Rituals of Death: From Prehistoric Times to Now

By Stan Beckensall

We all must die, and how society deals with the disposal is fascinating in the way it reflects the beliefs of the people of the time and ways in which they honor or do not honor the dead. Having excavated prehistoric burials, the author weighs carefully the evidence of what people might have thought of the dead through the way they buried them and what was put into the graves. These excavations were done mainly with the help of young people, and the way that this has been organised in order to get the maximum information has been an essential part of the task. The author provides much detail of this that makes it more interesting and personal.

Burial customs change, so the book includes a section on events such as the Black Death and cholera to show how such catastrophes change people's minds and customs.

The present problem of burial has been highlighted as it was then by the horror of an invisible disease, the effects of which we have to cope with. In the past the causes of the disease, when discovered, led to Public health inquiries into the causes, and to improvements in some burial grounds. The traditional burial in “God's little Acre' around a church provides with much information about people through their headstones and other monuments – something accessible to all who visit our churches today, and examples from Northumberland give a typical range of what we find there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Feb 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781399098380

Stan Beckensall

Dr Stan Beckensall is a writer and archaeologist, as well as an honorary Doctor of Letters of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His work on the prehistoric period and rock art is appreciated worldwide. He is also an expert on many aspects of the history of Northumberland, and has produced a number of books on the county.

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DETAILED LANDSCAPES

We begin with some landscapes in Britain that have a concentration of monuments, the purpose of which was to lay claim to the land and to give parts of that landscape a special function in rituals involving the dead.

The Ring of Brodgar is part of this complex and is one of the largest in Britain.

Orkney

The Ness of Brodgar is a strip of land that contains very impressive monuments. The soil is fertile, and the underlying sedimentary rocks split conveniently into slabs that provide excellent building material. Any tree covering has long gone. There is a succession of monuments here, including the recently-excavated site of a walled enclosure containing very well-constructed buildings with finds that place it beyond ordinary domestic buildings, yet echo them.

Prehistoric people did not necessarily see a difference between secular and spiritual: each place in the land had a special ethos, and some places were often enclosed or marked off, set apart, perhaps to denote their claims to that part of the land. Sites such as henges or cursuses show a circular and linear means of enclosure. We do not know what rituals were carried out in them, but they had a visual importance that laid claim to the land and stressed its importance, particularly when people were buried there.

The large chambered tomb of Maes How is a triumph of construction, built to house the community dead. Built about 5,000 years ago, it is older than the pyramids of Egypt. The tomb, built of local stone that lends itself to skilled domestic and monumental building, lies close to other important monuments on Orkney, the standing stones of Brodgar and Stenness. It is entered by a long passage way that leads to side chambers for burials, found when it was cleared of earth and rubble. Characteristic pottery known as grooved ware which has distinctive decoration – flat-bottomed pottery with distinctive grooved patterns – which was used domestically was also found, similar to many other sites of the same period. It occurs widely in Britain. At the same time, the clearance of earth and stone in the chambers revealed linear Neolithic decoration on some of the stones, as well as Norse runes from when the mound was entered by Norsemen. It was excavated in 1861, but only horse bones and a piece of human skull were found. The mound is 35m across and over 7m high, its outer casing made of earth, clay and stones. The mound is built on a platform, around which was a ditch nearly 14m wide and 2m deep before 2,500 BC and a bank outside was added later. Although some tombs were used for single burials or new burial mounds were built, the lack of burials suggests that it may have been used in a different way.

The recently-excavated site is unusual in its complexity, and the range of finds within it adds to its special nature. The buildings are big and built to impress, and were probably centres for seasonal rituals. They were not built in one go, but are the result of many years of change. A building might collapse and the same site be built on, often on the middens created by others, which would give it a strong connection with the past. Continuity is again a strong factor in domestic and monumental building. This is an integrated landscape and not a series of separate monuments.

A strip of land links monuments, including the Ring of Brodgar, a large ditched circle that includes vertically-erected large stones of the natural rock, probably excavated from the ditch that surrounds them. The stones are very impressive in their stillness and brooding character, even without our knowing what actually went on inside it.

This was the last of the monuments to be built, and the building came to an end around 2,300 BC, probably due to climate change. Another circle seems to be based internally on the plan of a house, which combines the sacred with the domestic.

The massive cairn, Maes Howe, which dominates the skyline, is a remarkable structure with chambers for the dead, and was broken into by Vikings long after it was built. It is still accessible by a long, low, narrow passage that leads into a corbelled structure that has chambers that housed the dead. It is like a huge, man-made cave that demands awe and wonder. It is over 4,800 years old, and in its last phase it is 100 feet in diameter and 20 feet tall. On Orkney, at the Tomb of the Eagles, found in 1958, over 16,00 human bones were deposited, along with the remains of white-tailed