Ancient and ArchaeologyÌý permalink
A grave question
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by RyanO (U8918008) on Friday, 22nd August 2008
Visited Newgrange recently, excellent job but as one wag commentated ‘couldn’t they have built it closer to the M1’. Anyway a question I was wondering about but which I’d forgotten to the ask the guide was whether there were any similar passage graves in England?
A quick google threw up this list which shows sites in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Britany but not in England. If this is the case then surely it is a very interesting question: were the builders related (tribal, religious, by trade etc) in some way, and were they a separate religion (or whatever) to those from what we now know as England? -
Message 2
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Saturday, 23rd August 2008
Hi RyanO,
A difficult set of questions for which there are probably no certain answers.
It is true that passage graves like Newgrange are found in 'Atlantic Europe'. Other famous examples being Masehowe, Orkney and Bryn Celli Ddu, Anglesey (both of which I have visited) and Carnac, Brittany (which I have not). The English Neolithic equivalent, if I can use this expression, must be the stone chambered Long Barrows like West Kennet, Weylands Smithy and Belas Knap. These are not covered in roughly circular mounds of earth or stone however.
It is important to remember that these monuments must have contained only a tiny fraction of the dead. The Neolithic equivalent of a burial in Westminster Abbey perhaps. For all we know the funerary rite for more ordinary members of society may have been identical throughout Britain and Ireland.
Secondly we must beware of imposing a modern classification on our remote ancestors. Perhaps the 'vital' part of the ceremony was choral singing not the architecture. Imagine our remote descendants trying to classify football stadia if they had no concept of the game played in them. Their conclusions would be incomplete to say the least.
I'd be wary of using the word 'religion' in a Neolithic context. You can make a reasonable case out for ancestor regard and a sense of place and landscape, but there is really no evidence of the worship of transcendent beings.
Having said all this the sea routes to Britain do fall rather naturally into a western route (Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Wales, Atlantic Scotland) and a Central and Eastern route (Denmark, Germany, Low Countries, England, S. Scotland). So elements of true cultural difference may exist.
Ireland was culturally rather advanced in this period. It seems to have entered the Neolithic before the rest of Britain and some years ago Nordmann (I believe) pointed out that copper mining occurred earlier in Ireland than the rest of Britain. At this period, if the Amesbury Archer is corrected interpreted, copper technology may have been introduced separately into southern Britain from central Europe.
TP -
Message 3
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Saturday, 23rd August 2008
Your google might have been a bit too quick RyanO. England boasts quite a few passage graves. West Kennet, near Avebury in Wiltshire, has one of the most impressive of its type (referred to in England as "long barrow") and which was found to have housed the interred remains of up to 50 people at a time - more, if cremated remains were accommodated. It is roughly contemporary with Newgrange.
In fact parts of England are dotted with such barrows, and while not all of them contain a chamber, this may be just a failing in the traditional application of the terminology rather than an indication that such chambered mounds were not as meaningful to their builders as Bru-na-Boinne to its. Soil analysis within the non-chambered barrows has given rise to speculation that in fact many of these had also once housed significant artificial voids constructed of wood rather than stone which had long ago collapsed. A case of technology outstripping durability (we still live with THAT curse!).
I was in Newgrange myself two weeks ago - first time in 20 years - and I was mildly disappointed by the interpretative centre's take on everything. It hadn't been there last time I was.
The Board of Works guide however pleased me immensely when she began her talk outside with the warning that what you're seeing facade-wise owes more to Michael J O'Kelly's imagination than his otherwise utterly scrupulous and still impressive archaeological expertise. She also made the point that it is not the oldest known, the best aligned regarding the winter solstice, nor the best preserved internally - all untruths that used to be peddled to visitors in the past. -
Message 4
Posted by RyanO (U8918008) on Sunday, 24th August 2008
‘England boasts quite a few passage graves’
Aha, so the difference is in terminology, should have known!
Yes I agree with the façade point which is still argued over, it certainly makes for an impressive structure. It occurred to me hat the Pyramids were also gleaming white in their original state and perhaps the intention could have been the same.
