The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic 0713448709, 9780713448702

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© Ralph Merrifield 1987 First published 1987 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may bc reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission by the Publisher Typeset by Latimer Trend & Company and printed in Great Britain by

Butler & Tanner Ltd Fromc,

Somerset

Published by B. T. Batsford Ltd 4 Fitzhardinge Street, London wıM oAH ISBN 07134—4870—9

Ltd, Plymouth

Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

List of illustrations ix Preface xiii 1 Ritual and the archaeologist

ı

2 Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times 3 Rituals of death

58

4 From Paganism to Christianity

83

5 Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations 6 Written spells and charms

137

7 Charms against witchcraft

159

8 The ritual of superstition:

recognition and potential for study Bibliography

196

Notes and references

Index 219

206

184

107

22

Acknowledgements

In writing this book Peter Kemmis Betty, Webster, Batsford's indebted to the many

the author owes much to the encouragement of Managing Director of Batsford, and of Graham Archaeological Adviser. He is also very much archaeologists who by excavation recovered the

greater part of the evidence discussed here, often working

in very

difficult conditions. It has been made available either by publication (the ideal method) or by personal information where publication has not yet occurred, and for both the author is very grateful. If a note of criticism

sometimes appears, it is made in no carping spirit, but rather with the wish that the full harvest may be gathered from the arduous work of excavation.

Those

whose

finds can

be cited, in fact, have clearly

not

suppressed them, and in most cases have interpreted them in much the same way as the author, if with greater caution! Where there is a difference of opinion, however, it in no way diminishes the author's respect for the excavator, and he trusts this feeling will be reciprocated. He is also indebted to the many other people who have supplied interesting

facts

about

casual

finds

and

surviving

traditions,

and

es-

pecially to Marion Archibald of the Department of Coins and Medals in the British Museum for numismatic information, and to June Swann of the Northampton Museum for the latest statistics for shoe-finds in

buildings. If the London bias of the book is particularly noticeable in the choice

of illustrations, this is largely due to the generous help and cooperation that the author has received from his former colleagues at the Museum of London, and especially from Barry Gray, Trevor Hurst, and their

Photographic staff, who patiently applied their professional expertise to the somewhat bizarre requirements of this book. The author also thanks Peter Marsden for his generous loan of a print for pl 24, and for indly re-excavating the contents of pl 36 from the museum store. He is

viii / Acknowledgements

very grateful to the staff of the Epping Forest District Museum

for

allowing him to photograph the Museum's portion of the Waltham Abbey hoard, and to Professor Barry Cunliffe and the Danebury Trust for generously supplying photographs from the Danebury excavation and permitting their use. Thanks are also due to the following for kindly supplying photographs and allowing them to be used: the Ministry of Culture, Greece; Leiden Museum, the Netherlands; the National Monuments Record; Exeter Cathedral Library; the British Museum; the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle; the Corinium Museum, Cirencester; the Gloucester Museum; Ipswich Museums; the Pitt-Rivers

Museum,

Oxford; Orpington

Historical Society; Mr M S Kirby. The

author also thanks Chris Unwin for her very prompt and effective response to a request for the line-drawings in figs 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6, and to Mr R P Wright and the Clarendon Press for permission to reproduce fig. 7. Finally, he is particularly grateful to his wife for typing the text, sorting out the notes and bibliography, and compiling the index.

List of íllustratíons

Photographs I

Neolithic stone axe from Roman context, City of London

2

Neolithic flint axe from floor of Saxon hall, Westminster

3 Imitation bone daggers, with bronze prototype,

from river Thames, west of London

12 14

Early Bronze Age,

25

Bronze helmet, later first century Bc, from Thames

27

Roman votive plaque, Thames 28

of altar, from

enamelled

Human skulls from the Roman London 29

bronze,

in form

stream of Walbrook, City of

Bent sword, with portions of a scabbard, second century Bc, from votive deposit, Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey 31 Part of iron hoard, with bent and broken tongs, c. first century AD, Waltham Abbey, Essex 31 Skeletons of horse and second century BC 33

dog

from

pit, Danebury,

Hants,

fourth-

IO

Articulated leg of horse, from pit, Danebury, Hants fourth-second century BC 34

II

Ritual

pit

in Roman

cemetery,

London,

late

first-early

second

century AD 37 I2

13 14

Pot, about AD 200 from fill of ditch, City of London

39

Dog burial, from fill of ditch, about AD 200, City of London

4o

Pair of complete cooking-pots, from fill of Roman ditch, Orpington, Kent 41

I5 Timber-lined Roman pit, containing many pottery vessels Skeletons of dogs, late second century, Southwark 50

and

x / List of illustrations 16

Dog burial under timber-framed house built after fire of AD 130-135, City of London 53

17 Late Roman face-pot, containing bones of small dog, from tower of west gate of Roman 18

19 20

21

22

town, Chester-le-Street, Durham

55

Copper coin (as of AD 88-9) as found in mast-step of Roman sailing barge, City of London 56 as

of

Blackfriars barge

Roman

coin,

57

Interior of Roman Netherlands 62

Domitian,

AD

sarcophagus,

88-9,

early

found

in

third century,

mast-step

of

Simpelveld,

Offerings to the dead in Bronze Age Crete, sarcophagus of c.1400 BC, from Hagia Triadha 62 Cremation AD

canister from

Caerleon,

in burial of late first century

63

23 Burial of woman, mid-first century AD, as excavated in Southwark, London 69

24

Cremation don 73

25

‘Plaster’ (chalk) burial of girl, a mixture of pagan and (?) Christian rites, first century AD, London 80

26

Altar of Mercury, found in Smithfield, City of London

27

Woodcut print, fifteenth century, of St Anthony, showing votives

28

Wax votives, fifteenth century, from tomb of Bishop Edmund Lacey, Exeter Cathedral go

29

Limestone

burial in amphora,

head

of Mercury,

temple, Uley (Glos) 30

31 32

late first century AD, City of Lon-

from

mutilated

89

cult figure of Roman

98

Roman bronze figurines of Mercury London Bridge 100 Fragments of Roman

84

and Apollo from Thames

bronze statues from London

at

102

Bronze hand and arm taken from figurines, Roman temple, Springhead, Kent 104

33

Marble portrait busts of second century AD, Lullingstone Roman villa, Kent 105

34

Bent silver pennies of Henry I, c.1134—5, as removed from Billingsgate, City of London, in 1984 109

35

Bent pewter tokens, late thirteenth century, from Thames foreshore,

City of London

110

List of illustrations / xi 36

Bent daggers and knives, early sixteenth century, found in Thames, City of London 111 Large pewter pilgrim badge of Madonna and child, from Thames foreshore at Billingsgate, City of London 113 Miniature

weapons

of pewter,

later thirteenth-fifteenth

foreshore, City of London

from Thames

114

Bent sixpence used as eighteenth-century love-token

Two

century,

116

halves of sheep’s jaw-bone as found in fourteenth century

waterfront, City of London Dried

chickens,

shoes

seventeenth century

118

etc,

found

in

Lauderdale

House,

London,

130

Shoe, c. 1650—75, found in house at Corfe Castle, Dorset Shoe, c. 1670-80 found in old cottage, Peaslake, Surrey Roman lead curse found in City of London Roman

word-square

from

Corinium

132 132

138

(Cirencester),

second-third

century AD 144 Written charms from Somerset, probably late nineteenth-early twentieth century 145 Seventeenth-century

cestershire

curse from Wilton

Place, near Dymock,

Glou-

147

Charm, early twentieth century, found near Sarn, Powys, Wales

152

Mysterious graffito on chimney-breast of farmhouse at Horsham, Sussex, (?) seventeenth century

156

Graffito written at Monschau, West Germany, 6 January 1985 157 Knives from wall at Cade House, West Malling, and knife inscribed AGLA, late sixteenth-early seventeenth century 162 Bellarmine witch-bottle with contents, from Thames foreshore, City

of London

164

Bellarmine witch-bottle with cork and contents, 1650-1700, found in

Westminster Stoneware

165 jug

used

as

a

witch-bottle,

found in City of London

166

Bellarmine

from

witch-bottles

mid-seventeenth

Stowmarket

and

Ixworth,

1650—1700 167 Stoneware witch-bottle from Ipswich, about 1700 169 57 Contents of Ipswich witch-bottle, about 1700 170 58

Witch-bottle from Padstow,

Cornwall, about

1900

181

century, Suffolk,

xii / List of illustrations Line drawings phial of ‘steeple’ form, eighteenth century, from Lutterworth Church, Leicestershire 19 Fig 2 Cremation burial in amphora, late first century, City of London 72 Fig 3 Bastion of Roman city wall, London, with sculptures of Roman

Fig

1 Glass

soldier, etc.

106

Fig 4 Acoustic pots in wall of Tarrant Rushton Church, Dorset 122 Fig 5 Acoustic pots, St Peter's per Mountergate, Norwich 123 Fig 6 Pilgrim badge of John Schorn, fifteenth century, from Thames at London 135 Fig 7 Roman curse found in valley of Walbrook, City of London 140 Fig 8 Protective charm, probably late eighteenth century, from West Bradford, near Clithero, north-east Lancashire

149

Preface

Ritual and magic were formerly part of everyday life, but by association with fantasy fiction and occultism they have now acquired an aura of sensationalism that has discouraged investigation. In spite of the great interest of this aspect of human behaviour, no synthesis has hitherto been made of the considerable information that is available from archaeolo-

gical and historical sources, except within a few very restricted fields. A broad survey of the ritual customs of Europe is attempted here. These may be defined as practices intended to gain advantage or avert disaster by the manipulation of supernatural power, whether derived from the impersonal forces of magic or from the intervention of supernatural beings. This book is particularly concerned with the material evidence for such activity, frequently encountered by archaeologists but not always recognised and seldom acclaimed. In recent years it has received serious attention from prehistorians, but is often neglected by those working in the historic periods, except when it occurs in a manifestly religious or mortuary context. Superstitious ritual often survived the religious beliefs that gave birth to it, and was reinterpreted in the light of current beliefs or adapted to

relieve new

fears. In one or two instances it was even justified by

dubious claims to practical utility. Yet, in spite of inevitable modifications to meet a new purpose, some strands of behaviour that are demonstrably of ancient origin have survived to our own time. The survey made here is in no way comprehensive, being limited by the author's knowledge and experience. The examples cited are those

that he encountered in forty years' service as a museum archaeologist in South-eastern

England,

mostly

in London,

either in the course

of his

Professional life, in the reading that accompanied it, or in his occasional

travels. A general interest in folk customs

led him to take note of

evidence of this nature whenever he found it, and by the time of his

xiv / Preface retirement a large file of miscellaneous information had been accumulated. Getting this into order not only revealed new complexities and some unexpected relationships, together with a number of curious survivals, but also made it necessary to reconsider the theoretical basis of interpretation. Only a few aspects of the subject had previously been explored in published papers, and there seemed to be good reasons for making a substantial part of the compilation and the problems arising from it available to others. A thematic approach within a broad chronological framework seemed most appropriate, but it was convenient to treat rituals of death and written spells as separate topics. The period covered intensively is from the pre-Roman Iron Age, in which many later practices have their roots, to the present day, and the scene is mainly western Europe. More exotic examples have been briefly cited, where they seemed to throw significant light on basic human attitudes, and similarly a few instances have been drawn from earlier prehistory, either because they foreshadow later practices, or illustrate particularly well the reconstruction of ritual from archaeological evidence. Because of its origin in a personal record, the book has an inevitable bias towards south-eastern Britain, and especially London. An archaeologist of northern Britain might have written a very similar book, but it would probably have had a different emphasis, and certainly a different balance of examples. A book written by a German archaeologist would have diverged more widely, for to a great extent this is a subject not yet readily accessible to international scholarship. There is a common heritage, but there are also regional developments and survivals with a limited distribution. A definitive work on the subject will remain impossible until much more evidence has been widely and systematically sought, and made generally available by adequate publication. In the meantime, students in need of a research project might find a rewarding field for investigation in any of the unsolved problems that will be encountered in this book. A principal purpose in writing it was to stimulate active enquiry into a subject of great human interest that until recently has been sadly neglected.

1 Ritual and the archacologist

The recognition of undoubted ‘ritual deposits’ in the South Cadbury and Danebury hillforts within the last twenty years has gradually made the ritual practices of the pre-Roman Iron Age a respectable subject for

academic enquiry. Even the heavy mathematical artillery of the New Archaeology has recently been brought to bear on the limited data available, in a useful thesis on the ritual and religion of Iron Age Britain.' This marks a welcome change in the attitude of archaeologists to a subject that still tends to be neglected by those who are concerned with the Roman

and later periods, in which comparable evidence is too

often disregarded or inadequately published. All who have any interest in that wide field of human thought, aspirations and fears, covered by such terms as ‘religion’, ‘magic’, and the more derogatory ‘superstition’, will be fully aware that it has produced immense activity that must have left almost as many traces in the archaeological record as any of the basic human activities that are concerned with satisfying hunger, constructing shelter, or providing defence against enemies. In a sense it must be regarded as even more basic, since it concerns man’s view of himself in his earthly environment, and activities arising from it inevitably pervade all other fields of human action. This would no doubt be accepted as an intellectual Proposition by most archaeologists, but in their daily work they are often curiously reluctant to recognise evidence for behaviour that has no Obvious material purpose. Even where it is realised that something unusual has occurred, and that it requires explanation, it is common for €very other possible interpretation, however unlikely, to be put forward, provided it makes sense in terms of accident or functional utility, while the possibility that it should be interpreted as yet another example of a not uncommon form of religious or magical ritual remains ignored. Any such suggestion is likely to be greeted with nervous laughter and

6 / Ritual and the archaeologist museum archaeologist in south-east England. Some of these appear to be repetitive, suggesting that they may be manifestations of a popular custom; others are single examples that are difficult to explain except as the result of deliberate human action for a wholly non-practical purpose. It will be for the reader to decide in each instance whether a case has been made for ritual or superstitious behaviour, or whether the circumstances can be satisfactorily explained by coincidence or a purely practical intention. Some definition of terms is clearly necessary, for scholarly prejudices have certainly been deepened by the loose use of such words as 'ritual', *magic' and 'superstition' to cover a wide range of

human

behaviour,

often

indeed,

as

the

well-worn

joke

has

it,

meaning little more than something we do not understand. In this book, therefore, ‘religion’ is used to indicate the belief in supernatural or spiritual beings; *magic', the use of practices intended to bring occult forces under control and so to influence events; 'ritual', prescribed or customary behaviour that may be religious, if it is intended to placate or win the favour of supernatural beings, magical if it is intended to operate through impersonal forces of sympathy or by controlling supernatural beings, or social if its purpose is to reinforce a social organisation or facilitate social intercourse. Something of all three functions may be found in a single act of ritual, or the act may remain the same while one function is increasingly dominated bv another, which may eventually survive alone. Morris-dancing is a good example of this: originally a fertility rite, it has survived to modern times merely as a pleasant group exercise and an excuse for social drinking—attractions which were probably present from its beginning. As we

shall see, some

ritual acts are remarkably

tenacious,

and

mav

continue to be performed in much the same way for quite new purposes. ‘Ritual’ usually however implies some mystical purpose, and this is perhaps the principal reason why archaeologists dislike the word. Purely social ritual can often more conveniently be termed ‘ceremonial’, as for example the civic ceremonial of the City of London. 'Superstition' is a derogatory term usually applied to religious or magical practices or beliefs that are no longer approved, and implies disbelief on the user's part. It is often used for survivals from defunct religions in the more backward sections of a community, but the derivation of the word has nothing to do with survival. In its original Latin sense, superstitio seems to have meant ‘excessive religious belief’ or ‘credulity’. ‘Irrational’ is an adjective that is sometimes used to cover all these variants of human activity for non-practical purposes, but it makes a judgment that is valid only from the view-point of a modern rationalist. Given the premisses

Ritual and the archaeologist / 7 that were generally accepted in earlier times, such activity may then have been completely rational. The only neutral term is in fact the despised word ‘ritual’. Nevertheless, all these expressions will be used from time to time throughout this book, in the senses indicated here,

with the understanding that any prejudice implied is that of the author, who is inevitably a creature of his own time. One advantage of studying the archaeology of ritual in the historical period is that we know a great deal about contemporary thought from written sources, and our knowledge increases the nearer we come to our own times. Even so, a wide range of popular custom and belief slips through the historian’s net, and it is only for the last 150 years or so that

we are able to draw on that other great source of information on this subject—surviving folk-memory. This sometimes throws a surprising light on very much earlier practices, so that in some instances it may be helpful

to pursue

a theme

to the nineteenth

century,

present day. Similarly, if we begin with the Roman

or even

to the

period, to which a

great deal of the author’s experience and personal knowledge relate, we have to recognise that the folk-life of Roman Britain was rooted in that of the pre-Roman Iron Age. It is in that inheritance rather than in the

imported customs of the numerous foreign cults that poured into Britain with the Romans, that some at least of the more bizarre ritual practices of Roman Britain had their origin. It will therefore be necessary to begin this survey with later prehistory, but although in general a chronological sequence will be followed, certain subjects are better treated as themes to be pursued separately. It is perhaps in the Roman period that the prejudice of archaeologists against a ritual interpretation is felt most strongly. Its material remains seem so practical, so ‘modern’ in many respects, that there is an almost instinctive reaction against the suggestion of anything ‘other-worldly’ in this context—except of course in its proper place, the temple precinct, Where it is acceptable. Yet this attitude is historically indefensible, for if there is any message on the subject that comes loud and clear from our many non-archaeological sources of information, it is that religion in the Roman world pervaded every human activity, and that practices relating to it were almost as common in the home and in the fields as in the temple. Moreover, undiscovered, and the

many temples in Roman Britain may remain first clue to the existence of one may be a

-oncentration of evidence for ritual activity in its immediate neighbour-

ood. It would of course be unfair to suggest that all excavators of Oman sites have this prejudice, and in many archaeological reports the Possibility of a ritual explanation of some finds is readily admitted. In

8 / Ritual and the archaeologist other instances the failure to indicate such a possibility may be due simply to the fact that it has not been recognised, and it is hoped that this book may be of some service in pointing out the sort of evidence that ought at least to be considered in this connection. Nevertheless, the prejudice does exist, and is particularly strong among the younger archaeologists working in the Roman period. The pre-Roman Iron Age in this respect occupies the same intermediate position between earlier prehistory and the Roman period as it does chronologically. It lacks the conspicuous ritual monuments of the Neolithic and earlier Bronze Age, and the evidence of ritual activity that it presents is very much like that of the Roman period, consisting mainly of such manifestations as the deposition of animal and bird burials,

unusual groups of pots and hoards of iron implements at the bottom of pits or at an early stage of filling them. Professor Cunliffe comments on those at Danebury as follows: While each individual case could be explained away in non-ritual

terms the sheer number of these depositions and the recurring patterns to be found strongly suggest that we are observing the archaeological evidence for a complex pattern of behaviour.? From this it appears that the ritual element is recognisable only when it has been encountered a number of times, as at South Cadbury and Danebury, where neither Alcock nor Cunliffe had any doubt about it. At Winklebury, on the other hand, where very similar animal and bird

deposits were found in pits within the earthwork, there is no suggestion in the very full report that any of these had a ritual significance." A robust dismissal of any idea of ritual is made in connection with a single example of an unusual group of pots deposited in a pit in the final phase of occupation of a pre-Roman farm at Farningham, Kent. Here a large number of apparently complete pots were dumped at one time—a pattern that we shall find repeated elsewhere. This seems to have happened at about the time of final abandonment of the site, which may have been due to the Roman conquest of AD 43. The explanation proffered is simply that the inhabitants were unable to take their pottery with them when they left, and being tidy people deposited it in a convenient hole near their hut. There is a final terse comment,

without

further

be con-

discussion:

‘Other

possibilities

(none

ritual!)

could

sidered.’'' It will be a purpose of this book to pose the question “Why not?’ to the bracketed exclamation, and the difficult problem of finds of this kind will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. Enough has been said

Ritual and the archaeologist / 9 here to demonstrate that archaeologists are not exactly eager to admit

the possibility that odd occurrences for which they find evidence have anything to do with religious or magical practices, and that their reluctance increases the closer these are to our own times. Yet there are grave dangers in ruling out any consideration of a whole range of human activity that we know has continued throughout

history, since this may

lead to a misinterpretation of evidence and

consequently to the drawing of conclusions that may be completely wrong. Before embarking on a general survey of the whole subject, it

may be useful to cite two examples of the errors of interpretation that can arise from failure to take account of quite well-known superstitious practices. The distribution of Neolithic axes in the London

area

In the Victoria County History of Middlesex, vol. ı, published in 1969,

there is a useful survey of the evidence for Neolithic occupation in the area, mainly based on casual finds rather than archaeological excavations.'? The most numerous class of Neolithic objects found were the axes, mainly of flint, chipped and often polished, but with a smaller proportion of ground or polished stone, the source of which can often be identified. Many are from the river, but the authors point out that land-finds are concentrated on the gravels, brick-earths and alluvial areas, with hardly any on the London Clay. They also note that there is an interesting concentration of some 25 axes covering the City and parts of Holborn. Their map also shows a smaller concentration of about a dozen in Westminster, though some of these may be river-finds. On the latter, the authors comment

that Staines, near the causewayed camp, is

more prolific than Sunbury and Hampton, and that the densest find areas are in the Teddington-Twickenham and Isleworth-Brentford stretches. (A particularly large concentration is shown at Kingston.) Downstream there are fewer river-finds, except at Hammersmith and Mortlake, while ‘below Chelsea Bridge they are not plentiful except Where the river passes the older parts of London and the City'. The authors of the article demonstrate with other maps that only in the

Yiewsley area is there a rough correlation between Neolithic pottery, arrowheads

and

axes

as

land-finds,

with

some

correlation

between

Neolithic pottery and axe-finds from the river at Mortlake and Hammersmith. They do not however mention another important factor in the distribution—or

rather

re-distribution—of

stone

axes,

and

their

data might be taken to imply that there is some probability of Neolithic

10 / Ritual and the archaeologist settlement in the older parts of London, particularly as land-finds of fragmentary Neolithic pottery are likely to be overlooked except in an archaeological excavation. We

know,

however,

both

from

ancient

writers,

such

as Pliny, and

from folklore studies in many countries, that stone axes were sought after and collected for magical purposes long before their true nature was understood. They were in fact usually regarded as thunderbolts and were called by the Greeks and Romans ‘ceraunia’. It was only with growing knowlege of recently discovered peoples in America who were still in their Stone Age, and used precisely similar polished stone axes, that it gradually came to be realised by a few European scholars in the sixteenth century that these rather beautiful objects that were occasionally turned up by ploughing were tools made in a remote past by people who, like the American Indians of their own day, had no knowledge of metals. Yet this new understanding percolated very slowly through society, and a belief in the origin of stone axes as thunderbolts and their possession of magical powers has survived among country people in many parts of Europe to the present day. The commonest belief is that they will give protection against lightning, but many curative and protective qualities are ascribed to them as well. Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, quotes in his Natural History an early Greek

author, Sotacus, on the subject, and tells us that there

were two types of ceraunia, black and red, resembling halberd or axeheads, and that the black ones, especially those that were round, were believed to enable cities to be forced and navies at sea to be discomfited. A very rare kind was much sought after by Parthian magicians, who alone could find it, for it only occurred in places hit by a thunderbolt."' Not surprisingly objects with such powers were collected in Roman times, in Britain as elsewhere. A ground flint axe was found in the Roman villa at Beddington, Surrey, nine miles south of the City, in a recent excavation. It lay close to fragments of painted plaster from a collapsed ceiling, and if the latter fell where it was found, as is probable, it seems likely that the axe also fell, and was originally kept in the roof as a charm against lightning and probably other dangers as well. The excavators, Lesley and Roy Adkins, were led by this find to make a definitive study of similar occurrences of Neolithic axes in Roman

contexts in Britain.'* They were able to trace 37 examples, most of which are unlikely to have been survivals from Neolithic occupation of the site. Some were from temple sites at Hayling Island, Springhead, Farley

Heath,

Lancing

and

Nettleton,

and

may

well have

been

taken

there as votive offerings in Roman times, a practice for which there is ample evidence in France, where Neolithic axes have been recorded

Ritual and the archaeologist / 11 from at least twenty-four Romano-Celtic temples, mostly in Burgundy and eastern Normandy." More relevant to the London distribution,

however,

is an interesting stone axe found

London (pl. 1). This has a deep pronounced V-shaped groove quite to the butt, and a fainter clear that the notch completely

in King Street, City of

notch in the cutting edge, from which a runs up the middle of one surface, not groove up the middle of the other. It is destroys the effectiveness of the axe as a

cutting tool, and together with the grooves its purpose must have been to secure a cord from slipping, so that the axe could be hung up cutting edge down. It was obtained by G F Lawrence from a building site, and in a letter to Dr Mortimer Wheeler dated 29 June 1929, in the Museum of London records, he states that it came from the Roman level, and remarks that it is a curious instance of a later use of a stone axe. Almost certainly it was found by a workman, but Lawrence was experienced in

getting both antiquities and information from the workmen, and quite possibly had been offered Roman finds that were closely associated with it. His view of its context is not therefore to be lightly disregarded, although the ‘level’ of a find means little in the disturbed stratigraphy of the City of London, where finds of very different dates can often be found side by side. Nevertheless, the tampering with the axe must be subsequent to its use as a cutting tool, and the only obvious reason for

doing so would be in order to suspend it as an amulet, as might have happened in Roman

times or later. In this case at least, an axe included

in the VCH distribution does not indicate Neolithic occupation, and we may suspect that this may also be true of other stone axes found within the area of the City occupied by Roman Londinium. A belief in the magical powers of Neolithic stone axes did not end with the Roman period, however, and John Evans cites a remarkable

Latin verse written by Marbodaeus, a Bishop of Rennes who died in 1123. He wrote a metrical work on gems, and in it extols the virtues of

the thunderbolt or ‘keraunios’: He who carries one will not be struck by lightning, nor will houses if the stone is there; the passenger on a ship travelling by sea or Driver will not be sunk by storm or struck by lightning; it gives Victory in law-suits and battles, and guarantees sweet sleep and

pleasant dreams." It is hardly

surprising that ‘thunder-stones’

Carefully preserved

when

they

were

found;

were

no doubt

taken they

home

and

also had

a

iod market-price and tended to pass from the possession of the poor to € rich.

12 / Ritual and the archaeologist

1 Neolithic stone axe from Roman context, King Street, City of London, grooved for suspension, actual size (Museum of London)

Only one Neolithic axe has as yet been found in an archaeological excavation in central London. This was found during a rescue excavation carried out by Mr HJM Green on the site of Treasury Green, Westminster, in 1962-3. Here the eastern end of a large Saxon hall, 8m (26ft)

wide,

was

found,

datable

to the

Middle

Saxon

period

by

the

ninth-century Ipswich-ware cooking-pots found associated with hearths nearby, and also by fragments of a wine-jar of Badorf ware imported from the Rhineland. The polished flint axe (pl 2) which lay on the floor of the hall was probably 3-4000 years old when the hall was built, and had evidently been brought from elsewhere, since the Saxon building overlaid river deposits and was built on a raft of planks and poles laid on bracken.'? There is little doubt that this ‘thunder-stone’ was installed as

Ritual and the archaeologist / ı3 a protective talisman, perhaps originally in the roof, and we do not know how it came to be left lying on the floor.

The anything

only

other

known

two

Neolithic

axes

of their stratification

from might

central

London

conceivably

have

with been

deposited there in the Neolithic period, though this is far from certain.

One was found with an antler axe or hoe near a surface of gravel beneath black mud, which contained fifteenth- and sixteenth-century objects, in Finsbury Circus. Roman objects lay on the gravel surface, and a rather late cremation urn of the late second-third century was

buried only just below the surface, at the same level as the stone axe."

The upper stream of the Walbrook was very near, water-rolled. It is possible therefore that the ground

and the axe was surface had been

eroded by the stream nearby to the Neolithic level of an old stream-bed by Roman times, but this is not totally convincing. The other axe was found ‘under six feet of natural soil’ at the corner of Hawick Place and

Francis Street, Westminster, an area that is said to have been swampy until the nineteenth century. Presumably the ‘natural soil’ was river-silt, and a thicker accumulation might have been expected since Neolithic times, unless again some had been removed by erosion. We cannot be certain of the date of deposition of any of these tools that were not excavated archaeologically, and even then the interpretation may be difficult. What is reasonably certain, however, is that Londoners, like everybody else, continued to collect Neolithic axes long after Saxon times, because they still believed in their magical properties. Although we have as yet no direct evidence of the practice in London, there is plenty from elsewhere. Thus John Evans notes that a large jadeite axe-head was found in the roof of the granary of a ruined Cistercian nunnery at Bonn, presumably placed there as a protection against lightning not earlier than the twelfth or thirteenth century, and possibly much later. He also Possessed a stone axe found in north Germany to which the date 1571

had been added by an earlier owner.” Superstitions concerning them

ad in fact survived in country districts to Evans’s own time. In Cornwall the water in which a ‘thunder-axe’ had been boiled was drunk as a cure for rheumatism, and in Ireland one was passed around among neighbours to put in cattle troughs as a preservative against cattle Isease. There was a similar belief in the north of England, and in Tittany axes were thrown into wells to purify the water or to secure a continued supply in time of drought. Centres of population were therefore likely to draw to themselves stone axes from the countryside Around them for centuries, and in the case of a wealthy trading city with

14 / Ritual and the archaeologist

2 Neolithic flint axe from (Museum of London)

floor

of Saxon

hall,

Westminster,

actual

size

widespread contacts like London, its catchment area could be very wide indeed, extending even overseas. The concentration of such finds mav therefore reflect the distribution of the population who collected them between Saxon times and the eighteenth century, rather than that of the Neolithic population who made them. There is the added complication of Roman collecting in places remote from these more recent centres of population, as at Beddington, and also at Brockley Hill, where a Neolithic stone axe or adze was found in the first-century clay lining of

a pit near a potter's kiln.” We are forced to the discouraging conclusion that we cannot assume that any Neolithic axe was dropped where it was found by a Neolithic

Ritual and the archaeologist / 15

man, unless it was found stratified in a Neolithic archaeological context or was closely associated with a known Neolithic site or with Neolithic objects of a less easily recognisable kind. Even a hoard of axes raises a question in the light of the ritual deposits of numerous axes in some Gallo-Roman temples. A maker's hoard, however, will presumably be homogeneous in material and type, and therefore recognisable as such, whereas

a hoard

resulting

from

later

collection

normally

will

not.

Similarly a careful consideration is necessary before deductions are made about Neolithic trade patterns from unstratified casual finds of axes of foreign stone. If they come from a place like London, they could reflect a much more recent trade. There is some element of doubt, though considerably less, about whether even the concentrations of axe-finds in the river necessarily indicate local Neolithic activity; for these mostly occur in precisely the same

stretch

of

river,

between

Brentford

and

Battersea,

that

has

produced rich concentrations of finds of the later Bronze Age and preRoman lron Age. As will be fully discussed in Chapter 2, there is a strong probability that throughout this period offerings of objects of great value were made to the river. How long was it after stone axes became obsolete as tools that their original purpose was forgotten and they acquired their new reputation as magical thunder-stones? Lesley and Roy Adkins point out that this belief certainly extends back to the pre-Roman lron Age, since there are a number of instances of such finds in Iron Age contexts." In at least one example of axe-finds from a Romano-Celtic temple in France—at Mont-Beuvray

(Saóne-et-Loire)—

they came from pre-Roman levels under the temple, ‘almost certainly an Iron Age shrine under the later temple, contemporary with the intensive Iron Age occupation of the oppidum up to the time of Augustus’. The finds here included not only one-and-a-half Neolithic polished jadeite axes, but also a bronze axe of the Bronze Age, which likewise gives food for thought. There were also Gaulish coins, and mirror fragments associated with a coin of c. 5o BC." It seems likely therefore that the

Neolithic axes were deposited as votive offerings at Mont-Beuvray in the first century Bc. Why shouldn't some precious ‘thunder-stones’ have been offered to the Thames at this period, when valuables such as the

well-known horned parade helmet, decorated horse-bits and a chariot fitting were being deposited in the river probably for this purpose?

evertheless, for reasons that will be discussed, the author believes that the practice of making offerings to the Thames does go back at least to the early Bronze Age (see pp 24-5) and may well also account for the complete Neolithic pots from the river, so that there is no reason why

16 / Ritual and the archaeologist stone axes should not have been deliberately deposited there by their

Neolithic users, quite apart from the obvious possibilities of accidental loss in that period, which no doubt account for even more axes in thc river. ‘Concentrations’, however, may need to be interpreted with caution, particularly when they coincide with similar concentrations of antiquities of later periods. It is fair to point out that the authors of the VCH article make no attempt themselves to interpret the data they present, and the potential error lies with the reader who may try to do so without any knowledge of the complications due to later collection for superstitious reasons. These, however, have far-reaching implications for any attempt to reconstruct the pattern of Neolithic occupation. Even the avoidance of the London Clay areas means very little, since these were seldom built over until the great explosion of London's population in the nineteenth

century. It should also be mentioned that axes were not the only class of stone implement sought and collected long after they ceased to be made. Flint arrow-heads, particularly the barbed varieties of Beaker and early Bronze Age times, were regarded as ‘elf-bolts’ or fairy weapons, and used as amulets were believed to give protection against attacks by supernatural beings, presumably by the same sort of sympathetic magic that made 'thunder-stones' effective against lightning. As with the axes, their properties might be extended to general curative powers. In the Scottish Highlands, for example, it was believed that the water in which

an arrow-head had been dipped restored to health people or animals struck with a sudden illness.? A flint arrow-head was found in the cella of a Romano-Celtic temple at Cracouville (Eure) together with Neo-

lithic

axes

regarded

and

fossil

sea-urchins

as thunder-bolts);

and

(also

another

potent was

found

charms with

sometimes a terracotta

figurine, miniature pots and other Roman votive objects at Haegen (Bas-Rhin).” It is likely that any sufficiently striking stone tool might be similarly collected and valued for its supposed magical powers at any

time between the Roman period (or earlier) and the present day. Even palaeolithic implements were included in a great deposit of stone tools and fossils in the ambulatory of the Romano-Celtic temple at Essarts (Seine-Maritime).? The dating of 'steeple' bottles A serious error arose from failure to recognise a superstitious practice of

comparatively recent times. The author was himself led astray by this

Ritual and the archaeologist / 17 some thirty-five years ago, when he was called upon to mount a small

exhibition of *Finds of Mediaeval London’, drawn from the City of London collection belonging to the Guildhall Museum, then all in store following

the

Museum’s

loss

of

its

premises

during

the

war.

For

information on glass he leant heavily on W A Thorpe's English Glass, an entertainingly written and informative general survey of glass and glass-making in England from the earliest times. It was the only book that could serve as a general introduction to the subject, and it ran into

several editions. Unfortunately its weakest section dealt with mediaeval

glass, about which little was then known, and it was difficult to find anything in the Museum

collection that could be certainly dated to the

Middle Ages, apart from one or two very recent finds. Thorpe had a paragraph, however,

on a

rather elegant type of apothecary's

bottle

with tapering sides, which he dated to about 1400, because one had been found ‘under the foundations! of South Kilworth church (Leics.), which

was built about 1390-1420. (Cf fig 1). He named these 'steeple' bottles and remarked that ‘their slim vertical design has an obvious affinity with later Gothic architecture'. His description of their evolution by three stages into the cylindrical glass phial seemed convincing, with an intermediate phase, which he attributed to the beginning of the sixteenth century, of shorter bottles ‘beginning to lose their Gothic taper’.”* He illustrated a steeple bottle, also said to have been found under the foundations of an old wall, from Whitstable, Kent." Several very similar examples of this type were to be found in the London collection, so these were included without hesitation in the temporary exhibition of mediaeval London, dated ‘c. 1400’. The author did not learn until several years later that they had been dated more than three centuries too early! He subsequently saw a number of steeple bottles that were found together in an eighteenth-century pit in Portsmouth, and learnt that the sharply everted flat or down-turned rims that are common to these and to the much more numerous cylindrical ones of the eighteenth century are a better indication of date than any 'Gothic lines', since

earlier (seventeenth-century)

bottles have a gently curved or funnel-

shaped lip, rather than an everted rim.”

