultures, was dependent upon recurrence of diagnostic types in association, which would permit the comparison of one cultural assemblage with another in time or space. Even in processual and post-processual approaches the essence is to reduce the ever-burgeoning data-base to some semblance of order, without which it is impossible for interpretation to proceed, other than intuitively, empathically, or experientially, that is, based upon imaginative reconstruction rather than being inferred, however inadequately, from archaeological data. The consequence of this process of classification has been to emphasize certain outstanding classes of data, like long barrows, stone circles, or hillforts, as typical of their period or region, at the expense of a subtler analysis of the many possible variations of settlement or burial sites that are detectable, even from the surviving archaeological record. In recent years there has been a significant shift in archaeological approaches to burial data.