If another approach had been taken and the white stone used as a type of ceremonial paving I think just as many people would have questioned it, so O’K was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. At the end of the day he was the archaeologist involved and he saw the stone in its original position so he was best to judge and at the end of the day no one will ever really know what the builders intended… -
Message 5
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Sunday, 24th August 2008
Or even that we should refer to "the builders" as if it was constructed in one big project. Aerial photography revealed years ago that a broad, presumed ceremonial, avenue led directly from Newgrange down to the river and the extant smaller mounds (an impressive network in any case) might have been part of an even larger and more intricate network of sites bordering this route. If that was the case it supports the theory that the site developed over many generations and the importance of the ceremonial axis route might well indeed that the archaeologist guessed wrong.
But you're right - even now, after almost 50 years of intensive study and evidence gathering, it's all still in the realms of conjecture. -
Message 6
Posted by Philip25 (U11566626) on Monday, 25th August 2008
Were they graves, or places where bodies were placed until they had rotted?
If so they may have been used over many generations for certain families or classes of people.
The Spanish royal family have such rooms at El Escurial where those who will eventually rest in urns in the royal vaults are left for a considerable time until the flesh etc has decomposed.
In other cultures bodies are left in the open until the skeleton has been picked clean by birds.
Sorry if this sounds gruesone!!
Phil -
Message 7
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Monday, 25th August 2008
Hi philip,
The gruesome stuff is what the living do to the living; not what they do to the dead. Also it’s really important to remember that in Britain up to the medieval period only a small fraction of the total number of body disposals are represented in the archaeological record. It is always possible to argue that what does remain is highly atypical. Moreover Mesolithic and earlier burials are very rare.
In the Neolithic it is believed that ‘excarnation’ was practiced. The burials are of disarticulated bones, which suggests that the dead were left for the flesh to rot off in mortuary enclosures (similar to the modern Parsi Towers of Silence). After a period the bones were carefully sorted and stored which suggests collective rather than individual interment.
It is not known on what basis individuals were selected to be moved to communal burial sites - the Long Barrows, Passage Graves and Chambered tombs. Portions of up to 50 skeletons have been identified. The forecourts of many of the tombs have firepits, hearths and post-holes which hints at a third stage of funerary ritual. There is apparent chronological and regional variation in Neolithic chambered tombs. Long-barrows are typical of the south. Stone chambered tombs occur in the north & west; megalithic tombs occur mainly in the Highland zone.
Grave goods in attended burials represent what the living thought would be important to the dead. Goods are rare in megalithic tombs and long barrows. In is estimated that only 1/10 have beads, necklaces, pendants or pottery bowls. This minimal provision of grave goods are suggests no sense of provision for an afterlife. Possibly rebirth into this world was assumed; the entrance passages into chambered tombs do seem to resemble the birth canal.
TP -
Message 8
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Monday, 25th August 2008
A South African immigrant in Ireland is currently annoying all of academia with a book that asserts that the bones found in Newgrange were remains of wild animals' victims when the former were using teh delapidated structure as a lair in the early Bronze Age period. That the man is not a professional archaeologist (I think he's a retired fitter or something) is only adding fuel to the flames of scorn as his book slowly acquires greater readership.
I think he's dead wrong too (pardon the pun) but it is SO refreshing to hear someone else posit the sacrilegous theory that dismissing these amazing structures as "graves" (just because they had a subterranean element) might not be a good thing at all, however reverentially. Presently much is assumed about attitudes to death in the megalithic period on very scanty evidence, which in turn begins to be accepted as undeniable truth. A bit of tail feather ruffling has excited others into the fray. Can't be a bad thing. -
Message 9
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
What an intriguing theory. I can see that someone more familiar with the African Palaeolithic might advance it. What predators were present during the Irish Neolithic; wolves of course, and perhaps bears?
Presumably you would look for evidence from the selectivity of bone survival, and for gnaw marks. Predators are somewhat selective in the damage that they do to the skeleton. Your message made be appreciate that I've always assumed that Neolithic mortuary enclosures were so constructed as to give protection for the bodies from animal interference; but I don't know that for a fact.