Thorpe's errors clearly arose from the discovery of the steeple bottle under the late mediaeval wall of South Kilworth church, and from the tWentieth-century assumption that nobody would have undertaken the

considerable labour of putting it there after the wall had been built. It is interesting that the two nineteenth-century antiquaries who published Notes on 9wnall,

this bottle who

first

made drew

no

such

attention

assumption.

The

to

called

it,

was

Rev to

Assheton the

spot

18

/ Ritual and the archaeologist

immediately after its discovery, and records that it was found during a

major rebuilding of the church, lying bottom upwards among the foundation stones and the earthy rubbish about them at the base of the east wall of the chancel, not less than a metre (3ft) below the surface. He

points out that the foundation was loosely formed of the large pebbles of the district and there was no trace of mortar. Although he believed that the bottle had contained holy oil, he quite specifically allowed the possibility that it had been deposited after the building of the wall, and suggested it might have been placed there for safe-keeping at the time of the Reformation.” As a result of his interest and some local publicity, he was informed of a very similar find of two glass phials in the foundation of the

west

wall

of the

north

aisle

of Lutterworth

church,

also

in

Leicestershire, in 1867-8. One of these was of the steeple variety (fig ı) and the other apparently rather more globular in shape. The steeple bottle was half full of liquid, identified by the local pharmacist from its smell as oil of origanum. The Clerk of Works informed Pownall that the bottle was found nearly at the outside of the foundation, which, as at South Kilworth, was of stone and earth, without mortar. As a result of

this additional information, the Rev Pownall commented that a position outside the building was ‘little likely to be chosen, unless the deposit had to be made quickly and with secrecy’. He was therefore inclined to believe that ‘it was in a period subsequent to the foundation of the

church itself that we must look for the date of these deposits’. One of the reasons for attributing some antiquity to the South Kilwell and Lutterworth bottles had been their iridescence, and this brought them to the attention of James Fowler, who was studying the process of decay in glass." He pointed out that similar steeple bottles were sometimes represented in old engravings, and that he himself had actually acquired three from an old herbalist’s shop in Wakefield. He

recognised the filmy iridescent decay of the surface as typical of that of a buried seventeenth- or eighteenth-century bottle, and in an extensive footnote also identified, almost certainly correctly, the real reason for the deliberate burial of these bottles in the foundations of church walls, and the probable nature of their contents. In 1876 scientists had no inhibitions about studying folklore as well as the natural sciences, and Fowler was able to find close parallels in the deposition of ‘witchbottles’ in foundations as antidotes to witchcraft—a subject that will be fully explored in Chapter 7. The matter was somewhat indelicate, since an essential ingredient of the contents of a witch-bottle was the urine of the supposed victim of witchcraft, so Fowler discreetly dropped into Latin

for this part

of his commentary.

He

suggested

that the South

—

—

L_

|

0 Fig 1 Glass

5cm phial

medieval

of ‘steeple’

wall

form,

of Lutterworth

woodcut of 1871)

eighteenth Church,

century,

Leicestershire

found

under

(Redrawn

late from

20 / Ritual and the archaeologist Kilworth and Lutterworth bottles had contained, not consecrated oil, as Pownall had thought, but ‘aguam a renibus humanis secretam’. He drew particular attention, also in Latin, to the fact that the Lutterworth

pharmacist thought the bottle smelt like oil of origanum, and com. mented that in his experience no pharmaceutical preparation smelt

more like decaying urine." It is interesting to speculate have made of either the South been found in a present-day course have been no difficulty

on what a modern archaeologist would Kilworth or Lutterworth bottles if it had controlled excavation. There would of in recognising that it had been deposited

subsequently to the building of the late mediaeval wall. It would have been recorded as coming from the bottom of an area of adjacent to the wall, and would not have given rise to dating. Would it have been published at all, however, the excavation had been to investigate the history of

probability

is that it would

later disturbance a major error of if the purpose of the church? The

have been relegated to the archival or

unpublished report (‘Level 2’ in current jargon) without further comment, as something irrelevant to this purpose. If its intrinsic interest as an eighteenth-century apothecary's phial had been recognised, it might have found its way into the published finds report, with a brief statement of its context, and it would have had a better chance of doing so if it had been one of many interesting post-mediaeval finds that were considered worth reporting from the site. It is improbable that there would have been any published discussion of the reason for the eighteenth-century intrusion at such a deep level, or, if there were, that it would ever have been suggested that the sole purpose of this was to deposit the bottle.

In these circumstances,

evidence

for an interesting

variant of a well-known superstitious practice could have disappeared into a limbo of unconsidered archaeological detail. Moreover, the second similar find a little later and not many miles away could likewise have sunk into oblivion, without any possibility of comparison between the two. It is hard to see how this can be avoided until archaeologists arc at least prepared to take note of things that seem odd and to draw attention to them, even if they are reluctant to go further and attempt an

interpretation. The responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of the director of an excavation, and cannot be delegated to the specialist who writes the finds-report, though information from the latter may be needed for the director's assessment. In this case, he should be able to

recognise without difficulty that a deep hole had been dug beside the wall and that a bottle had been pushed into its foundation—and should

Ritual and the archaeologist / 21 say

SO

unequivocally

in

his

published

report.

Anything

less

is a

dereliction of duty. He should also comment that it is a curious occurrence that he is unable to explain. If, however, he does attempt to explain it in terms of practicality and accident, imagining a possible reason for digging the hole—e.g. to examine the strength of the foundation—and accounting for the bottle by supposing that it had been thrown away into the hole and then accidentally trodden into the

foundation,

it would

be

wrong

not

to state

also

the

alternative

possibility that the bottle had been deliberately placed where it was found in conformity with some unknown superstitious practice. The

second similar find, even if made years later, would be recognised as confirmation of the latter interpretation, but only if proper attention had been drawn to the first find. It is not of course to be expected that every archaeologist should have a knowledge of folklore studies or religious practices before undertak-

ing an excavation, any more than he need have of botany or zoology to recognise the potential importance of any environmental evidence that he may encounter. In all these fields there are experts who can be consulted. What is needed is an open mind and an appreciation of the great diversity of human behaviour.

2 Offerings to earth and water in pre-Romanand Roman times

Archaeological evidence for ritual activity consists mainly of objects deliberately deposited for no obviously practical purpose, but rather to the detriment of the depositor, who relinquishes something that is often at least serviceable and perhaps valuable for no apparent reason, and sometime seems to have taken considerable trouble to do so. Where this is not the case, the first assumption must always be that his loss is accidental, and only numerous repetitions of similar losses in the same place would suggest that his motive might be religious or superstitious. Even then doubt may remain, since accidents can be repetitive too, and in general the ‘ritual’ interpretation may be credible only when it conforms with known practices of that nature. These mainly fall into the large and diverse category of votive offerings to deities, who will probably not be individually identifiable, but may be broadly classified by the mode of offering as spirits of earth or water. If, as in modern West Africa,' there was a third mode, by which offerings were made to

sky or air spirits by raising them above the surface of the earth, this 1s unlikely to leave any recognisable archaeological evidence. Human

and animal sacrifice

A distinction should

probably

be made

between

sacrifices and other

offerings. The essential part of the former is the taking of life, and an animal sacrifice was probably intended not merely as a gift of food, but rather as a release of energy which the god could use. The most basic offering was probably a human life, which in some way renewed the life

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times / 23 of the god, on whom the primitive farming community depended for its own life. All over the world human sacrifice seems to be closely linked with the mystery of food production, and may first appear with the

introduction of farming.

in the more

It reaches its peak, however,

developed barbaric communities, where it is often especially associated with seasonal

fertility ceremonies.

In the Celtic world, the two

major

festivals came in spring and autumn and seem to have been related to the pastoral year, marking the season when cattle could be driven to open grazing and the season when they were brought together and

reduced in number

for the winter. The

latter was an occasion

for

feasting, and in Ireland (as probably elsewhere) was the time for a ritual marriage between the tribal god and the local goddess of nature to renew fertility for the coming year. Both festivals were probably accompanied by sacrifice, and Caesar’s description of human sacrifices on a large scale by some Gaulish tribes, as a regular state ritual, probably relates to such occasions. His well-known account of the

burning alive of many victims in colossal images of wickerwork gives the impression of a fertility rite to renew the power of a tribal god. Burning, drowning and hanging were according to Lucian, the appropriate modes of sacrifice to three separate Celtic gods—Taranis, Teutates and Esus. Powell, however, has suggested that these names might be merely epithets applicable to any tribal god, and the different

rites may have been appropriate to different occasions rather than to different tribes, perhaps symbolising the elements of fire, water and earth or vegetation.” Other modes of sacrifice mentioned by Strabo are shooting with arrows and impaling. In addition to regular tribal offerings,

there

were

also

human

sacrifices

initiated

by

individuals,

according to Caesar, in order to save their own lives when these were under threat from disease or the perils of battle, by offering a substitute to appease the wrath of the gods. Like the tribal sacrifices, these were Supervised by the Druids, who were specialists in the ritual. Caesar makes it clear that criminals were preferred as victims, and were more acceptable to the gods, but if the supply of these ran short, there was no

€sitation in making up the required number with innocent people.’

Offerings in watery places À number of well-preserved human bodies of the Early Iron Age from

the Peat-bogs of Denmark

have been plausibly identified as human

Sacrifices. They had mostly been killed by hanging or garotting, and

although some may have been executed criminals, the common occur-

24 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times rence of ornaments, weapons, cauldrons and pots containing food in the bogs, apparently as votive offerings, suggests that the human bodies also were placed there as offerings to the gods, whatever the reasons for their execution.” A comparable find of a young man throttled with a twisted sinew in a bog at Wilmslow in Cheshire suggests that similar sacrifices

were made in Britain.” In

Britain,

also,

as

in

Scandinavia,

there

are

numerous

finds

of

metalwork, that cannot all have been accidentally lost, but seem to have been deposited deliberately as offerings in pools, bogs and rivers. They include the collections from the lakes at Llyn Cerrig Bach in Anglescy and Llyn Fawr in Glamorganshire, from the rivers Thames and Witham, from the fens of East Anglia, and from bogs in Ireland, Scotland and various parts of England.^ Most of the important finds of fine decorated metalwork of the pre-Roman lron Age came from these waterlogged deposits (pl 4). Weapons and cauldrons seem to have been considered especially appropriate as offerings, with the occasional tankard also suggesting that the intended recipients were believed to enjoy convivial feasting. The practice of depositing valuables, particularly weapons, in watcry places extends far back into the Bronze Age, and Colin Burgess has suggested that there was a fundamental religious change in the Middle Bronze Age, when the old gods of sky and earth, whose great sanctuaries were on the Wessex uplands, were displaced in favour of water deities, possibly as a result of climatic deterioration. The general replacement of burial by cremation in Britain about 1400 BC, and the apparent abandonment of the old religious sites, marked by stone circles and alignments, certainly testify to a major change of religious practices that accompanied a shift of wealth and power to the lowlands and river valleys. It may be unsafe, however, to interpret a change of ritual as the substitution of new gods. As we shall see, there is abundant evidence of the propitiation of earth and underworld deities later in the pre-Roman Iron Age, even if there are no longer indications of the old preoccupation, as shown by the stone circles, with the seasonal movements of heavenly bodies, now perhaps often obscured by clouds. It may also be

suggested that offerings to rivers were not unknown

at a somewhat

earlier date. Among the abundant prehistoric finds from the Thames west of London are five copies in bone of early bronze daggers, dating from the latter part of the Early Bronze Age, about 1500-1400 Bc (pl 3)It is difficult to account for these copies, two of which are represented in

their sheaths, except on the assumption that they were made as votive substitutes for metal weapons which were too valuable to be sacrificed.

3 Imitation daggers in bone, with bronze prototype (left), Early Bronze Age, from River Thames,

west of London

(Museum

of London)

It is significant that one of the only two other bone copies known was associated with a burial. Substitutes of this kind have always been

Considered legitimate in ritual; for the gods and the dead need only the SSsence or ‘soul’ of the offering, so the sacrificer can often avoid real &conomic loss. The great quantities of neolithic stone axes found in the ames may indicate an even more remote origin for the river cult.

9me are of fine quality, and it has been noted that stone axes from the fiver are much more numerous than those found on the adjacent land." €t it is the Middle and Late Bronze Age, and the earlier part of the preOman Iron Age, that are particularly strongly represented by weapons

cms

inches

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times / 25

26 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times from the Thames, and their predominance over similar land-finds of the

same period in the Thames valley cannot be accounted for solely by the better conservation of metal in water-logged conditions. Some may wel] have been accidentally lost in crossing the river or in battle at a natural tribal frontier, and trading activities certainly account for the concentra-

tion of a wealth of such equipment, some imported and some locally made, on a great water highway. The preponderance of weapons over tools of this period in the river, however,

in marked

contrast with the

preponderance of tools over weapons found on the land, points to selection and probably to deliberate deposition." A decline in quantity of such deposits in the Thames in the Early Iron Age seems to be matched by a similar decline in other parts of western Europe, such as the Main-Rhine area. Those of the beginning of the Iron Age, however, are quite numerous in the western part of Greater London, where the Bronze Age tradition of weapon deposition in the river is continued by a group of iron daggers ranging in date from about 550 to 3oo BC.!! There are also brooches of the same period from this part of the Thames. Later, however, weapon finds from the river are represented only by a more scattered distribution of swords, until there is a strong revival in the first century BC, when the range of offerings is extended to decorative equipment like the Waterloo helmet and ornamental horse-trappings (pl 4). The practice did not cease with the Roman conquest, though there was a marked change both in its geographical location and in the nature of the river offerings. The building of the Roman bridge, on or near the site of all subsequent London Bridges, inevitably concentrated losses in the river, both

accidental

metal figurines significance, see the commonest the coins were Charles Roach

of animals, birds and gods (which may have a different p 99), and thousands of coins, in Roman times as today of small votive offerings. There is no doubt that some of accidental losses by people crossing the bridge, but Smith, who was present when the Thames was being

and

deliberate,

at that point.

They

include

dredged after the removal of the old London Bridge, became convinced that their numbers and concentrations by period indicated deliberate deposition. Similarly, the present writer, who in 1955 watched the removal by builders of the stream-bed of the Walbrook, a small tributary of the Thames in the heart of Roman London, became

convinced that the great quantities of Roman antiquities of many kinds, concentrated in the stream-bed and the flood deposits adjacent to its could not possibly all have been accidental losses. They included not only many coins and personal ornaments, but also the tools of everyday

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times / 27

4 Bronze helmet, later first century Bc, from Thames

near Waterloo Bridge

(British Museum)

life, representing

many

crafts

and

trades,

with

the

styli of clerical

workers particularly abundant." Some, such as a ploughshare, were so

large that they could easily have been recovered from the little stream if

there had been any wish to do so. Further upstream numerous human skulls have

human

been

found

in the Walbrook,

invariably

without

other

bones, and have perhaps been too readily attributed to the

Boudican massacre of AD 6o (pl 6). A recent study has suggested that they are more likely to have been deposited without their lower jaws Some time after death, as votive offerings, following a macabre Celtic tradition that was continued in Roman Britain (see also pp 45-6)." Roman artefacts from the Thames and Walbrook made solely for votive Purposes are rare, but it is difficult to account in any other way for a cautiful enamelled bronze plaque in the form of an altar, found in the hames (pl 5), and a miniature sword, only 4lin (10.6cm) long, from the

28

/ Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times

Walbrook at Bucklersbury House." There are several daggers from the Walbrook, but examples of Roman military equipment from the Thames are sufficiently scarce and early to be accounted for as campaign losses during the conquest. They include a mid first-century legionary's helmet with finding-place unrecorded and an early firstcentury officer's sword from Fulham. In marked contrast with preRoman finds from the Thames, which emphasise the importance of a warrior aristocracy, the deposits in the Walbrook, dating from about 50 to 155 AD, after which the stream seems to have become less accessible and much less frequented, point to the predominance of civilian activities in early Londinium, and the existence there of a class of craftsmen and small traders, who could afford to make their own substantial offerings to ensure continued prosperity. The Walbrook was particularly enriched by votive offerings because of its accessibility in the first and early second centuries to a consider-

s Roman

votive plaque, enamelled bronze, in form of altar, from Thames.

Height 7in (18cm)

(British Museum)

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman

6 Human

skulls from Roman

and Roman

times / 29

stream of Walbrook, City of London

(Museum

of London)

able population, and it is likely that many similarly venerated.

The

other small streams were

little river Ver at Verulamium,

for example,

also received many coins and more valuable objects. In the later Roman period, objects were dropped into a stream at Horton in Dorset, probably for the same purpose. They included 140 coins, ranging in date from Antoninus Pius to Valens, seven complete and apparently unbroken pots and a spearhead. The coins were not contained in the pots, so it is unlikely that this was simply a buried hoard subsequently submerged by a stream. A curious local legend, that a tenth-century earl used to behead deer as they leapt the stream, may indicate that skulls of animals and antlers have also been found there. Ironwork seems to have been considered as appropriate for votive Purposes as highly decorated bronze, perhaps because of the special mystique

attached

to the blacksmith's

craft,

and

because

one

of the

underworld deities to be placated seems to have been himself regarded

as a smith. The great bog deposit of Llyn Cerrig Bach in Anglesey, the votive character of which has long been recognised, included, in addition to iron spears and swords, one deliberately bent (pl 7), a bridle-

bit, chariot-tyres, two slave chains with neck irons, and two pairs of Smith's tongs.'* There were also numerous bronze objects and bones Indicating animal sacrifices. Though there were many pre-Roman Objects, deposits probably continued to be made here in the early years

Of the Roman occupation. A hoard of smith’s and other tools, found in water-logged gravel at

30 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times Waltham Abbey in the Lea valley in 1967, was probably votive, since some tools had been deliberately destroyed by bending, in accordance with the not uncommon ritual practice of ‘killing’ an inanimate object to despatch it to the world of spirits (pl 8). This seems to be another example of votive deposition in a watery place in the early years of Roman

rule. Three Scottish hoards of ironwork were also deposited in

water in the Roman period at Blackburn Mill (Borders), Carlingwerk Loch (Dumfries and Galloway) and Eckford (Borders), the first two in cauldrons, which themselves have votive associations. Professor Stuart

Piggot has pointed out the similarity of these hoards to other votive

deposits," and the view that they were dropped into peat bogs or lakes for religious reasons is strongly supported by Professor

W H Manning."

Offerings on dry land We now have to consider the deliberate burial on dry land of similar material to that deposited in watery places, viz human and animal remains, pottery vessels and metalwork. Difficult questions are raised by finds of skeletons of animals buried by human agency as intact bodies. The commonsense explanation, particularly in the case of animals not normally butchered for food, such as dogs and horses, is that it was simply a means of disposing of a dead animal before putrefaction. lt is

only when we can detect the repetition of a regular pattern, or when the burial is placed in a significant context, in circumstances indicating ritual activity, that we can suggest the possibility of animal sacrifice, although we know that this was one of the commonest forms of religious rite. At Danebury, for example, four large pits were found predating the Early Iron Age earthwork, all on the same contour round the ridge occupied by the hillfort. Dating evidence overlying one of them showed that it had been filled before the fourth century Bc. They could have been contemporary with the early stages of the hillfort construction or could have been much earlier. Two had certainly contained massive vertical timbers, and under one of them were the skeletons of two dogs, together with bones of cattle, sheep, pig, deer, vole and frog

or toad.”! It is rather unlikely that two dogs would have died natural or accidental deaths at precisely the same time, and we shall find this pattern of the burial of two or more dogs repeated many times in the

Roman period. At this point only two examples need to be cited, both with supporting evidence suggesting ritual activity. Under Newington Causeway, Southwark, near the Roman road to London Bridge, the remains of two dogs were found with amphorae in a box-like structure:

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman

7 Bent sword,

with portions of scabbard,

c. second

century

deposit, Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey (National Museum

times / 31

BC, from

votive

of Wales)

8 Part of iron hoard, . with bent and broken tongs, c. first century AD, from Waltham Abbey, Essex, in Epping Forest District Museum (Author)

32 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times

apparently not a well. At Godmanchester, in the second century, two dogs were buried at the bottom of each pit used for refuse at the mansio

there. Two

pipeclay figurines of Venus came

from the same pits,

suggesting the proximity of religious activity of some kind, but the convincing argument for ritual here lies in the repetition of the practice. The fortuitous need to dispose simultaneously of two dead dogs at the beginning of the fill of a refuse pit might occur once; its repetition several times strains credulity more than the suggestion of a double sacrifice. The chronological gap between Danebury in the fourth century BC or earlier and Roman Godmanchester in the second century AD is partially bridged by Danebury itself, where numerous 'special animal deposits', now recognised as votive by their repetitive character, were found in pits secondarily used for refuse throughout the later pre-Roman Iron Age." Such pits, usually 1-2m (3-6ft) deep, are a common feature of Early Iron Age hillforts, and were primarily used for corn storage, but were subsequently filled with refuse intermingled with the stone derived from digging new pits. Deliberate animal burials are often found at the very bottom (pl 9), apparently marking the change of use, but they also occur at higher levels in the fill. At Danebury dogs were common, but so also were horses (pl 9), while goats, sheep, cattle and pigs were also found. A badger and fox deposited together suggest that wild animals could on occasion be used. Often only a part of an animal was buried— usually the skull (in 99 pits) or articulated limbs (pl 10). Horse jaws formed a distinct category (in 1o pits, some late). Of the skulls, dog and horse occur more frequently than would be expected statistically. Bird bones, nearly all of ravens, were found in more than a

third of the pits

that contained other special animal deposits. Altogether, only 43 pits out of 891 excavated had these special burials, and as they became recognisable only after repetition, it is understandable that excavators on a smaller scale have often disregarded similar finds.

Even the remarkable discovery of a complete and articulated red deer skeleton, buried in close proximity to no fewer than twelve foxes, in a pit at Winklebury Camp, led to no suggestion that the collection might have been brought together by human agency.? Although the difficulty of interpreting this as an accidental tragedy of wild life was acknowledged, no other explanation was put forward, so that, by default, the

scenario of a deer and pack of hungry foxes trapped in an open pit seemed to be tacitly accepted. This implied an absence of human occupation at the time, and quite a different impression is given of thc state of the hillfort if the animals were collected and deposited for votive

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman

and Roman

times / 33

9 Skeletons of horse and dog (horse-skull removed to left of dog) as found in pit, Danebury,

Hants., fourth-second

reasons, as must now

century

nc (Danebury

be suspected. At Cadbury,

Trust)

on the other hand, it

was recognised that skulls of horses and cattle had been deliberately Placed in similar pits the right way up, and in one case on a bed of Stones, as part of some ritual, and it has been suggested that complete Pots and grindstones, found there in other pits, may also have been deposited for a ritual purpose.” Similar pottery deposits, occasional iron implements and layers of burnt grain were found on pit bottoms or low in pit-fills at Danebury, and Professor Cunliffe has suggested that these too could have had a ritual significance, like the special animal

burials found in similar circumstances." He also illustrates a complete Corn-grinding quern from the fill of a pit.” À special mystique seems to have been associated with corn-grinding

34 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times

10 Articulated leg of horse, as found in pit, Danebury, Hants., fourth-second century BC (Danebury Trust)

stones from even earlier times, presumably because of in providing the daily bread. An interesting forerunner ritual deposits dates from the Neolithic period. In Neolithic pots were found, packed in flints, arranged

their importance of these Iron Age Deal, five early as a quincunx in

the base of a conical pit, believed to be a corn storage pit like those of

the Iron Age. The central pot contained a grain rubber.? Not all the animal burials at Cadbury came from the fills of deep storage pits. In the centre of the hillfort, near the summit of the hill, were about 20 burials in shallow graves of young domestic animals—a few piglets and lambs, and a majority of newly-born calves. These were associated with a small square building with a porch, originally of timber, which

was identified as a shrine, and there is little doubt that

they represented a series of sacrifices. Nearby was a group of post-holes

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times / 35 that might represent an earlier shrine. A number of weapons were found in a disturbed level near the animal burials, and one group of ironwork was still in situ in a shallow pit like those containing the animals.

It is

robable, therefore, that these also were offerings." Votive deposits at shrines and temples continued of course in the Roman period, sometimes, as on Hayling Island, on the very place

where a pre-Roman shrine had stood. Here offerings of the century before the Roman conquest included the familiar deposits of ironwork, weapons and horse equipment, some deliberately bent or broken, with bone deposits of sheep or goats and pigs, but not cows. The stone-built temple with circular cella that succeeded the Iron Age wooden shrine after the conquest no longer received martial equipment, but animal bones, pottery, personal ornaments and coins continued to be deposited there, especially -on either side of a path in the courtyard." At Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, where an octagonal or circular RomanoBritish shrine had been built in the late first or early second century AD

on the edge of a Bronze Age barrow (another instance of veneration of an earlier sacred site), a complete goat or sheep skeleton was found within the shrine, surrounded by four clusters of sheep or goat mandibles, with hooves laid on either side. Two of the jaws were accompanied by coins. Outside the shrine, within the north-west corner of the sacred enclosure, were buried five more goat or sheep skeletons,

each associated with a pot. There were also votive deposits of cattle mandibles and a boar's skeleton." Many other examples of this type of offering at a shrine or within its precinct could be cited, and the casual find of an obviously votive deposit may be an indication of the proximity of a temple. In such cases it reflects a religious ritual—the Propitiation of a deity that may be identifiable, though this is normally Possible only when there is an associated inscription. We should not in any case be too eager to name a deity, since British Bods

often

seem

to have

had

a number

of names,

some

local,

some

relating to an attribute, and could be identified with more than one god of the Roman pantheon. An unknown pre-Roman god at Uley (Glos.), for example, was addressed in the Roman period both as Mars-Silvanus and Mars-Mercury, though the attributes of Mercury seem to have €come dominant, and the numerous animal sacrifices of cocks and sheep or goats reflect the preferences of this god. Sometimes, however,

edications were made to deities who were unnamed and evidently completely unknown. A Roman officer serving on Hadrian's Wall could edicate an altar to a nameless deity ‘whether god or goddess’.”’ If there Was uncertainty about the supernatural being invoked by a specifically

36 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times religious act such as setting up an altar, it might be expected that thc spirits propitiated by traditional votive ritual were often even more vaguely conceived. At Wasperton in Warwickshire, for example, at the

bottom

of a pit were

found

two

sets of unburnt

antlers carefully

arranged to form a square, in the centre of which a fire had been lit; they rested on a block of sandstone, which was crudely inscribed on its under surface with the word ‘FELICITER’— for luck." It is hard to explain this except as a rite that had already in the Roman period lost its original religious significance, and had degenerated into magic—a phenomenon that we shall encounter repeatedly. Magic may be defined as the use of supernatural power vested in the operator or in the ritual he employs, without the intervention of a supernatural being. The term 'sorcery' is often used to describe an intermediate process in which the operator attempts to compel the cooperation of a supernatural being. Both differ from a religious rite, in which the operator approaches a supernatural being as a suppliant. Since, however, these terms only define the mental attitude of the operator, the same ritual might be used in all three ways. Sorcery, in the form of necromancy, the conjuring up of the dead to obtain information, such as the location of treasure, or in other ways to

make use of them, may be suspected in the case of one curious ritual deposit. At St Clare Street, in a Roman cemetery area east of Londinium where burials of the first and second centuries have been found, a small

pit contained the complete skeleton of a heron, more than eighty frogs or toads, and

a number

of shrews

and

voles, above

which

were

two

broken and two complete flagons of the late first-early second century. These suggest libations, but the odd zoological collection is an unlikely offering to a reputable deity (pl 11). A very different kind of ritual deposit, probably also associated with a cemetery, was a small fourth-century hoard of jet ornaments found at Moulsham, Chelmsford. The reason for regarding the group as votive, rather than a minor treasure hoard, was that it was accompanied by a flange-rim pottery bowl inverted over a shallow dish, which presumably contained food or some other perishable offering. No bones, burnt or otherwise, were found with it, although animal bones were well preserved in the filling of the pit into which it had been inserted, so it does not appear to have been a grave group. Two earlier inhumations of the third century, however, were found only 3om (100ft) away.”

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times / 37

11 Ritual pit in Roman cemetery, St Clare Street, London, with two complete and two broken flagons, late first-early second century ap; below lay skeletons of a heron and many frogs (Museum of London)

Ritual deposits in ditches There is a distinctive category of ritual deposit, intermediate in character, between deposits in naturally wet places, such as streams, pools or bogs, and those in shallow holes and pits in dry open ground. These are

the rather numerous deposits in artificial ditches, the wetness of which is variable and may not be relevant. Two practically complete samian bowls of about AD 50-70, associated with a human skull in a ditch parallel

with

the

Roman

north-south

road,

on

the

site

of 201—211

Borough High Street, Southwark, probably constitute a votive deposit

of some sort.” We shall find a preference for bowls in suspected ritual finds of various kinds, probably libations, while, as Geoff Marsh

because

of their use as paterae

has shown,

used for votive purposes in Roman Britain continuation of a long-established pre-Roman ditch was definitely wet, so this may be yet association of the Celtic head-cult with water.

human

for

skulls were often

(see nı4), no doubt in tradition. In this case the another instance of the A very similar deposit of

38 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times a century later was found in the east ditch of the London fort near its southern end in Aldermanbury. Here animal bones had been thrown into the ditch with a large portion of a human skull, and three broken but complete cooking-pots." Neither of these skulls was accompanied by its lower jaw, but in the Southwark example this could have been removed by a later Roman intrusion. In Rangoon Street, just within the eastern wall of Londinium, whole

pots and dog burials were found with a Roman field system on the edge of the town (pl 12, 13). In its final phase the ditch system incorporated an enclosure that may have been a pen for animals. The infill, which took place towards the end of the second century, and marks the end of farming here, is probably associated with the building of the city wall about this time some 60 metres to the east.” If the dog burials and thc pots were in fact votive, these circumstances may be significant. Deliberate intention of a ritual character seems clear in the deposition of three pairs of objects at intervals of about two metres in a Roman

ditch at Orpington, west Kent. These were successively two shallow bowls, two terracotta lamps and two cooking-pots, all substantially complete (pl 14)." The use of objects in pairs as ritual offerings, especially to earth deities, occurs too often to be coincidental, though its significance is unknown. Were the recipients imagined as a couple, each

of whom

had to receive a gift? It is curious that this practice runs

counter to the normal preference for odd numbers in magic and ritual. The use of ditches for ritual deposits may have less to do with the water that they often contained than with the fact that they served as boundaries. Terminus was the Roman god of boundaries, and in Roman rural custom boundary stones were set up with a religious ceremony that has much in common with many of the Romano-British practices discussed in this chapter. Siculus Flaccus tells us that the stones themselves were garlanded and anointed, that animal sacrifices were burnt

in the holes where

the stones

were

to be set, and

that incense,

grain, honeycombs and wine were thrown on the fires before the stones were set on the hot ashes." If any of the ditch deposits have a similar significance, they need not be regarded as evidence for an imported Italian

custom,

however,

since

a similar

veneration

for

boundaries

occurred in most primitive agrarian communities. We know it did in pre-Roman Britain, for the corner of a ‘Celtic’ field on Overton Down. Wiltshire, was originally marked by the burial of an Early Iron Age pot. and subsequently in the Romano-British period by two sarsen stones, no doubt set up with the appropriate ceremonial." Nevertheless, the most likely explanation of the ditch deposits—certainly those in the City of

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman m

^ m

times / 39

> L^.

12 Pot, about AD 200, as found in fill of ditch, Rangoon Street, City of London

(Museum of London)

40 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times

13 Dog burial, as found in fill of ditch, about AD 200, Rangoon Street, City of London (Museum of London)

London at Rangoon Street and Aldermanbury—is that the ritual accompanied the filling of the ditch and marked the end of its use, in conformity with a practice that we shall find to be common. Ritual deposits in shafts and wells A shaft is of course a deep and narrow pit, and there are borderline cases that could be attributed to either category. Nevertheless it is convenient to distinguish well-like shafts from the shallower pits dug originally for storage that have already been discussed, if only because of the suspicion that some were intended from the beginning for ritual purposes. The subject has been extensively studied by Anne Ross, who has published a gazetteer of more than 70 possible examples," and it will therefore be dealt with in more summary fashion here, but with special reference to more recent finds of this nature. It is important to

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman

and Roman

times / 41

14 Pair of complete cooking-pots, as found in fill of Roman ditch (with pair of bowls and pair of lamps), Orpington, Kent (Orpington Historical Society)

make a sharp distinction between shafts that do not seem to have served any practical purpose, and were used from the beginning for a succession of ritual deposits, and those that were undoubtedly dug and used as wells, sometimes for a long time, but received ritual deposits, often on a single occasion, in the process of filling, after they ceased to

be used to supply water. The offerings may have been intended for the same or similar deities, presumably of the underworld in both cases, but

the purpose of the ritual may have been quite different. Though he might raise an eyebrow at the early date of the record, the most sceptical archaeologist would probably be prepared to admit the ritual significance of the remarkably repetitive succession of finds from a dry shaft at Jordan Hill, Somerset, if only because this was located within a Romano-British temple, where religious rites are to be ©xpected. At the bottom was a rough cist formed of two stones, in Which were two Roman

pots, a short sword, a spearhead, a knife, two

42 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times pieces of iron and a steelyard. Above this was a layer of stone tiles, on which was a bed of ashes and charcoal. On this was a double layer of stone tiles arranged in pairs, with a skeleton of a bird and a small Roman coin between each pair. Another bed of ashes came next, and thereafter was an alternating succession of tiles enclosing bird skeletons and coins, and beds of ashes. There were 16 repetitions of this sequence

in all between the bottom and top of the well, and midway this was interrupted by a cist containing a sword, spearhead and pots like those in the cist at the bottom. The birds represented were raven, crow, buzzard and starling. Clearly, here there was a succession of rites as the

shaft was filled.** also have been a

religious site, and here again

was evidence of a repetitive ritual. Two

Ashill, Norfolk,

enclosures, an inner and an

outer,

were

may

formed

by

ditches,

and

within

the

inner

one

were

two

shafts, 12m (4oft) and 6.7m (22ft) deep, and a pit only 1.5m (sft) deep. The shallower shaft appeared to be unfinished, and contained only pots,

an ox skull and red deer antlers, while the pit contained a goat-skull and other animal bones. The deep shaft, however, contained in the bottom

6.4m (21ft) of its fill a remarkable sequence of more or less perfect pots, placed in layers symmetrically arranged, embedded in leaves of hazel and nuts. In all, about 100 pots were found, more than 50 of which were perfect. They were accompanied at various levels by other objects, such as part of a quern, pieces of antler, a boar's tusk, a bronze brooch and

an iron implement.” These and other shafts containing probable ritual deposits listed by Anne Ross seem never to have been used as wells and had no obvious practical purpose. They were admittedly recorded in the credulous nineteenth century, but in such detail that their nature can hardly be doubted. We will however conclude a necessarily brief selection with a dry shaft dug in the chalk at Keston, Kent, containing successive deposits, and excavated early in 1985 by Brian Philp, an archaeologist who admits to a prejudice against ‘ritual’ interpretations, but in this case was totally convinced. At the bottom of the shaft, at a depth of 4.9m (16ft), was the articulated skeleton of a dog. Above this were three

skeletons of horses, complete and articulated, carefully arranged as a triangle, the second with its head to the tail of the first, and the third with head to the head of the first. There were ten occasions when animal deposits were made, seven after the burial of the horses and two before it, for in addition to the dog at the bottom, animal bones were piled at

the side of the shaft, indicating that another burial was distributed when the horses were buried. Pottery evidence indicated that the fill was

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times / 43

taking place in the first and second centuries. A similar shaft found nearby

in 1962

was

filled in the fourth

century,

and

contained

the

cremated remains of two small dogs in a pile at the bottom, where they were covered by seven sherds of a red-ware pot.” Both shafts were in fairly close proximity to the mausoleum of a major Roman villa, and

may therefore have been intended for offerings to the shades of the family dead or to deities of the underworld on their behalf. If the cult extended over several centuries, as seems likely, other shafts may remain

to be discovered in this area. Anne Ross has shown that ritual shafts are especially characteristic of those parts of Britain most affected by the latest waves of pre-Roman immigrants from northern Gaul. The practice was certainly known in late pre-Roman and Roman times in many parts of Gaul. Such shafts are often called ‘puits funeraires’ by French archaeologists, but some of

them contain merely deposits of animal remains and pottery, as in Britain, with apparently no human remains. Others undoubtedly contain human skeletons, but in circumstances that might suggest sacrifice rather than a normal funerary rite. A well was originally used to supply water at Bavay (Nord) about the time of the Roman conquest, and its subsequent fill contained three successive inhumations, not later than the early first century Ap—a child with a dog, a woman and a man, one

above the other." In the Luxembourg Gardens at Paris more than a hundred Gallo-Roman shafts, from 3 to 12m (10-40ft) deep, apparently not deep enough to supply water, were excavated between 1956 and I974. One contained two skeletons and another a single one, whose body had apparently fallen or been thrown from the top of the shaft. Many

contained

burnt earth, as did the well at Bavay, so it is possible

that they were associated with a cremation rite. In general the shafts in the Luxembourg Gardens contained many pottery vessels, more rarely glass vessels, bone tools and some terra-cotta figurines. The date range was from the first to the third century Ap. At Montmaurin (HauteGaronne), a shaft containing pottery of the first century Bc had at the bottom a bronze situla, a quern-stone and three complete but broken Pots; higher in the fill were three complete amphorae, six amphora

bodies and five more mill-stones, with bones of ox, pig, sheep, goat,

horse, chicken, wild boar, roe deer, and the jawbones of two dogs. A late Roman shaft associated with a villa at the same place, believed not to be a well, contained at the bottom eleven loom-weights, a number of complete pots standing upright, iron objects including keys and a knife, anima] bones, holed stones, oyster and snail shells. At a higher level in the fill, above a coin of Constantius it, was an uninscribed marble altar,

44 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times above which

flagstones had been laid to seal the well. Above

this was

the demolition debris of a building. Animal bones (levels not specified) included the same domestic and wild animals as the earlier shaft, again

with two dogs, this time more complete." There seems to be no evidence to support the suggestion that either of the Montmaurin shafts is funerary; on the contrary, as we shall see, the later one, with apparent ritual deposits followed by demolition of a building, has many parallels in Britain, in circumstances that have nothing to do with mortuary rites. It is clear that Anne Ross was right in linking the ritual shafts of Roman Britain with Gaulish practices, though the idea of the deep shaft as a means of communicating with the powers of the underworld is in fact much more ancient and widespread, as she points out. The device was used in Britain as early as the Bronze Age, and undoubted ritual shafts of that period have been found at Swanwick, Hampshire” and Wilsford, Wiltshire, the latter nearly 100 feet deep.”' It was also familiar in the Mediterranean world under the Greek name of Bó0pogq and the Roman mundus. There was however also another kind of ritual pit, known in the Roman world as favissa, which was used for quite a different purpose. Things consecrated to the gods, even the bones of sacrificial

animals,

became

themselves

sacred,

and

the

Roman

word

sacer meant much the same as the Polynesian tabu. Sacred things were dangerous and had to be disposed of with proper care when they were no longer required. If we think of our own attitudes towards the disposal of radioactive waste, we may understand more clearly how people felt about such things in a religious age. A deep pit or shaft was an appropriate place for the disposal of the remains of sacrifices, vessels used to make offerings and libations, and votive objects that had been broken or had to be removed from shrines to make room for new offerings. In the case of archaeological finds, even when we are convinced that a bizarre collection of objects from a shaft or well were

not the result of accidental loss but were deliberately deposited

in

accordance with a religious ritual, it may be impossible to determine whether the shaft was being used as a mundus to make offerings directly to the spirits of the earth or of the dead, or as a favissa to receive the

sanctified and therefore dangerous debris left over from a rite performed nearby. It is conceivable that in some cases the same shaft could have been used at different times for both purposes.

