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Durham Research Online Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 18 October 2018 Version of attached le: Published Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Caswell, E. and Roberts, B.W. (2018) 'Reassessing community cemeteries : cremation burials in Britain during the Middle Bronze Age (c. 16001150 cal BC).', Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society., 84 . pp. 329-357. Further information on publisher's website: https://doi.org/10.1017/ppr.2018.9 Publisher's copyright statement: c The Prehistoric Society 2018. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, page 1 of 29 © The Prehistoric Society. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1017/ppr.2018.9 Reassessing Community Cemeteries: Cremation Burials in Britain during the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600–1150 cal BC) By EDWARD CASWELL1 and BENJAMIN W. ROBERTS1 The Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600–1150 cal BC) in Britain is traditionally understood to represent a major funerary transition. This is a transformation from a heterogeneous funerary rite, largely encompassing inhumations and cremations in burial mounds and often accompanied by grave goods, to a homogeneous and unadorned cremation-based practice. Despite a huge expansion in the number of well excavated, radiocarbon dated, and osteologically analysed sites in the last three decades, current interpretations of Middle Bronze Age cremation burials still rely upon a seminal paper by Ellison (1980), which proposed that they comprise and represent an entire community. This paper analyses 378 cremation sites containing at least 3133 burials which represent all those that can be confidently dated to the Middle Bronze Age in Britain. The new analysis demonstrates that relatively few sites can be characterised as community cemeteries and that there are substantially more contemporary settlement sites, though few contemporary settlements are in close proximity to the cemeteries. The identifiable characteristics of cremation-based funerary practices are consistent across Britain with little evidence for social differentiation at the point of burial. It is also evident that only a minority of the population received a cremation burial. There is a substantial decrease in archaeologically visible funerary activity from the preceding Early Bronze Age (c. 2200–1600 cal BC) and a further decrease in the proceeding Late Bronze Age (c. 1150–800 cal BC) in Britain. This is comparable in form, and partially in sequence, to Bronze Age funerary practices in Ireland and several regions in North-west Europe. Keywords: Middle Bronze Age, Britain, cremation, burial, cemeteries, communities, radiocarbon dating The Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600–1150 cal BC)in Peebleshire (Jobey 1980); and Black Patch, East Sussex Britain is characterised in broad archaeological nar- (Drewett 1982) in close proximity to contemporary ratives by the major expansion of settlements and settlements has encouraged interpretations that they bronze and gold metalwork hoards throughout contain entire communities from these nearby settle- Britain, as well as the construction of field systems in ments (eg, Bradley 1981; 2007, 185; Darvill 1996, central and southern England (Darvill 1996, 108–32; 116–17; 2010, 222). The interpretation that Middle Bradley 2007, ch. 4; Yates 2007; Cunliffe 2013, Bronze Age funerary sites throughout Britain are 266–7). Contemporaneously, the funerary record is representative of community cemeteries – groups of overwhelmingly dominated by cremation burials. The cremation burials that are associated with a specific presence of certain Middle Bronze Age cremation sites community and contain all members of that commu- such as Itford Hill, Sussex (Holden 1972); Stansted nity – can be traced back to a seminal paper by Ellison Airport, Essex (Cooke et al. 2008); Harehope, (1980). However, despite the immense increase in the excavation and radiocarbon dating of Middle Bronze 1 Age cremation burials over the last 35 years, and the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, Dawson fi Building, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE. re nement and widespread application of osteological Email: [email protected]; e.j.caswell@durham. analyses on cremated bone, there has been no reap- ac.uk praisal of the community cemetery interpretation. 1 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Durham University Library, on 18 Oct 2018 at 16:09:31, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/ppr.2018.9 THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY Similarly, there has never been an analysis of Middle had been deposited in an earlier phase of the Bronze Bronze Age cremation burials that goes beyond a Age, although this was based solely on the relative region larger than southern Britain. paucity of their grave goods. These social evolu- In the last few years, there has been a substantial tionary interpretative schema were soon supplanted advance in the analysis and interpretation of cremated by the development of a Bronze Age temporal fra- human remains. In particular, there has been an mework based on pottery typo-chronologies. Aber- increasing emphasis on: the standardisation of cromby’s (1912) landmark corpus of British and recording (McKinley 2004); the development of new Irish pottery formalised many Bronze Age pottery analytical and experimental methods (eg, Marshall types and identified an ‘overhanging rim’ type, which 2011; Depierre 2014; Kuijt et al. 2014; Snoeck et al. later became the Collared Urn type (see Longworth 2015; Thompson 2015); as well as an understanding 1961; 1984) and the ‘Deverel-Rimbury’ forms of the highly varied chaîne opératoires in the creation (Abercromby 1912, 7–14). These were attributed to of superficially similar cremation burials (eg, Rebay- the Middle and Late/later Bronze Ages, respectively, Salisbury 2010; Marshall 2011; Appleby 2013; and both contained cremation burials. The identifi- Depierre 2014). There is also now a broader recog- cation of these two ceramic types provided the foun- nition of the importance of analysing this funerary dation for all subsequent scholarship on Middle phenomenon which has been far too frequently over- Bronze Age cremation cemeteries in Britain. As was looked in broader mortuary studies due to it being less typical in the late 19th/early 20th century, the ceme- visible in the archaeological record (see Rebay- teries were interpreted within invasion-based para- Salisbury 2010; Kuijt et al. 2014; Barceló et al. digms(eg,Clay1927;Kendrick&Hawkes1932, 2014; Capuzzo & Barceló 2015; Bradbury et al. 2016; 107; Childe 1947, 188). There is little osteological Cerezo-Román et al. 2017). detail in the late 19th or early 20th century research This paper investigates all available evidence for on the cremated remains, many of which were not Middle Bronze Age cremations in Britain in order to retained. evaluate the characteristics of cremation burial during It was not until the advent of radiocarbon dating in the period and whether cremation cemeteries repre- the mid-20th century that the deposition of crema- sented the majority of Middle Bronze Age people. It tions within broader cemeteries was shown to pre-date explores the size, duration, distribution, and asso- the Urnfield funerary tradition in continental Europe ciated structures of Middle Bronze Age cremation (Ellison 1975, 373; Barrett 1976; cf. Sørensen & cemeteries, and subsequently analyses individual Rebay-Salisbury 2008). During the late 20th century, cremation burials, both in terms of their associated the greater chronological accuracy achieved through material culture and the osteological evidence relating increasing radiocarbon dating and refining typo- to demography. Finally, this paper analyses the chronologies (eg, M.A. Smith 1959, 155–9, 185; I.F. cremation burial process, encompassing the evidence Smith 1961; Calkin 1962) did not substantially change for pyres, the burning of the deceased, and the col- the relative temporal sequence of funerary practices in lection and deposition of the remains. Britain. Cremation cemeteries in Britain with Collared, and occasionally Food Vessel, urns were dated to the Early Bronze Age: Needham’s Period 3 (2050–1700 cal URNS, INVADERS, & COMMUNITIES – PAST SCHOLARSHIP BC) (Needham 1996, 130–2). Subsequently, the wide- ON MIDDLE BRONZE AGE CREMATIONS IN BRITAIN
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