This type of discussion has occurred elsewhere. In Orkney the Isbister chambered cairn - best known today as the Tomb of the Eagles - contained sea-eagle bones; initially these were regarded as cult objects of the founders. Radiocarbon dating showed them to be old, but a millennium younger than the human skulls contained in the tomb. I have heard it said that the eagles were simply using the tomb as a lair, but if this were indeed the case you would expect a large range of dates. When the RSPB reintroduced the Norwegian sea-eagle to the Western Isles I don't think that they looked for Neolithic tombs to place them in!
TP -
Message 10
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
By the time Newgrange came under close archaeological scrutiny it had been open to all and sundry for nearly two hundred years (the void was originally rediscovered in the post-Cromwellian decades when the new landlord targeted the site as a quarry). So you can imagine the corruption of data that pertained.
Unfortunately the uncremated bones found in the serious digs of the 1960s were totally fragmented (apart from those belonging to three dogs). Amazingly, I have never heard of any attempt to carbon date these finds though they are owned, as far as I am aware, by the National Museum. I'll check that out though - I could be wrong. -
Message 11
Posted by petes (U3344676) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
Nordmann – I don’t know if they’ve ever radio carbon dated the Newgrange finds but they have carbon dated the Belas Knap finds. These consisted of some 30 plus individuals with skulls (all ‘long head’ type) found in the three chambers plus an adult skull (round head type) and child remains found buried under the portal stone behind the false entrance.
Rick Schulting, a researcher from Cardiff University, was keen to establish an absolute date for the skulls from Belas Knap, and in December 2000, a series of samples were taken for carbon dating to the Oxford Research Laboratory. The results range from around 4000 to 3700 BC, largely consistent with results from other Cotswold-Severn tombs. However, the date for the round-headed skull placed under the portal stone lies towards the middle of this cluster of dates - which is more than a millennium earlier than the round-headed skulls found in Beaker graves. This has caused a mystery since other than this single instance, Beaker remains have never been found in Neolithic long barrows since they are believed to originate around a 1000 years later. -
Message 12
Posted by TwinProbe (U4077936) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
Hi Nomdegloom,
Belas Knap is a fascinating site but like Newgrange it has been subject to some reconstruction in modern times. I wish we could attach images to these postings!
But are you sure that yours is the correct interpretation of the skull dates, or have I missed the point?
Surely the radiocarbon studies indicated that the long-headed and round-headed skulls were 'contemporary' and Neolithic. This means that now it is not necessary to postulate a secondary burial of a 'Beaker' body (of the early Bronze Age) into a Neolithic long barrow to explain the findings.
The remaining puzzle is do the long-headed and round-headed individuals represent different groups, and why is it usually 'long-heads in long-barrows'? If funding were available it would be interesting to perform stable isotope studies on the teeth to establish where, in Britain or Europe, the skulls spent their childhood!
TP -
Message 13
Posted by RyanO (U8918008) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
I was explaining Newgrange to the kids as a kind of cathederal, or a place to worship, rather than a grave... -
Message 14
Posted by Philip25 (U11566626) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
I sometimes think we need to clear our minds of all modern parallels when trying to understand these places.
For instance if we think of Versailles of buckingham as "palaces" does that get in the way of our understanding Knossos? (Which has been explained as a necropolis with the famous "baths" actually being coffins - whether it was believable or not it certainly made one question.)
Is it not better rather to try to understand the culture and then try to see the artefact or building/construction against that background. It might lead to different assumptions.
Much a ancient Egypt (as i perceiev it) has been explained in terms which relate to classical times - Roman or Greek values, assumptions, terminology and archetypes. I increasingly find it easier to understand Egyptian civilisation by reference to sub-Saharan African parallels.
Are we right to use terms like "king", "queen", "priest" or even "god" all of which (I think) make us think immediately of such things in more recent periods and usages?
It is clear to me that ancient Egypt with its magic, sexually-related ceremonials; harems and fan bearers etc is much more likely to have been akin to some of the arrangements seen perhaps even now in West Africa.