Offerings 8 to earth and water in

pre-Roman and Roman

times / 45à

Deposits in wells Special difficulties arise in the case of shafts and pits that were undoubtedly used as wells or cisterns, but also contain deposits, often made on a single occasion, that suggest a deliberate act of ritual, particularly when they are considered in comparison with very similar finds elsewhere. The archaeologists who excavate them are rarely in a position to do this, and are therefore understandably reluctant to admit

any other explanation than that of accident or the disposal of refuse. A further difficulty arises if the evidence for ritual is in fact the disposal of

refuse, but refuse of a special kind that can be recognised as such only

after analysis of a considerable number of similar deposits. Such finds include much the same kind of offering that we have already encountered. Human

skulls are the most convincing of these, since, as Anne Ross

has shown, they are likely to be manifestations of the well-known Celtic cult of the head, remembered in later folk traditions and closely

associated with sacred waters and wells.” Moreover they are unlikely to be dropped into wells by accident or to be disposed of as rubbish in the ordinary sense of the word. Only occasionally, as at Carrawburgh, is a skull found in a well that is itself demonstrably a holy place and the home of a water deity (named there by inscription Coventina). More usually they occur in wells that have previously been used to supply water for domestic or industrial purposes, and are reminders of the pervasive character of ancient religion in everyday life. In the City of London, one of a group of Roman public wells in Queen Street had a male skull without lower jaw thrown into it after it had become unserviceable through silting in the later first century Ap; and in Cannon Street another human cranium, minus upper and lower jaws, was found in the bottom of a well with animal bones, including those of two dogs, and pottery of AD 55-80, all apparently contained in a box. The two London skulls are likely to have been fleshless when thrown into the wells, as they had lost their lower jaws. Another skull, found in a third-century well of a Roman villa at Northwood, Herts, however, had apparently been thrown in as a complete decapitated head, but was Subsequently crushed by flint and tile building debris. Beside it was a natural stone with a crude likeness to a human head, with the eyes

Perhaps accentuated by artificial peckings.? The deposit was sandWiched between layers of building debris, so was evidently made at a

üme of demolition, probably in the fourth century. Another late Roman example is a woman's skull found in a well associated with a potter's workshop of the later third century, on the

46 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times site of the Churchill Hospital, Headington, Oxfordshire. This had several neck vertebrae attached and had evidently been deposited as 4 complete decapitated head. The fill above consisted mainly of pottery made on the site in a later phase of occupation during the fourth century, and it is uncertain whether the skull went into the well at the end of the first phase of occupation or during the second. It was accompanied by half a sheep.” The four wells described above were not included in the Ross corpus, as they were found or reported after its compilation.

It does however

skulls in wells at Caves

contain

records of four similar finds of

Inn (Warwickshire),

Heywood

(Wiltshire),

Brislington (Avon) and Caerwent (Gwent)—two of Antonine date. A further first-century example at Odell (Bedfordshire) is recorded by Marsh and West, though in this case the skull with lower jaw was found behind the well-lining and must have been placed there when the well was constructed.?' The practice was evidently by no means uncommon in southern Britain, and continued through most of the Roman period. Animal remains are much more frequently found as deposits in wells, however—sometimes skulls alone, sometimes other parts of the body, and sometimes whole skeletons. In such cases it may be impossible to distinguish ritual deposits from domestic rubbish, which may well include

the bodies

of inedible

animals,

animals

that

have

died

from

natural causes, or inedible parts of animals that have been eaten. When they accompany a ritual deposit, however, like the two dogs with the Cannon Street skull, or the half-sheep with the Churchill Hospital skull, it is a reasonable assumption that they form part of the same deposit. Repetitions of the same or similar deposits may also convince us that we have encountered a regular custom, particularly if they occur in similar circumstances. Pairs of dogs, for example, sometimes multiplied, occur so often in wells that the standard archaeological explanation of a dogfight ending in a fatal accident wears very thin. Two dogs were found in the fill of a well at Farnworth, Gloucestershire, associated with a fourth-

century coin, with stone debris suggesting demolition in the shaft above them. Two dogs were found in the upper silt of a second century well at Gadebridge Park Roman villa, with oyster-shells, pottery and much red wall-plaster, indicating partial demolition or at least alterations; more substantial evidence of demolition came later, in the early third

century, overlying a complete ox-skeleton higher in the shaft." Four dogs with other animal remains were found in the late third-century fill of a well in Borough High Street, Southwark, together with coarse-ware bowls of local manufacture and much building debris.“ A record number of 16 dogs was excavated from a single Antonine well in the

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times / 47 Market Square, Staines, Surrey, accompanied by a red-deer antler, two complete dishes and a flagon broken at the neck; in the fill above was

building debris." If this was the result of a dog-fight, it was of epic dimensions! A cat and a dog found together in the lower silt of a late third-century well under Southwark Cathedral may have fallen there by accident, as a result of the age-old antagonism of the two species, as the

excavator has suggested—but again the shaft above was filled with dumped building debris." The regular occurrence of these fatalities after a well ceased to be used, and just before its shaft was filled by the demolition of the building it had served, suggests very strongly a sacrificial rite appropriate to that occasion. Not

all animal

deposits

in wells

were

associated

with

demolition,

though they must normally mark the end of the wells’ use for supplying water, which would have been rapidly poisoned by decaying flesh. The difficulty as always, lies in distinguishing ritual deposits from refuse. The former must be suspected, however, when a number of animal skulls were deposited together. At Portchester Castle, for example, the

fourth-century fill of a well contained 13 skulls of oxen and three of sheep, as well as of the usual two dogs, together with the complete skeleton of a Great Northern Diver.? On another military site, at Vindolanda, the skulls of ten oxen were found in the fill of the later

fourth-century well in the courtyard of the principia. Horse-skulls were preferred in Essex, and five were deposited not earlier than the fourth century in a well at Wickford, marking a phase of neglect, although the well was subsequently re-used. Five horse-skulls were also deposited in a dry shaft recut in the later second century in a well at

Chelmsford.^ Some deposits in Roman wells consist entirely of pottery, and in other

Cases pottery vessels accompany human and animal deposits. Occasionally these are of a kind associated elsewhere with religious practices, like the triple-vases and ‘unguent-flask’ found with a red-deer antler in the third-century fill of a well in Union Street, Southwark, where they were accompanied by building debris.ó More usually they are normal domestic vessels, distinguishable from the sherds of ordinary refuse only by their relative completeness. There is however a distinct preference for amphorae, flagons, bowls and occasionally beakers, all of which might ave been used for libations. Thus two almost intact flanged bowls

Come from the very bottom of the fourth-century Portchester well that Produced the animal deposit described above. The human skull from the first-century well in Cannon Street, London, was accompanied mainly by flagons and amphorae, which appeared to have been either

48 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times dumped complete into the well and broken on impact, or smashed nearby and dumped into the well in a single operation. There is 4 suspicion that some of the bronze jugs and flagons found in wells may have been more extravagant votive offerings of the same kind. One

found in the late third-fourth century fill of one of the Queen Street, London,

wells was associated

with the skulls of a horse, red deer and

two cats. David

cisterns noted a remains. the well

Graham

and

Martin

Millett,

who

excavated

several

water

and wells in the small Roman town of Neatham, Hampshire, recurrent pattern of finds, both of complete pots and animal They suggest that the ritual deposits were of two kinds; when was dug below the water-table an offering of a complete pot or

pots was made; later, when the well became foul, a further offering was

made as a sort of thanksgiving, before the well was filled with rubbish or used as a cess-pit. This later offering was more variable, consisting sometimes of complete pots, sometimes of an animal deposit, such as the body of a dog or cock, or the skulls of oxen.” Hoards of metalwork, very much like those from rivers and boys, have also been found in the fill of Roman wells, accompanied by the pottery jugs or animal skulls that seem to be characteristic of votive deposits. A great hoard of iron tools and bronze work found at Silchester, for example, had been dumped in a late Roman well on a thick layer of ashes, indicating a considerable fire, and was accompanied by a pottery jug and bowl, both entire (Fox and Hope 1901, 246-7). Under similar circumstances following a fire, a bronze and lead coffer containing a bronze basin, ornamented metalwork in silvered bronze and miniature hammers, was dropped in a late Roman well at Rouen, together with a pottery jug and the antlered skull of a roe-deer (all exhibited in the Musée des Antiquités, Rouen). Both deposits seem to mark the abandonment of wells made unserviceable by fire and

already partly filled with ashes, probably in the late fourth century. Rituals of commencement

and termination

The idea of a rite of commencement, or foundation offering, is à familiar one, which will be encountered many times in the next section, though it is not easily identified in a well or pit that has been regularly

cleaned out while in use, and often cannot be completely excavated to its bottom. Nevertheless, pots alone, probably originally containing 2 liquid libation, are what might be expected, and can reasonably be interpreted as such when they are found at the very bottom of a well, aS

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman

and Roman

times / 49

at Neatham or Portchester. Sometimes, too, coins are found embedded in the puddling at the base, or in the construction pit, as in an Antonine

well at Ewell. A rite of termination

is a less familiar concept,

but onc that could

explain many of the finds described here, from the animal deposits laid in former storage pits at pre-Roman Danebury to those dropped in Roman wells before they were finally filled, often with the debris of demolition.

It would

also

account

for the deposits

in the ditches

at

Rangoon Street, made at the time when farming ceased there (p 38). Similarly, a series of puppy burials in pots, interred apparently in rows, in a hollow between two areas occupied by potters near Upchurch,

Kent, may

mark

the abandonment

of this industrial site in

the late second century.^" A rite of termination may therefore be a useful indicator of change, though in a well it may merely indicate the failure of that well. Occasionally, however, similar deposits are found on a larger scale. An Iron Age farmstead at Farningham, Kent, for example, was abandoned at about the time of the Roman conquest. Of its 24 pits, one contained an exceptional deposit of at least 43 pots, many largely complete, and clearly thrown into the pit at one time. They included some of the latest pots found on the site. The excavator, while dismissing the idea of any ritual significance, suggests that the occasion may have been the abandonment of the site, when pottery that could not be carried away

was dumped in the pit." The deliberate burial of these pots may have been due merely to excessive tidiness, but in the light of evidence elsewhere for similar rites of termination, it seems more likely that it Was a sequel to some final feast of communion with local gods. Similarly in Roman Southwark 150 years later, three neighbouring pits received 42 complete pots, some of 'religious' character, and the bodies of at least 20 dogs, apparently in a single dumping, together with demolition

debris (pl 15).”” This large-scale termination rite cannot be dissociated from the decline in Southwark's activities in the later second century, and may point to a final crisis just before 200. '' An earlier crisis in Londinium north of the Thames, at the beginning of this period of decline, may be marked by the dumping of pottery, mostly nearly complete vessels, in a pit in Bishopsgate about the middle of the second century. Amphorae, flagons and bowls predominated to an unusual degree, and there is little doubt that they went into the pit on a single Occasion, together with pins, keys, two lamps, a pipeclay figurine—and Arge quantities of building material. No dogs or cats were found, but all Parts of the usual food animals were represented, including feet and

so / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman

times

15 Timber-lined Roman pit, containing many pottery vessels (whole when deposited) and skeletons of dogs, with demolition debris, late second century, St Thomas Street, Southwark (Museum of London)

skulls, and there were rather large numbers of roe-deer and chickens. ^ Unusual ‘rubbish’ deposits of this kind merit special attention, not merely for the light they may throw on religious practices, but also because they probably indicate a crisis in the local community.” It may be no coincidence that the Walbrook valley in the heart of the city was largely abandoned about this time. * Builders’ deposits By the nature of archaeological evidence, ritual deposits found ın buildings are likely to have been put there when the building was constructed or reconstructed, and so fall into the category of rites of commencement. Only rarely, as when several dog skeletons were recently found on the floor of a demolished Roman building in Southwark, is there any suggestion of a possible rite of termination. The practice of sacrificing at the foundation of a structure was familiar in the pre-Roman Iron Age, and often the sacrifice then was human. The best-known examples relate to the construction or reconstruction of hillforts. In Dorset, at Maiden Castle, a young man was

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman

and Roman

times / sı

buried in a contracted position at the junction of the phase 1 and phase 2 ramparts when the hillfort was extended, and at Hod Hill

tightly contracted

a woman

position was buried under a low mound

overlaid by the counter-scarp of the rampart.”

At South

in a

of chalk

Cadbury,

Somerset, a young man had been crammed head down into a small pit in

a rampart before a new rampart was constructed above it just before the Roman conquest. '^ A burial during the course of rampart construction at Sutton Walls, Hereford, is also a suspected foundation sacrifice." The bodies of an adult and child crushed beneath the foundations of the stone wall of a circular structure in a later Iron Age cemetery at Harlyn Bay, Cornwall, have been similarly interpreted.” The Romans

officially condemned

human

sacrifice, and this was the

main ostensible reason for their suppression of the Druids. Human life was cheap on the frontier, however, and Roman auxiliaries could be as barbarous as those they fought. It is difficult to account for the body of a ‘dwarf’, with votive animal deposits above and below it, in one of the

ritual pits at Newstead, except as a sacrifice for which the army was responsible." Even in the most civilised parts of Britain, the authorities seem on occasion to have turned a blind eye to infant sacrifice, which

may of course have been surreptitious. Two babies were found buried in

different places beneath the sandstone blocks of a third-century building, probably a barrack block, in Reculver fort, Kent, in the only two places where sections were cut beneath the building, so there may well

have been more in a total length of about 80 feet." In the same county, On a sacred site at Springhead, beside the main road from the Channel ports to Londinium, four infants of about six months were buried, one at each corner of a temple. They were, however, buried in pairs on two Separate occasions in the later second century, those in the south-east and north-east corners when the first floor was laid, those in the north-

West and south-west corners at least ten years later when a new floor was laid above it. One of each pair of babies had been decapitated. This repulsive rite was performed for the second time by people who knew of the burial of the first pair of babies, since these were not disturbed and the new burials were placed in the empty corners so that the two headless babies were diagonally opposite one another in the north-east

and south-west corners."

lt is interesting that another decapitated

foundation sacrifice lay under the robbed wall of the temple near its Corner, but this was merely a seagull, found in a moss-like material with thyme seeds. We do not know the name of the god or goddess Onoured at Springhead, but there is some evidence, apart from the Place-name, that it was a water deity, so that again we have an Association between decapitation and spirits of springs and wells.

s2

/ Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times The strict Roman

to have

been

law requiring burial outside towns does not seem

applied

to

infants,

so

when

their

buildings, this may

simply have been a means

Nevertheless

have

some

been

found

bodies

are

found

in

of disposing of them.

in circumstances

that suggest

foundation sacrifice. At Viroconium (Wroxeter) a new room was added to the northern hall of the public baths, not long after it was built in the mid-second

century, and an infant was buried

beneath

its floor in the

corner of the room. The body was in at least two parts." In Verulamium an infant was buried in a tile cist in the angle of a room at the time when the house was reconstructed in the late third century, and the cist was sealed

by

the

new

floor

that

was

then

laid."

At

Caerwent

a whole

human skeleton, presumably adult, was found under a wall with its head in a recess left in the wall, and apparently overlying the fill of a cistern, which itself contained ritual deposits—two human skulls near the bottom and several complete but broken Samian bowls and black jars." Some of these examples are not wholly conclusive, but there is little doubt that human foundation sacrifice continued in Roman Britain in the less conspicuous form of infanticide, whatever the attitude of its rulers may have been. In general, however, foundation and building offerings now took the less objectionable form of animal or bird sacrifice, food and drink in pottery containers, or even coins. A dog was buried under the sill beam of a timber-framed

house

in Newgate

Street, London,

when

this was

built after a fire of about AD 130—135 (pl 16), and another was buried in Winchester before a masonry building was built over it at about the

same date." A house in Silchester had pots and bones of lambs and fowls buried beneath a tessellated floor in three corners of a Finds of this sort beneath floors are common throughout the period in Britain, and some at least seem attributable to officialdom. At Colchester, for example, two pots were set beneath the clay floor of a pre-Boudican building, believed

room." Roman Roman upright to be

public." We need not look for a British origin here, for in this form foundation deposits are deep-rooted in Mediterranean tradition. In Athens, for example, specially made cheap pottery and offerings of chickens were buried under new floors in the fourth and third centuries

BC.” In late Roman

Britain there are several instances of curious deposits

under the floors or foundations of Roman fortifications. At Chester-leStreet, under the stone blocks that formed the floor of the north tower of the town's west gate, built in the late third-fourth century, was found 4 face-pot, decorated with hammer, tongs and anvil, containing the bones

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times / 53

16 Dog burial beneath sill-beam of timber-framed house built after fire of an 130-135, Newgate Street, City of London (Museum of London)

54 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times a small dog (pl 17)." At Caerwent, (including

a complete

hind-leg,

a great dump

dogs

(twelve

of bones of horse,

individuals),

cattle,

and

other animals, was found with two substantially complete fourth. century beakers and a flanged bowl in the north-west corner tower of the city wall, overlying the masonry chippings of its construction and just below an internal offset that presumably marked the position of a wooden floor."' In London, the skull of a horse and a human femur were found under the square chalk and flint foundation of a bastion of the city wall at All Hallows, London Wall." If these are foundation deposits

they must presumably be attributed to late Roman military builders. In town and country houses, modest foundation deposits are not uncommon. At Eccles Roman villa, Kent, a beaker of the late first-early second century containing bird bones was found under the clay floor of a room leading to the second-century baths, and a similar find was buried in the north-west corner of a building of about AD 130, believed to be a cook-house,

at Moor

Park, Rickmansworth,

Herts.?

Occasionally the threshold was selected as the appropriate place for a ritual deposit, foreshadowing a common practice of later times, when special attention was given to the protection of entrances by various ritual devices. The skull of a horse, ringed around with oyster-shells and crowned with a large smooth pebble, was found under the threshold of a barn-like basilican building of late Roman date near a Romano-Celtic temple at Bourton Grounds, Buckingham; and a complete folded beaker of the early third century, without recognisable contents, was found buried at the threshold of an external door of the Roman villa at Rapsley, Ewhurst."^ Often, votive pots, set in a floor or buried beneath it, contain only a single brass or copper coin—one of Vespasian at Farningham, Kent; of Domitian at Ashtead, Surrey; and of Vespasian

and Antoninus Pius in Southwark.”” In a commercial age, coins tend to play an important part in the minor rituals practised by individuals, as we know today. It may

therefore be appropriate to conclude with a practice that has apparently survived unchanged

from Roman

to modern

times—the placing of a

coin as a special kind of foundation deposit in the mast-step of a ship. A sailing barge with a cargo of building-stone from the Medway came to grief near the mouth of the Fleet at Blackfriars, London, probably in the later second century, and was excavated in 1962. Its mast had been removed, probably in a salvage operation, and in the mast-step was à copper coin (as) of Domitian, dateable to AD 88-9. It lay with reverse side uppermost, showing a figure of Fortuna, goddess of good luck, holding a ship's rudder (pl 18, 19). It was a little worn and had obviously

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman

times / 55

77 Late Roman face-pot, decorated with hammer and tongs, found containing bones of small dog beneath floor of tower of west gate of Roman town, Chester-le-Street, Durham (Bowes Museum)

$6 / Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times

n

i

Hi

i

Ls

"m

f

18 Copper coin (as of AD 88-9) as found in mast-step of Roman sailing barge Blackfriars, City of London (Museum of London)

Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times / 57

19 Roman coin, as of Domitian, AD 88-9, with figure of Fortuna, goddess of good luck, holding cornucopiae and ship’s rudder, found in mast-step of Blackfriars barge, enlarged, actual diameter 2.5cm (iin) (Museum of London)

been in circulation for some years before it was deposited. There is no doubt that it was selected for its reverse type, which clearly indicates the intended recipient of the offering and its purpose. Although the ship itself was of western build, this custom probably originated in the Mediterranean, where it had a long history in the Roman period. Two other examples, widely separated in time, are known from wrecks off the south coast of France. One is a bronze coin of Cossura (Pantelleria),

dated after 217 Bc, but found in the mast-step of a ship wrecked in the first century BC; the other a coin of Constantine 1 from a wreck of the fourth century AD at Port Vendres, near the border between France and

Spain. The practice was known to builders of wooden sailing-ships in fecent times, and may survive among builders of racing yachts, though It has been rationalised as dating the construction of the ship, by using a Coin of the same date.” We have no evidence of continuity, but it will be Surprising if future nautical archaeology does not reveal examples that

will bridge the gap.

3 Rituals of death

Alone among animals human beings are fully conscious that their earthly existence is finite, and it is not surprising that the inevitability of death should have been made more endurable by surrounding its

occurrence with elaborate ritual. As this has always been recognised by archaeologists, we have an overwhelming mass of data on it, in marked contrast with other aspects of ritual behaviour. Most people who have taken a general interest in archaeology have a broad knowledge of the sequence of prehistoric funerary rituals in Britain; collective burials in elaborate tombs in the Neolithic; individual crouched burials accompanied by personal possessions and drink or food vessels, often under round barrows, in the Beaker period and earlier Bronze Age; cremations with ashes buried in cinerary urns both in barrows and flat cemeteries,

overlapping in time with these inhumations and supplanting them later in the Bronze Age; a curious hiatus in the latest Bronze Age and earliest Iron Age, apparently signifying that the dead were disposed of in a way

that has left no recognisable archaeological record, possibly by cremation with dispersal of the ashes; this is followed later in the pre-Roman Iron Age by local variations of inhumation burial, mostly crouched or flexed, with restricted distribution, suggesting that the ‘invisible’ funerary rites continued through much of Britain; finally, from about the beginning of the first century BC, in south-eastern Britain cremation was followed by burial of the ashes, accompanied by grave furniture of varying richness. The Roman conquest carried a similar practice of cremation and urn burial with other objects through most of Britain in the first century AD, but inhumation of the unburnt body also occasionally survived,

even

in London

(pl 23); as also did cremation

and

urn

burial in the later Roman period, after inhumation became the fashionable rite, about AD 200. It is not possible here to discuss British mortuary rituals in detail, and it will be more profitable to consider the basic ideas

Rituals of death / 59 underlying them, which recur in all cultures and periods. Since these are

common examples,

to mankind, some

it will

modern,

be helpful

that throw

to cite one or two

a particularly

significance of practices likely to be encountered

foreign

clear light on

the

by archaeologists in

less comprehensible form.

Disposal of the dead The disposal of a corpse is a practical necessity, but is usually complicated by strong emotional attitudes, including feelings of loss and the need for support from kinsmen and the social group. There may also be fearof the ghost of the dead and its possible resentment at the loss of life. Usually there is belief in some sort of existence after death, and in the need for the soul to establish itself in its new life—a transition that

can be helped by rituals carried out by the living, who thereby express and relieve their feelings of loss and affection, and protect themselves against danger from a homeless and possibly angry ghost. There is also a widespread feeling that death is a pollution from which both the living

and the soulof the dead must be cleansed. In some degree this feeling is probably almost universal, but is subject to great variation, apparently culturally induced, ranging from comparative indifference to nearobsession. The material remains that were once a living human being inspire a special

kind

of awe,

which

can

verge

on

horror,

even

in a

modern rationalistic society, as many archaeologists can testify. To use old-fashioned but convenient anthropological terms, they have mana and are therefore tabu—from one view-point they are sacred, from

another unclean, and must therefore be treated with great caution.! Throughout the world there are three basic methods of disposal: by exposure and consumption by scavengers, as in the Towers of Silence of the Parsees, and in some African tribes, such as the Nandi of Kenya; by burial, the method

most

familiar to us, and

the one leaving the most

obvious archaeological evidence; and by cremation, usually revealed to archaeologists mainly by the accompanying ritual, by which the ashes May be placed in an urn and perhaps buried under a barrow. Quite

commonly there is a combination of more than one method, involving *Xposure in a protected situation, such as an abandoned hut or a special Mortuary house, or temporary

burial until the flesh has decayed, when

the bones may be made into souvenir ornaments (Andamanese), buried Again, deposited

in a pot or more formal tomb

(Southern

Chinese), or

‘temated (Balinese). The Balinese have in fact a most complex funerary Ceremony,

extending

over

weeks

or months,

and

intended

to purify

60 / Rituals of death body and soul, and to despatch the soul to its appropriate heaven. The elaborate ritual apparatus is eventually burnt, and the ashes of the dead deposited in the sea, so that virtually no evidence would remain for the archaeologist beyond a large area of burnt earth.” Beneficent bones

The affectionate preservation of bones of the dead as souvenirs seems to be a very primitive characteristic, as with the Andaman

Islanders, food-

gathering Negritoes of the Indian Ocean, but a more religious attitude to such relics seems to be found in early food-producing communitics, In the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Jericho, for example, skulls were buried under the floor of the house or kept in sanctuaries after being given moulded features in clay or plaster.’ Ideas concerning the beneficent influence of ancestral bones have survived in a highly sophisticated context to the present day in China, where the careful placing of the grave for reburial is considered to be of the greatest importance for the welfare of surviving members of the family, who receive the good influences of the landscape through the ancestor’s bones, but only if these are in the correct position in relation to ‘wind and water’. It is in the light of this world-wide and deep-rooted tradition of the benign influence of ancestral bones that the western Neolithic cult of the dead is best understood.

In Britain, as elsewhere, we have evidence for

mortuary houses for the temporary deposition of the dead, as well as collective chambered tombs that were used over long periods and were sometimes modified several times. Features often include a forecourt

and reserved zone around the tomb that were presumably

used for

regular ceremonies, so that the tomb played an important part in the religious life of the community.? The special virtues of human remains are reflected at a later date in the

so-called

‘Celtic’

head-cult,

some

manifestations

of which

were

described in the last chapter. The captured head of an enemy could be as beneficent as that of a revered ancestor, and head-hunting is a widespread but far from universal custom that seems to have originated independently in various parts of the world at a certain barbaric level of society. Cremation

versus

inhumation

The belief in the virtues of the physical remains of the dead cannot be reconciled with the practice of cremation, which is of great antiquity and almost as widely distributed as inhumation. It seems to be based on

Rituals of death / 61

che opposite attitude: that the mana of the dead is dangerous to human life, and that it is necessary to separate completely the dead from the living. This rite may also imply a more spiritual approach, in which the

aim is to free the soul of the deceased from material encumbrances. In Japan, for example, cremation is associated with Buddhism. There has

been a tendency to minimise the religious significance of a change of rite, and ancient Rome itself is cited as an instance of rapid fluctuation, in which cremation and inhumation alternated and often existed sideby-side.

Paradoxically,

strength

of both

however,

traditions,

for

this

Rome

example

lay on

demonstrates

the

frontier

the

between

regions of inhumation to the south and east and cremation to the north

and west, both dating from the beginning of the Iron Age in the tenth century BC. It may not be too fanciful to suggest that Rome's initial success in reconciling two conflicting religious traditions during the union of Italy prepared the way for subsequent absorption of alien cultures in the growth of the Roman Empire. Cremation, however, seems to have been predominant in Roman upper classes in the first century BC, and was general by the time of Augustus, so it was this rite that spread through the early Empire as an essential part of Roman civilisation.^ It remains uncertain why inhumation became general in the Roman world during the course of the second century, too early to be due to Christian influences, though we must suspect there was some

connection with religious ideas that spread through the Empire from the eastern Mediterranean, particularly from Egypt. The after-life

Some idea of a continuing life for the individual after bodily death is almost universal, though it is often nebulous. A basic and probably

Primitive concept is that the dead continued to live in the tomb, and this may be reflected by the representation of tombs as houses, as in the Street of tombs excavated beneath St Peter's in the Vatican; and ©xceptionally by the representation of furnishings, for the eyes of the ead alone, inside the sarcophagus of an early third-century lady from Simpelveld, Netherlands (pl 20). The ancient practice of offering food and drink to the dead in their tombs, represented on the sarcophagus of about

1400 BC

an wig,

from

Hagia

Triadha,

Crete

(pl

21),

also

survived

in

times, and pipes through which libations could be poured into ophagus or cinerary urn were not uncommonly provided, as a cremation

tow”

canister

from

Caerleon

(pl

22).

