HARDENDALE NAB BRONZE AGE CAIRN, CUMBRIA: A SYNTHESIS OF THE BIOLOGICAL REPORTS FROM THE 1986 EXCAVATION
Author(s): S Stallibrass
This synthesis aims to integrate the main conclusions of the reports on human bones (Henderson, 1988; Mays, n.d.), animal bones (Stallibrass, n.d.) bird bones (Allison, 1988) and fish bones (Jones & O'Connor, n.d.) together with those on molluscs (Thew 1989) and carbonised plant remains (Huntley, 1988). Before the cairn was built, the landscape on the top of the hill had already been cleared, and it remained open grassland (with occasional patches of woodland and of heather moorland) throughout the human usage of the site as a burial or funerary monument. Some of the grassland was grazed turf. The ciarn was used intermittently for the interment of cremated and inhumed burials, with at least one (and possibly two) long periods of haitus, when the site became overgrown with rank vegetation. The two rectangular features were kept clean and were used for burning wood and heather fires - were these funerary pyres, or simply cooking fires for food for the living? There is a possibility that these features were also used for the excarnation of cadavers. Some domestic mammals (or joints of meat) were brought to the site. Many of them were immature, and some appear to have been cremated with the corposes, and buried as food offerings. Other bones appear to be the remains of food for the living. The vast majority of the animal bones (like the molluscs) probably derive from animals that simply lived at, in or near the site itself. Most of the mammal, frog/toad, bird and fish bones were probably brought to the site by carnivorous birds and mammals, and deposited in pellets (of owls and birds of prey) or faeces (of mammals). The Cairn would have been made a prominent feature in the landscape and, with human corpses and food debris lying around or buried near the surface, would have attracted many scavangers such as red kites, buzzards, toads, foxes and weasels.
- Report Number:
- 55/1991
- Series:
- AML Reports (New Series)
- Pages:
- 8
- Keywords:
- Plant Remains