I don't know whether what I have said is helpful to this debate or not!!
Phil -
Message 15
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
RyanO - I'm glad to hear that you're not feeding the kids the usual line in any case. If it makes them curious about the notion of "worship" as it could ever apply in a religious system which - if it was like its presumed slightly later manifestation in Nordic lands - placed duality as a principle ahead of all personified deity, then you have provided them with a true gift for which they will hopefully have reason to be grateful for in time.
The solar and lunar cycles, as an extension of that expression, were known to have been the basis of one of the first documented supernatural belief systems and Ireland may not have been any different at the time. Then again, we just don't know - what we do know however is that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the archaeological record that suggests supernatural belief at all, except what we ascribe from an assumption that its prevalence now suggests it must also have applied then.
Phil - your comments on Knossos mirror my own thinking exactly. A much discredited (but never disproved) theory emerged in the late 70s from a geologist Wunderlich whose own study of Knossos - based on materials used, design etc - blew apart the cosy notion of Arthur Evans which is still (amazingly) the official line fed to tourists. Since then, and never ever with a nod in his direction as being one of the first to have had the courage to publicise such views, reputable archaeologists have slowly begun to adopt many of his observations as self-evident assumptions. The so-called "plumbing" for example, constructed of soft gypsum, could never have been intended for regular use as a liquid carrier. The "baths" (over 200 of them were found in pieces by Evans near the complex entrance - were Minoans SO hygienic?) echo the design and material used in the construction of sarcophagi found elsewhere in Crete, in parts of Egypt, and even as far east as Mesopotamia, and were used to inter corpses bound in a foetal position - an acknowledged intention of the part of the cultures who practised this custom to invoke the notion of new birth for the individual. Finally (and to anyone who has visited the site described as a palace something that must have struck them immediately) the organic and haphazard proliferation of interconnecting chambers which Evans called after a European palace's features, but which echo later developments throughout the Middle East where such necropoli continued to be used over generations.
A wooden model of Knossos, palatially symmetrical and evocative of Versailles, based on Evans own projection, was once available for viewing in the now closed Iraklion museum. Wunderlich, in one of the best chapters in his book, explains from an engineering viewpoint how unlikely it was that this structure could ever have actually stood under its own weight, let alone existed outside Evans' imagination - even given the materials that Evans was forced to conjecture might have been used (since annoyingly for Evans he never found strong weight-bearing vertical supports though he sought after them obsessively). Wunderlich's view was that, like the pyramids to an extent, the structure at all stages of its existence must have been covered with earth to a large extent, and chambers constructed in the open became converted into subterranean entities as the layers and extensions were applied over time.
Suddenly Theseus and his descent into a labyrinth becomes a plausible interpretation and a representation of later Macedonian grave robbing amidst the ruins of a giant structure dedicated to death (a concept largely alien to their own culture) and struggling to fathom the purpose and origin of an architecture and construction technique beyond their own ability. It is no wonder that those who returned with the goods were considered heroes, and felt they had indeed stepped into a realm governed by the supernatural. -
Message 16
Posted by Philip25 (U11566626) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
Excellent post Nordmann. We clearly have a similar approach/vision.
I "lost" or lent my copy of the book years ago. Thanks for reminding me of the author's name.
"The Secret of Crete (or Knossos)" wasn't it?
Phil -
Message 17
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
"The Secret of Crete" was the book. I bought it years ago in Crete as an English translation and enjoyed it immensely. I was therefore surprised when someone in the Norwegian Archaeological Society told me that the Norwegian translation is a more faithful translation from the original German and weighs in at over twice the size content-wise. Having read the Norwegian version now I can only add that it's a far superior version to that which we both read.
Hans Wunderlich had actually died in 1974, some years before his book caused such a stir. In Nordic countries he was a man who enjoyed a considerable reputation already as an academic in the field of geological analysis of archaeological and historical sites, so his treatment of Knossos was really just an extension of that work. He would have been surprised at the furore it caused when it was translated into English, especially since it had by then long been accepted outside of Britain and the US as an authoritative work. The only criticism against his deductions up to then had been levelled against his assertion that the complex had been destroyed ultimately by grave robbers.