It is improbable,

that the gloomy view that the souls of the dead were confined

eir tombs

was ever generally held, and more

likely that the grave

62 / Rituals of death

20 Interior of Roman sarcophagus, early third century, showing deceased lady lying on couch, and household furniture, carved from inner sides, Simpelveld, Netherlands ( Leiden Museum)

7

x

E ,

Wa

EX. C ACIE, XA

21

A a

ENGDAC IT

Offerings to the dead in Bronze Age Crete, depicted on sarcophagus of c.1400 BC, from Hagia Triadha, showing libations, pair of calves brought for sacrifice and model boat for transport (Ministry of Culture, Greece)

Rituals of death / 63

22 Cremation canister from Caerleon with lead pipe for libations leading from

Surface, in burial of late first century AD, reconstructed in National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (National Museum of Wales)

as considered to be merely a link between the living and the soul of the cad, wherever it was, through which its needs in the after-life could be Magically supplied, especially on such occasions as the Parentalia, the east of the family dead in February, or on more Such as the birthday of the deceased.

personal

occasions,

64

/ Rituals of death

Rituals at the grave certainly did not preclude a belief that the soul of the dead journeyed to a far land—either a shadowy and gloomy land beneath the earth (the tomb merely enlarged, in fact)—or, more cheerfully, a happy land beyond the seas (Isles of the Blessed, Avalon, etc) or in the sky (Heaven). Often there was some belief that water hag to

be

crossed—either

the

sea

or

a river—so

that

classical

funerary

symbolism abounds in ships and sea-creatures carrying Cupids and Nereids. Journeys by land, by horse or carriage, are also represented. It was important both for the dead and the living that the journey should

be successfully accomplished, and that the deceased should be accepted into the kingdom

of the dead; otherwise the soul would

become once of

the dreaded homeless ghosts, continuing its existence in misery and plaguing the living. Such ghosts were placated in another Roman festival of the dead,

the Lemuria,

held in May,

in which

black

beans

were offered by householders to these hungry and mischievous spirits to persuade them to go away. In Roman times, therefore, an important purpose of the funcrary ritual was to ensure that the soul of the deceased made its proper transition from earthly life to its new life in the land of the dead, and in varying degrees and under various forms the same purpose is probably to be found in most cultures and at most periods. Grave furniture and funerary offerings Articles buried with the dead vary in significance, and in most cases archaeologists can only make an intelligent guess at the reason for their inclusion. They may merely be objects so closely associated with the

deceased that it would be considered wrong and probably dangerous for anyone else to take possession of them. The weapon of a warrior and the mirror of a lady might fall into this category, and both recur in graves, again and again, over long periods. In the case of a mirror the feeling is probably intensified by an underlying primitive belief that the reflection is the soul. Certain personal ornaments may fall into the same category, but in other cases they may be merely part of the costume in which the corpse is buried. The dress itself, as well as certain pieces of insignia, may however be an indication of status, and may be considered necessary to ensure that the rank of the deceased is recognised in his new life beyond the tomb. In extreme cases, well known in both the archaeological and ethno* graphical records, an important king or chief might be accompanied by a retinue of human beings, sacrificed in order that he may enter the neXt

Rituals of death / 65 world with attendants, guards and concubines as befits his rank. The great death-pit of Ur is a notorious instance, in which an early dynastic

ruler of about 2700 BC was accompanied

in his grave by 59 people,

including soldiers, grooms and ladies of his court. Kings of Ashanti in

the nineteenth century were similarly escorted into the after-life by a large retinue, sacrificed for the purpose." It is interesting to learn that while

condemned

criminals,

prisoners-of-war

and

holders

of certain

offices at court were used for these sacrifices without any choice in the matter, others were volunteers, as may well have been the case in ancient Mesopotamia also. It shows an attitude towards death and a

confident expectation of an after-life that is difficult for us to comprehend. Similar sacrifice on a smaller scale for lesser chieftains was practised in many cultures, and often consisted of a single slave or concubine,

as described

by the Arab,

Ibn

Fadlan,

in his account

of a

Swedish Viking ship-funeral by burning on the river Volga in 992. In this case also the girl killed is said to have volunteered." The related Hindu practice of widow-burning on the husband's funeral pyre was sup-

pressed with difficulty in the nineteenth century. Archaeologically, a sacrifice of this kind seems to be represented by the skeleton of a young woman laid cross-wise above the thighs of an elderly chieftain of the Early Bronze Age, in a tomb with many rich offerings at Laubingen, Saxony.'” Evidence for human funerary sacrifice is normally inconclusive, since it shows only that more than one person died at about the same time and were buried in the same grave—as could occur in an epidemic or other disaster. If however one burial is overwhelmingly dominant, with other evidence of elaborate ritual, it may be suspected that the subsidiary burials are sacrificial. This was suggested by Cyril Fox in the case of a group of four secondary Bronze Age cremation burials associated with a primary Beaker barrow at Llandow, GlamorBan, which was extended for the purpose. One was in an inverted urn,

accompanied by a flint arrowhead and flint and bone tools; the three Others were merely placed in hollows without urns or grave-goods. All

Were of children and were contemporary burials, as was shown by a hard trampled layer, representing ritual activity, possibly a dance, that

'mmediately overlay them. The conclusion was drawn that a noble child was buried at the family tomb, with children selected to accompany him to the after-life.'' Other British multiple burials are more doubtful, and

in the case of some Iron Age pit-inhumations, buried without ceremony

cx rave-goods, it Is possible that all the burials were sacrificial. An in Ption, showing careful burial with abundant grave offerings, is the umation of two women in a single pit of the late pre-Roman Iron

66

/ Rituals of death

Age near Basingstoke. The grave-goods were mostly in pairs—two complete sheep, two less complete horses, two portions of cows, four antler ‘weaving-combs’ (two decorated, two plain), and two terret-rings (one of antler, one silvered bronze). One set was however inferior to the other, and this may have been associated with the secondary burial, which was laid in a subservient position, crouched above the legs of the extended primary interment, with her head on the pelvis of the latter, who was clearly socially superior, though somewhat younger." It would not be surprising if the older woman died in order to accompany her mistress to the other world. If, however, she was really subordinate, it is possible that the second

group of grave offerings, only slightly inferior, was not intended for her personal use, and this brings us to a fundamental deposits. It is usually assumed they were for the either in the next world or, in the case of food equipment, in the long and difficult journey to the must

often

be

the

case,

particularly

as

question about such use of the deceased, supplies and certain land of the dead. This

a means

of

transport

was

sometimes provided— such as the boats of Viking ship burials, or the chariots of some east Yorkshire burials of the pre-Roman Iron Age, although the chariots of Gaulish warrior burials that seem to be ancestral to the latter were undoubtedly also marks of status. Even the hob-nailed boots that are commonly found in late Roman burials, though often not on the feet of the deceased, are most reasonably interpreted as essential equipment for travel. It is fairly certain, however,

that some objects buried with the dead

were not for their own use, but were intended as offerings to powers of the underworld, to make the soul of the deceased acceptable in its new home, or to ensure its safe passage there. It is interesting that offerings were sometimes made in pairs in single graves, and we have already noted the same tendency with offerings to chthonic deities in nonfunerary contexts (p 38).' A goat (entire) was found on either side of the body in one of the pre-Roman Iron Age ‘Danes’ Graves’ of east Yorkshire; and a goat on either side of the head, with a pig on either side of the feet in another." A pair of bronze bowls accompanied the famous bronze mirror with Celtic ornament in the aristocratic female grave at Birdlip (Gloucestershire), and it is interesting to note that comparable bowls

were

found

at

Rose

Ash

(Devon),

Youlton

(Cornwall)

and

Keshcarrigan (Co. Leitrim), in each case apparently a votive deposit in a peat bog or stream." There is also a special type of bronze spoon or scoop, sometimes decorated, and normally found in pairs; they have been found with female burials of the pre-Roman Iron Age at Deal

Rituals of death / 67 (Kent), Barnmouth (Berwickshire) and Pogny (Marne).'^ Later, in the early Roman period, a pair « of terracotta lamps in an amphora burial in Warwick

Square, London,"

recalls the pair of lamps in a non-funerary

votive deposit at Orpington (p 38), and a pair of lamps found with an early second-century pot, not apparently buried but presumably covered

with

a

mound

of

earth,

south

of

the

Ratcliffe

Highway,

Stepney. No cremation was found with the latter, but bone fragments, burnt and unburnt, were found nearby in the same archaeological levels."

The

Warwick

Square

burial,

it should

be

noted,

however,

contained cremated remains of two individuals, an adult and a young child, and this may possibly account for the two lamps.

Finally, at the very end of the fourth century, the unfortunate pair of dogs, so familiar as a sacrifice in non-funerary contexts, as we saw in the

last chapter, reappear in the late Roman cemetery at Lankhills, Winchester, though not in a normal grave. It contained a coffin with no body in it, merely a handful of coins where the right hand would have been if

there had been one. Above the west end of the coffin was a large dog, and higher in the fill the remains of the second dog, which had been dismembered, and had its backbone bent to form a circle with the ends

tied together. Finally, a secondary containing the decapitated body of a head at his knees containing a coin has been interpreted as a cenotaph, someone of importance whose body and decapitated man are considered burial rites to ensure the acceptance

grave had been cut in the fill, young man, not in a coffin, with his in its mouth. This remarkable find a substitute for proper burial for could not be recovered. The dogs to be sacrifices in lieu of the proper of the missing person in the after-

life.'? Pairs of gifts may or may not have been intended for a lord and lady of the underworld, but there is little doubt of the purpose of coins buried with the dead, well attested in classical literature as fees for the

ferryman who conveyed the soul over the river that separated it from its new home. We have already noted the tendency of coins to take over the

role of other objects in ritual, and will encounter it again. It is hardly

surprising, since in a commercial civilisation money has a mystique of Its Own, containing as it does a potential extending far beyond its own small compass. Grinsell has shown that the use of coins in graves extends back to about 470 Bc in the Greek world, but that the notion of

a ferryman of the dead is much older, and was known in Egypt in the

third millennium sc?" His earlier reward may have been the magical renewal of his boat by means of full-size or model boats included as Brave furniture, like the silver boat in the tomb of King A-bar-gi of Ur,

68 / Rituals of death or the model

boat shown

being taken to a Cretan

tomb

on the Hagia

Triadha sarcophagus (pl 21)."' Coins were commonly placed in the mouths of the dead, as it was a Greek custom to carry small change wrapped and tucked into the check, but they were also placed in the hands, near the skull, or even around

the legs and feet. With Roman

cremations they were usually, but not

invariably, placed in the urn with the ashes. The custom was by no means universal in the Roman world, and seems to have been subject to fashion or changing ideas. In Roman Britain it was common in the second century, rare in the third, and common again in the fourth, particularly in the later fourth century. At Lankhills, Winchester, for example, of 51 graves with coins, 12 had coins dated between 345 and 364, 14 between 364 and 378, and eight between 387 and 400.” Coins

buried with the dead need not be of great value; in fact the purchasing power of these bronze coins of the later fourth century must have been small. This may have contributed to the popularity of the custom at that period, but we can avoid cynicism by noting its unpopularity in the late third century, when coins of low value were even more abundant. The offering of a coin had in fact become a symbolic gesture, even in earlier times, and the traditional silver obol, originally a day's wages, was sometimes replaced by 'ghost coins’ that were merely impressions in gold leaf. In Roman times copper or bronze coins were generally uscd, and out-of-date coins that had become valueless seem to have been considered legitimate." It is possible that unworn jewellery in a grave was also intended for payments to enable the soul to pass obstacles it encountered on its journey. This is an even more widespread and ancient practice, recalling

the visit of the Assyrian goddess Ishtar to the underworld, in which she began her journey in rich apparel and loaded with jewellery, and passed through the seventh gate to confront the Queen of Hades naked.” The bronze torc lying near the feet of a first-century female inhumation in Southwark, for example, would be very difficult to put on, and if it had ever been worn by the lady could not easily have been removed from her

neck (pl 23).? It is therefore more credible that it was intended as a gift to

one

23

Burial of woman, mid-first century AD, with pottery flagon at head, bronze neck

of those

ornament

wark, London

Romano-Celtic

and

mirror

deities

of

the

at feet, as excavated

(Museum of London)

underworld,

at Harper

Road,

such

as

South-

Rituals of death / 69

70 / Rituals of death Cernunnos,

who

are usually

represented

wearing such an ornament,

than that it was intended for the lady’s future use. It is also noteworthy that in the fourth-century cemetery at Lankhills 35 graves with unworn ornaments were found, most commonly those of women and children, and forty-one graves with coins; but only four of these contained both coins and unworn ornaments, suggesting that coins and unworn ornaments were placed with the dead for the same purpose. The two

practices coexisted, but reached peaks of popularity at different times— unworn ornaments in graves between 350 and 370, and coins after 370; both were rare before 350.^ Pagan ideas were manifestly rife in late Roman

Winchester, and there seems to have been an obsession with the

need to make the dead acceptable in their new home— perhaps a reflection of earthly anxieties at a time when peoples were on the move and Winchester itself, on the evidence of the cemetery, had received alien settlers. From the funerary ritual alone it has been possible for Giles Clarke to distinguish the arrival soon after 350 of a foreign element derived from the Danube basin—an impressive achievement, indicating the possibilities of the studies of ritual when abundant comparative detail has been recorded.” In the light of evidence from coins and unworn ornaments for a sharp increase of these anxieties after about 350, Macdonald's interpretation of the sudden popularity of bone combs as grave equipment after that date is plausible. He recalls the tradition of offering hair as the first fruit of sacrifice, and the cutting of locks by Proserpina when men died at the appointed time, and suggests that the provision of a comb indicated that the hair of the deceased was tidy and ready to be taken, and that death had occurred at the right time, thereby helping to ensure acceptance in the next world. It seems that there were particular dangers in cases of untimely death, and these could be countered by an appropriate offering. Such fears may account for the special provision made in seven children's graves at Lankhills, ranging in date from 310 to 370; these exceptionally contained both pots and unworn ornaments." Dog burials accompanying the burials of children in late third- to fourthcentury pits at Cambridge may have a similar significance, bearing in mind the acceptability of dog sacrifices to deities of the underworld. In this case it was perhaps recognised that the children's journey would be lengthy, as they were provided with shoes allowing for considerable

growth." Similarly in a cemetery of infant burials at Barton Court, Abingdon, one child was buried with a dog's skull, and another with a sheep's, while at Victoria Road, Winchester, a baby's grave of the mid-

fourth century contained the skull of a horse."

Rituals of death / 71

Rituals of separation Burial ceremonies were essentially rites of transition, in which the mourners were often as much concerned to sever the connection between the deceased and his earthly life, as to ensure his acceptance in the life to come. A number of long-standing practices could be

interpreted in this way. A cairn of stones or an earth barrow piled above the dead, for example, not only served as a monument to his memory and a protection for his body, but also separated him physically from the living, a separation often reinforced symbolically and magically by the ring-ditch that surrounded it. In the Roman world the separation of the dead from the living was enforced from the earliest times by the Law of the Twelve Tables, under

which burials were strictly forbidden within the pomerium or ritual boundary of a city, and were normally located beside the roads that led out of it. We may be sure that the necessity for separation was often expressed in funerary ritual, of which archaeology can indicate only a

very small part. It is rarely reflected in the material arrangements for burial, but it is difficult to interpret in any other way the curious arrangement of pottery with the amphora burial in Warwick Square, to which reference has already been made (p 67). Here the opening to the amphora body containing the ashes and two lamps was closed by a tile placed on edge, which formed one side of a small tile cist in which pottery had been placed. There were two cooking-pots that had been

deliberately smashed, perhaps indicating that the deceased's task as a housewife was ended, perhaps merely to transfer this equipment through the mysterious barrier separating this world from the next; and also three unbroken lids placed on edge against the enclosing tile as if to reinforce it (Fig 2, pl 24).? We are tempted to imagine that the placing of each lid was accompanied by spoken words intended to create a magical obstacle against any return. This need not have been an act of hostility to the dead woman, but was perhaps merely a ritual statement that her future now lay elsewhere. Fear of a possible return of a dead person unable to sever the links

with earthly life may sometimes underlie the grisly practice of decapitation before burial—a subject that has received considerable attention

In recent years. It occurred occasionally in the pre-Roman Iron Age, as at Harlyn Bay,” and is not uncommon in late Roman and Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. The subject has been extensively surveyed, with special reference to four late Roman cemeteries near Oxford where they occur, ut taking into account all known Roman and Anglo-Saxon cases." In

the great

majority

of Roman

decapitations

the detached

head

was

72 / Rituals of death N

T

. ash

. (greatest . - . parts

' * . thickness)

of same

tout

s

vessel

amphora

(in section)

10 O Eng -—— BE M XM CANON 1 O

30cm 1 ft

Fig 2 Cremation burial in amphora, late first century, Warwick Square, City of London (After plan by P R V Marsden)

buried between the legs or feet, or near them. Nearly all were adults of varyifíg ages and both sexes, and only four cemeteries contained a single decapitated child. Not all were necessarily beheaded for the same reason:

some

are likely to have

been

prisoners,

either criminals

or

captives of war, who were executed in this way; others were probably

beheaded after death, though some of these may have been sacrifices of some kind. The decapitated body of a young man, for example, was a secondary burial in the supposed cenotaph at Lankhills, where two dogs had already been sacrificed; and another grave there with a decapitation also contained a bundle of human bones evidently collected some time after death. It is reasonably suggested that sacrifices were needed because it had not been possible to carry out the proper funerary rites ın both cases—in the first, because the body could not be recovered, in the second because the remains had to be brought from a distant place,

Rituals of death / 73 ~

*"

wA

^

FE.

4^

24 Cremation burial in amphora, late first century AD, with tile cist closing opening in amphora body, and containing broken pots and complete lids placed against sealing tile, as excavated in Warwick Square, City of London (Museum of London)

74

/ Rituals of death

possibly

a battlefield.

The

other

decapitated

burials

at Lankhills

arc

closely associated with military burials, possibly of men whose profession had brought them to an untimely end.” It may well have been believed that such people needed special help in making their transition to the after-life. Macdonald's suggestion that the decapitated served as vicarious sacrifices to give them immortality by forfeiting their own, however, cannot be reconciled with the traditions of the Celtic head-cult

on which these late Roman practices must be based. Beheading in no way deprived the victim of an after-life, for his detached head became a fetish that his spirit could occupy. This is clearly shown in the early medieval Welsh myth of Bran the Blessed,

who,

when

wounded

in the ankle,

ordered his

followers

to

behead him, and carry his head with them until a door was opencd towards Cornwall, when they must take it as quickly as possible to London and bury it facing towards France. Bran's friends enjoyed his company as a detached head with happiness and festivity for eightyseven years, a foretaste of the timeless delights of paradise, but then one

of them opened the forbidden door and the spirit departed from the head, presumably for the Isles of the Blessed somewhere to the southwest beyond Cornwall. The head then began to decay, but still served as a powerful talisman when it was buried as instructed, keeping invasion from the land, until it was foolishly dug up by Arthur, who scorned to rely for defence on a magical head. The Mabinogion, in which the myth is

preserved,

contains

situations

and

characters,

such

as

Magnus

Maximus, derived from fourth-century history, and ideas expressed there about the head-cult cannot be fundamentally opposed to those that were current in fourth-century Britain.” It can be argued that the harshness of pagan belief was in this case mitigated by Christian ideas,

since Bran is also credited in legend with the introduction of Christianity to Britain. The story is, however, deeply rooted in pagan Celtic practices,

by

which

detached

heads

were

valued

and

venerated,

evi-

dently as links with the spirit world, and it can reasonably be assumed

that in each case the spirit directly concerned was the former owner of the head. There are other objections to Macdonald's

interpretation, which

he

himself recognises and can counter only by citing the contradictory nature of pagan religion. A decapitated child at Lankhills was accompanied by a pair of shoes (not worn), and there was a coin in the mouth of

the detached head of the secondary interment in the cenotaph. Since both of these practices seem intended to facilitate the soul's journey to the next world, they are unnecessary if it has already been deprived of

Rituals of death / 75

its future life. If the gods of the dead, like the bureaucrats of the Roman Empire, were becoming increasingly selective in permitting new subjects to enter their domain, they would hardly have welcomed the headless and mindless zombies that Macdonald suggests might have been considered capable of walking like automata to the abode of the gods— 4 nightmarish thought that one hopes the late Roman inhabitants of Winchester were spared!" This, in fact, leads to a final objection. A sacrifice is a gift that brings some advantage to a deity or spirit, and it is hard to understand who gained anything by the killing of a soul— certainly not the gods of the underworld, who thereby lost a potential

subject. There is no evidence of any tradition that those who missed a proper funeral were punished by annihilation, and might escape this fate if a substitute were found. They appear to have faced instead an unpleasant future as homeless ghosts, and

in this situation could

be a

nuisance to survivers. These gained nothing, however, by providing a reluctant substitute, who might with reason be much more vindictive than the original ghost. Elsewhere, e.g. at Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire, and Charlton Mackrell, Somerset, finds of decapitated burials have led to the suggestion that the purpose of the rite was to prevent the dead from walking. This view was supported by Joan Liversidge, who pointed out that two decapitated women at Guilden Morden and Kimmeridge (Dorset) both suffered from arthritis, which may have made them bad-tempered and therefore suspected of being witches." There is some ethnographical evidence in favour of this suggestion, for among the Plains Indians sorcerers were decapitated before burial. In the case of shamans and witches, who were believed to be able to send their souls temporarily out of their bodies during life, there may have been a special fear that after death the soul might return to re-animate the body. We should Perhaps distinguish between mere apparitions and the walking dead, Who in some cultures and at certain periods seem to have been Particularly dreaded. The occasional partial dismemberment of a Corpse, as at Dunstable (Bedfordshire) and Helmingham (Suffolk), may

also have been a precaution against its re-animation.”” The simplest explanation of the rite of decapitation is that the soul was believed to reside in the head, so that the removal of the latter “sured the complete and final separation of the soul from the body. The placing of the head by the legs may have been intended as a reminder to the soul that it was now

time to set off on its journey, for

Which it could no longer use its bodily legs—as was often emphasised by P'acing boots elsewhere in the grave. It was in fact another rite of

76

/ Rituals of death

separation, presumably intended by its drastic character to ensure 4 prompt departure. This was perhaps considered particularly necessary in the sort of sacrifice envisaged

at Lankhills,

where

the

role of the

sacrificial victim may have been to serve as guide to a deceased person who had been inadequately briefed, through the circumstances of his death

or his lack of a burial

service.

In other

instances

the deceased

might be decapitated because there was some reason to suppose that he would be reluctant to depart. A similar but less gruesome rite of separation, also probably intended to ensure that the dead did not return, was burial in a prone position with face downwards, presumably indicating to the soul the direction in which it should travel. Perhaps the inverted cremation urns sometimes foundin Bronze Age burials had the same significance. It has been pointed out that prone burials tend to occur in the same cemeteries as decapitations, e.g. at Cassington, near Oxford, which contained 14 decapitations and 13 prone burials, seven of these individuals receiving

both treatments."' At Lankhills, with its seven decapitations, there were 14 prone burials, mostly late fourth century. There are also AngloSaxon examples, and it seems that statistically prone burials became relatively more important in the Anglo-Saxon period. Some of these appear to have been sacrificial, as at Sewerby, Yorkshire, where a female skeleton lay prone over the coffin of another woman with rich grave goods; and at Mitcham,

Surrey, where there was a simultaneous

burial of two women in a single grave, the uppermost in the prone position.” These two cases seem to have some affinity with the preRoman burial of two women together near Basingstoke, described above

An

(p 65-6).

interesting

Somerset,

carpenter, used before nailing downwards. It practice did not pagan

recent

whereit is said

Romans,

survival

of prone

that the sexton,

burial who

is recorded

was

from

also the village

secretly to reverse the corpses of people of ill-repute down the coffin-lid, so that they were buried face ‘showed en which way they was bound vor." The necessarily have the same derogatory implications for for whom

perhaps for those heavens.

the downward

rare great

souls

that

path

was

achieved

universal,

except

apotheosis

in the

Christianity and burial practices

It may seem surprising that paganism in its most barbaric form should have been flourishing at Winchester, one of the most accessible towns of Roman Britain, in the second half of the fourth century, when all

Rituals of death / 77 Roman emperors apart from Julian were nominally Christian, and even the usurper Magnentius, suspected of paganism by some authorities, firmly proclaimed his Christianity by an issue of coins bearing a large

Chi-Rho. Moreover, human sacrifice had for centuries been condemned by respectable Roman paganism, and would have horrified the philosophical Julian. Its undoubted appearance in the Lankhills cemetery is a testimony to the failure of Roman civilisation in a remote province before political control had been lost. On this evidence Britain was already entering the shadow of its Dark Age, in which human life was cheap and human minds were prey to fears that the new religion was not yet able to disperse. Yet there was already an organised Christian Church

in Britain, since three bishops attended the Council of Arles in

314, änd

at least three Romano-British towns must therefore have been

insome

degree

under

official

Christian

surveillance.

evidence of Christianity in the land-owning class from Lullingstone (Kent), Hinton St Mary

There

is also

villas such as

(Dorset) and Frampton

(Glouces-

tershire), from which Christian influences must have spread to neighbouring

areas,

including

towns

such

as Dorchester,

where

there

is a

cemetery (Poundbury) that is almost certainly predominantly Christian. How then can we recognise a Christian grave? Various criteria have been suggested, but unfortunately none of them are decisive in individual cases. Early Christian burials are of course inhumations, as the literal resurrection of the body was believed to be imminent. They are invariably oriented east-west, with the head to the west, and are said to look towards the east to await the second coming of Christ, that according to prophecy will be from the east (Matthew 24, 27). This orientation, however, is also associated with the pagan sun-cult, and the

Christian interpretation is almost certainly a rationalisation of a preexisting practice. The question is further obscured by Constantine's Own apparent confusion between the sun as a Christian symbol and as Sol Invictus, the deity of a pagan cult. Whereas Christian burials are usually but not invariably on the west-east alignment, therefore, pagan urials may be the same, or on a north-south alignment with head in either direction, or on a random alignment. Christian burials are normally without grave goods, but so also may be Pre-Roman burials and Roman burials that are probably too early to

€ Christian. Conversely

some Christian burials, especially in post-

‘oman times, may be quite as rich as any pagan burial. This is Particularly true of ecclesiastics who may be buried with appropriate Insignia. St Cuthbert is a notable example, for he was buried in a “corated coffin with costly vestments, a jewelled pectoral cross, a chalice and paten, portable altar and even an ivory comb, remarkably

78

/ Rituals of death

like the bone combs from fourth century graves at Lankhills, but in this case probably a liturgical instrument used to comb his hair before

celebrating Mass." It cannot even be claimed that coins in a grave are a certain

indication

known

from

of paganism,

Cambridgeshire,

for nineteenth-century Lincolnshire

and

France,

examples though

arc these

must surely be regarded as pagan survivals, whatever Christian rational-

isation was applied to them.” Belief in the resurrection of the body induced much greater care in burial among Christians, who tried to ensure that the body would not

be disturbed.

The

amount

of protection

it was given, whether

by

wooden, lead or stone coffin, by wrapping in a shroud, or some combination of these, depended on the family's wealth, but all these methods were also used by pagans. Stone or tile cists were often used bv early Christians, perhaps, as has been suggested, in imitation of the stone tomb of Christ, as in some graves that may be late Roman at St Bride's Church, London, and in graves later than about 370 at Lankhills.*° In the latter, flints were used, but were sometimes reduced in number to one or two, so were obviously symbolic rather than practical. Yet stone cists were used in south-west Britain, Brittany and Scotland in pre-Roman times, and may well have been originally a symbolic enclosure to prevent the dead from walking—another rite of separation in fact, though this would not preclude a subsequent Christian reinterpretation. If the practice was already vestigial in some graves at Lankhills in the late fourth century, it can hardly have been a new Christian custom, even though it was newly introduced or re-introduced into Britain. As in so many other cases, an ancient practice had probably lingered on as the proper thing to do, but may have been reinterpreted to accord with current thought. One custom has been convincingly claimed to be diagnostic ot Christian burial; this is the use of plaster within the coffin, presumably

in an attempt to preserve the body.” Its original purpose seems to have been to absorb body moisture, and if applied dry it could have been effective for a time, but there is a suspicion that it was also sometimes used as a wet slurry. Gypsum (plaster of Paris) was often used, perhaps with the intention of preserving the features of the deceased as a negative mould. In other cases a substitute was found in lime or chalk. which might be effective as a drying agent, but in the long term would be destructive. Nevertheless the use of plaster seems to have been closely linked with that of embalming, for which there is literary and archaeological

evidence

contexts."

Often

in the

Roman

the body

world,

in both

seems to have been

pagan

and

Christian

first embalmed,

then

Rituals of death / 79 packed in plaster, but archaeological evidence of the second process is much more likely to survive than the first. Both practices are preChristian in Egypt, but plaster-packing is known in only a few instances

of mummified baboons of Hellenistic date. Elsewhere in North Africa, however, plaster was used for human burials from before the birth of Christ, but continued in Christian cemeteries in Algeria and Tunisia. The introduction of the practice into Europe seems to be closely associated with the spread of Christianity. In Rome, the bodies in the Catacombs of Priscilla were in shrouds packed in plaster, and in the Rhineland known Christian cemeteries, associated with the graves of martyrs and Church leaders, contained plaster burials. In Britain 40 of these burials have been recorded from York, where we know there was

a Christian community with a bishop in 314, and there is a similar number from Dorchester, where one lead coffin containing a plaster burial had a Christian inscription. It must of course be remembered that in a mixed community a pagan might readily borrow a Christian practice that had become fashionable, as a Christian might cling to some pagan practices, so it is not unknown for a plaster burial to be accompanied by grave-goods, as in Southwark (pl 25), in St Medard's cemetery, Trier, and in the mausoleum at Lullingstone Roman villa. It is also possible that the whiteness of plaster was quite as important as its supposedly preservative quality, both as a symbol of purity and as the antithesis of the blackness of death. It may have demonstrated that the dead treated in this way had joined what Gregory of Tours later called ‘the snow-white

number of the elect.??

The cult of the blessed dead

In Christian cemeteries there was a strong tendency for graves to be clustered around the burial place of a particularly holy person, prefer-

ably a martyr, but, failing that, a Church leader or someone well known

for the holiness of his or her life. These great Christians would act as Patrons of the less perfect dead that surrounded them, and ensure that they too shared the blessings of Paradise, as a powerful earthly patron could ensure that his clients received their share of worldly benefits. The natural sequence, in the case of a martyr or major figure recognised by the

Church

as

a

whole,

was

for

his

grave

to

be

provided

with

a

mausoleum that became a shrine and cult centre, a fit place for public

Worship on the site of which a church or cathedral was subsequently uilt. This itself became a centre of community life and often a centre of Pilgrimage, leading to a great development of activities in what had

80 / Rituals of death

ERU Bet.)

25 'Plaster' (chalk) burial of girl, with pot at head and personal ornaments (hairpins and bracelets) at side and between legs, a mixture of pagan and (?) Christian rites, fourth century London (Museum of London)

AD,

as

excavated

in

Southwark

Street

Rituals of death / 81 previously been a Roman cemetery, as at the shrines of St Peter in the Vatican and of St Martin outside the walls of Tours. In extreme cases, this could lead to the abandonment of the old city, and the development of a new one in the former cemetery, as at Bonn, where the focal point

of the

new

city

was

the

burial

place

of the

martyrs

Cassius

and

Florentinus; and at St Albans, where Verulamium was deserted, and the

abbey and mediaeval town must have developed around the martyred soldier’s shrine. There

were

also countless

lesser figures who

had

a

similar role in smaller communities. Their names have sometimes survived as the dedication of a single church, but others have been lost,

like that of the young girl whose grave, oriented east-west, seems to have

become

a

focal

point

in

a sub-Roman

Christian

cemetery

at

Cannington, Somerset, early in the seventh century. Her grave was covered by a mound, on the surface of which its position was marked by non-local stones. For a petiod it was much visited, with a clearly defined

path leading to it, but the small Christian community that venerated it seems to have been obliterated or absorbed by Anglo-Saxon settlers with their own religious ideas, probably still pagan or semi-pagan."" Intercession for souls after death was not the saint’s only function; he was also expected to cure the earthly ills of those who came as humble suppliants to his shrine. An essential test of sainthood was the performance of miracles; and so the shrines of the holy dead were thronged with the sick, lame, and those possessed by evil spirits. The remarkable rituals associated with pilgrimages and the mediaeval cult of the saints will be discussed in another chapter. Here we have to note the extraordinary change in the attitude to the physical remains of the dead brought about by the veneration of these special dead. Not only did former cemeteries become centres of population and worship, but a degree of intimacy was sought with the relics of saints that was horrifying to a Roman pagan with traditional ideas about the pollution of death. The Carthaginian noblewoman, Megetia, for example, sought

à Cure at the shrine of St Stephen, and in her emotion beat against the

Brille in front of the relics until it gave way, and, pushing her head Inside, laid it on the holy relics, and drenched them with her tears.’' A Roman of the old school would not only have been repelled by the

unbridled emotionalism, but would have considered such close contact with the dead unclean—a point of view that many people today might

Share. It was expressed in no uncertain terms by the Emperor Julian With reference to Christian processions with relics. He denounced ‘the "àrrying of the corpses of the dead through a great assembly of people, ' the midst of dense crowds, staining the eyesight of all with ill-omened ‘ights of the dead. What day so touched with death could be lucky?

82 / Rituals of death How, after being present at such ceremonies, could anyone approach the gods and their temples??? It is clear that in establishing this new intimacy with the dead, and in fact using it as a basis for public worship, the Christian Church had overthrown a great tabu, and its subsequent success shows that it had gained strength from doing so. A deep well of psychological power may have been tapped, particularly as the Church was reverting to a basic attitude towards the dead familiar in earlier times (p 60), and perpetuated in the west by the Celtic head-cult, as the story of Bran seems to indicate. We have seen that the practice of depositing human skulls in wells continued in Britain throughout the pagan Roman period (pp 456), and in Wroxeter skulls that had been preserved in oil were found on the site of the basilica, where they had become incorporated in rubble in

the fourth century.? In Britain, therefore, as probably elsewhere in the Celtic world, the idea that human

relics could be beneficial rather than

harmful may have been readily acceptable. The belief that the physical remains of the dead could be precious links with the spiritual world may have its unpleasant aspects, but it was healthier than the morbid fears that gave rise to the bizarre funerary practices of late Roman paganism, as encountered at Lankhills. For those who accepted the Christian faith, not only the fear of the pollution of death was removed, but also the old nightmare of the walking dead, which could not be reconciled with the doctrine of a glorious resurrection. This does not mean that the victory was complete and final. however, for Julian the Apostate's sentiments are still very much alive today. The writer recalls that when the former church-site of St Michael Bassishaw in the City of London was excavated in 1965, the human bones found there were carefully covered with a tarpaulin. Unfortunately, this was frequently disarranged by the activities of the workmen, and sometimes a few bones became visible. Each time this happened an irate telephone call came from a neighbouring second-floor office, that was

high

enough

to

overlook

the

perimeter

fence.

It was

evidently

considered that a glimpse of a few fragmentary human limb-bones, even at a distance, was ‘staining the eyesight’ of the office-workers ‘with illomened sights of the dead'. No doubt it was a similar feeling of horror

that led to the prompt disappearance, before it could be studied, of the human skull found in a first-century well in Cannon Street in 1982 (see P 45).

4 From Paganism to Christianity

The fundamental change of ideology demanded

by Christian mission-

aries did not include, in the earlier period of conversion at least, a total disbelief in the pagan gods and their powers. Instead, they were relegated to the ranks of the ancient Enemy of a jealous God who would brook no rivals, but whose worshippers, like their rivals the Mithraists, recognised the age-old struggle between the forces of good and evil. Their own God would inevitably be victorious but the hostile powers were not to be treated lightly. The new concept was one of opposing armies, and, if Satan had been allowed to recruit the great nature gods and local deities of traditional paganism to his force of imps and devils, the host of righteousness was also reinforced. To the angels and archangels, traditional agents of the Hebrew God, the Christians added the great army of martyrs, who had suffered death for their faith during the imperial persecutions. Since most of these had died, not for professing Christianity, but for refusing to sacrifice to pagan deities, it can readily be understood that the Church could not adopt a more negative attitude towards the latter. At worst the gods had been morally neutral, but they now had to be regarded as evil powers or demons; if they were just non-existent, the deaths of the martyrs for refusing to perform a meaningless ceremony could be regarded as suicidal rather than glorious, and this was an unacceptable proposition. Even minor

attributes of the gods were taken over for the new demonology, and are recognisable in mediaeval iconography. The horns of some Celtic and eastern gods and the cloven-hoofed feet of Pan became characteristic features of devils, and the pitch-forks they used to propel damned souls into hell may well have originated from a misrepresentation of the caduceus carried by Mercury, guide of the pagan dead (pl 26). St Martin of Tours in the late fourth century is said to have exorcised devils from the possessed,

in whose

agonised

Pagan gods that possessed them.!

cries were

uttered

the names

of the

84

/ From Paganism to Christianity 26 Altar of Mercury, found in Smithfield, City of London; the winged hat and cadu. ceus of the Roman god may have suggested the horns and pitch. fork of the mediaeval devil (Museum ofLondon)

The Christian cult of the saints helped to fill the gap left by the banishment of the innumerable minor and local deities. There was a basic human need for a comprehensible supernatural figure that was not too remote and could intercede with higher powers, following the pattern of patronage that was familiar in Roman society. It was a figure to whom appeals could be made at times of personal crisis or illness, and who might reasonably be expected to take a special interest in the

welfare of his own devotees. The new cult of the blessed dead provided such figures in abundance, but unevenly distributed. It is clear that these special dead were not believed to be sleeping until the second coming of Christ brought a general resurrection, but were present and active near the

throne

of

God,

where

their

intercession

would

be

heard,

and

simultaneously in their burial-places, where they were accessible to living mortals. Their saintly status was assured when well-attested miracles took place at these tombs. It is interesting to note that another great monotheistic religion also felt the need for similar mediatory personages, for miracle-working tombs of holy men are as familiar a feature in Islam as in Christendom.

From Paganism to Christianity / 85

The cult of relics The tombs of saints and martyrs were not always in the right places, however. If they were remote, this could sometimes increase their appeal, since the hardships of travel helped to prepare the pilgrim psychologically for the spiritual experience he hoped to receive—and often undoubtedly

did receive—when

he reached

his destination.

It is

significant that one of the most successful and enduring later places of pilgrimage was located in a place very difficult of access near Finisterre in Galicia. In this case the mountainous and dangerous approach seems to have more than compensated for the improbable authenticity of the tomb of St James at Compostella. Yet it was often expedient to remove holy remains to a new shrine elsewhere, sometimes for political reasons, ‘in order to boost the authority of a bishop; or to overcome some local

opposition, pagan or heretical. The expansion of Christianity led to a considerable movement of religious relics of all kinds from the Holy Land to the new Christian communities of the west in particular. Such gifts helped to give them a sense of the unity of the Church, more than ever necessary when the political Roman empire was breaking up. The redistribution of relics also made possible the multiplication of shrines, for it did not require the complete body of a saint to ensure his spiritual presence. The treatment of the remains of St Stephen, the Protomartyr, after the discovery of his tomb at Caphar-gamala in 415, set the typical pattern. They were immediately taken to Jerusalem by John, Bishop of Jerusalem, and were subsequently widely dispersed. The main part was taken to Constantinople by Eudoxia, wife of Theodosius it, and was subsequently sent to Rome to cure the wife of Valentinian t1, Emperor of the West, who was afflicted by a devil. Venice

eventually acquired a rib-bone for San Marco, and major shrines with relics were established at Uzalis and Hippo in North Africa, where St Augustine was impressed by the miracles that were performed. Other relics were destined for Bracara in Galicia, which could not be reached

Owing to the disturbances in Spain, so they were deposited at Mago in Minorca. In words attributed to the Bishop of Seleucia and addressed to the saint, *Every place is glorified and hallowed by your remains; your Protection shines out over all the earth’.? A natural corollary to the belief in the multiple and simultaneous Spiritual presence of a saint in a number of shrines, provided that each Possessed a small portion of his earthly anatomy, was that the presence Of a multitude of saints could be assured by the accumulation of the appropriate relics. A story of the exorcism of the possessed at the shrine of St Julian of Brioude in the Auvergne, quoted by Professor Peter Brown, tells how the devils, who evidently thought these tactics unfair,

86 / From Paganism to Christianity shouted through the mouths of the possessed, ‘Why do you bring in strangers to this place? You have gathered a whole council of the saints.’ Professor Brown points out the symbolical value of the concord of the saints, which recalled memories of senatorial and imperial concord ang emphasised the solidarity of the Church.’ A practice by which spiritual power could be accumulated by the exercise of political power and personal influence was, however, clearly open

to abuse, and it is not surprising that rivalry in the collection of

relics in later times sometimes gave rise to acts that in a lay community would

be

regarded

as

criminal.

