The Story of the East Riding of YorkshireBrowne, Horace B. (Horace Baker)
History
The Story of the East Riding of Yorkshire
Browne, Horace B. (Horace Baker)
Yorkshire (England) -- History
X. Bed of chalk grit. * Probable summit of the barrow when
built.
From the diagram we see that the bodies first interred have been placed
at the bottom of a cavity dug out of the solid chalk. This hole not
proving large enough for the numbers to be buried, an extension has been
begun, but not finished. Time was evidently pressing, for some bodies
have been buried above the surface of the ground. They have been placed
in different positions, but the legs of all have been bent at the knees
and all are enclosed in a low mound of clay. Above this lie the remains
of numerous other bodies, which have been burnt before burial; and over
them comes a twelve-inch layer of a blue clay which is impervious to
water. Then a large mound of soil and pieces of chalk has been raised
over all, the mound being originally much higher than it is to-day.
Such has been the building of Howe Hill. But it must not be thought that
all barrows contain the remains of a large number of bodies. Most
contain one only, and the body has either been buried as it was when
life left it or been burnt and the calcined bones gathered up in an
earthenware vessel, or pinned in a skin garment. The eight full-grown
skeletons discovered under Howe Hill are those of men, and we may
suppose that they represent a chieftain and his relatives killed in the
onslaught by a hostile clan. The cremated bodies, forty of which were
discovered in the digging of a trench through the barrow, would be those
of his dependants, who died fighting in defence of their lord and
master.
* * * * *
But the barrow contains evidence of the lives of the people of the time
as well as of their deaths. Scattered through the soil under the band of
blue clay were found many broken bones of the ox, roebuck, red deer,
fox, goat, and pig, the remains of the burial feast; and among these
were human bones which had quite evidently been broken and cooked. It is
horrible to think of the people of our East Riding as having once been
cannibals, but the evidence to that effect is indisputable.
Here and there were also found portions of the weapons with which the
defenders of the settlement had fought—the hammer head shown on page 9,
made from the shed antler of a red deer, and the broken javelin head of
flint shown on page 15. In this barrow was also found the wonderfully
made flint knife represented below—an implement fashioned out of a piece
of flint with no other tools than such as are mentioned below, and yet
fashioned so delicately that its greatest thickness is only
one-sixteenth of an inch.
[Illustration:
POLISHED FLINT KNIFE FOUND IN DUGGLEBY
HOWE (1/1).
]
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