The British School in Athens, who see themselves as the guardians of Evans legacy as well as the sole excavators of the site, criticised almost every page however once the abridged English version came out and its popularity became established. They even began "vetting" North European archaeologists wishing to research in situ, giving them no access if they wished to research Wunderlich's theory, and this led to a flurry of academic papers from around these parts questioning the BSA's adherence to interpretations which were becoming more and more at variance with what even the BSA itself was saying about other Minoan settlements. In the late 80s, when US academics also joined the fray and questioned the BSA's policy, the tide began finally to turn in Wunderlich's favour.
His book was originally called "Where the bull carried Europe (Wohin der Stier Europa trug)" and concerned itself in its latter chapters with the transition from necropoli to monumental architecture in the eastern Mediterranean. That bit, which is much referenced even today academically, never made it into the abridged translation which we both bought. If the BSA had read it at the time they might well have reconsidered their initial approach of dissing the guy. -
Message 18
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
And apologies for saying "Macdonian" when I meant "Mycenaean" above. You know what I meant!
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Message 19
Posted by Jim Reuss (U10298645) on Tuesday, 26th August 2008
To divert the conversation a bit. do you think that this "guardians of Evans' legacy" attitude spills over into other areas of study to inhibit our understanding and perceptions of other ancient cultures as well, such as in Egyptology and biblical archaeology?
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Message 20
Posted by petes (U3344676) on Wednesday, 27th August 2008
Hi Twinprobe - I understand that current theory puts long barrows in the Neolithic between 4000 and 2400 BC and round barrows appear at the start of the Bronze age which is around 100 years later – also round barrows are associated with Beaker people – which in turn is associated with a 'round' skull morphology very different to the long skulls found in long barrows. Incidentally recent tooth enamel isotope research on bodies found in early Bronze Age round barrows around Stonehenge indicate that at least some of people were migrants from the area of modern Switzerland.
Long barrows are only ever found to contain long skulls and thus assumed to be an earlier race than Beaker people, thus the inclusion of a round skull in a long barrow can easiest be explained as a secondary burial but the original excavators of Belas Knap are definite that the round skull was not a secondary burial and the recent radio carbon confirms this. Possible explanations are that this round skull at Belas Knap is either a freak occurance or it’s a precursor of the Beaker people who were present around Belas Knap before previously thought. See this article from Archaeology Today (if the link is removed Google Belas Knap and take the 5th hit).
I was at Belas Knap two weeks ago – yes it is a reconstruction nevertheless you can still feel the ‘vibes’ of the place and the mound and the chambers are well kept. It’s quite a climb from the road but the views from the mound are terrific. -
Message 21
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 27th August 2008
That's a huge diversion j_reuss!
But I think that instances such as the British School of Athens attempting almost to enforce "copywright control" on all published theory relating to Knossos are very rare. There have always been theories that resisted challenge despite an increase in the volume and validity of the challenges being mounted (we are in the middle of such a debate now - its subject that of a "Celtic" hegemony in late Brone Age and early Iron Age Europe) but they tend to succumb eventually through attrition. In fact "succumb" is also too strong a term since elements of the old theory find application often in the new, so it can also be described as an evolution - albeit punctuated by often acrimonious debate.
It is rarely that a "whole new theory" comes along which potentially negates the "old theory" in any case. Egyptology, in fact, is a good example of how some of the oldest theories have benefited from having to resist such challenges from time to time (for some reason Egypt attracts a lot of agenda-driven supposition which attempts to contradict accepted knowledge). Some initial presumptions however have indeed been radically modified over the years, but almost always as a result of discoveries or decipherment from within what we might call "serious Egyptology", whose contributors draw very much on material produced by previous contributors in the same branch.