A

belief

in

the

intrinsic

power

of

unidentifiable scraps of bone or drops of blood, as well as other objects associated with the stories of saints or the Holy Family, opened the door to trickery by substitution or duplication. It seems likely that a parasitic, if not criminal, element was drawn to this aspect of ecclesiastical life from an early date, although some deceptions may have originated innocently. Relics were believed to communicate their power to other objects closely associated with them, and these secondary relics in course of time could become genuinely confused with the primary ones, particularly if they were concealed in reliquaries. A saint might, for example, appear to have several heads, kept in different shrines in headshaped reliquaries, but some of these might contain merely a sliver of bone from the original skull. It is impossible to believe, however, that some relics originated in any way but through deliberate deception. In the centuries of the great expansion of Christianity among the barbarians, the supply of relics had to be increased to meet the demand, for it had always been considered necessary that a new church should have its own saintly presence, and at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 it was firmly decreed that no church should be dedicated without the placing of relics. Graves not only of martyrs but of ‘confessors’, those who had suffered for their faith but had not actually died for it, were opened and their remains distributed. Since the original supply of martyrs ceased to be replenished after the Peace of the Church in 313, it

was obviously necessary to broaden

the qualifications for sainthood.

The door was now open, however, for claims based on local heroworship and even political protest. To some extent this was true from the beginning, and the Christian rulers of the late Roman Empire were concerned lest political executions should create new martyrs. An eagerness to raise contemporary fellow-countrymen to sainthood, however, seems to have become particularly prevalent in mediaeval Eng: land, often for overtly political reasons, as with Simon de Montfort, about whose corpse, buried at Evesham in 1265, a popular cult sprang

From Paganism to Christianity / 87 up» producing the usual miracles, and surviving for years, in spite of attempted repression both by royal and ecclesiastical authority.” His close associate,

Thomas

Cantilupe,

who

became

Bishop

of Hereford,

did actually achieve official canonisation in 1320, for no obvious reasons apart from the need felt by his successor for a wonder-working shrine at Hereford, and the case he was able to present for the success already achieved by Thomas's tomb in this capacity. The outstanding success story of all English saints with a political background, however, was of course that of Thomas

Becket, whose tomb at Canterbury became one

of the great international shrines of pilgrimage. In achieving recognition for a new saint, the acid test was the accomplishment of wellauthenticated miracles after his death, and indications of the incorrupti-

'bility of his body, which were quite often found, were regarded as valuable supplementary evidence. During the great expansion of Christianity in the west,

however,

between

the fifth and

eighth

centuries,

relics had to be sought in Rome, and it was necessary for the Pope to release for distribution a flood of human fragments, as well as secondary relics that had absorbed holiness by contact with a saint's body. The supply was not inexhaustible, but could be maintained by recourse to a belief that the miraculous power of a relic enabled it to replicate itself. Supported by papal decree, this could be accepted by men of genuine faith, such as Paulinus. The most notable instance was the Cross itself,

most of which had been taken by St Helena to Constantinople after its discovery in 298, and was redistributed from there in the following century. The portion that remained at Jerusalem, however, is said to

have given off fragments of itself without diminishing.° The supply of relics in the west was greatly increased in 1204, when Constantinople was scandalously looted by self-styled Crusaders during the Fourth

Crusade. It will be appreciated that the function of a relic in a church was not SO very different from that of a pagan foundation sacrifice, which was Probably originally intended to provide a guardian spirit for the

building, although this primitive notion was overlaid by later ideas

about placatory gifts to earth deities. Similarly secondary functions of ristian relics came to eclipse this primary function. Their healing Powers were particularly important, to replace those of the old pagan

nealing shrines, some of which survived for a long time after the ‘Ntroduction of Christianity. A successful reputation in this field ensured is Ls by pilgrims with offerings, and brought wealth to the church, so it Ot surprising that there was

rivalry, sometimes

scandalous,

in the

*Cquisition of successful relics, and in the claims put forward on their

88 / From Paganism to Christianity behalf. In addition to their curative function, relics were also used for

oath-taking, since it was firmly believed that if an oath sworn on the relics of a saint were broken, his wrath would inevitably descend on the transgressor. William the Conqueror is said to have worn round his neck at the battle of Hastings the relics from Bayeux on which Harold had falsely sworn. The need to give access to crowds of pilgrims visiting popular relics

affected the physical arrangements for their accommodation. In early times they were sometimes placed in circular crypts, round which the

pilgrims could perambulate. The usual place for them was beneath the altar, but after about 800 they were often raised to a loftier position, either on the altar or behind it on a separate base. When churches were extended in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they were often moved away from the altar to a more easterly position, where there was space for the pilgrims to move round them. Often special apertures were

provided in the base or protective surround of the shrine, in order that pilgrims could get as close as possible to the holy body, as with the shrine of St Edward

the Confessor

at Westminster,

and with Beckct’s

first tomb at Canterbury.’ Christian votive offerings Offerings brought by pilgrims to the saints differed very little from the votives offered by their forbears to the pagan gods. Often they were in the form of images of parts of the body that had been cured, or for which a cure was hoped, or of animals or objects that had been involved in a miracle (pl 27). Ships that had been saved from destruction after a prayer to the saint were popular subjects. Such models could be of silver or wax, and the silver was eventually melted down for the enrichment of

the church, while the wax

was re-processed to make

new

models or

candles for sale to the pilgrims. Few mediaeval examples have therefore survived, but by chance some fragmentary fifteenth-century wax images of heads, arms, legs and feet of humans and animals, together with the

complete figure of a woman, escaped the usual fate, and remained on 4 ledge over the tomb of Bishop Edmund Lacey in Exeter Cathedral until they were found in 1943 (pl 28).* The use of anatomical votives has survived to the present day in both the Roman Catholic and Greck Orthodox Churches, and is of great interest since it is deeply rooted in the pagan past, from which it has survived unchanged—a striking instance of the greater longevity of ritual than of gods. It was certainly practised by Greeks and Etruscans from at least the fifth century Bc. An enormous deposit of bronze and terracotta models of heads, hands, feet,

Mm

UE

I INN

€

From Paganism to Christianity / 89

27 Woodcut print, fifteenth century, of St Anthony, showing suspended votive models of parts of body, babies and animals at shrine of saint (Ashmolean

Museum, Oxford) limbs, torsos, breasts and internal organs was excavated at Veii in 1889, 9r example; and in Rome itself similar objects in large numbers were Ound in the Tiber near the Isola Tiberina, where the Temple of €sculapius stood.’ In Gaul, wooden

anatomical

votives attributed to

the mid-first century AD have been found at the source of the Seine." In

90

/ From

Paganism

to Christianity

28 Wax votives in form of woman, human faces, legs and feet, and portions of horses, with strings from which they were suspended, fifteenth century, from tomb of Bishop Edmund Lacey, Exeter Cathedral (Exeter Cathedral Library)

Roman Britain they occur only sporadically, nearly always on known sites of pagan temples, as for example an ivory model of breasts at Bath, bronze arms at Lydney Park and Springhead, and legs at Uley and

Muntham Court." The commonest votive offerings at Christian shrines were candles and coins, but as with the anatomical models, although there is abundant documentary evidence, the chances of survival on archaeological sites are small. Curious practices are recorded in both cases. It was customary to measure a sick person or animal, or an ailing limb, and make the size of the candle that was to be lit at the shrine conform to this measure. In order that it should not be inconveniently large: however, the wick was made to the correct length, but was then doubled

back on itself a number of times before being coated in wax; alternatively, the candle could be made in a coil, called a 'trindle'. In this custom

the Church seems to have accepted for its own use a simple process of popular magic, by which a person or an animal was identified with a

From Paganism to Christianity / 91 candle by the act of measurement.

It is not clear, however,

whether he

was thereby wholly dedicated to the saint, or whether, as is perhaps

more probable, his illness was transferred in this way to the candle, and would disappear as the latter was burnt away.'” In the case of coins, there was a curious custom that seems to have derived from the ancient pagan practice of ‘killing’ an object to be devoted (see pp 29-30, pl 7-8). The coin was bent, usually by doubling it over across the middle, in the name of the saint who was invoked, and

this constituted a vow to take it on pilgrimage to his shrine and to present it there. To the accompaniment of a prayer calling on the saint

“

for help, a coin would

be bent above a sick person or animal, or one

might be bent at a time of danger to avert some catastrophe, such as a shipwreck. There is even a record of the bending of a coin to stop the spreading of a fire. The identical coin that had been bent was the one that had to be presented at the shrine, and no substitute would serve.

Silver pennies, occasionally gilded, were most commonly used for this purpose, and were presumably eventually melted down, for their metal value would not be reduced by bending, even if it made them unacceptable as currency. There is abundant documentary evidence for the practice, cited by RC Finucane, who mentions that it was called ‘the English custom' by commissioners investigating Thomas Cantilupe's canonisation in 1307, but he expresses doubt whether it was confined to

England. Coins bent for this purpose are likely to survive only if they were lost or stolen before the normal process was completed. Occasionally a bent coin is found on a religious site—as for example a penny of Stephen on the summit of Glastonbury Tor, a penny of William 1 of Scotland at Jarrow, or a fourteenth-century German sterling at Battle Abbey.'* Possibly, these coins escaped the melting-pot because their

metal was considered dubious. Bent coins also occasionally occur as

stray finds, as for example a St Edmund memorial penny of about 910-20, bent almost double, that was found at Mursley

in Buckinghamshire,

Provenance unusually far to the west for this East Anglian coin, perhaps

a

Suggesting that it was lost by a pilgrim on the way to a western shrine,

such as that of St Frideswide at Oxford." The bending of silver coins has usually been explained by numismaas a test of their genuineness, but in the absence of strong Supporting evidence for this to set against the abundant documentary

tis t$

rase

Presented

by

Finucane

for

votive

coin-bending,

it

seems

ever nable at least to consider the possibility of the latter purpose in . Ly case. Where there are many such coins in a hoard, as in the 'Ncoln hoard of Henry 1 coins and the Chancton (Sussex) pre-Norman

92

/ From

Paganism

to Christianity

hoard, we may perhaps suspect that some part of it was derived from sacrilegious theft. It is surely significant that bent coins are particularly common in Scandinavian hoards that may well have received contribu. tions from Viking loot.'^ Documentary evidence for the practice extends at least from the late thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth. In Edward ı’s reign (1272-1307) coins were bent once a year to ensure the health of the king's hawks and chargers; and in 1499 a child drowned in the Thames at London was brought back to life when a penny was bent over her head to devote it to one of the last of England's uncanonised saints, King Henry vi. It was of course then taken in pilgrimage to the

King's miracle-working tomb at Windsor." It may be assumed that the general practice of devoting coins to saints by bending was brought to an end in England only by the Reformation, and sporadic later instances occur; when it began is a more difficult question. The present writer learnt of the custom and drew his information from the two invaluable secondary sources cited (Finucane 1977, and Spencer 1978), which were concerned mainly or wholly with the later Middle Ages. Evidence for earlier votive coin-bending may well be found somewhere in the numerous records of miracles. It would be an interesting subject for research, particularly if the enquiry were extended to continental records to find the real distribution of this supposedly ‘English’ custom in space as well as time. Surviving bent coins seem in fact to be commoner for the pre-Norman period and the early Middle Ages than for later times. There is even a Saxon sceatta from a dispersed hoard at Aston Rowant that was bent to a right angle, with considerable difficulty one would think in the case of such a small thick coin; it can hardly have been accidental." Advocates of the metal-

testing theory draw attention to the fact that bent coins of periods when the coinage was suspect are particularly common, as is the case with pennies of Henry ı. It might also be argued, however, that these were in circulation in the long period of anarchy and civil war following Henry ı’s death, when the normal progress of a votive coin, from the moment of bending to its final fate in the melting-pot for the enrichment of a church, may have been almost as likely to have been interrupted as at the time of Viking raids. It is in fact questionable whether bending was an effective test of the quality of coin-metal at all. In the Museum of London collection are a number of base-metal tokens from the Thames foreshore at Swan

Lane, of a kind that was made

in the late thirteenth

century, probably for use by London taverns." Three of these are doubled over in exactly the same way as a bent silver penny, and others have multiple bends that also demonstrate the flexibility of the metal

From Paganism to Christianity / 93

(pl 35). The possible significance of these finds from the Thames will be discussed in the next chapter. Here we need only note that although of base metal they would presumably have passed triumphantly the supposed test by bending.

The destruction of paganism The developed popular religion of the Middle Ages provided a system of locally-based supernatural beings, founded on the early Christian cult of the blessed dead, and constituting a perfect substitute for the proscribed pagan deities, who

had likewise been based on local shrines, to which

people could turn when in need, and on which the comforting ritual of prayer

and

offering could

be centred.

Some

of these

too

had

offered

special powers of healing, which attracted worshippers from a considerable distance, and it is not surprising that these temples of healing were

abandoned with reluctance, or that some substitute was desperately needed. In Britain, the temple complex at Springhead in Kent, on the main road from the Channel ports to London, seems to have been in ruins by the later fourth century, but votive coins of Valentinian 1 were

subsequently deposited in its debris." Further west, temples at Farley Heath (Surrey), Lydney Park (Gloucestershire) and Pagan's Hill (Somer-

set) continued to function well into the fifth century, but the great healing complex at Bath seems to have been abandoned and allowed to become waterlogged about the end of the fourth.”' In general, the new shrines and churches incorporating them, that were to replace the pagan temples, were located in or near urban centres. Dwellers in the countryside (pagus) perforce remained pagan until the Church was able to encompass them. The natural sites for the first churches were the martyrs’ tombs that were normally located in cemeteries just outside cities. Martyrs, however,

were relatively scarce

In the north-western provinces, where, under Constantius Chlorus and Constantine the Church had been spared the later persecutions. NecesSity led to two developments that also occur elsewhere, but were essential for the extension of the Church in the north-west. One was the liberal distribution of holy relics from places where they could be spared to places that had none, and the second was a certain open-mindedness

'N recognising that the blessed dead need not have been martyrs in the Strict sense community Suggest that "anonisation

of the word. Deceased leaders of the local Christian were an obvious substitute. It would be too fanciful to a later eagerness to create unofficial saints and to urge their had its roots in this early deprivation. It is a fact, however,

94 / From Paganism to Christianity that some early churches in Britain were built over Roman tombs whos occupants

are

unknown

to

history

or

tradition,

and

were

in

all

probability unknown to the builders of the churches as well. At Stoncby-Faversham, Kent, a rectangular Roman structure, believed to be a mausoleum, was incorporated in the fabric of the early Saxon church, and something very similar happened at St Martin's, Canterbury, and St John's Abbey, Colchester, both of which were partly built on Roman rectangular buildings.? In these cases a standing Roman building was

put to new use, with a considerable saving in labour and building material, so that an explanation in purely practical terms can be given. This does not seem to have been the case at St Bride's Church, London, the late Saxon apse of which cut through a Roman building with

a tessellated

floor,

almost

certainly

cemetery of Londinium. Some Roman used in the church walls, but the Roman

a mausoleum,

in a western

building material had been rewalls had not been incorpor-

ated, and within the apse the tessellated floor had been destroyed by a

mysterious pit before the apse was built. The pit contained a fill of dark organic material with a few human bones and a single sherd of nintheleventh-century pottery, with a concentration of human bones towards the bottom, which was not fully cleared. A number of late Roman or early Christian Saxon inhumations were found in close proximity to the early church, and Professor Grimes suggested that the bones were derived from similar burials encountered during the digging of the pit." The earliest recognisable church on the site cannot be earlier than the late Saxon period, and it is possible that here we are dealing with two coincidences: the fortuitous location of the sanctuary of a late Saxon church to enclose a deep domestic pit, which happened to have been dug through the only Roman building recorded between the city wall and Charing Cross. An alternative explanation might be that an earlier church, probably of timber, all traces of which had been destroyed by the late Saxon church, had occupied the same site, which had been selected

because

a Roman

mausoleum

stood

there.

If it did,

the pit

might have been dug within its sanctuary for the sole purpose of burying bones that had some special significance. It might even be suggested that they came originally from the mausoleum and had been venerated as relics until something better could be obtained, when they were disposed of in this way. The arrival of a more authentic relic might have been the occasion for rebuilding the church in stone, which must have occurred soon after the filling of the pit. Dare one further suggest that when the remains of St Brigid were removed from Kildare in the ninth century for reburial at Downpatrick

From Paganism to Christianity / 95 at a time of Danish invasions, a relic may somehow

have been obtained

for London, leading to a rather surprising re-dedication?" To do so is to pile speculation upon speculation in a way that will horrify the

distinguished excavator of this site. The unsteady base of the structure may perhaps be buttressed to some small extent by pointing out that another church standing in a precisely similar position on the west side of the Fleet, also in a Roman cemetery, is described in King Edgar's Westminster Charter of 959 as 'the old wooden church of St Andrew', standing beside the ‘wide army street’ (the Roman road from Newgate) as St Bride's stands beside the Roman road from Ludgate.” It is not

unlikely therefore that St Bride's also had a wooden predecessor that would have been considered old in the tenth century, although archaeological evidence for it is lacking. St Andrew's, Holborn, also has a close association with a Roman tessellated floor, found near the church in the

seventeenth century. A Roman burial was found in the roadway opposite St Andrew's in 1833, and others have been found nearby.” As a Roman dwelling in a cemetery is unlikely, it may be suspected that the floor belonged to an elaborate tomb or mausoleum which perhaps determined the location of the church. Yet in spite of the obvious parallels between these post-Augustinian churches and the earlier cemetery churches built over martyrs’ graves on the Continent, there remains a possibility that the former were built over Roman structures, not because these were believed to be Christian,

but because in some way they were blatantly pagan. The square cellalike buildings incorporated into churches could have been temples or mausolea that were obviously pagan, and the suppression of pagan powers by building a church was a common practice. It is arguable that this might

be a better interpretation

of the evidence

from

St Bride's,

since it would explain the great depth (3.7m; 11ft) of the pit in the apse, and we need not postulate the existence of an earlier church. Churches Were also not infrequently built on sites where there were substantial

Roman domestic buildings, the ruins of which were probably visible When they were founded, and these may have been selected not only cause there was useful building material to hand, but also because the

©onsecration of the church would be expected to expel or suppress troublesome ghosts.

We know too that it was papal policy to build churches where pagan Practices still flourished, or to convert existing temples into churches. ere is the story of the fifth-century bishop who found a three-day

“stival of offerings to a marsh

surviving in the mountains

of the

Uvergne, and built there a church with relics of St Hilarius, to which

96

/ From

Paganism

to Christianity

the pagan pilgrimage could be diverted.”* Pope Gregory, in his letter to Mellitus before the latter left for Britain in 601, instructed him not to

destroy pagan temples if they were well-built, but to destroy the idols, sprinkle the buildings with holy water, and set up altars there and enclose relics in them. The people might continue to kill animals and feast on them, but they must now do so in praise of God and not as sacrifices to the Devil. He suggested that a Day of Dedication or the Festivals of the holy martyrs whose relics were enshrined there would be appropriate occasions. The people were also to be allowed to build shelters of boughs around the churches on these feast-days—foreshadowing later folk-customs associated with May Day. This policy Melli-

tus was asked to convey to Augustine." Perhaps existing pagan temples in Britain were too small to be transformed into churches as they often

had been in Italy, since apart from the few instances of the incorporation of Roman

structures

into larger churches,

already

discussed,

no

examples are known. The idols to be destroyed were probably not surviving images of Roman paganism, since, in the neighbourhood of towns and main roads at least, these had probably been removed in the first onslaught of Christianity more than two centuries earlier. Their fate is of great interest and relevance to the subject we are considering.

The fate of Roman sculptures We have in Britain as yet no certain case of a Christian take-over ot a Roman pagan temple when Christianity first became dominant in the

fourth century, and our few probable churches of the Roman period, as at Silchester and Richborough, were not built on temple sites, though a possible baptistery, perhaps accompanied by a church, was built on a

long-established

pagan

religious site at Witham,

Essex." The

most

striking evidence for the treatment of the cult-figure and altars of a pagan temple comes from Uley, Gloucestershire, where soon after AD 380 a rectangular Roman temple, built in the second quarter of the fourth century on an earlier sacred site, was cleared of its votives and cult objects and demolished, as also were associated buildings. The votives and sacrificial refuse, including many bones of goat, sheep, cattle and

fowls,

were

spread

over

the demolished

structures,

and

a small

rectangular stone building with apse to the south-west was built over the eastern corner of the former temple. Carefully constructed cobbled floors were laid on the north-east and south-east sides of the new building. Before this was done the principal cult statue, a limestone

From Paganism to Christianity / 97 figure of Mercury with purse and caduceus, and accompanied by a ram

and cockerel, incorporated

was as

deliberately

foundation

mutilated,

deposits

cobbled platforms of the new

and

in the

key

walls

fragments and

beneath

structure. The head, broken

were the

at the neck

(pl 29), received special treatment, being carefully placed in a small pit beneath the platform immediately adjacent to the north-east corner of the new building. A polygonal structure with open side was built about the same time to the south of the apsidal building. Another apsidal building, constructed of timber, was subsequently built across the cella (sanctuary) of the old temple, at right angles to the stone apsidal

building, and with its apse to the north-east. A defaced altar with representation of Mercury was incorporated in the floor ofthe apse, and another formed a step leading to an entrance passage on the north-east

side of the building." In spite of their oddities of alignment, it is difficult to interpret the apsidal buildings in any way except as shrines or chapels of a cult hostile to Mercury, and at the end of the fourth century this can

only be Christianity. The slighting and defacement of pagan cult objects and their subsequent incorporation in a Christian structure, where their power might be neutralised, would conform

with Continental practice. At Bonn, for

example, numerous religious sculptures relating to a cult of Mothergoddesses and of Mercury formed part of the foundations of a fourthcentury church found under the crypt of the cathedral." The association

of Roman

sculptures

with

Christian

churches

seems

to have

been

particularly common in Germany, although in most cases it is recorded only that the sculptures were built into the masonry of a later church. Of 761 Roman sculptures recorded by Espérandieu from Roman Germany, 44 (nearly six per cent) were found built into churches." ese were not necessarily on or near the sites of pagan temples, however, and Esperandieu suggests elsewhere that some trouble may have been taken to bring a pagan sculpture a considerable distance to Incorporate it in a new church as an act of piety. Those found in the walls of the cathedral at Le Puy (Haute-Loire), for example, he believes were brought from St Paulien, 13 kilometres (8 miles) away.” €presentations of pagan deities were clearly not treated lightly or eft lying about, but were disposed of with some care. Many were

TOpped into disused wells where they could be buried deeply, thus ding them to the underworld of demons where Christians thought ral belonged. A late Roman well excavated under Southwark CathedContained in its fill a number of broken sculptures and a damaged Altar. The deities represented were a hunter-god conflated with Apollo,

98 / From Paganism

to Christianity

29 Limestone head of Mercury, from mutilated cult figure of Roman temple, Uley (Glos.), used as foundation deposit beneath floor of successor building:

possibly a Christian chapel (Britisb Museum)

From Paganism to Christianity / 99 4 Genius maritime

(spirit of a locality or community) and a fragment of a god. The hunter-god, which was the largest and most

complete, had been broken across the thickest part of the body by a considerable blow, and showed signs of burning on the broken surface,

suggesting that the shrine in which it stood was fired after the figure had been broken. The sculptures were accompanied by dumped building debris, much of it caked with soot. This may be from a late Roman temple on the site and it is perhaps not coincidental that a Christian church was eventually built here, but we have neither archaeological nor historical evidence to bridge a gap of several centuries." A very similar occurrence took place in a rural environment at Lower Slaughter, Gloucestershire, where three altars, two headless figures and

three stone dumped

votive tablets

into

a

well

with

associated

reliefs of multiple with

a

native gods

fourth-century

were

farmhouse,

together with a quantity of stone rubble, presumably from the shrine or

temple that had contained them.” There is also a single find of this nature, a crude relief of Mercury found in a well at Embleton, Buckinghamshire." Pagan sculptures have quite commonly been found in wells or well-like pits on the Continent, mostly singly: there are 33 examples from 26 wells in Espérandieu's corpus of sculptures from

Roman Gaul and Germany.” Other figures of deities were thrown into rivers, often after mutilation. From the Thames near London Bridge have come a number of small bronze figurines, of the kind kept in domestic shrines or offered as votives in temples, and from most of these limbs have been amputated (pl 3o), while

two

have

also lost their heads."

From

the Rhine

near

Xanten there is a large bronze statue of Hypnos, God of Sleep, with part of its right arm removed, and from the Mosel at Metz comes a bronze

Statuette of Neptune that has lost its left hand and leg and the lower part of its right leg. There is also a mutilated statue of Bacchus with missing arms

from

the Saóne

near

Macon."

Stone

reliefs and

altars, often

mutilated, have also been found in rivers—including an altar with a Genius or goddess from the Thames at Bablock Hythe near Oxford, a male figure with a mallet (? Sucellos) on a relief from the Saóne at Ournus, the mask of a river-god on a block from the Mosel at Metz, a

telief of Hercules in an old stream-bed of the Escaut at Wetteren and a

damaged altar to Neptune in the Neckar at Heidelburg.*! It is interesting that precisely the same methods seem to have been Used to dispose of unwanted pagan images as had been used to make

Offerings to the deities of earth and water that they represented. Burial

In the earth beneath a building or in a deep well, or casting into a river,

100 / From Paganism to Christianity

3o Roman bronze figurines from Thames at London Bridge, (a) Mercury, (b)

Apollo, probably deliberately mutilated

(note slash on thighs), 11.5 cm

(4} in) (British Museum)

were still a means of communication with the nether-world of spirits that the Christians now called hell. In individual cases it may even be

doubtful whether a deposit of this kind was made by pagans as an offering or by Christians as a means of despatching a dangerous instrument of their spiritual enemy to the place where it belonged. Were the reliefs of water-nymphs thrown into Coventina’s Well at Carrawburgh as offerings to the goddess who dwelt in it, like the numerous

other votives found in the well, or were they sacred images that had been displayed above it until they were cast down by Christians? We

cannot be sure, but in cases where deliberate damage had been inflicted before deposition the hand of a Christian iconoclast must be suspected. Curiously, however, iconoclasm seems to have been directed against representations of human beings almost as commonly as against the images of the gods, in a way that cannot easily be justified by any Christian doctrine but might be derived from earlier Judaic traditions. It is understandable when it was directed against deceased emperors and empresses for whom divinity had been claimed; indeed, it was the

From Paganism to Christianity / 101 refusal to sacrifice to such deities that had brought martyrdom

to so

many Christians. We need not therefore be surprised that the head of even a ‘good’

emperor

such

bronze statue in Londinium

as Hadrian

was

hacked

and thrown into the Thames

from

his large

near London

Bridge (pl 31a), or that a much smaller marble head of Agrippina ı found

its way into the Avon near the line of the Fosse Way at Bath." It is more difficult to interpret the damage often inflicted on funerary figures of ordinary

mortals

as a manifestation

of Christian

iconoclasm,

and

yet

these are found in similar, even identical, circumstances. With the sculptures of deities dumped in the well beneath Southwark Cathedral was the lid of an ash-chest with the headless recumbent figure of a deceased woman; and a limestone sculpture of a child holding a ball, found in Westminster and presumably from a tomb, has likewise lost its head. Did these go into the Thames,

like the marble head of

a woman

found near London Bridge, or the bronze head of a girl found in Fish Street Hill, and from its condition likely to have come from riverine

deposits at the southern end of this street?? The head of Hadrian in the Thames recalls the life-size bronze head of Claudius found in the River Alde in Suffolk, which may well have been looted from Camulodunum

at the time of Boudica's rebellion.* It has been thought likely that this was a manifestation of the Celtic head-cult, which, as we have seen, survived into the later Roman period and had a close association with water. Did it reappear in some form when iconoclasm became fashionable in late Roman or sub-Roman times? We also have to consider the curious circumstances in which other fragments of life-size or larger bronze statues survived. A large bronze right hand that could have come from the same statue as the head of

Hadrian, but probably did not, was found in Lower Thames Street near the Tower of London, and its uncorroded condition indicates that it came from a waterlogged deposit, probably in the river, which extended beneath Thames Street after the collapse of the Roman waterfront in the fourth century. Like the head it had been deliberately hacked off (Pl 31b). Another bronze right hand with forearm attached was found in a well not far away in Great Tower Street (pl 31d). In this case there was

some corrosion, indicating that the arm had not been submerged in a completely waterlogged deposit, but had probably been dropped in a well where dumping had already begun. A third large bronze hand, this

time a left one hacked from a slightly smaller statue, was found in

racechurch Street, within the Roman forum of London and remote Hid any stream (pl 3ıc). Its uncorroded condition strongly suggests at It was preserved in waterlogged silt that on this site can only have

102 / From Paganism to Christianity

From Paganism to Christianity / 103

been at the bottom of a well. There is a repetitive pattern that seems to indicate the observance of a custom. Whatever its purpose it overruled have suggested the melting-pot for

normal self-interest, which would

the disposal of valuable scrap metal. It would be interesting to enquire equally closely into the circumstances under which fragments of Roman bronze statues have survived elsewhere. There is a possible parallel from the river Adige at Verona; a bronze right hand and forearm described as but this was

an ex-voto,

apparently

made

as such,

is no

since there

obvious indication that it was cut from a statue." Certainly the London fragments seem to fall naturally into the large and long-enduring class of anatomical votives already discussed, perhaps indicating that even Christian iconoclasm could be pressed into the service of an ineradicable pagan practice. It may be noted that anatomical votives on a smaller scale found in the temple precinct at Springhead were derived from

bronze

(pl 32).

statuettes

It is possible

that

of the limbs

some

removed from figurines cast into the Thames, not all of which were deities, were disposed of profitably for a similar purpose.” Feet and heads from stone statues were also apparently used as votives at the

spring of Mont Auxois, and many heads detached from statues were found with anatomical votives at the source of the Seine." Although it can be demonstrated that Roman sculptures and fragments of statues were frequently thrown into rivers and wells, we have

very little evidence of the period when this was done. It can be assumed, however, that the disposal of representations of pagan gods on a large scale, especially after mutilation, is unlikely to have taken place before the fourth century, and (more doubtfully) that these are unlikely to have been available in such quantities later than the fifth century, at least in towns and easily accessible places. There is also some ambiguity about the motivation of the iconoclasts. Was this always wholly negative—a wish to remove from the surface of the earth things associated with the old order and therefore spiritually dangerous—or was there sometimes

31 Fragments of Roman

(a)

Hand

from

bronze statues from London,

Lower

Thames

Street,

(?)

from

life-size or larger:

river

(32cm)

(British

Bridge

(42 cm)

(Britisb

Museum) (b) Head

of Hadrian

from

Thames

near

London

Museum) (c) Hand

from

Gracechurch

Street,

(?) from

well

(24.5 cm)

(Museum

London) (d) Arm

from well, Great Tower

Street (48.5 cm)

(Museum

of London)

of

104 / From Paganism to Christianity

32 Bronze hand and arm taken from figurines, used as anatomical votives at Roman temple, Springhead, Kent (4.2 and 7.1 cm) courtesy Gravesend Historical Society)

(Museum

of London,

the hope of a positive advantage to be gained for health or welfare, as the deposition of anatomical votives would suggest? It is quite possible that both motives coexisted at a time of transition, when recourse to the old temples and comforting rites was no longer available, but the new system involving saints and their relics, with pilgrimages and offerings at their shrines, was not everywhere fully established.

It is unlikely that works of art, whether religious or funerary, were ever regarded with indifference, and some element of superstitious fear may always have been present when it was necessary to dispose of them. This is well demonstrated at an earlier date by the careful treatment of

the two second-century marble busts of former occupants found in the ruins of the villa at Lullingstone,

Kent,

when

it was

reoccupied

and

rebuilt in the late third century after a period of abandonment. A basement room was enclosed after the busts had been set up on the steps that led down to it and were no longer required. Two small votive pots, one containing a sheep-bone, were set in the floor of the room, evidently

containing offerings to the spirits represented by the busts (pl 33). At a later date, in the mid-fourth century, when a new floor had been laid,

these were replaced by two new votive pots, which remained open with their mouths above the floor level, presumably in order that libations

could still be offered to the spirits, though the room above was now dedicated to Christian worship.” Even when a sculpture was used

for the

utilitarian

purpose

of

constructing the foundation of a bastion of the city wall of London, probably in the later fourth century, an element of ritual may be suspected in its disposition. J E Price, who recorded the excavation o the Camomile Street bastion, which contained the elaborate tombstone

From

of

a Roman

soldier

and

other

Paganism

fragments

to Christianity /

of funerary

105

monuments,

pointed out that the head of the soldier had been broken off at the neck

‘and was found placed, maybe purposely, between the ankles’ (fig 3). MC Bishop, in an important reassessment of the find, has pointed out that this was precisely the rite performed in many contemporary burials, as discussed in the last chapter (pp 71-6)." It gives some confirmation to the view expressed there that the rite of decapitation in this form was

intended to separate the soul from the body and to send it on its way. Bishop points out that there can have been no intention to punish a soldier who had been dead for three centuries. There may, however, have been an uneasy feeling that his spirit might linger in proximity to his monument and even occupy it. On the interpretation suggested in ‘this book, the rite of decapitation would liberate the spirit and remove LAE

33 Marble portrait busts of second century Ap, Lullingstone Roman

villa,

Kent; with complete bust and plinth of broken bust (head on right) replaced in their third-century positions on steps, and votive pot as found in floor below (National Monuments Record)

to Christianity

TCIT

/ From Paganism

I

106

Fig 3 Plan of base of bastion of Roman city wall, Camomile Street, London, with sculptures of Roman soldier (head in relief at ankles, arm above) and lion (Original plan of 1880)

any fear of haunting. It cannot logically be compatible with the idea of a

foundation sacrifice, the purpose of which should be to bind a spirit to a building and so to strengthen it. Yet, as we have seen, at Springhead

some foundation sacrifices were decapitated. In this twilight world of irrational fears and hopes, in which correct performance was the prime consideration and little thought was given to its theoretical justification, we

can

hardly

expect

logical

consistency.

It therefore

remains

4

possibility that those responsible for laying in orderly fashion in the foundations of a bastion the decapitated figure of a soldier, another head of a larger decapitated statue and the figure of a lion attacking another animal, also from a funerary monument (fig 3), felt that by doing so they were somehow giving spiritual as well as physical strength

to the building. There is certainly evidence that at a later date, in places such as Rome where antique sculpture abounded, it was so commonly placed in foundations as to suggest that this was in accordance with a superstitious custom. It is recorded that between 1872 and 1882 more than 200 statues and busts were found buried in this way under mediaeval and later buildings on the Esquiline alone.

$ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

Old rituals die hard, and, although the Christian Church had provided a

‘completely new channels,

many

ideology and had diverted ritual customs of the old practices still continued,

into new

not in defiance of

Christian authority, which was usually fully accepted, but as a matter of habit.If something has always been done, it may be safer to continue to doit, though it may on occasion be necessary to find a new explanation to reconcile it with the beliefs that are currently acceptable. Sometimes an old practice was reintroduced by foreign influences from lands where it had never been abandoned. This is the most likely explanation for the reappearance in the later Anglo-Saxon period of customs that had been prevalent in pre-Roman Britain, and were, as we have seen, equally characteristic of northern paganism.

