endlessrarities | The Iceman Hangeth Around. And Some Bronze Age Ruminations...

Back to work. A straightforward enough exercise, you may think. But not when there's been a fresh fall of snow in the night. First sign that something was wrong was when the train was delayed for 15, then 20, then 30 minutes. Then an announcement came that services were subject to delay and cancellation due to various train failures and points failures. Already the alarm bells were ringing, when another announcement followed advising passengers to seek alternative travel arrangements. But with the main roads at a crawl, it seemed pointless to add to the vehicular mayhem.

Finally made it in at 11.30, after taking one and a quarter hours to complete a journey that usually takes 40 minutes, on a bad day!

The time spent waiting for the rush hour traffic to clear was not lost, though. Spent an hour doing some preliminary research for a paper I'm writing on a Bronze Age burial site in Ayrshire. Ploughed through the National Monuments Record for Scotland (if you're interested in Scottish Archaeology and you don't know this resource, then check out http://www.rcahms.gov.uk) looking at all 246 recorded cist sites in Argyll and Bute.

Burying your loved ones in the Early and Middle Bronze Age in Scotland was certainly an eclectic affair, involving a 'Pick n' Mix' approach to material culture and also landscape setting. Burials can be inhumations or cremations. The cremations can be urned or unurned. Instead of a cordoned or collared urn, a Food Vessel can be included (oh, and let's not forget Beakers, but that's another story!). There may be addfitional grave goods. A flaked flint tool, perhaps. A joint of mutton. A smaller vessel like an 'incense cup'. The urn can be buried standing upright or upside down. It may be covered or left open. The cemetery itself may be in level ground, or set into a natural mound, or perhaps an artificial circular stone cairn. Individuals may be placed in their burial pits together. The pits may be stone-lined. And so on. Some of this variation must be due to changing tastes and styles over time. But different communities or even families do seem to have done their own thing. Exploring the subject in depth would merit a Ph.D. thesis in itself.

My particular site is rather unusual, if not virtually unique. 19th century accounts describe how a number of the cremations were placed in urns then deposited in a single pit together. I was told there was a similar example in Argyll, which is why I went sifting through so many reports to try and track it down. But alas, the cist in question proved elusive.

I like the Bronze Age of Britain and Ireland. On the surface, everything seems normal, and routine, even a little tedious. Dig a little deeper, and things start to emerge that seem well and truly weird. Nothing is quite as it seems. Oh, and the pottery's quite nice, in a crude and clumpy kind of way. So's the metalwork. But then, maybe I'm biased.