Obduracy in resisting reinterpretation, such as the BSA's in the case of Knossos in recent years, might exist on an individual level, but even that tends to excite discussion within the branch which itself produces an advance in knowledge. "Stand-offs" are very rare, and equally short-lived. -
Message 22
Posted by RyanO (U8918008) on Wednesday, 27th August 2008
Round or Narrow?
‘Rolleston believed the narrow-headed race to be weak, short in stature with poor brain development. He suggested that remnants of this race could still be seen among the Welsh and inhabitants of western Britain, being 'the black-haired type . . . feebler in development . . . and larger in skull form'. In Rolleston's version of prehistory, this race was swept away by the taller, stronger, broad-headed people with 'more favourably conditioned brains' who came from as conquerors from Scandinavia.’
I can see that going down well in Wales
I think I would subscribe more to this: ‘The division of skulls into types may just be a meaningless statistical ruse dreamt up by Victorians keen to legitimise racist theories.’ -
Message 23
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 27th August 2008
Tom Rolleston would never have been defined as an expert in any field, RyanO. And it's even debatable whether he actually "believed" some of the claptrap that he wrote. Half the time he was trying to shake off the (accurate) perception of him as a wannabe intellectual and bad poet, the other half he was just trying to stick one up WB Yeats, who he hated with a vengeance. Every time Yeats made a grand assumption about Ireland's "Celtic Inheritance" and popularised it in drama or poetry, Rolleston countered with an opposite theory - sometimes in poetry, sometimes in a new "translation" of an old legend which no one had ever heard of before, and sometimes as a mock scientific essay or book.
A charlatan of the first order - but then, so was Yeats to an extent. -
Message 24
Posted by petes (U3344676) on Wednesday, 27th August 2008
RyanO – I don’t think there’s much dispute that there is a definite division of long and round skulls identified with the different types of barrow and different ages (Neolithic/Bronze), however Rollastons crackpot theories of the ‘long skull’ race being weaker and defeated by the stronger ‘round skull’ race are exactly that, crackpot. His ‘theory’ is totally unsupported by evidence and because there’s an apparent gap of a a few hundred years between the two groups it does not seem likely this ever occurred.
We don’t really know what happened but it’s likely some climatic event occurred that caused the Neolithic people to abandon their territory which was then later on re-populated by Bronze age peoples. -
Message 25
Posted by Jim Reuss (U10298645) on Wednesday, 27th August 2008
While I'm not familiar with the roundhead/longhead discussion, it looks as though there could be an analogue from the new world. In the Mayan culture, I believe the ruling classes intentionally shaped the skulls of infants to elongate them. Could that be a ready explanation for finding two separate skull shapes at the same time - not different races, but different class markings?
-
Message 26
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Wednesday, 27th August 2008
The "debate" arose first in an era when phrenology was gaining credibility, especially amongst pseudo-scientists.
Even if broader and narrower skulls are found in close proximity and from a relatively contemporary timescale it means doodlysquat. One would find the exact same disparity were one to go to my local village's graveyard and dig up the McCanns and the McMahons from their family plots - and I am not aware of Ireland having been invaded by a super satient race any time in the last hundred years or so. -
Message 27
Posted by petes (U3344676) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
Long barrows are distinct and contained burial chambers made of stone or wood containing disarticulated bones of the dead. They were made by a Neolithic people around five thousand years ago. Round barrows are much smaller, roughly circular mounds of earth. They were created later than the long barrows by Bronze Age (Beaker) people. Some contained bones and skeletons but later ones contained cremated remains. While the long barrows contained multiple burials round barrows have individual burials or small numbers of remains. The round barrows also contained ‘grave goods’, such as beakers and daggers.
The evidence is there were two distinctly separate groups responsible for creating the wo different type of barrows – the early Neolithic people and the later bronze age Beaker people. The two are not contemporaneous, being separated by 100's of years.
One of the early barrow excavators was John Thurnam, a medical superintendent with a long involvement in archaeology and craniology. Based on his observations, Thurnam established his axiom, 'long barrows, long skulls; round barrows, round skulls'. The long skulls were only ever found in long barrows, while round skulls were only found in round barrows. There is nothing inherently racist in this reasoning – just that there were two separate peoples creating the different types of barrow. Victorian theorists like George Rollaston then developed these observations to conclude that the long skulled peoples were ‘weak’ and ‘short in stature’ with poor brain development.