Mediaeval deposits in rivers Àn interesting deposit of the Viking period that may be votive was found in the river Hull at Skerne, near Driffield, in 1982. Animal skeletons and metalwork were closely associated with the oak piles of a bridge abutment or jetty. There were about 20 animals— horses,

cattle,

dogs and sheep—of which only one showed evidence of slaughter. This was a horse that had been pole-axed in the forehead. There was no indication of butchering for food on any of the bones. Four knives, a

Spoon-bit, an adze and a Viking sword in a wooden scabbard of the ninth-tenth century were found in the adjacent silt.! The tools can of

Course be explained as accidental losses during the construction of the Jetty or bridge, but the adze seems to have been dropped in the river at about the same time as the sword,

which

would

have been

less easily

Ost and not readily abandoned after an accident. It has to be considered in the context of the numerous other finds of swords of this period in rivers, notably the Thames.

108

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

David Wilson in 1965 listed 34 swords of the period between 800 and ı100 that had been found in English rivers. He pointed out that there

was a vast increase in the number of swords found in rivers throughout Europe in the Viking period. His comment was that it is difficult to see them in any other light than as offerings in some unrecorded sacrificial custom.^ Precisely the same arguments can be advanced for ritual deposition as in that other period of abundant sword losses in rivers, the late Bronze Age (pp 24-6). Rivers that have produced Viking swords include

the Cam,

Witham,

Nene,

Wensum

and

Frome,

but no

fewer

than 24 in the 1965 list come from the Thames or its tributaries. To these must be added another found in 1981 in the gravel of an old backwater

of the Thames

at Chertsey.

In the

report

on

this find

an

interesting alternative suggestion is made that the ritual could be funerary. It is pointed out that earlier Anglo-Saxon sword-finds of the pagan period come predominantly from graves, and that in pagan Scandinavia and its settlements swords and other weapons were still being deposited in warrior graves in the Viking period. The river-finds, however, are from areas of north Europe and the British Isles that were

already Christian, and where weapon-burial in graves would not normally be allowed. Were swords deposited in rivers as an alternative route to a Valhalla in which they would rejoin their former owners? There is often a strong feeling that some things are so closely associated with the dead that they should not pass into other hands. It is in fact quite possible that some earlier river deposits should be similarly interpreted. It may not be coincidental that weapons were most commonly thrown in rivers at times in the late Bronze Age and Early

Iron Age when burials are ‘invisible’ (see p 58). Against this it may be argued that later in the Middle Ages certain categories of object were deposited in rivers for reasons that had nothing to do with burial practices. If they were superstitious, as seems likely, the purpose was merely to buy good fortune with an appropriate offering. Perhaps this was always the intention. It has often been noted that pilgrim badges, the little souvenirs that were bought at shrines and worn by medieval pilgrims, are commonly found in rivers, often in great numbers in towns such as London, King's Lynn and Paris. These are of pewter with a large lead content, and it must be said at once that they are unlikely to survive uncorroded and in a recognisable state except in

waterlogged mud. Nevertheless the great number found at important river-crossings is difficult to account for unless they were deliberately thrown

in. More than 250 mediaeval badges, mostly of this kind, were

found in 1977 in a small area of foreshore deposit on the south bank of the Thames east of Blackfriars Bridge in London, near a jetty that may

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 109 have marked a river crossing. These images and symbols of the saints

were believed to be protective amulets, and had presumably all been

moats of castles

and

manor-houses

as

well

as

in

rivers,

and

has

suggested that they were deposited in gratitude for a safe homecoming. It is possible that an extra badge was bought at the shrine specifically for chis purpose, in order to invoke the saint's protection on the return journey, while other badges were retained as amulets.’ It can of course be argued that the latter may also eventually have been thrown away,

either because they seemed ineffective, or because they were replaced by new badges from a shrine that had become more fashionable because its saint had acquired a reputation as a particularly potent miracle-worker. Many also must have been disposed of as emblems of Popery after the Reformation. In such cases a lingering superstition could have suggested

the river as the safest means of disposal of objects round which some supernatural aura still lingered. If, however, there was in fact a continuation

of the custom

of

dropping offerings in rivers, in parallel with the approved practice of taking them on pilgrimage to shrines, it might be expected that one of the commonest of all mediaeval shrine offerings, the bent coin (see p 91-

2), would also be found in rivers. Finds of this nature have not hitherto been reported, because their significance has not been realised, but the Museum of London has a photographic record of two silver pennies of Henry 1, that were found together doubled in half, one over the other, in river mud removed from Billingsgate lorry park in 1984 (pl 34). These

34 Two silver pennies of Henry I, c. 1134-5, as found bent together, one over the other, in foreshore mud removed from Billingsgate, City of London, in 1984. Enlarged X 4 (Museum of London)

ııo / Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations were found by a collector and are not in the Museum’s own collection. The

Museum

does

however

possess

a quantity

of mediaeval

meta]

objects, including pilgrim badges, that were recently recovered at Swan Lane,

just

above

London

Bridge,

embankment deposits. These include

from

foreshore

and

submerged

a number of base-metal tokens of

the late thirteenth century, that were probably issued by taverns and

presumably, like later tokens, served as change that could be used for subsequent small purchases at the tavern concerned.? They are made of a lead alloy resembling pewter, and their exchange value was probably small. A number of these tokens have been deliberately bent, some simply doubled and others more elaborately bent (pl 35). Were these poor men's offerings, the best that could be achieved by those who could afford to sacrifice neither a silver coin nor the time for pilgrimage? Much

more evidence of this kind is required, however,

before we can

affirm with any confidence that such a custom existed. Even if we can identify possible votive objects, the problem is complicated by the fact that many came from the fill of submerged mediaeval river embank-

35 Bent pewter tokens, late thirteenth century, from Thames foreshore at Swan Lane, City of London. Enlarged x (Museum of London)

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 111

ments, where they could have been deposited either accidentally with dumps of mud and organic refuse from the foreshore at low tide after previously being dropped in the water, or deliberately at the time the

embankment was constructed as a form of foundation offering. It may be noted that a number of early sixteenth-century daggers and knives that had been deliberately bent were found in the Thames during the construction of the new embankment in 1969-70, just opposite Paul’s Stairs, from which they had undoubtedly been thrown (pl 36). A substantial minority of the knives and daggers found here had been treated in this way or had been otherwise damaged. Of 25 daggers

recovered for Guildhall Museum, seven had been bent to the point of fracture, and three others were completely broken. Another knifedagger which passed into private possession had been deliberately chopped along its cutting edge.° Small knives had been treated more

gently, some with only a token bowing, presumably because less force was

needed,

remained

but

perfect.

there

There

was

also

would

broken

seem

blades;

to be

two

others,

equally

however,

possible

36 Bent daggers and knives, early sixteenth century, found in Thames opposite Paul's Stairs, City of London, during construction of new embankment,

1969-70 (Museum of London)

112

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

explanations for this curious concentration of cutlery, either stil] serviceable or deliberately damaged. One is that it reflects the activity of the Cutlers’ Company, which was concerned both to maintain the

standards of London cutlers and to prevent illegal sales in the city by ‘foreign’ cutlers; it was empowered to confiscate goods that contravened its rules, and may have used the river to dispose of them. The alternative explanation, which can be substantiated only if more instances of similar behaviour in the sixteenth century come to light, is that this is a late manifestation of a superstitious practice for which many earlier antecedents can be found (see pp 29-31). The bending, on which so much effort was expended, is reminiscent not only of the earlier votive bending of weapons and tools, as at Llyn Cerrig and in the Waltham

hoard, but also of the contemporary coin-bending, and it may also foreshadow the common nineteenth-century practice of bending the pins that were the normal small votives dropped in holy wells in Cornwall, Wales and Northumberland.’ ‘Killing’ an inanimate artefact in this way is presumably intended to transfer it from the physical to the spiritual plane, and by renouncing irrevocably its normal use to devote it to the intended supernatural purpose. If no practical reason for a rather laborious act of destruction can be found, a ritual intention of this kind may be suspected. Occasionally even pilgrim badges were deliberately folded, as for example was a particularly large one from the Thames foreshore at Billingsgate, found folded several times to a small compass (pl 37). At all periods only a minority of objects ritually deposited seems to be treated in this way, perhaps as a token of intention for the rest, but more probably as a result of the greater determination of some individuals to ensure the efficacy of their own offerings. —The chronological gap between the Viking swords and early sixteenth-century daggers deposited in the river is bridged by the many quite spectacular finds of swords, daggers and other weapons, often undamaged, from the Thames at London, ranging in date from the

twelfth to the fifteenth century. It may

also be noted that swords,

knives, lances and spears were considered appropriate gifts to mediaeval saints in their shrines, for they are listed with anatomical votives, model

ships and jewellery among the offerings at the shrine of St Thomas Cantilupe at Hereford, in the report of the papal commissioners of 29

August 1307." There is also a remarkable class of miniature weapons from the Thames, usually regarded as pilgrim souvenirs representing instruments of martyrdom (pl 38). This may have been the origin of some of the

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 113

* — LI

ir

REL A 4

37 Large pewter pilgrim badge of Madonna and child, (Height 13.5cm), found folded sever al times to a small compass in mud removed from Thames foreshore at Billingsgate, City of London (Museum of London)

114 / Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 115 swords at least, for the broken sword that killed St Thomas was a venerated relic at Canterbury. Others, however, may have been made as votive substitutes, appropriate for offering at a saint's shrine if the actual weapon causing the wound he had miraculously healed was not

available. If that were the case they may have been deposited in the river for a similar purpose. The inscriptions on some of the axes—AVE AMI (‘Hail, Friend’) and ECCE EDWARDUS (‘Behold Edward’)—seem to be curiously secular greetings from the donor. T Those who have observed the way in which water attracts the votive offerings of the moderately superstitious in the twentieth century will not be too sceptical about the possible survival or revival of this prehistoric practice in mediaeval or post-mediaeval times. Some twenty years ago the writer was amused to see that even the drinking-bowl of

the ravens at the Tower of London was receiving votive coins, including silver. The opening of the Museum of London in 1976 provided an even more bizarre receptacle for offerings. In order to maintain the humidity necessary for the conservation of the Lord Mayor's coach, which is shown in the Museum when not in use, it is exhibited standing above a shallow pool, specially designed by the architect. This at once began to attract votive coins, fortunately no longer bent, and it continues to do so, providing a modest but useful addition to the Museum's revenue. The donors do not of course believe that their offerings will win the favour of water-spirits or even the ghosts of past Lord Mayors; they will simply bring luck. Similarly, we may be sure that if ritual deposits were dropped in rivers in the Middle Ages they were not intended as gifts for the old pagan river-gods, but were interpreted in terms of current beliefs, religious or magical. These may change from generation to Beneration; what remains constant is the ritual itself—the proper thing to do in certain circumstances, and something that it might be unsafe to neglect. Even coin-bending was to survive the cult of the saints with which it

Was so closely associated. The tradition that a crooked sixpence is lucky

is still remembered, although that coin is now lost to us. Moreover a

New use for the custom appeared after the Reformation. Bending a coin had always been regarded as a symbol of devotion and of a vow; when Worship of the saints was condemned as idolatrous, it was re-directed to —

38 Miniature weapons of pewter (battle-axe with wooden haft), late thirteenth—fifteenth century, from Thames foreshore, City of London (Museum of London)

116

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

a secular purpose, and bent coins came to be used as love-tokens. The practice of giving a lady a bent coin as a pledge of love is mentioned jn Elizabethan

literature, and

survived

at least to the eighteenth

century

(pl 39). Dark-age and mediaeval foundation deposits Ritual deposits for the protection of buildings continued to be buried i in

post-Roman times, and in one early example thereis at least a suspicion of human sacrifice. Yeavering in Northumberland, north of Hadrian's Wall, was a sacred site from the Bronze Age, with stone circle and buriat-

mound,

and it continued to attract burials from the local population

when it lay on the border of the Roman empire, and also after that empire fell. Associated with later burials of the sixth century was a rectangular wooden building, believed to be a temple, with an accumu-

lation of ox-skulls

against the base of its east wall. Elsewhere, a

39 Eighteenth-century love-token —a bent sixpence of Queen Anne container, an ivory box with ‘Ann’ and red roses on lid (Author)

with

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 117

nn

beyond the foot of the grave. This was also aligned on another grave with a similarly placed post 17.4m (57ft) to the east. The grave outside the threshold contained a ceremonial staff, and there were traces of a

goat-skull with horns at the feet of the skeleton. Unfortunately little remained of any bones, owing to the acidity of the soil." The burial seems intended to provide a spiritual guardian of the door, and it is

possible that the occupant of the grave died expressly for that purpose, probably early in the seventh century. It is equally possible, of course, that this

was

a corpse

that

was

conveniently

to

hand

when

it was

required. A third possibility is that the burial is subsequent to the building of the hall, but that the person buried was closely associated with its construction. It has been suggested that the staff in the grave was a surveyor's cross-staff or groma, in which case its occupant may have been the person responsible for the hall's careful alignment. As in earlier times, animal deposits are much commoner than human remains in association with buildings. At Cowdery's Down, Bas-

the south of the access to the doorway and adjacent to a central posthole in front of the entrance, cutting the wall-trench but respecting the wall-line.

The

bottom

metre

had

been

filled with

clay,

in which

the

curled body of a cow had been laid. Butchery of the animal had apparently begun, but had been abandoned before the limbs were disarticulated. The excavators suggest that it was buried as some form of foundation sacrifice, and compare the position of the pit in relation to the door with one at Yeavering which was filled with ox-bones.'' . About the same period, at Kiondroghad on the Isle of Man, the Jawbone of a pig had been placed beside a post-hole of the foundations of a building, under what was described by the excavator as ‘a neat setting of small stones', and he suggested that this was a good luck

Charm laid there by the builders.' he use of part of an animal, particularly the skull or jawbone, as a Symbol of its sacrifice, was common in building deposits of Anglo@xon, mediaeval and later times. At Chichester, for example, a goat-

118

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

skull was found in a small rectangular pit between two rows of post. holes adjacent to a hearth that probably formed part of a late Saxon hut." Four horse-skulls were found beneath the doorway of a house in the fourteenth-century deserted mediaeval village at Thuxton, Nor. folk.^ Not only domestic structures had their stability and safety

assured by this kind of offering; the two halves of a sheep’s lower jaw were placed

Thames

in the foundations

of a fourteenth-century

in Trig Lane, City of London,

quay

of the

carefully laid in a parallel

alignment on a horizontal beam (pl 40). l'Sacrificing animals to unseen powers who may be disturbed by the

laying of foundations is rational behaviour only if primitive animistic

40 Two halves of sheep's jaw-bone, as excavated, lying on foundation timber of fourteenth-century waterfront at Trigg Lane, City of London (Museum of London)

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations /

119

beliefs survive, as they undoubtedly did in traditional paganism, both Celtic and Teutonic. Their continued survival in a religious underworld after acceptance of Christianity is demonstrated by the stories of fairies and hobgoblins that have enriched our culture. Nevertheless, even in the

darkest of the Dark Ages, when paganism was far from dead, there is reason to believe that many of these practices had degenerated into mere

magic—safety-measures that operated by their own virtue to divert a

malign influence, however this was envisaged. If we ask what these people thought they were doing when they buried portions of dead animals at their doors, or under their walls, we can find an answer in the treatise Medicina de Quadrupedibus, attributed to Sextus Placitus, who

lived between the fourth and sixth centuries, and whose Latin work was ‘translated into Anglo-Saxon in the tenth century. This suggests the following uses, among others, for a dead badger: Take his liver, divide it, and delve it down at the turnings round of

thy land boundaries, and of thy borough wall foundations, and hide the heart at thy borough gates; then thou and thine shall be released in health to go about and home to return; all pestilence shall be driven away, and what was ere done shall naught scathe,

and there shall be little mischief from fire." It is interesting that land boundaries are mentioned as appropriate places for animal deposits, as well as wall foundations and gates, and

this should be borne in mind when Anglo-Saxon or mediaeval finds of this nature occur away from buildings, as for example the skulls of a dog and a red-deer with antlers recently found in a boundary ditch at Kingston-upon-Thames, filled in the twelfth century. It should also be

noted thatan animal deposit such as the heart or liver of a badger would leave no evidence for the archaeologist if it were unaccompanied by ONE or pottery, apart from the apparently purposeless hole made to

receive it. . ^

Late mediaeval and post-mediaeval building deposits ine deliberate burial of pots in or under buildings, sometimes enclosed it was $, attracted attention in Germany more than a century ago, when conta; suggested that some at least of these were foundation deposits an enchae the ‘Luck’ of the house. In support of this, Ariosto s story of anted castle was cited, in which the whole edifice vanishes when

* Pots beneath its doorstep are broken."

120

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

The burial of pots beneath thresholds or fire-places was common in parts of the Netherlands at least from the fifteenth to the seventcenth century. Usually these are stoneware jugs or earthenware cooking-pots, sometimes containing peat-ash or eggshells, but often apparently empty, At Culemborg, near Utrecht, jugs were buried under the new houses built after a great fire in 1422, perhaps as a safeguard against a similar disaster, and at Deventer a tripod-pitcher containing eggshells wa;

found under a house of the fifteenth or sixteenth century." Pots and jugs commonly occur under thresholds in Oldenzaal, and jugs of seven. teenth-century type have been found in similar positions at Baardwijk

and Loon op Zand in Noord-Brabant. These were empty, but a jug found many years ago under a threshold in Waalwijk was filled with oats." [n Oldenzaal there was a surviving tradition that an evil spirit could be conjured into a box, which was then thrown into water, where

the contents would burn. It has therefore been suggested that the buried pots similarly served as traps for evil spirits, lured into them by the food they sometimes contain. There was a similar belief in northern Holland, where the exorcist was said to banish evil spirits into a jug, which was taken by cart to the marshes of Drente and thrown in. This may account for the bronze tripod-pitchers that have sometimes been

found there.” It may be noted that pots under buildings are sometimes inverted, and the jug from Loon op Zand had a leather thong round its neck that had evidently been used to tie on a cover, no trace of which survived. The preference for entrances gives some support to the view that these were charms intended to divert to themselves any evil that might enter the house. These finds in the Netherlands have been considered in some detail, because sufficient examples have been accumulated to provide convincing evidence of the existence of a custom, whereas more sporadic finds of this nature in other countries cannot always be distinguished from

accidental occurrences. Is a late mediaeval cooking-pot containing burnt organic material, possibly food, from the foundations of a bridge at St Omer a genuine foundation deposit, or merely the spoilt and abandoned lunch of one of its builders?? We would need to accumulate more instances of a similar nature from northern France before claiming the former. In England, pots as building deposits are rare, at least in domestic buildings, but a find very similar to those of the Netherlands is recorded from an early seventeenth-century almshouse at Odiham, Hampshire. Here a pot with a hole just below its rim was found under the threshol of a bricked-up doorway

during renovations

in 1968.74 In

a somewhat

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations /

different category are four pots, now

in the Kingston

Museum,

121

that

were found built into the walls of the house at Ruxley Farm, Ewell,

surrey. Whole

mediaeval pots, deliberately deposited, are also some-

times found in ecclesiastical buildings, either in foundations or immured

in walls. An almost complete jug of the late fourteenth-early fifteenth

century was found in the foundation trench of the cloister of Chichester Cathedral”; and three late thirteenth-century jugs were found standing

upright, completely enclosed in a chalk internal wall, perhaps the wall of a chapel, at the north-east corner of All Hallows, Lombard Street, in the City of London.* In the church of St Mary at Bexley, Kent, are two

broken jugs of the late fourteenth-fifteenth century, that were found

similarly immured at a depth of 45cm (18in) in the north wall of the chancel,

about

6ocm

(2ft)

above

floor

level.

One

contained

what

appeared to be the remains of a piece of parchment.^ These were evidently neither foundation deposits nor acoustic pots, but may have been the containers of written charms of a kind to be discussed in the

next chapter, perhaps believed to have been given not only security but also additional power by being enclosed in a sacred place. Other mediaeval pots, found beneath the floors of churches, may conceivably once have contained heart burials. One found inverted about 30cm (1ft)

deep in soil beneath

the floorboards

Church,

only

Devon,

had

soft

brown

in the south earth

aisle of Musbury

beneath

it; and

a late:

fifteenth-sixteenth-century vessel with a lid found under the floor of Buxted Church, Sussex, contained nothing but dust." Definitely funerary are the late mediaeval pots converted into braziers by punching holes

round

their

sides;

these,

containing

charcoal,

have

often

been

found in graves in northern France, but are as yet unknown in Britain.

They were probably used to burn incense beside the corpse and were subsequently buried with it.” Acoustic pots and skulls: science or superstition?

By far the commonest finds of pots built into churches, and occasionally

Other buildings, are those placed there for Poses—to increase the volume of the singing Y means of an echo. The use of pottery “came very popular in the fifteenth century,

ostensibly practical puror to make it sound better to improve the acoustics both in Britain and on the

9ntinent. Its origin is usually attributed to the practice of installing

Fonze vessels beneath the seats in Greek theatres to act as resonators. Is became known to the west through the writings of Vitruvius, the “gustan

architect and engineer, although

it does not appear

to have

ı22

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

been generally applied to Roman theatres, perhaps, as Vitruvius himself suggests, because they contained a great deal of wood, which adequa. tely performed the same function. In the system that he describes, cach pot is made to vibrate to a separate pitch in a musical scale, so that there is a resonator for every note, and it is essential that each pot should have

a clear space around it, so that it is free to vibrate. He also mentions that clay jars can be used as a chcaper substitute, provided that they are similarly resonant." There is a great chronological gap between Vitruvius and the acoustic vessels of the late Middle Ages, matched by a wide divergence of method. There is no indication of any concern for pitch with the latter, or even that it was considered necessary for the pots to vibrate freely. ]f they worked at all, it was as simple amplifiers of volume, and there was no consistency

in their location.

This does

not necessarily

mean

that

they were ineffective, since modern engineers also seem to arrange their acoustic devices by trial and error. Sometimes they were placed high in

the walls of the chancel or nave, lying on their sides with mouths facing into the church, as at St Olave's, Chichester, Luppitt Church in Devon, Leeds Church

in Kent and Tarrant Rushton

Church

in Dorset

(fig 4).

Occasionally the mouths have been plastered over, probably when their purpose was no longer understood, as at Ashburton Church, Devon.

Another common position is under the floor of the choir, sometimes set in its foundation wall with mouth open to the hollow space beneath the floor-boards, as at St Peter's per Mountergate and St Peter's Mancroft, Norwich (fig 5). An interesting contemporary account makes it clear that some fifteenth-century ecclesiastics were trying to improve acoustics by installing pots in their churches, and that others were sceptical of its effectiveness. A Chronicle of the Célestins of Metz records that in

Fig 4 Acoustic pots in wall of Tarrant Rushton Church, Dorset (Drawn from photograph)

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 123 section

2

"d

book

board A

( choir stall ~

f

j

J

I

section c

)

(C =

—

i

—

a

chancel

is

floor

|

—

| |

=>

opening

Fig 5 Acoustic pots below floor-level of chancel, St Peter's per Mountergate, Norwich (plan of chancel and section of choir stall, showing position of pots, after drawings of 1871 by H Ninbam)

1432 the prior returned from a meeting of the Order impressed by the pots he had seen in another church and determined to instal some in his: own, thinking it would make the singing sound better and more resonant. This was accomplished in a single day by taking on sufficient workmen, but the chronicler was not convinced that it made the singing sound better, and many people were astonished that so much damage

should have been done to the walls.’ The development Scandinavian

and distribution of this practice, also known

and Russian

churches,

is of great interest, but need

in not

Concern us here if there were not another acoustic device that cannot

easily be disassociated from a superstitious custom we have already encountered many times—the ritual burial of a horse's head. Again and again we find instances of horses’ skulls enclosed in or beneath buildings 9stensibly for acoustic purposes. T. M. Hughes recorded two interesting *xamples from lay buildings; many horses’ skulls were removed about

whe from beneath the parlour floor of Thrimby Hall, Bedfordshire,

wen they had been placed 'for purposes of sound' by the tenants, who un * a musical family; and at least 24 were found screwed to the o ide of the floor-boards of a large room in an inn called the installey ent miles (13km) west of Hereford, where they had been Purpose oe ma © the fiddle go better’.”” This must also have been the

30-40

horses’

skulls found regularly arranged between the

124

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

floor-joists, with the floor-boards resting on them, in an old house jp Bungay, Suffolk, described in a letter to The Architect and Building News of 17 March 1933. It is hard to believe, however, that two horse. skulls placed under the floorboards near the corner of a room of a seventeenth-century house in Flintshire (Clwyd) would have had much effect on the acoustics; while a single skull found in the cavity between a chimney-flue and two enclosing brick walls, probably of the sixteenth seventeenth

century,

at Little Belhus,

South

Ockenden,

Essex,

is in à

position where a protective charm might be expected, as we shall see. Horse-skulls enclosed

in the belfry walls of Elsdon Church,

Northum.

berland, however, were probably intended to increase the sound of the bells.

In Ireland a survey by S. O’Suilleabhain showed that the burial of a horse's head was widely believed to give an echo or make the dancing sound better, and was often buried under the flagstone in front of the hearth for that purpose; while coins rather than skulls were built into the house as true foundation deposits. Only in Co. Galway was a horseskull buried under foundations expressly to bring luck to the house. Cows' heads, however, were buried under the threshold to keep away ill-luck and evil spirits in Co. Leitrim, and only in Co. Sligo were they buried under floors like horses' heads to give an echo. In the same county, horses’ heads were sometimes placed at the end of a drain outside the house to create an echo, but the reason it was required is not stated. In Co. Wicklow,

horses' skulls were buried under the floors of

churches as well as houses *to make an echo', and it was supposed to be lucky to do so. In Co. Wexford, the heads of animals used to be buried in churches under the altar, ‘to help the preacher to be heard all over the church', and were also buried under houses. When a horse died its head would always be kept, and it would be the first thing to go down when building. In Co. Cork, horses' skulls were put under house floors to increase the volume of any music played there, and also under threshing-floors to make the blows of the flails echo loudly and sweetly. In Co.

Clare, a large old pot was sometimes buried as well as a horse-skull beneath the floor, to give a fine hearty echo and make the dancing soun better, and sometimes copper coins were placed in the skull, but any

superstition other than the acoustic belief was disclaimed. Nevertheless O’Suilleabhain came to the conclusion that the acoustic motive was secondary, and was a rationalisation of the forgotten primary motive 9 foundation sacrifice." It is understandable that foundation offerings 4° such might have been discouraged in Ireland by the Church, and that !! may have been necessary to find a new reason for perpetuating a time“ honoured custom.

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 125 O'Suilleabháin's views, however, were strongly contested by Albert sandklef, Director of Varbergs Museum in Sweden, on evidence col-

lected from Scandinavia. He demonstrated that it was common practice in Denmark and southern Sweden to bury horses' skulls or iron pots under the floors of threshing barns, whether these were of clay or boards, and that the explanation was always given that the skulls and pots caused the floor to give a pleasant ringing note when threshing took place. He also enquired into superstitious practices in Scandinavia to rotect

buildings,

corn

and

animals,

and

found

that

these

did

not

include the burial of horses’ skulls. Coins, prehistoric stone axes, steel, human skulls and living animals, including cats, dogs, chickens, sheep, pigs and foals were buried under the foundations or in walls of houses for luck, but not horses' skulls. Serpents were particularly common as protective charms beneath thresholds. To protect the corn in threshing-

barns, pentagrams were drawn above doors and on wall-posts, and pieces of steel knocked into the walls and thresholds. The only instance

of the burial of an animal's head for this purpose was a single note on the burial of a protect against doors of barns that the horses' never had any burying

two

calf's head under the corner of the threshing-floor to evil. A calf's head, however, was often hung above the to avert sickness from the animals. Sandklef concluded skulls were buried only for acoustic purposes and had other function. He also carried out an experiment by

horse-skulls

under

the

floor

of a barn,

and

simulating

threshing with straw and a stake. The echo was much better and louder and there was more elasticity in the beat in the part of the floor where the skulls were buried.” . Before we dismiss the acoustic skulls as a purely practical invention, introduced by the Vikings into England and Ireland, two questions may, Owever, be asked: how was such a remarkable discovery made, and why was it so important that the threshing-flails should ‘sing’? It is hard to imagine a deliberate search for a suitable resonator, or any circum-

stances in which the special qualities of a horse's skull could be learnt by accident, except through the very common and widespread practice of urying animals’ heads for votive purposes. It can be readily understood

that hard work is pleasanter when accompanied by a rhythmical noise, ut did this also have some magico-religious purpose? The whole entan at acoustic devices, both pots and skulls, is in fact closely car Bled with that of ritual Practices. Basic food production among the ^ agriculturalists had a strong religious element, and according to

oviet

ethnographical

film,

‘Winds

of the

Milky

Way’, ,

the

p reshing-barns of the Finns, close neighbours to the Scandinavians, in a

.

8an times served in some sense as temples. This should not surprise .

.

.

126

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

classicists, for the winnowing fan, used to separate the grain and chaff collected from the threshing-floor, came to be a religious symbol closcly associated with the ancient agrarian mystery cults of the Mediterranean, and was carried in processions both of Ceres and Bacchus." A former ritual use of horses' heads in northern Europe for votive or protective purposes might in fact be suspected from their common appearance as 4 decorative motif in the folk-art both of Norway and northern Russia. The carved wooden horse's head set near the top of the traditional house of some Finno-Ugrian peoples of north Russia as a charm against

evil seems particularly significant." The horse's head has been a symbol of power used in many rituals, but from early times seems to have had a special association with the foundation of buildings. According to legend, the Phoenicians built a temple of Juno and founded Carthage on the spot where they discovered a horse's head.” It was, however,

a tradition of wide distribution and

long life that, rather surprisingly, survived in the Cambridgeshire fens almost within living memory. Enid Porter has recorded an instance of this practice as recent as 1897, remembered by an old fenman, WH Barrett. He recalled that, as a boy six years old, he was sent with his elder brother to a knacker's yard to buy a horse's head. His uncle had the contract to build at Littleport, of all things, a Primitive Methodist chapel; and marked the centre of the foundation trench with a wooden stake. Here the horse's head was placed, and a glass of beer was poured on it. When the rest of the beer had been drunk by the workmen, the trench was filled over the head. Barrett understood that this was a custom to drive away evil and witchcraft, and there is no suggestion that

it was intended to improve the acoustics of the building." It seems in fact to be a classic instance of a foundation offering, surviving in eastern England, where it is interesting to note there was some preference for

horses' skulls for votive practices even in Roman times (p 47). It seems unlikely that their use for acoustic purposes in the same region is totally unconnected. The relationship between acoustic skulls and acoustic pots is obscure,

although, as we have seen, they are sometimes interchangeable both in Ireland and Scandinavia. There is no obvious connection between the use of these devices in relatively recent Scandinavian threshing-floors and the popularity of acoustic pots in churches of the fifteenth century; or between either and the use of acoustic vessels in Greek theatres, 35

described by Vitruvius in the late first century Bc. The ecclesiastical fashion began more than fifty years before the first printed edition of his book, De Architectura, appeared in 1486, but manuscript copies were

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations /

127

no doubt available in some religious houses, and are likely to have been the source of the practice. The method described by Vitruvius would not, however, be easily understood or put into practice, particularly as

late mediaeval churchmen had to deal with a very different type of building from the Greek theatre. This may be sufficient to explain their divergence into methods that are unlikely to have had much effect, except by lucky accident. At present only the writing of Vitruvius seems

to bridge the gap between Hellenistic antiquity and the late Middle Ages, for the occasional structural use by the Romans of pots in buildings to achieve lightness is probably irrelevant." It seems likely that the purpose of acoustic pots in churches was sometimes misunderstood by later generations. There was, for example, a curious local custom in eastern Scotland of installing pots high in the walls of dwelling-houses,

on

their

sides

with

mouths

flush

with

the

surface of the wall, in precisely the same way that acoustic pots were set in thé walls of churches. These, however, found in Dundee and near Abernethy, Perthshire, were usually open to the outside of the wall, where they can have had no acoustic function. Some had been used by birds as nesting-boxes, but this can hardly have been their purpose, for in one instance in Dundee they were on the inside of the wall of a

staircase that was a rectangular adjunct to the house, separated from it by a wall. Their dates range from the mid-sixteenth century (one pot being a German ‘grey-beard’ jug of about 1530), perhaps to about 1700. Was there again some idea of trapping in a pot the evil that might attempt to enter the house, possibly based on a misunderstanding of the acoustic pots seen in churches? A generation that had forgotten their original purpose might have imagined they were intended to trap and imprison the evil expelled from the congregation by the holy rites. No conjecture can be offered to explain the curious treatment in later

times of the two acoustic pots found under the fifteenth-century choir of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, in 1953. They could only have been Placed

under

the

joists

where

found

when

the

choir

stalls

were

Constructed about 1480. Subsequently, perhaps on two separate occasions, the pots were half-filled with fragmentary animal bones (sheep, 9X and chicken) and soine other objects, thereby, it must be assumed, destroying any acoustic properties they may have had. In the first pot IScovered the bones seemed very fresh indeed and a number had been

Snawed by rats, so that the contents were firmly identified as a modern rat's larder. They also included two oyster shells and the shell of a hazelAut, with glass fragments of a small bottle attributed to the seventeenth “entury. The bones in the second pot showed no trace of gnawing and

128

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

from their condition were considered much older. They were accompa.

nied by walnuts, hazel-nuts, cherry and plum

stones, leaves, flower.

heads resembling Michaelmas daisies, twigs, charcoal, large snail-shells, a piece of iron, four pebbles, two fragments of paper and a small marble

tessera. Much of the organic material fell to dust, but Mr F W Underhill,

who saw it when first found, received the impression that there had been complete bunches of cherries and plums on the stalks. The nuts were mostly whole and were ungnawed, so the deposit in this pot was attributed to human agency. The marble tessera suggests that it was

made when the present floor of the chancel was laid in the reign of James ı1, an occasion when the pots were presumably exposed and accessible. It seems likely that the glass at least in the first pot was deposited at the same time. The find is sufficiently odd to be noted here,

but in the absence of similar confirmatory evidence from elsewhere cannot be attributed to any folk custom. The exalted ambience does not necessarily rule out superstition, for at least one seventeenth-century

royal chaplain, Joseph Glanvil, author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, who held office in the previous reign, was a firm believer both in witchcraft and in white magic as a counter-measure. Nevertheless, the likeliest explanation is that the pots were simply used as dust-bins to receive the combined debris of

a workmen's meal and a harvest-festival,

without regard either to their acoustic function or to the sanctity of the chapel. Protection in walls, chimneys and roofs

In archaeological

excavation,

foundation

deposits

are for obvious

reasons more frequently encountered than ritual deposits placed higher

in buildings. These commonly survive in existing structures, however, and have often been recorded, so that we have a great deal of information from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, but very little of earlier date, though we must assume that protective magic has always been applied to vulnerable roofs, where fires often began, and to chimneys, which might give ready access to spirits less welcome chan Santa Claus. When open hearths were replaced by smaller fireplaces 1n the seventeenth century, the opportunity was often taken to enclose 2 protective deposit in the new structure. A favourite position was a recess near the chimney beside a first-floor fireplace, but similar finds have also been made in the hollow spaces between roof and ceiling and beneath attic floors. Reference has already been made to the horse-skull found in a cavity

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / beside the chimney

at first-floor level in South

Ockenden,

Essex,

129 and

other horse-bones have been found in the brickwork of old houses in

Cambridgeshire, often in the chimney-breast.

