Read on Twitter
a thread of archeological finds from pre-Christian Britain that creep me out
Bryn Celli Ddu, meaning "the mound in the black grove". now a passage tomb, in c. 3000 BC it was a circle of standing stones with cremated human remains under each. a pit was dug in the surrounding ditch, and a single human ear bone was buried there & covered with a slab of rock
in Verulamium, in the 2-3rd century, a child's skull was carefully defleshed using a small sharp knife. it was then displayed on a post outside of a shrine for sometime before being interred in a shaft, upright, with a whetsone and a the corpse of a puppy.
the Druid's Circle, in Penmaenmawr. In fact predates the druids by millennia. an urn containing the remains of a cremated child was found in the center, and another was found near the edge. this is where my horse skull comes from!
in the 4th century cemetery at Lankills, Winchester, an old woman's body was decapitated and her head placed near her knees. the grave contained the bones of two dogs, one of which had had its limbs severed and its it spinal columnn bent into a circle and tied that way.
in a 4th century BC settlement at Great Houghton, a woman was buried with her arms and legs tied, probably antemortem. She wore a lead torc, reversed, so that the opening was at the back of the neckc. Lead is v. unusual for a torc; they're always gold, silver, or bronze
miranda aldhouse-green reads this as "an intense message of shameful death and the desire to consign this woman to outer darkness"
the West Kennet Chambered Long Barrow has a complex history of human internments, and it looks like some of the bodies were exposed for long periods before being interred; some may have been taken in and out for ritual purposes. it also contained a large number of infants
what's particularly creepy about it is that some of the chambers, intentionally or not, function as acoustic resonators. activity within the barrow can (allegedly, i haven't tried it) produce measurable levels of infrasound:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound
in the Thames, a clamp was found decorated with busts of cybele. it was probably used by the galli, the priests of that goddess, to self-castrate.
i'll add some more to this later on
probably the best book if you're interested in pagan britain is uh Pagan Britain by Ronald Hutton
in the late 3rd century at Kimmeridge, a group of elderly women were buried with their heads severed & put by their feet and their lower jaws removed. A spindle whorl, the sign of the Fates, was placed beside each. this was probably witch stuff.
in four separate cases during the ango-Saxon period, women were thrown face down with their hands and arms bound over the body (and in the grave of) of a high-status man and buried that way. they may have been buried alive.