Later on, moral aversion towards Victorian anthropology and its role in fascist ideology caused the argument over long and round skulls to be sidelined and suppressed. A more acceptable way to characterise the Bronze Age incomers was based on their material culture, including metalwork and Beaker pottery vessels.
In the 1990s, however, the archaeologist Neil Brodie revisited the craniological evidence and concluded that there was undeniably a difference between the shape of skulls from Neolithic long barrows and Bronze Age round barrows. A trend from long to round skull shape was clearly shown.
The puzzle at Belas Knap is the single round skull now known to be contemory with the Neolithic long skulls, as far as we know a unique event – how it could have happened seems to be a puzzle that remains unexplained. -
Message 28
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
Hi Nomdegloom - you may know more about Brodie's aptitude than I but I do remember the reports he published, originally with the BAA and which were published later by the University Press in Ireland, where I read them. They were by no means accepted by the archaeological community in Britain or Ireland as definitive studies if I recall, and the objection was not grounded in any "moral distaste" but in the fact that he had used a lot of data as source that had long been discredited without actually studying the material on which that data had been based - a lot of which is no longer available in any case.
Others who have written on the subject, such as Mark Edmonds, Julian Thomas and Richard Bradley, have all warned against falling into the trap that Brodie seemed to have done, and Caroline Malone (whose Neolithic Britain is a very good book) actually cites Brodie's reports as a spur to investigate for herself what the record shows.
According to Malone the long/round skull disparity was never so great or so marked as early theory of the transition between Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain tended to require. In fact it isn't even a good "rule of thumb" since there are so many instances (not just one, as you say) where the finds were inconclusive or actually contradictory, but where they were nevertheless claimed to be supportive of the theory. For this reason those many finds which now are not available for verification must be discounted and any theory of racial infiltration be based on those which are extant and verifiable. The only possible conclusion from these so far is that nothing is certain, except of course that supposed phrenological patterns cannot be used to suggest anything.
That is not to say that there was not a demgraphic in play which saw the original inhabitants of Neolithic Britain and Ireland become minorities within communities of later arrivals who "took over" in the early Bronze Age. There is a very good probability that something along these lines really did happen. It is just that skull records don't tell us what we need to know. -
Message 29
Posted by petes (U3344676) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
Hi Nordmann – I bow to your greater knowledge - thanks for information re Blaine (no I don’t have any further insight on him, I’m just an enthusiastic amateur (a little knowledge etc) with a son who’s studying archaeology at Uni. We did a 2 day ‘tour’ of several Gloucestershire barrows a couple of week ago, hence my interest.
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Message 30
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
I'm jealous, Nomdegloom. Best of luck to your son, by the way - forging any type of a career in the field he's chosen is bloody difficult. I wish him well!
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Message 31
Posted by petes (U3344676) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
Thanks Nordmann - correction I should have said Brodie not Blaine (Doh!)
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Message 32
Posted by NCH (U9519230) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
Nordmann,
to quote "...I am not aware of Ireland having been invaded by a super satient race any time in the last hundred years..."
Satient? Created some worrying images in my mind. Surely sapient? Or are you talking about the skull cavity capacity? I had Irish gonads on my mind for a while, back there.
Either way, Ireland is free of these beings as they've all emigrated to Norsk surely? -
Message 33
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
That's typos for you, NCH - I of course had intended typing "salient"!
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Message 34
Posted by Jim Reuss (U10298645) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
Nordmann - Your display of humor surprised me, and now I am having difficulty not envisioning Irish and Norse gonads in satyric and satient proportions. I am attempting to transfer gender identification to female, however.
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Message 35
Posted by an ex-nordmann - it has ceased to exist (U3472955) on Thursday, 28th August 2008
I am attempting to transfer gender identification to female, however.
Ìý
I wish you luck in your venture. I believe others have done the same thing and say they never looked back!
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