On an ancient British burial at Ilderton, Northumberland, with notes on the skull / by W. Greenwell and D. Embleton.

  • Greenwell, William, 1820-1918.
Date:
[1865?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On an ancient British burial at Ilderton, Northumberland, with notes on the skull / by W. Greenwell and D. Embleton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ON AN ANCIENT BRITISH BURIAL AT ILDERTON. XIII.— On an Ancient British Burial at Ilderton, Northumbei - ‘land, with Notes on the Skull. By the Rev. W. Greenwell, M.A., and D. Embleton, M.D. (Plates XIII, XII •) The district where the discovery was made, an account of which is now laid before our Society, is one peculiarly rich in various remains of the tribes which occupied Northumberland, before and at the time of the Roman invasion. Fortified places are found upon almost every hill end. At Old Bewick, close to the fine camp there, is a rock, covered with the circular markings mysterious symbols, which have as yet eluded any solution of their meaning; whilst, from time to time, numerous discoveries of burials, both of burnt and unburnt bodies, associated, m many cases, with sepulchral urns and other articles, testify to the large population, which, in former ages, dwelt along the fertile valley of the Till. After an examination of many places of sepulture of British times, and from a careful study of this subject, we may come, without much doubt, to the conclusion, that, as a rule, during the later British times, the ordinary mode of inter- ment was by inhumation. In the earlier*- part of the bionze period the body was usually burnt, the bones being then enclosed in an urn, a small cist, or a circular hollow sunk in the natuial surface of the ground, or simply placed upon the ground, in each of these cases a barrow being afterwards raised over the remains. But though this was the ordinary mode, burials by inhumation arc found so intimately associated with burnt bodies as to prove that both modes were sometimes practised at the same period, and by the same tribe. The reason of these diverse manners of burial is at present unknown, but it is quite possible that, by fur- ther examination, we may be able to arrive at some just conclu- sion on the point. Burial after cremation seems to have been replaced, in the main, by burial by inhumation, a practice which * There is reason to suppose that, before the period during which the body was burnt, there was an earlier one, when the body was interred in the flesh; but it is most probable that this was practised by a different race, to whom the use of metal was unknown.