A leg-bone of a horse

from a sixteenth-century cottage at Histon and a dog's leg-bone from a seventeenth-century chimney-breast in Magdalene College have been preserved in the Cambridge Folk Museum. One of the most lavish deposits of this kind was found in the Tudor Lauderdale House, Highgate Hill, north London, once owned by Lord Lauderdale, minister

of Charles 1. During work following a fire in 1963, a bricked-up recess was found near a first-floor fireplace, containing the desiccated bodies of four chickens, two of which had been strangled, and two apparently walled-in alive, for an egg had been laid after their enclosure. The recess also contained an earthenware candlestick, a glass goblet (broken) and

two odd shoes. All were apparently in a large basket that was thrown away by the workmen.

Museum of London

The other finds, however,

are preserved

in the

(pl 41). The writer was informed by Dr Norman

Davey that a similar dried body of a chicken was found in 1874 during restoration work on the great chimney of the Porch House, Potterne, Devizes, which itself dated from about 1470, though the chicken could presumably have been deposited at a later date. Very much commoner than dried chickens as finds in buildings are dried cats, the significance of which is uncertain. Some were undoubtedly trapped and starved to death by accident in the course of building, but others had been deliberately placed in secret and enclosed recesses

of buildings, perhaps after some attempt had been made to preserve them by desiccation or smoking. They are usually described as ‘dried’ or 'mummified', and have the skin intact although the fur has decayed. The Practical purpose of frightening away vermin is often suggested, and a number have been set up, as if by a taxidermist, with the dried body of a Fat, mouse or even bird, but always in a place invisible not only to the human occupants of the building, but also, one would have thought, to

Many

of its rodent

invaders.

In Southwark

one

woodwork said to be of the sixteenth century, with

was

found

a mummified

under rat in

'ts Jaws and another beneath its forefeet. Other cats, each with a single Tat, have been found in the following places: in the wall of a house demolished in 1803 in Lothbury, City of London; in the thatch of a

Cottage at Pilton, Northamptonshire (now in Peterborough Museum); and behind the organ in Dublin Cathedral. A cat with a mouse in its Mouth is said to have been found in an old house in Tewkesbury; and at

yseley, Birmingham, a cat had been set up facing a bird in the hollow wall of a medieval house, probably when the inner wall, which may be

130 / Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

41

Dried chickens, shoes, etc, found in bricked-up recess near fireplace; Lauderdale House, Highgate Hill, London; seventeenth-century deposit a5 reconstructed in Museum of London (Museum of London)

of later date, was constructed. More dried cats have been found alone;

but some of these also seem to have been set up in an unnatural position; simulating life. Twenty-two finds of cats in buildings were listed by Miss M M Wood,

was

found

with

in 1951," and to these can be added a dried cat that

neck

compressed

by a roof-joist

in an eighteenth-

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 131 century building in Kettering (now in Kettering Museum). It can hardly have got into this position accidentally, and must have been placed there

at the time of building. There is also the skeleton only of a cat found

lodged beneath one of the massive roof-timbers of a Tudor house that was extended in the seventeenth century, at Milford, Surrey.** Cats found under roofs or near chimneys may well have been sacrificial, and two such are recorded by Miss Wood from the period when London was rebuilt after the Great Fire. One was found in a house built by Wren in the Tower of London, lying against a joist beside a corner fireplace under the floor of an upper room; and another was found in a sealed passage under the roof of St Michael

Paternoster Royal,

College Hill,

where it must have been placed by Wren’s masons when the church was rebuilt in 1687-91. This was one of the cats that were deliberately set up in a life-like position, so it must have been dead before it was immured. The concealment of ‘cats in buildings was not confined to the British Isles, for Miss Wood also cited examples from Gibraltar and Sweden. One from a Swedish farm had been set in an unnatural position under a front doorstep that had been put in place in the twentieth century. On the whole it seems likely that the practice of enclosing cats in buildings, making due allowance for accidents, was probably derived from the ancient custom of building sacrifice, but was rationalised and

justified as a deterrent to vermin. As such it was hardly less superstitious, with its occasional quasi-magical imitation of a hunting cat. It is also possible that the real fear underlying the practice was of spiritual vermin rather than actual rodents, which were taken for granted before their connection with disease was understood. The great obsession of the seventeenth century was with witchcraft, and witches were supposed to work their evil by means of familiar spirits, that often took the form of rats or mice. Were the cats intended to repel these rather than flesh-and-blood rodents? The question is complicated by the ambivalent character attributed to cats themselves, which also often served witches as familiars and had associations with the powers of darkness. _ By far the commonest charm to protect a building in post-medieval times, however, was an old shoe, like the two that accompanied the dried chickens in Lauderdale House. There are few local museums in

southern England that do not possess a few shoes, mostly dating from

the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, that were found hidden in old

Ouses, usually in a wall, roof or chimney breast, or under a floor (pl 41,

42, 43). They are occasionally in pairs or in new condition, but are more Usually odd shoes that are well-worn, and are sometimes accompanied

y other odd shoes and/or a diversity of small personal possessions.

132 / Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

42 Shoe, c.1650-75, found in filled-in sixteenth-century fireplace in house at Corfe Castle, Dorset (Author)

Er

1

=

Mur

ala

MM

T

BLISS

|

DMD

buda

an

hd

| ud

dr”

M

Ba

ai

ath

Ta

MORTE —

43 Shoe, c.1670-80, found in chimney-breast of old cottage, Peaslake, Surrey (Autbor)

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 133 Individual instances are easily dismissed as accumulations of rubbish, bearing in mind the propensity of old shoes to hide themselves in unlikely places, even in otherwise tidy households. Mostly, however,

they have been deposited in places that are normally accessible only at the time of building or structural alteration, or by taking considerable trouble at other times, for example by raising a floorboard. As always, evidence for a custom becomes convincing only when instances are multiplied, as in this case they are in abundance. The writer first became

aware of the practice through association with the Museum of Leathercraft, to which old shoes were often sent for dating. He subsequently learnt that Miss

J M Swann, of the Northampton Museum, a recognised

authority in this field, had already compiled an impressive dossier of shoes concealed in buildings, amounting to 129 finds of this nature when

it was published in 1969. They ranged in date from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, the greatest number (49) being attributable to the seventeenth century, and were found in most parts of southern England as far north as Derbyshire, with a few examples from Wales, the usA and Canada. The writer is indebted to Miss Swann for the information that the number recorded by February 1986 amounted to the huge total of more than 700, and the distribution now covers the whole of Britain, as well as Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Finland, Turkey and Australia, with a date range from the thirteenth century to

1935. À very small proportion had been deliberately mutilated, in a way reminiscent of the symbolic destruction of votive objects (pp 29-30, 91-2), with two from Ontario cut with a cross. In one seventeenth-century find from

Northamptonshire,

however,

shoes

have

been

slashed

with

such determination as to suggest malevolent magic. Miss Swann is of the opinion that this is essentially a male superstition connected with the building trade, and understands that it is considered to be unlucky to remove the shoes from the house. There is even a story of an apparent

haunting that began when a shoe was sent to the Museum of London for identification, and ceased completely when it was returned.*

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this common custom, which Nas survived until our own times, is the secrecy that seems to surround It. As we shall see in a subsequent chapter, superstitious practices of many kinds were fully discussed by learned men in the seventeenth century, when this one was particularly common, but it escaped their Notice, and no surviving tradition or belief throwing any light on it was

recorded by the avid collectors of folklore in the nineteenth century, When there is abundant evidence that the practice was still flourishing.

134

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

There was even an eye-witness of the Swann, a child who saw his father and boot, that significantly did not belong laying the kitchen floor, at Wareham

latest instance recorded by Miss a workman put an old worn-out to the family, in the rubble when St Mary, Norfolk, in 1934-5. He

could get no reason

his father, who

ashamed

of what

for this from

he was doing.

This

seemed

is not necessarily

slightly

sinister, since

people commonly are ashamed of superstition, but it is possible that secrecy was considered necessary for the effectiveness of the rite. We know that not all shoes were deposited in houses for the same reasons, though it may be suspected that all are following the same tradition. In two instances the underlying motive was sentiment rather

than superstition. In the foundations of a new shoe factory in Norwich, for example, the firm's latest model of a lady's boot was buried in 1964; and at Papillon Hall, Leicestershire, the removal from a locked grille in the dining-room of a pair of brocade shoes, that had belonged to a daughter of the house who died in the eighteenth century, was forbidden by a clause of the deeds. Shoes have a particularly intimate association with their former wearers, and there may be other instances in which they were hidden simply because bereaved relatives could not bear to throw them away. This does not explain the much more numerous finds of odd worn-out shoes, often in a repellent condition, that have been put in secret places with equal care. There are a few known superstitions about old shoes that may be relevant. There was a belief that a shoe thrown after someone setting out on a journey would ensure good luck and a safe return.” This is a custom still observed when the bridal pair departs after a wedding, though the shoe is now usually tied to their car; and there used to be a belief that the bridesmaid who obtained the shoe would be married before the end of the year. There is a strong association with fertility; we all know the fate of the old woman who lived in a shoe, and there used to be a custom in Lancashire of trying on the shoes of a woman who had just had a baby in order to conceive.” For all these reasons old shoes were considered ‘lucky’. It may be significant that in Cambridgeshire lightermen working on the river considered shoes taken from a dead man's feet were especially lucky." It is not recorded that these were ever placed in buildings, but if they were

it would have been a fairly obvious substitute for a human sacrifice. It i5 not unlikely, in fact, that this sinister tradition underlies the custom, though we may hope the full implication that a soul was thercby imprisoned as a guardian was not understood. There is, however, another possibility; a well-known fifteenth-century pilgrim badge, sold at the shrine of one of England's unofficial saints, the wonder-working

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations / 135

John Schorn, sometime parish priest of North Marston in Buckinghamshire, shows the reverend gentleman in his pulpit with a large boot beside it, in memory

of his most famous exploit, which was to conjure the devil into a boot (Fig 6). It may be therefore that a boot or shoe was

considered an effective trap for an evil spirit. This might be a good reason for its concealment in places such as chimney-pieces, roofs and under window-sills, near points of entry that people were concerned to protect.

It is curious, however,

that even

the drawn

outlines of shoes

were apparently considered to have some strange virtue, for they are sometimes found scratched on lead roofs, especially of churches.

O

dcm

Fig 6 Pilgrim badge of John Schorn, pewter, fifteenth century, showing him in pulpit, with boot into which he conjured the devil on left, from Thames at London

136

/ Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations

Other objects found hidden with shoes in houses are mostly, like them, intimate personal possessions, such as gloves, found with seventeenth-century shoes against a chimney in a Kent farm, or a spoon,

found with seventeenth-century shoes in Suffolk, and with an eighteenth-century child’s shoe in Gloucestershire. Such objects are also found separately in hiding-places similar to those of shoes, and were presumably intended for a similar purpose. Three pairs of gloves of about

1800

were

found

in a chimney

at Wadhurst,

Sussex;

and

clay

tobacco pipes of the seventeenth century have been found built into walls near Horley, Surrey, and in St Mary Aldermary church in the City of London. These are mentioned here as possibly falling into the same category of intimate possessions as the much commoner deposits of shoes.

Other

more

definite charms

found

in houses

are deferred

to a

subsequent chapter, because they are known to be counter-measures against witchcraft, mostly deposited on specific occasions for that purpose, rather than general prophylactic charms set in position at

times of building or reconstruction.

6 Written spells and charms

To the illiterate there is something magical in the way that ideas can be

conveyed by the written word, so it is not surprising that writing itself should from its beginnings have played an important part in magical practices. The role of the latter in the development of writing is a complex and intriguing subject that cannot be discussed here, but symbols drawn for magical purposes everywhere precede written characters and are likely to be their source. In literate societies the great religions have their holy books, which for believers have a special power, and the dark underworld of sorcery has always attempted to divert this power to its own ends. The use of the spoken word in ritual of all kinds is even more basic, but is undetectable by the archaeologist, whereas the written word sometimes survives. Since in recent times this is usually on perishable material, it is possible that some deposits of apparently empty containers, such as pots, in places where charms might be expected, once contained written magic of this kind on paper, Papyrus or vellum. Even lead, the preferred material for malevolent spells, might survive in oxidising conditions only as unrecognisable white powder.

Graeco-Roman curses \ Curses incised on lead tablets were a common and long-lived method of magical ill-wishing, of which many examples are known. Those from reece are particularly numerous, and the Greek alphabet seems to ave been considered especially appropriate for this kind of written Magic, even when the practice spread into Latin-using parts of the oman Empire. In North Africa, for example, where it became as Popular as in Italy, a Latin curse was sometimes written in Greek letters. hese also appear on a late Roman curse from Trier in Germany, where

138 / Written spells and charms they accompany magical signs as single letters or making up rhythmica]

magical words.' There was no doubt an element of deliberate mystification in using a less familiar alphabet, for these curses were produced to order by professional sorcerers, to whom mumbo-jumbo was a useful

stock-in-trade. Magical phrases or drawings were often placed at the beginning or end of the text, at regular intervals within it, or enclosing it as a border. The name of the person or persons cursed is included, sometimes carefully defined by giving the parents’ names, and may be

repeated to make doubly sure. The Latin word for these curses was defixio, for it was intended that the person cursed should be ‘bound’ or ‘fixed’ in his evil fate, and words of constraint are commonly

used. It

was specialised work, for not only was it necessary to get the wording just right, as if it were a legal document, but the sorcerer had to know

how to deliver the instruction—for it seems to have been considered stronger than a request or prayer—to the appropriate deities.

There were two main methods by which the curses were activated: by nailing them, presumably to a post or other appropriate place at the god's shrine (pl 44), or by folding them or rolling them into cylinders

(the bending technique again) before dropping them into sacred waters or

entrusting

them

to

a ghost

for

delivery

to the

powers

of the

44 Roman lead curse on T Egnatius Tyranus and P Cicereius Felix, found in Prince's Street, City of London, where it had probably been nailed to a shrine beside the Roman Walbrook (Museum of London)

Written spells and charms / 139 underworld.

A tomb was considered an appropriate mail-box for the

ghostly postman, and those tombs with an opening for libations were particularly convenient. Sousse

in

Tunisia

was

The terracotta filled

with

libation pipe of one tomb

these

missives

to

gods

of

at the

underworld. Sometimes steps were taken by relatives of the deceased to prevent this by blocking the opening with a perforated lead seal, so that only liquid would pass through. If no convenient orifice could be found,

the lead tablet had to be placed inside a tomb either by smuggling it into a new grave at the time of burial or by surreptitiously opening an old one, an illegal and dangerous act for which the sorcerer was no doubt well paid. Some North African curses from graves show clearly by their inscriptions addressing 'the soul of this place' (animae buius loci). or ‘whatever spirit you are’ (daemon quicunque es) that the ghost of the occupant was intended to transmit the message to the infernal gods.?

An alternative to a cemetery as a suitable repository for lead curses was an amphitheatre, also a ghost-haunted place, since many had died violent and untimely deaths in its arena. They have been found in a small pit under the amphitheatre at Carthage, where it is believed the

corpses of gladiators were placed before being removed for burial, and also in the cellar of the amphitheatre at Trier. In Britain we have one from the amphitheatre at Caerleon that had been nailed to something; this dedicates to Nemesis a cloak and boots, possibly left by a gladiator in a dressing-room, unless redeemed by his death or perhaps that of his charger, for the meaning is uncertain.? This curse is likely to have been aimed at a gladiator, as may also be

one from the Trier amphitheatre, on which is a crude magical sketch of a human bust, possibly wearing a helmet. The targets of amphitheatre curses, however, were not confined to participants in conflicts of the

arena. Those from Trier are aimed at women as well as men, and in one Instance at an adversary in the lawcourts and his advocate, a very common class of curse. In sport there is another large class aimed at Charioteers

and

their horses,

which

are named;

these are common

in

North Africa and presumably originate from gamblers as well as rival charioteers. Rivals in love are likewise a common target, and sometimes

Sexual conflict of a complex nature seems to be implied, as in a curse

found in the Roman

reservoir at the sacred spring of Sulis Minerva at

Bath:

May he who carried off Vilbia from me become as liquid as water. May she who devoured her become dumb, whether the culprit be Velvinna,

Exsupereus,

Severinus,

minianus, Germanilla or Jovina.*

Augustalis,

Comitianus,

Catus-

140 / Written spells and charms The originator of the curse seems uncertain not only of the identity

but also of the sex of his rival and, as was not unusual in curses, includes a list of names that he hopes will cover all possibilities. The punish. ments

requested

also are curious.

springs might appropriately were perhaps

make

forcible, become

Sulis Minerva

as a goddess

Vilbia’s abductor,

as weak

whose

as water, but why

of hot

methods

should

her

new lover be made dumb, unless perhaps there was a secret that might

be betrayed? Another interesting feature of this curse, which it shares with many others, is the reversal of the order of letters in each word (iug for qui, etc), making it more difficult to decipher but possibly enhancing the magic. A lead curse from the Walbrook valley in London (fig 7), pierced with

seven nails driven from the uninscribed side, is certainly intended to keep a secret, perhaps by silencing a blackmailer:

Fig

7 Roman lead curse on Tretia Maria, pierced with seven nails, found in valley of Walbrook in Telegraph Street, City of London (Courtesy of Mr R P Wright)

Written spells and charms / 141

] curse Tretia Maria and her life and mind and liver and lungs mixed

up together, and her words, thoughts and memory;

thus

may she be unable to speak the things that are secret nor be able ... nor ... 5 Another large class of lead curses, particularly common in Britain, was intended to ensure restitution of property stolen by a thief, who might be unknown to the curser. They were usually presented to a respectable god at his shrine, and often took the form of a bargain offered to him. These are in fact religious transactions, though not of a high order, rather than mere sorcery, if we define the latter as the

involuntary cooperation of a supernatural being, induced by the skill of v the sorcerer. Curses of this kind may be regarded as conditional prayers, that could be dismissed by the god if he were able to resist the bargain

offered. It might be expected that he would not do so, however, for he would have no reason for siding with the wrongdoer. A good example, with typical quasi-legal phraseology intended to cover all categories of

person, comes from the temple at Uley: A memorandum to the god Mercury from Saturnina, a woman, concerning the linen cloth she has lost. Let him who stole it not have rest before/unless/until he brings the aforesaid things to the

aforesaid temple, whether he is man or woman, slave or free. She gives a third part to the aforesaid god on condition that he exact those things which have been aforewritten. A third part from what has been lost is given to the god on condition that he exact this, whether (the thief) is man or woman, slave or free.° Clearly not all Graeco-Roman curses were anti-social; they could even by beneficial, both as a sanction against law-breaking and as a safety-valve for those who felt they were intolerably oppressed. Gra-

dually, however, the role of the god as a supernatural ombudsman was usurped by the sorcerer, whose main concern was profit. In later Roman times the decline of traditional paganism and the popularity of oriental cults led also to the introduction of new invocations, especially in North Africa, and strange names of powers and demons derived from Hebrew, Egyptian and Gnostic mythology appear on the tablets, as well as those Of the Graeco-Roman underworld deities such as Hecate, Mercury, Persephone and Tartarus. The dark undercurrent of occultism, from which so much superstition in the west was derived, was already flowing strongly in the east. One purely magical element remained constant throughout; the use

142 / Written spells and charms of lead for written curses was almost invariable.’ This probably has less to do with the poisonous quality of lead, which does not seem to have been fully recognised by the Romans, than with its astrological association with the unlucky planet Saturn. It is interesting to note that wich the inscribed lead curses from the Trier amphitheatre were found similar lead tablets that had never been inscribed, but had been treated

in the same way by rolling or folding and by piercing with a nail. Some had been marked with criss-cross scratches, resembling a net or lattice, presumably a method of magical binding, no doubt accompanied by a spoken spell with names. This could be performed by the illiterate who were unable to afford the services of a professional sorcerer or unwilling to entrust him with their secrets."

Magic squares The written word was not only used for malevolent magic but could

serve as a protective amulet also. The curious tricks that could be played with writing exerted great fascination from early times, and were later to be the stock-in-trade of countless magicians, *wise men and women', ‘white

witches

and

survived in some magic square, in backwards and impression and world, probably

wizards’

and

other

wonder-workers,

whose

craft

rural parts of Britain into the present century. The which a group of words is arranged to read the same forwards, horizontally or vertically, made a great was repeated for centuries throughout the Roman already as protective magic, which was certainly its

purpose in more recent times. It is always the same example,

which is

aAO->u

believed to be the only possible magical square of five-letter words in Latin to make some sort of sense as a sentence. lt appears as the following graffito:

This can be translated not very happily as “The sower Arepo holds steady the wheels’, and is of course a cheat in that Arepo is a name made up to fit. It has been claimed as a Christian cryptogram, as the letters can be rearranged as A-PATER NOSTER-O, in a horizontal line, with an identical vertical line making a cross, both centring on a common N. The A and O

Written spells and charms / 143 are explained as alpha and omega. This seems convincing, but many scholars are sceptical, since other anagrams are equally possible, and it is doubtful whether ‘Pater noster’ and ‘a et ’ were used by Christians at the early date when these word-squares appear, while the cross itself was not in general use as a Christian symbol until later. It ıs particularly the appearance of the word-square in places where no other evidence of Christianity is known until a very much later date that casts most doubt on the Christian interpretation. There are two examples at Pompeii that must be earlier than AD 79, another from Portugal that is dated by its lettering to the first century, and one from the middle Danube of the early second century, at least a century before Christianity seems to have arrived there. From Britain we have two, one scratched on wall-plaster at Cirencester ‘that is attributed to the second or third century (pl 45), and another scratched on an amphora sherd from a late second-century rubbish-pit at Manchester; both are earlier than any other evidence of Christianity in Britain. From Dura-Europos on the Euphrates there are four, scratched or painted on the wall of a pagan temple requisitioned by the army in the early third century. None is known from a Christian context earlier than the fourth century, such as the Catacombs, where a secret Christian symbol

might be expected." Two questions have to be asked, and both require an affirmative answer before it can be accepted on this evidence alone that secret Christianity was so widely diffused at an early date. Was the A-PATER NOSTER-O anagram primary in the sense that the whole magic square was built up from it? Was the use of the words PATER NOSTER in prayer and aw as a symbol of an eternal deity confined to Christians in the first century AD? The answers to both should probably be negative. If the five-letter word-square is a rare or even unique phenomenon in Latin, the odds against anyone stumbling on It by chance in juggling with the letters of two simple words must be astronomical. On the other hand, these and other words can easily be Constituted from the square, once it has been devised. Pagan gods were not Infrequently addressed at ‘Pater’, and the aw symbol comes from Revelatıons which, as we shall see, contains also numerical symbolism that has more to do with magic than with Christianity, and was undoubtedly shared

With non-Christian mystical cults. There is no doubt that the word-square had a strong appeal as an emblem of mystery and power, and it was Probably used as a magical spell from the beginning. It has survived in that Capacity to our own times. A written charm that belonged to an old lady Tom Somerset who died about 1924, begins with ‘Sator, Arepo, Tenet, Pera, Rotas' in a single line (pl 46). It was probably written for her by a Ocal ‘wise’? man or woman not earlier than the late nineteenth century. It is

144

/ Written spells and charms

45 Roman word-square, ROTAS OPERA TENET AREPO SATOR, incised on wallplaster from the Roman town of Corinium (Cirencester), second-third century AD (Corinium Museum)

interesting that the usual Latin word order has been reversed, as i$ necessary when it is translated into English, suggesting that the phrase had survived as a living tradition, and was not merely copied from an ancient example like the one at Cirencester. Numerical magical squares were later to become even more popular, and were diffused widely with the expansion of Islamic culture from the tenth

Written spells and charms / 145

FT

8.5.01 Lb

Gs

92 L0 1515.2 6491-7 " 13.16, 2

2,

1, 5.9% Ini De

6, 13,18,

Lt

4

?

Z3

5g

A

-

=

|

46 Recent charms from Somerset, written on parchment, both folded three times, probably late nineteenth-early twentieth century. The larger one commences with SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS, the words of the Roman word-square in English order (Author)

146

/ Written spells and charms

century.

In these

a series of consecutive

numbers

was

rearranged

in ,

square so that the addition along any line, horizontal or vertical and the two diagonals, each came to the same number, called the ‘Magic Constant’, and

the total of all the numbers of the square also had magical significance. In Astrology each of the seven traditional planets, which included the Sun and Moon, had its own magic square, allocated in the order of what appeared to be its velocity, ranging from nine numbers for Saturn to 81 for the Moon. The magic square for the Sun, for example, is of 36 numbers arranged as follows:

632

33435

!

71127 28 8 30 I9 I4 16 IS 23 24 I8 20 22 21 17 13 25 29 10 9 26 12

36

5334

231

Each line adds up to 111 and the total of the numerals is 666. Roman numerals could not conveniently be used for this purpose but Hebrew could, and it seems probable that the author of Revelation was acquainted with this square, or at least the numerical studies from which it was developed, when he wrote that the Number of the Beast is Six hundred threescore and six. We should not be too dismissive of these studies by

learned men of earlier times, whatever superstitious use was made of them, for they led to advances in the science of numbers, and prepared the way for future triumphs of the exact sciences. The squares also gavc rise, however, to a series of mysterious signs and seals that were perpetuatcd by the magical books called ‘grimoires’, used as sources by later practitioners. These were the 'signacula' of the planets, and the 'characters' of the Intelligences and Daemons that were believed to inhabit them. Nowotny has demonstrated that in the occult system devised by Agrippa of Nettesheim in the early sixteenth century, the former were produce directly from the squares by joining up a sequence of numbers with lines to produce a figure that was usually symmetrical. The latter were made by joining on the square the numbers derived from the numerical values of the spirit’s Hebrew name, to produce an asymmetrical zig-zag figure with rings at each end. Hebrew letters were also used as figures, and the names themselves were carefully devised so that the numerical values of theif letters added up to the Magic Constant of the square in the case of the Planetary Intelligence, and to the Magic Total in the case of its Daemon)

e.g. 111 for the Intelligence and 666 for the Daemon of the Sun." If the number of a letter is too high to appear on the square, e.g. 400 in the last name, its first figure (4) is used. The method is described in detail t?

Written spells and charms / 147 demonstrate that these signs are not just meaningless mumbo-jumbo, but che product of care and thought, misplaced as it may seem to us.'* As abstract images representing connections and relationships, they are perhaps not so very different from the images and models used by modern scientists to convey their idea of hidden reality. Nobody has yet used a molecular diagram or a DNA model to give added strength to a curse, however, as the astrological symbols were often employed to do.

Post-mediaeval curses and charms A good example is the written curse

of the seventeenth

century,

inscribed on a lead tablet in the ancient tradition, and found in 1892 in a ‘cupboard at Wilton Place, near Dymock, Gloucestershire (pl 47).'* It is now in the Gloucester Museum. At the top is the name of the person on whom the curse was laid, ‘Sarah Ellis’, written backwards, as was the case with some Roman

, ir pi

x H

Es ‘

:

gt c By. po

M

aConn ivy L

MU"

D

/

"MC 4°

j

Qno P d

47 Seventeenth-century : curse on lead tablet, found Dymock, Gloucestershire (Gloucester Museum)

at

Wilton

Place,

near

148

/ Written spells and charms

curses throughout. The reversal, therefore, could be part of the magic,

and not merely

a measure of secrecy to make it more difficult for a

finder to identify the target. Below the name are symbols that can be identified as astrological, and all are associated with the moon. They are complex because they are derived from the very large magical square of the moon,

which

has 81 numbers,

nine in each row. First, on the left,

there appears to be a somewhat disintegrated Seal of the Moon, with four crescents, each with a circle at either end. These should be divided by a St Andrew's cross, which, however, is incomplete. Then comes the

complex character of bent lines terminating in rings that signifies the Supreme Daemon of the Moon. On the extreme right and at the left end of the line below are the two even more complicated characters signifying the Supreme Intelligence of the Moon. Next comes the mvstic number 369, the Magic Constant of the square of the moon (i.e. the total of each of its rows of nine figures), and also the number of its Daemon, Hasmodai,

whose

name

follows.

Then,

after the invocation

of scven

more spirit names, comes the curse itself: make this person to Banish away amen to my desier amen.

from this place and counterv

Astrological symbols of this nature were also used in protective charms, which sometimes included a complete magic square of the planet considered to be appropriate. Four paper charms with these features, all obviously produced by the same *wise man', have been found concealed in buildings in north-east Lancashire. The first of these came to light in the early nineteenth century, before May 1825, when it was sent to the British Museum for study. It was then considered to be not more than 30-40 years old, and can be attributed fairly confidently to the late eighteenth century. It had fallen from the roof-beams when a barn

at

West

Bradford,

near

Clithero,

was

demolished,

and

had

evidently been hidden there, ‘folded to the size of a small letter’, in order to protect the barn and its contents (fig 8). It seems at first quite incomprehensible, for the magical concealment, that practitioners of the occult seem to have considered necessary, was here carried to extraordinary lengths. Fortunately, Richard Garnett, who deciphered it, was not only erudite in the old astrological books but a good cryptographer 35 well. In the upper left corner is the magic square or 'Table' of the Sun (cf p 146), in which for greater mystification the figures are expressed as an arbitrary code of letters, some Greek. In the space to the right are che symbols of the sun and of the constellation Leo, with the seal of the Archangel Michael below; to the right of these are the characters of the

Written spells and charms / 149

eee

ov

v

|

"

i VO

~XKey

de

z

-

RR.

$l

U

-)

=

Aj—o

||?

)

«X -OAÀ

-w-vihv ean s

ub té

c-A-6

AxBor

pr Id

Sp

U£A

ine

Jv € A

hA

ve d

[fet MU

i yr A

Be

Cepot »H

S vol

Yrs

~-

Ev

yw % ee Ile v^ age ene

VS

a

4

~ pA

\

jie; Joe

c -

td

fre pe

Re ie di i

ty

e

po es TIONS

--65«

||

vy4V@ P

yo

V/A. yp

WM

yr

v9

ce ev)

De |

A hd Vf bs [32 ^e ey

Jere vo v,

dd 2^? v6, Ey

vL

vcl,

-wley-: .

py CONTlE vyyedy

Ly 9. comu) U

Aa)

ON sop

+yyvd"+19

- fat " MOM Jr

é-vcly

- 34e

Ida, ld

ct wee! wiG ART Boca

ur

C5

pred”

—] vv

^ bye

U uel

+ SY ns

“ve ACH

rA,

c+

Foyavyd NOR

deln

PT

CV

+ v~-dy

9,0 d m-4vd

IVUGYA- +t-aTr6 E

|

ES

e

X hebfolly df - iy H

Pod!

t

gsi 119, mak - slayıp

J e

£1 vc Vs ) ler, NY Dow T

Fam 9

cL

st

Fig 8 Protective charm in code, probably late eighteenth century, found in 1825 in barn at West Bradford, near Clithero, north-east ‘Proc. Hist. Soc. Lancs. and Cheshire’, 1852)

Lancashire

(From

Intelligence of the Sun (above) and the Daemon of the Sun (below); these are named in Greek letters. Finally in the upper right corner is the Seal of the Sun.

Below

all this is the text of the charm,

curious cipher with special marks to b, and with some consonants fepresented by figures or signs. Ines remain gibberish, a mixture

written

for vowels except e, which in Greek characters, while Even when deciphered the of Greek and Latin words

in a

is changed others are first three that does

not have any meaning. From line 4, however, the text makes sense—in atin. Translated, it runs as follows:

As it is said in the 17th ch: apter of St Matthew, 2oth verse, ‘By faith ye may remove mountains; be it according to (my)f:

is, or ever shall be enchantment or evil spirit that haunts or troubles this person, or this place, or these cattle, I adjure thee to depart, without disturbance, molestation or the least trouble—in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

150 / Written spells and charms Then

follows the Lord's Prayer in Latin, Pater noster ... etc, ending

with the word ‘fiat’ (‘let it be done’). symbols were written on the outside:

After

folding,

the following

—YyA-— +evt tét7 — Y7 — WW t\v This will serve as a small sample of the cipher used throughout, demonstrating the use of Greek letters combined with strokes or other symbols for vowels. It stands for Agla—On

(or En)—

Tetragrammaton

The first two words are cabbalistic names of God, and the third, ‘four-letters’ in Greek, stands for the sacred and unpronounceable name of Jehovah. They were considered words of great power, and are

commonly used in white magic of this kind." It was suggested in 1852 that as the astrological symbolism all relates to the sun, the charm was intended to be put into operation on a Sunday, which was the day not only of the sun but also of the Archangel Michael, whose seal likewise appears. Three more almost identical charms have been found in the same area, however, one from Burnley,

one from Foulridge near Colne, and one from Healey near Rochdale." It seems, therefore, that all four are simply copies of the same original, and the *wise man' who wrote them may himself have been less learned in the occult sciences than he appears. They are careful copies, but nevertheless one or two errors appear, e.g. in the numbers of the magic square. Three are almost certainly by the same hand, but the fourth, a more fragmentary example from Burnley, may not be, as it has different symbols in the square. The solar emblems and the seal of St Michael, however, appear on this also. Perhaps the writing of charms in Lancashire was Sunday work for *wise men’ who were otherwise employed during the week. Yet they were certainly professionals, who with painstaking care were following an old tradition that they had inherited. One of the charms, folded and wrapped in lead foil, was found in a groove made in the door lintel. This recalls the ancient Jewish practice of placing written words of power in the doorposts, but

the use of lead in connection with a protective amulet is unusual; it w* traditionally reserved for cursing and Protective charms of a somewhat written and used in Wales as recently example was found on a farm called

retribution. similar nature continued to bé as the present century. A typica Pentrenant, near Sarn in Powy?

Written spells and charms / ı51 (formerly Montgomeryshire) during the reconstruction of a cowshed in the 19308. A cylindrical stoneware bottle was found buried beneath an old feeding-trough. Inside was a folded sheet of paper on which the charm was written (pl 48). No word of Welsh occurs in it, and the sentences are entirely in English and very garbled Latin, without any use of cipher. Perhaps English and Latin provided enough mystification in a Welsh-speaking community. The portion in English, with its repetition

of the names of all the creatures for which protection was required, is written with the same legalistic care to provide comprehensive cover that we have already encountered in some Roman curses. In the name of the Fatha and of the Son and of the Holy Gost Amen XXXX and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ his redeemer and saviour he will relieve William Bains Pentrynant his cows calves milk butter catle of all ages mares suckers'’ horses of all.ages sheep yews lambes sheep of all ages piges sowes and

prosper him in all his farm and from all witchcraft and all Evil deseases amen XXX Gasper fert myrham thus melchor balthasar auraum hec tria quregum salvatis a morbo a Christ pietate ea duco amen XXX ineducto unversanilam amathuram—positis sarah adverus artedovalis amen XXX Eructavit cor meaum verbum bonum dicam cuncta opera meregi domino labia mea aperies and os meum annutiabit vertatem cuntre brachna iniquet lingua malusqua subvertatur a Lord Jesus Christ homnoum he hereth the preserver of William Pentrynant his cows calves milk butter catle of all ages mares suckers horses of all ages yews lambes sheep of all ages piges sowes and prosper him on this farm to liv luckly saved from all witchcraft and evil men or women or spirits or wizards or hardness of hart amen XXX and this I will trust in the Lord Jesus Christ my redeemer and saviour from witchcraft amen XXX and this I trust in Jesus Christ my redeemer and saviour he will releve William Bains Pentrynant his cows calves milk buter catle of all ages mares suckers horses of all ages yews lambes sheep of all ages P!ges sowes and everything that is his posesion to live lucken and

Proster him on this farm and (saved) from all witchcraft by the Same power as he did cause the blind to see the lame to walk and

the dum to talk and thou findest with unclean spirits as wilt Jehovah amen XXX the witch compased him about but the Lord will destroy them all pater pater pater noster noster noster ave ave ave maria

creed

car of acteum

X on X

adona

X tetragra

amen

XXX and in the name of the holy trinity and of — — — — preserve all above named from all evil diseases whatsoever amen X.

152 / Written spells and charms

—

»-

vLp

et = und ti ee (

i, &

y* 2»;

R B A AA go

en lyexy nas facet o

LATCour

feed

mens

yl

pay!

4

.

f

e

x

ir

Lodo]

=

o»

y

bs

A VETE

48 Charm written on paper, 18.5cm

1

X

ee

‘

ML.

