Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric PeoplesNadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
History
Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples
Nadaillac, Jean-François-Albert du Pouget, marquis de
Archaeology; Prehistoric peoples
At the same period the two rites appear to have been practised
simultaneously in Armorica, but there incineration was the dominant
custom. In one hundred and forty-five megalithic monuments supposed to
date from the Neolithic period, seventy-two give proof of incineration
and twenty of inhumation only. The others yielded a few cinders, but it
was impossible to come to any definite conclusion. In many cases, as we
have seen, the megalithic monument was surrounded by a double or triple
_enceinte_ of stones without mortar. Inside these _enceintes_ were some
small circular structures made of stones reddened by the action of
heat. In the lower part of these structures were openings to admit a
current of air to fan the flames. These strange structures, full of
cinders and black greasy earth, bear the significant name of _Ruches de
Crémation_.33 Of thirty-nine sepulchres of the Bronze age twenty-seven
gave evidence of incineration, two of inhumation, whilst ten decided
nothing one way or the other.34 The dolmen of Mont St.-Michel and that
of Tumiac are separated by a short distance only; they were erected by
the same race and probably about the same period, yet at Mont
St.-Michel we find incineration, while inhumation was practised at
Tumiac. How explain this difference in funeral customs? Does it imply a
diversity of race, of caste, of religion, or of social position, or may
it not rather be explained as being merely the result of those later
displacements which upset the most careful reasoning?
Whatever may have been the cause of the different modes of burial, we
meet with them in every country.
In Scandinavia, during the Bronze age, cremation and burial were
practised in about equal proportions. Similar facts are noticed in
Germany, but in the North incineration predominates, while in the West
it is inhumation. Beneath the cairns of Caithness in Scotland, we find
some bodies lying at full length, while others are in a bent position,
and large jars of coarse pottery filled with cinders and calcined bones
which had belonged to men of medium height. One of the largest of these
jars is fifteen or sixteen inches high by forty-nine wide at its
largest part.35 In excavating the barrows of the Orkney Islands, Petrie
noted the practice of both modes of burial36; but were those buried in
manners so different contemporaries? This is what we are not told, and
what we have to find out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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