The arts in early England (1903) (14761714716)

Identifier: artsinearlyengla03brow (find matches)
Title: The arts in early England
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Brown, G. Baldwin (Gerard Baldwin), 1849-1932 Webster, A. Blyth (Adam Blyth), 1882-1956 Sexton, Eric H. L. (Eric Hyde Lord), 1902-1980
Subjects: Art Architecture Architecture, Medieval Church architecture Crosses Decoration and ornament, Celtic Inscriptions, Runic
Publisher: London, J. Murray
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries



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amongabout 240 burials reported on, with only about a dozen excep-tions of which most were burials of children, the bodies werein the doubled up position.1 There are exceptional cases alsoin which the body has been found in the normally extendedposition but prone on its face and not as is almost always thecase on its back. Dismembered skulls have been found severaltimes either detached from the vertebral column of skeletonsto which they appear to belong and placed between the thighbones, as in some graves at White Horse Hill, Berks, or elseplaced in a grave as an adjunct to a complete skeleton, ofwhich the head is in the normal position. Plural interments,where two or more bodies are laid in the same receptacle, arenot uncommon, but the systematic disposal of corpses in acemetery in two or more layers one above the other is perhapsmore frequent abroad than in our own country, thoughinstances of it occur in the Anglo-Saxon region. This * super-1 Archaeologia, l, 385. XIV facing p. 155
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ARRANGEMENT OF THE GRAVES 155 inhumation, as it is called, is inevitable in the case of secondaryinterments in earlier barrows, but it is noticed also when bothlayers are Teutonic of the migration period. The possiblesignificance from the social point of view of all these phe-nomena will be noticed in the sequel (p. 188 f.) but theseare fascinating by-paths into which it is not advisable towander far. V. The arrangement and the forms of the graves. In cremation cemeteries the urns are generally found regu-larly placed in rows, as was the case at Sancton and Heworth,Yorks ; Newark and Kingston-on-Soar, Notts; Saltburn-on-Sea, Yorks, where they were arranged in parallel lines that rannorth and south and were about 6 yards apart ; and Ipswich,where five urns were in a single line about 1 ft. from eachother. This was not however always the case, for at Kettering no order had apparently been maintained,1 though the urnswere sometimes in groups ; and at Brighthampton, Oxford-shire, Akerman