Ld

ap

AE

2

~ Fa

TER LOAN ERR

yu, TU

art

ar

1-4 : SIR

Ado

aoc

x os ae

nn.

LA

7 ^ 2 Im. ft AU nd an SCH BUE. D d ESI

poor

BR

ay

uA d

IR T»

46

*

jd

x

} ch GREIZ ^

"mo

,E

UFER aA nmelo M FR [227

htm

du^

u

ws

2 yes

nd “ene 7

im

t

mt

pre

wer "nyf om

a

ET

LADY 4> ring , i e Au : } . leg , p "1 ER

j 7543,

EET.Larges EEE

sts

“4

7

Py

fev: 7

A

wile pas aks

LE

"T

as

^d

ea

ey BIER,

ERepe UE,

IC RR

e. AAA

D

ALIAE

T

ie

ty

z^ ae "n be eae

ı2cm, early twentieth century, found

buried in bottle in cowshed on Pentrenant Farm, near Sarn, Powys, Wales

(Author)

Below are two rows of astrological symbols—six-pointed stars (identical with those on a late Roman curse from Trier) and symbols of the seven planets— with the words ‘by Jah Jah Jah’. In the lower lefthand corner is the ABRACADABRA triangle, a magical device of great antiquity; and in the right-hand corner a circular emblem closely

resembling a papal seal. Apart from vagaries of spelling and the occasional omission of words or phrases, the meaning of the English portion is clear, if difficult to read

in the crabbed handwriting. Like all white magic it is a mixture of prayer and spell, of piety and

ritual enchantment.

The authority of

scripture is cited for the performance of miracles, but words have obviously been omitted in the reference to the third miracle, which should read ‘and those that thou findest with unclean spirits to be if their right mind’. There is much use of triple repetition and invocation of the Deity by secret names of power, such as On, Adonai, Tetragram

maton and Jah. As for the ‘Latin’, its corruptness is evidently the result of copying many times repeated by those who had no knowledge of the language. Yet it is by no means all meaningless. There is an almost correct half-sentence meaning ‘Caspar brings myrrh, Melchior franki"™

Written spells and charms / 153 cense and Balthasar gold, these three things ...', but it tails off into obscurity, and one can only assume that the original charm invoked the magical qualities of the sacred gifts in the name of the kings, in order that the person for whom it was written should be ‘saved from disease

by Christ’. There are also recognisable phrases from the Latin Psalms, and right at the end, among the words of power, what appears to be a corruption of ‘Caro factus est’, ‘He was made Flesh’. The use of the Vulgate and of formulae such as ‘Ave Maria’ indicates that this charm of Nonconformist Wales follows a pre-Reformation tradition; yet it is written on a piece of notepaper with watermark of a kind that was produced by the firm of Thomas De La Rue until the

1914-18 war. A similar charm in the same handwriting in the National Library of Wales was found in a bottle in the stable-loft of a farm near

Devil's Bridge, Dyfed, when the farm was sold between 1916 and 1918

following its owner's death. This was specifically to cure a sick mare. Another, also in the same

handwriting,

in the collection of the Welsh

Folk Museum, was obtained in 1916 from a ‘conjuror’ (Dyn Hysbys), as the local *wise men' were called, who lived near Llanidloes, Powys. This

was acquired by a farmer who lived near Llanfyllin in the same county, and was accustomed to buy a new charm every year. All these charms were evidently written by the same 'conjuror', who, according to the late Dr lorwerth

Peate,

curator

of the Welsh

Folk

Museum,

lived at

Llangurig, near Llanidloes, and was consulted by farmers from many miles around in the years before and up to the first World War. There are, however, almost identical charms written in a slightly different hand, and one of these is said to have been obtained as recently as about 1934. There was clearly a family practice handed on from one generation to the next, all copying from the same original, which must be of

considerable antiquity.'* _A written similar way, Aberhafesp, building that

charm derived from a different original, but used in a was found more than thirty years ago on a farm at near Newtown, Powys, when demolishing an old stone had been used as a pigsty. It had been rolled up in a

Cylindrical phial, which was concealed in a hole in the wall. It is now in

the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth, and reads as follows: + Lignum Sanctae Crucis defendat me a malis presentibus preaterItus (praeteritis) & futuris Interioribus & Exterioribus+ + Willam [— — — ++. +omnes spiritus laudet Dominum: Mosen (abent & prophetas: Exurget Deus & disipenture inimici essus eius).

154

/ Written spells and charms (The wood of the Holy Cross defend me from evils present, past and future, within and without+ + William J+ + Let every spirit praise the Lord: they have Moses and the prophets: Let God arisc and his enemies be scattered.)

Then follows a line of astrological symbols, and (in English): + + +In the name of God Amen. This is a fight against the wills of the Devils Amen. The

phial

also

contained

a fragment

of decayed

wood,

no

doubt

purporting to be a piece of the true cross." Here then the Welsh conjuror was continuing the old trickery of the medieval pardoner with his false relics. There are two other examples of the same formula in the collection of the National Library of Wales, and these are longer, more complex, and

presumably earlier, with cabbalistic names of God, the names of the Magi and of the Evangelists, in addition to the lines from Latin psalms and astrological symbols. One also has the names and seals of the

archangels Michael and Gabriel.” The services of the conjuror in rural Wales were not confined to the provision of a written charm. The father of Mr T A Lloyd, who found the written charm at Pentrenant, remembered

of Llanfyllin and Llanfechain when the ing unexplained deaths of cattle on a boundaries reciting spells, once on the and so on, until the seventh day when times. He would then bury two written

occasions in the districts

conjuror was called in, followfarm. He would go round its first day, twice on the second, they would be repeated seven charms, one on the land itself,

and one in the farm buildings. An old man who had always lived near Pentrenant remembered a conjuror walking round the fields there with two large plates that looked like silver, one in each hand, performing the

magical rites that accompanied the burying of a charm?!

The Welsh conjuror was a professional who worked on traditional lines, and all the examples cited here of his charms are purely protective and based on the ‘white magic’ that lies in the borderland between religion and sorcery. The echoes of pre-Reformation Christianity amid the astrological symbolism and the mumbo-jumbo are a reminder that he was merely filling the gap left in the troubled lives of simple men when reforming zeal removed miracles and the protection of the saint$ from the Christian Church. Malicious spells intended to harm an enemy are rarer in modern times, and generally seem to be of the ‘do-it-yourself’ variety, not requiring any special expertise. The written element is reduced to 2

Written spells and charms / 155

minimum, sometimes merely to the name or even the initials of the person cursed, but is accompanied by an unpleasant form of image magic. À black pipkin covered with a slate on which the name *Nanney Roberts’ was written was found buried in a bank on Penrhos Bradwen Farm, near Holyhead, Anglesey, in the nineteenth century; it contained the skin and bones of a frog, which had been pierced by several large pins, and was clearly intended as the image-substitute of the woman named.” Slate seems to have been considered a specially appropriate material for cursing in Anglesey, perhaps because of its leaden colour. It was also used in conjunction with what were called ‘cursing wells’, which in order to be efficacious had to have a northern aspect. A slate with the name of the person to be cursed scratched upon it, or a

wretched frog pierced with pins, was thrown into the well by the curser, who then crawled round the well against the path of the sun, uttering appropriate curses. This was called ‘well-wishing’, signifying the exact opposite of the ordinary meaning of that term. A piece of slate three inches by two inches wide was found in a north-facing well of this kind at Fynnon Eilian in the parish of Llaneilian, Anglesey. An oblong ‘label’ had been scratched in the centre and surrounded with a border of crossed lines. On the label were the large letters RF, presumably the initials of the person cursed, with the unexplained small letters oAM, MEM, ?AGM and — — —M scratched in the corners. A crude wax figure with left arm broken off was pinned through a hole in the centre of the

slate.” A more elaborate written curse of the late nineteenth century can be

seen in the Hereford Museum,

also accompanied by a crude image.

They were found together in a crevice of brickwork in East Street, Hereford. The figure consists of a bag of dark-blue cotton with red spots drawn close at the neck, where a head of pink cotton with a plait

of hair has been inserted. The paper curse, which has its upper righthand corner torn off, had been folded six times longitudinally. It shows

d esoteric knowledge, but merely strong emotion, with an indication of

the reason for it;

Mary Ann Ward

I act this spell upon you with my holl heart Wishing you to never rest nor eat nor sleep the festen part of your life I hope your flesh Will waste away and I hope you will never Spend another penny I ought to have Wishing this from my whole heart

156

/ Written spells and charms

This seems to be a spontaneous outburst of envy and malice, with little in it that is traditional, beyond the mere fact of writing a curse and making a magical image.

The recent charms and curses that we have been considering have in most instances been written on paper, which is unlikely to survive for very long, and only in exceptional circumstances could they remain in à recognisable condition for more than a century or so. A number, however, were buried or concealed in some form of container, such as 4

bottle.

Since

they

are clearly

following

a tradition

of considerable

antiquity, we have to bear in mind that some more ancient vessels deliberately buried or concealed in buildings, and apparently empty when found, may once have contained similar charms written on perishable material that has decayed to dust. The fourteenth-century pitcher containing decayed parchment that was found enclosed in a wall of Bexley church (p 121) may not have been unique. Graffiti in old buildings occasionally survive, and may sometimes

have a magical significance, for protective magic, such explanation of a single scratched on the plaster of

especially if they occur in a traditional place as a chimney-piece. This may well be the line of quite incomprehensible ‘writing’ the chimney-breast of a bedroom in an old

farmhouse at Horsham, Sussex (pl 49). The one intelligible symbol is a

(e aes 5

uadit

E ER

49 Mysterious graffito, (?) protective charm, found on old plaster surface of chimney breast in an ancient farmhouse (mediaeval in origin) at Horsham, Sussex, (?) seventeenth century

(Mr M S Kirby)

Written spells and charms / 157

so Graffito chalked ‘for luck’ in the forthcoming year on upper panel of front door in Monschau, West Germany, on 6 January 1985. Initials stand for ‘Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar’ (Author)

large R with a dash through its tail, placed immediately below the line of ‘writing’. This is the mark that English physicians place at the

beginning of their prescriptions, as they have apparently done for over 500 years, as a contracted form of the word ‘Recipe’.™ It suggests that

the writing may be a prescription, in this case presumably magical rather than medical. The graffito lay beneath about a quarter-inch thickness of subsequent plaster and colour washes, and there is no means of dating it. Equally incomprehensible

until it was explained

was a mysterious

graffito seen in 1985 chalked on a number of front doors in Monschau,

in the Eifel region of West Germany: 'I9 — C-

Mc B—85'

(pl 50).

According to local people it is chalked on the door every year on the 6 anuary (Old Christmas Day, or Twelfth Night) to bring luck in the

158 / Written spells and charms coming year, and the letters are abbreviations for Caspar, Melchior ang Balthasar, the names of the three Magi that we have encountered in Welsh written charms.? This brief and cryptic invocation of the Three Kings, placed on the front door 'for luck', must represent the ultimate devolution of the protective magic of the written word.

7 Charms against witchcraft

The more

recent

written

charms,

as we

have

seen, were

aimed

quite

specifically against malevolent sorcery or witchcraft, which from about the fifteenth to the seventeenth century was an obsession that haunted

even highly educated people, and sometimes impelled them to acts of appalling cruelty. The fear of ‘ill-wishing’ and measures taken against it lingered on until recent times among the rural poor, but the development of science in the Age of Enlightenment drove this particular horror from the corridors of power. It still sometimes led to murder, as at Tring in 1751, when a woman of 7o was drowned as a witch, but no longer to judicial murder, and on this occasion it was a leader of the witchducking mob who perished on the gallows.' Yet as recently as 1685 a witch had been hanged at Exeter, and in 1645, when the notorious witch-finders were most active, these executions had reached their peak in England. The slaughter was worse in Scotland, where torture was used to extract confessions and witches were burnt. On the Continent,

waves of witch hysteria swept through country after country, Catholic and Protestant

alike,

in the sixteenth

and

seventeenth

centuries,

thousands of poor wretches suffered horrible deaths. witchcraft was not new, but towards the end of the Middle a mania, for complex historical and psychological reasons Controversial and cannot be adequately discussed here.”

and

The fear of Ages became that remain There was a

ferment of new ideas in which old assumptions were being challenged

and strongly defended; new philosophies were developing and there was t € beginning of a new scientific spirit of enquiry. To any religious or

Political establishment the clash of ideas was the struggle against heresy,

and was regarded as yet another manifestation of the historic conflict etween good and evil. The new ferment therefore meant that Satan

Was active, and it was necessary to take firm action to destroy his allies. ese would include not only the overt heretics but also his fifth column

Of secret supporters.

160 / Charms against witchcraft The theory formulated by the Dominican Inquisitors, and adopted with equal enthusiasm by Protestant fanatics, was that witches made a pact with the Devil and received from him supernatural power in return for worship and the ultimate loss of their souls. There was a strong element of sexual fantasy about these beliefs, emanating partly from neurotic imaginations and partly from the traditional demonology with its incubi and succubi—male and female devils that copulated with human

beings. Other fantasies related to cannibalism and supernatural

flight, and these are familiar to anthropologists from witch beliefs in

many parts of the world. In the fifteenth century the idea of witchcraft as an organised cult, with its sabbats at which the Devil was invoked, had already developed, and there was persecution on a large scale in Switzerland and France. Whether this cult existed outside the morbid imaginations of the persecutors and persecuted remains controversial. A

mass of legal evidence was accumulated over two centuries and in many countries to prove that it did, and a surprising number of witnesses told similar stories—after skilful treatment that included careful questioning, torture and false promises. Since the publication in 1921 of Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe we have seen in our own time similar trials, and are

in a better position to evaluate such evidence. Her theory that there was a surviving pagan fertility cult on which the belief in a conspiracy of organised witches was based has been dismissed by most modern scholars. Their incredulity concerning its organisation and the farreaching claims made in Dr Murray's later books is certainly justified. Nevertheless the pendulum may have swung too far. As we have seen, there is abundant archaeological evidence for the long life of many ritual practices, and there are a number of recent folk customs that can reasonably be interpreted as survivals of fertility rites. It would not be surprising if the net of the Inquisitors had caught not only individual dabblers in magic, and innocent old ladies feared by their neighbours on account of bad temper or senile dementia, but also groups of people who still met to perpetuate a traditional paganism. The Church would always have regarded this as devil-worship, and it could easily be presented as such in the stereotyped pattern imposed on the legal records. The pagan horned god had inspired panic fear in antiquity, and a being with similar attributes was still doing so in the seventeenth century. It is reasonable to suspect a connection, however much overlaid

by

later ideas,

but

it is doubtful

whether

such

a figure

was

really still the centre of a rural cult. Abhorrence of the imaginary conspiracy of witches was shared by Popes such as Innocent virt, who issued a Bull demanding its suppres

Charms against witchcraft / 161

sion, religious reformers such as Luther and Calvin, who both urged

that all witches should be put to death, and kings such as James vi of Scotland, who

wrote himself a Demonologie

to refute Reginald

Scot's

Discoverie of Witchcraft that had dared to express scepticism. One result of this preoccupation, in fact, was that a great deal was written the subject, from the Malleus Maleficarum (‘Hammer of Witchcraft’) the German Dominicans Sprenger and Kramer, first printed in 1486, Joseph Glanvil's Sadducismus Triumphatus, a philosophical defence

on by to of

the belief in witchcraft published in 1681. Yet Glanvil was also one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society, and genuine scientific enquiry, which would soon make such beliefs impossible for any educated person, was already developing, and had in fact been applied to this very subject as early as 1634, when William Harvey, the distinguished King's Physician, later to discover the circulation of the blood, had examined supposed witch-marks (believed to have been used to suckle imps with the witch's

blood)

on those

accused

in the Second

Lancashire

Witch

Trial, and declared that they were normal. Harvey is also said to have dissected a toad that was claimed to be a witch's familiar, and found it

no different from other toads.” The subject is very fully documented, not only by the records of witch-trials, but also by the numerous books written by highly intelligent people.

One of the consequences of condemning all witches for the mere act of witchcraft, whether its purpose authors were much concerned with it, and whether these were legal or and other genuinely religious acts there were differences of opinion about the point where superstition

was good or bad, was that these the counter-measures taken against were themselves witchcraft. Prayer were obviously legitimate, though between Protestants and Catholics began. The Dominicans Sprenger

and Kramer,

the use of sacred words

for example,

allowed

as written

charms provided they were not accompanied by unknown names that might be invocations of demons, and permitted the use of the natural Properties of stones and herbs to drive away a bewitchment.! Increase Mather, the New England divine, however, condemned all forms of White witchcraft, including the ‘nailing of Horse-shoes at Men's doors’, as a bargain with the Devil.’ In considering the archaeological evidence for Post-mediaeval ritual of this kind, therefore, we have the advantage

Of a great deal of contemporary discussion, that tells us not only what

People did,

but

also

what

they

believed

its effect was,

and

even

Sometimes how they thought it worked. Horseshoes were not the only domestic charms then considered to be Not merely ‘lucky’ but quite specifically antidotes to witchcraft. Natur-

ally holed stones were hung in stables, cow-sheds and houses to repel

162 / Charms against witchcraft witches, and were believed to protect horses and cattle from being ridden at night to the sabbats, after which they were found sweating and weary in their stables next morning. The use of a holed stone, hung by the manger to prevent a horse from being hag-ridden, is mentioned in John Aubrey’s Miscellanies, first published in 1696.° Iron in the form of hooks and shears as well as horseshoes was hung up for the same

purpose.’ In early twentieth-century Cambridgeshire a knife was put under the mat to prevent a witch from entering the house, or under a chair to prevent her from sitting down." The protection was sometimes made permanent by enclosing knives in a wall as a builder’s charm. Two knives made completely of iron, and of sixteenth-seventeenthcentury date, were found covered with mortar in the wall of Cade House, West Malling, Kent (pl 514). There is no doubt that they were

placed there as charms against attacks of witches, for the same custom of enclosing knives in the walls of houses for that purpose was described in the Orkneys in 1795.? The knives from West Malling are in a private

collection that also contains a larger knife of unknown history that must likewise have been used as a charm, for engraved on one side of the blade are magical symbols, and on the other is the cabbalistic name of

power AGLA (pl 515). As in the smaller knives found in the wall, blade and handle are made from a single piece of iron. We also find our old friend the votive coin reappearing as a charm against witchcraft, especially in dairies. The difficulty often encountered in butter-making was of course attributed to malevolent witchcraft, and in Yorkshire dairymaids kept a crooked sixpence handy as a ‘churn-spell’ for dropping in cream that obstinately refused to become butter. Like other witch-charms it was taken to the New World, where a dime was used

for the same purpose in Kentucky and a five-cent piece in Nova Scotia." EN i

\

a

ML

Te

rm,

ar

(b) sı Two small and larger symbols on knife height W

knives (a), found in wall of Cade House, West Malling, Kent; knife (b) with name of power AGLA on one side, and magical the other; all late sixteenth-early seventeenth century; larger 31.4cm (124in), others to same scale (Author, by courtesy of Mr

H Brown)

Charms against witchcraft / 163

Witch-bottles The antidote to witchcraft that has become most familiar to archaeologists, however, is the witch-bottle, of which many examples dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are known. The writer first learnt of it when a bellarmine, a German stoneware jug or bottle with a bearded mask, was given with its contents to Guildhall Museum.

It had been found by one of those diligent searchers of the Thames foreshore

called

*mudlarks',

who,

before

curned treasure-hunting into a profitable river-mud at low tide for odd scraps of pleased to find a late seventeenth century perfect except for a missing handle, in the

the

use

of metal-detectors

business, used to search the antiquarian interest. He was 'greybeard' jug or bellarmine, mud about nine feet from the

bottom of the steps at Paul's Pier Wharf in the City of London.

It was

stoppered with a hard clay-like substance. This was scraped away and the interior was washed under a running tap. A small quantity of dirt and mud with a few brass pins was washed away, and a number of iron nails fell out. It was apparent that the vessel also contained a larger object which would not pass through the narrow neck. It was extracted with some difficulty, doubled up, with the aid of forceps, and found to

be a piece of felt, cut into the shape of a heart and pierced with five brass pins (pl 52). A very similar find was made in Westminster in 1904, and is

now in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford. This is a bellarmine found at a depth of 3.5m (10-11ft) below street level at the corner of Great College Street and Tufton Street, in the course of an old mill-stream that

is followed by the line of Great College Street. It was corked, and contained a piece of cloth cut into the shape of a heart, in which bent pins were stuck, together with some human hair and nail parings (pl 53

and cover). Another bellarmine, in this case sealed with a lead plug, was found at Gravesend in the Thames estuary, in the south bank of the river, and is said to have been ‘five feet down in undisturbed river-mud’. It contained human hair, brass pins, iron nails and other odd pieces of brass and iron, as well as fragments of lead that may have been derived

from the sealing material, which seems to have been applied in a molten condition. This stoneware bottle and its contents were subjected to chemical examination by Mr S Scholes, who found indications suggest-

Ing that urine had been present—a point of considerable importance, as we shall see.'! Also from the Thames, and in this case definitely from the river itself, üt less certainly a witch-bottle, was a broken bellarmine found at

Iswick Eyot, in west London, containing a bent iron nail, small pieces

of Partly burnt coal and fibrous fragments.

164

/ Charms against witchcraft

52 Bellarmine witch-bottle with contents (iron nails and felt heart pierced with pins), 1650-1700, from Thames foreshore near steps at Paul's Pier Wharf, City of London (Author)

Other bellarmines that had been used in this way have been found in London in circumstances showing that they had been buried in open ground, or possibly deposited in ditches. One was rescued from a builder's excavation on the site of the city ditch in Duke's Place;

Aldgate, but was buried there not earlier than the third quarter of the seventeenth century when the site was occupied by houses with gardens between them and the city wall. It was in an upright position at the bottom of a narrow pit, presumably dug in one of these gardens, and contained a mass of corroded brass pins.'? Further east in Pennington Street, Stepney, a bellarmine that was fully prepared with all the usual ingredients of the witch-charm was found in similar circumstances, on 4

Charms against witchcraft / 165

53 Bellarmine witch-bottle, with cork and contents (hair, nail-pairings and cloth heart pierced with pins), 1650-1700, found in bed of old mill-stream, Great College Street, Westminster

(Pitt-Rivers Museum,

Oxford)

Site occupied by small houses and gardens, in which it had probably been buried. It contained human hair and nail-clippings, the remains of

a cloth heart with pins, pieces of wire and a number of bent iron nails. Altogether a dozen ‘greybeards’ with contents indicating their use as witch-charms have been found in the London area, all dating from the Second half of the seventeenth century. Contemporary with these, or Possibly a little earlier in the mid-seventeenth century, is a very small jug

of German stoneware, only 11cm (44in) high and without a bearded face, found on the site of Plaisterers’ Hall, Noble Street, also in the

neighbourhood of the city ditch. It had evidently been used for the same Purpose and contained nine brass pins, each carefully bent twice (pl 54).

166 / Charms against witchcraft

54 Stoneware jug used as a witch-bottle, with contents (nine bent pins), midseventeenth century, found on Plaisterers’ Hall site, Noble Street, City of London (Museum of London)

Charms against witchcraft / 167 Bellarmine witch-bottles of the seventeenth century are even more abundant in the eastern counties of England, especially in Suffolk. In 1980 at least 18 examples from Essex and East Anglia were known to the author, and the Ipswich and Norwich Museums are particularly rich in them (pl 55).'” Their contents are much the same as those in London, but there is a striking difference in the method of using them. In the eastern counties they have nearly all been found under buildings,

normally beneath the threshold or the hearth, the traditional places for protective charms. This in fact is a good indication of their true nature. It might be imagined from their contents, such as the hearts pierced with pins, that they were intended for malevolent magic, and so in a sense

they were, but the numerous references by contemporary writers all indicate that they were devised as counter-measures to witchcraft, with the purpose of saving the victim by throwing back the evil spell on the

55

Bellarmine

witch-bottles

from

Stowmarket

and

Ixworth,

Suffolk,

contents (iron nails and bent pins), 1650-1700 (Ipswich Museum)

with

168

/ Charms against witchcraft

witch who cast it. Only a few typical East Anglian examples can be described here. One was found buried just within the threshold of the old Plough Inn in King Street, King's Lynn; it contained a cloth heart pierced with pins. Another was buried in an inverted position, as was not uncommon, beneath the partition wall of two late seventeenthcentury properties at the corner of Horn's Lane and King Street, Norwich: it contained several iron nails and some human hair. Both are in the Norwich Castle Museum. One was found buried in an inverted

position

beneath

the hearthstone

of an old cottage at Stradbroke,

Suffolk, and is now in the Christchurch Mansion Museum at Ipswich; its contents have not been preserved but are believed to have been thorns. Another bellarmine definitely containing thorns was found under the hearth of an old cottage at Stratford St Mary, near Ipswich. One containing pins was found at a depth of one metre under the hearth of the tap-room of the Duke's Head Inn at Coddenham, near Ipswich.'* A

remarkable

stoneware

bottle

in

the

bellarmine

tradition,

but

marking its final stage of devolution, in which the bearded mask was replaced by an ornament (in this case an impressed pattern of three horseshoes) was found beneath the floor level of a house near the corner

of Pottery Street and Arthur Street, Ipswich. It was unearthed during excavations for the foundations of Ipswich Civic College in 1958, and the house in which it had been buried had been demolished many vears earlier, so it was not possible to ascertain its position in the original house. The date of the stoneware bottle can hardly be earlier than the last decade of the seventeenth century. It was stoppered with a plug of earth or clay only, and contained a variety of objects cemented together by rust in the upper part of the vessel, suggesting that it had been deposited upside-down (pl 56). When dissected out they were found to include most of the usual contents, with the exception of nail parings.

There were several fragments of felt, no doubt originally forming a heart-shape, in which six or seven pins had been stuck; some human hair; and more than 40 iron nails. There were also various less usual additions, of a similar nature in that they had sharp points; 24 brass studs (possibly pins for upholstery); a two-pronged iron fork (an ordinary table-fork of the period); a number of flat wooden spills with pointed ends (of the kind used for making sulphur matches for use with the tinder-box, but showing no trace of sulphur); and more than 49 fragments of glass (pl 57). The bottle and contents were examined by Dr A E Werner,

of the

British

Museum

Research

Laboratory,

who

was

asked whether he could detect any traces of the former presence of urine. He found a concentration of phosphates that could have been

Charms against witchcraft / 169

$6 Stoneware witch-bottle, with contents about 1700, from Ipswich (Author)

in corroded

mass

in upper

part,

derived from urine in the stopper, where salts in solution would have collected as the liquid dried out, if the bottle had been placed upsidedown. From the contemporary accounts of such charms, we know that the urine of the supposed victim of witchcraft, whether human or animal, was the most important ingredient, and it was in fact sometimes used alone. This method of counter-witchcraft is described by Joseph Blagrave of Reading, in his Astrological Practice of Physick, published

in 1671, as one of a number of 'experimental Rules, whereby to afflict me Witch, causing the evil to return back upon them’. His recipe is as

ollows: Another way is to stop the urine of the Patient, close up in a bottle, and put into it three nails, pins or needles, with a little white salt, keeping the urine always warm: if you let it remain long in the bottle, it will endanger the witches life: for I have found by experience that they will be grievously tormented making their water with great difficulty, if any at all, and the more if the Moon

be in Scorpio in Square or Opposition to his Significator, when its

done.

170

/ Charms against witchcraft

" 3 4 NCHES

1

i2

:r

3

57 Selection of contents of Ipswich witch-bottle, about 170o, after dissection, comprising fork, human hair, glass fragments, pieces of felt with pins, iron nails, wooden spills and brass studs (Author)

He goes on to explain why the witch can be tormented through the medium of her victim's urine.

The reason ... is because there is part of the vital spirit of the Witch in it, for such is the subtlety of the Devil, that he will not

suffer the Witch to infuse any poysonous matter into the body of man or beast, without some of the Witches blood mingled with it 15 In other words, the witch has established a magical link of sympathy with her victim, and through this she can herself be attacked. John Aubrey published in 1696 a story of the successful use of a witch-bottle when a horse was bewitched, and mentions only the horse's urine as an ingredient. Mr Sp. told me that his horse which was bewitched would break bridles and strong halters, like a Sampson. They filled a bottle of the horse's urine, stopped it with a cork and bound it fast in, and then buried it under ground: and the party suspected to be the

Charms against witchcraft / 171 witch,

fell ill, that he could

not make

water,

of which

he died.

When they took up the bottle, the urine was almost gone; so, that

they did believe, that if the fellow could have lived a little longer, he had recovered."

It should be noted that the bellarmine witch-bottles described here all date from the second half of the seventeenth century, and are therefore approximately contemporary with Blagrave's prescription and Aubrey's story. Glanvil, however,

has a curious

account

of the use of a witch-

bottle, that from its biographical detail must have occurred before 1660. The story was told by William Brearley, who heard it from his landlord when he was lodging in Suffolk. Now Brearley was Rector of Clipstone ‚in Northamptonshire, and lived there quietly from 1660 until his death in 1667. His stay in East Anglia must have been of earlier date, probably during the Commonwealth, when he was deprived of his living, but possibly before he received it in 1644, when he may for a time have been

Vicar of Burwell on the Cambridge-Suffolk border. He was certainly told the story between 1630 and 1660, and the events described in it had happened a few years earlier, i.e. probably during the second quarter of the century. It concerns the curing of his landlady, who had been afflicted by a curious form of witchcraft, and is worth quoting in full, as it is told in Sadducismus Triumpbatus: For an old Man that travelled up and down the Country, and had some acquaintance at that house, calling in and asking the Man of the house how he did and his Wife; He told him that himself was

well, but his Wife had been a long time in a languishing condition, and that she was haunted with a thing in the shape of a Bird that would flurr near to her face, and that she could not enjoy her natural rest well. The old Man bid him and his Wife be of good courage. It was but a dead Spright, he said, and he would put him in a course to rid his Wife of this languishment and trouble. He therefore advised him to take a Bottle, and put his Wife's Urine into it, together with Pins and Needles and Nails, and Cork them up, and set the Bottle to the Fire, but be sure the Cork be fast in it,

that it fly not out. The Man followed the Prescription, and set the Bottle to the fire well corkt, which, when it had felt awhile the heat

of the Fire, began to move and joggle a little, but he for sureness took the Fire shovel and held it hard upon the Cork. And as he thought, he felt something one while on this side, another while on that, shove the Fire shovel off, which he still quickly put on again, but at last at one shoving the Cork bounced out, and the Urine,

ı72

/ Charms against witchcraft Pins, Nails and Needles all flew up, and gave a report like a Pistol, and his Wife continued in the same trouble and languishment still. Not

long

inquired

after,

of the

the

Old

Man

of

Man

the

came

house

to the

how

house

his

again,

and

did.

Who

Wife

answered, as ill as ever, if not worse. He asked him if he had followed his direction. Yes, says he, and told him the event as ıs

abovesaid. Ha, quoth he, it seems it was too nimble for you. But now I will put you in a way that will make the business sure. Take your Wife's Urine as before, and cork it in a Bottle with Nails, Pins and Needles, and bury it in the Earth; and that will do the feat. The

Man did accordingly. And his Wife began to mend sensibly, and in a competent time was finely well recovered. But there came a woman

from

a

town

some

miles

off

to

their

house,

with

a

lamentable Out-cry that they had killed her Husband ... But at last they understood by her, that her Husband was a Wizzard, and had bewitched this Mans Wife, and that this Counter-practice

prescribed by the Old Man, which saved the Man's Wife from languishment, was the death of that Wizzard that had bewitched her. This story did Mr Brearly hear from the Man and Womans own

Mouth

who

were

concerned,

and

at whose

house

he for a

time Boarded, nor is there any doubt of the truth thereof." In this story there are several points of great interest that throw light on the whole problem of witch-bottles and their significance. First we

have the account of their more drastic and dangerous use by heating, a method

that

is also known

from

later tradition

but

would

normally

leave no recognisable archaeological evidence. The witch-bottles that have been found were all used in the slower but safer way. The method of heating to the point of explosion, thereby killing the witch and curing

the victim, demonstrates that the bottle itself was magically identified with the witch, who

remained wizard

would

survive if the cork flew out and the bottle

intact. In this, as in many was

unknown,

so

the

only

other cases, the actual witch or means

of

making

the

magical

identification was through the victim, and it is her urine that is the vital ingredient, through the sympathetic link described by Blagrave. Later tradition also shows that it was the hair and nail-parings of the victim of witchcraft and not of the witch that were put in the bottle. The method was remembered in the early twentieth century at Horseheath 1n Cambridgeshire, and was described by Catherine Parsons in 1915» although she refrained from defining to her learned audience the nature of the *water' enclosed in the bottle. She did, however, give useful details

Charms against witchcraft / 173 of the other ingredients—a lock of hair ‘from the noddle of the neck’, an ounce of new pins, some rusty nails from an old shoe and some parings

of finger and toe-nails. The ‘pint and a half glass bottle’ had to be put on the fire at midnight, and it was important that the operator should not

speak when the bottle burst. The witch would then come to the house screaming with the trouble that had afflicted the bewitched person, who

would be cured.'" The practice had in fact developed from a more generalised class of counter-measures against witchcraft in which heat was applied to something bewitched. Two examples from fifteenth-century Germany are cited in the Malleus Maleficarum. When a cow's supply of milk was believed to have been reduced by witchcraft, a pail of the milk was hung over a fire and the pail was beaten with a stick; the pain from these blows was supposed to be felt by the witch. Similarly the intestines of a bewitched

animal

were

burnt

on

a hurdle

over

a fire, and

this

was

believed to inflict burning pains on the witch, who would come to the house and try to relieve herself by snatching a coal from the fire. If she

succeeded the counter-witchcraft would fail." The witch-bottle superstition must have been partly inspired by the anthropomorphic greybeard jug, which in its later development had a somewhat malevolent face. The earlier stoneware jugs in this tradition, made in the Rhineland in the early sixteenth century, were not only superior in quality but had a distinctly kindly expression. Later the form developed into the characteristic narrow-necked bottle and the mask degenerated. Martin Holmes has shown that one type developed a particularly unpleasant snarl under the influence of the common Renaissance ornament of the lion's mask (pl 53)." It is perhaps significant that the use of greybeards as witch-bottles seems to have begun about the same time. The element of image-magic in the practice is demonstrated by the use of heart-shaped pieces of cloth or felt stuck with pins, an ingredient that does not appear to have survived in later witch-bottles. On analogy with the other contents it seems likely that they were cut from the clothing or hat of the supposed victim of witchcraft, although their purpose was to identify the bottle as a magical image of the witch. Curiously, in view of the Continental origin of the bellarmines, the witch-bottle seems to have been an English invention, and there is no evidence of its use in the Netherlands, where bellarmines were equally common, although, as we have seen, there was a long-established *ustom of burying pottery jugs under thresholds and hearths, where witch-bottles were usually placed in East Anglia, and the two practices

174 / Charms against witchcraft may not be entirely unconnected. The concentration of seventeenth. century witch-bottles in Suffolk strongly suggests that the custom began there, and William Brearley's story of the successful use of one in that county, not later than the middle of the century, may not be far removed from its origin. It rapidly spread to London, however, where it was adapted to the time-honoured belief in the Thames as a link with the supernatural. The custom in its East Anglian form, with burial beneath hearth

or

threshold,

was

known

before

the

end

of the

seventeenth

century in the neighbouring counties of Lincolnshire (at Crowland), Huntingdonshire (Wennington) and Essex (Saffron Walden).?' Bellarmine witch-bottles have also been found sporadically in Kent (inverted beneath a hearth at Hoath near Herne Bay) and Sussex (just within a

former mediaeval porch at Michelham Priory).” The rapid spread of the practice was no doubt stimulated by the various accounts published in the late seventeenth century. Knowledge of the witch-bottle and almost certainly the practice itself had even crossed the Atlantic before the end of the century. Reference to it was made by the two New England divines, Increase and Cotton Mather in 1684 and 1691 respectively, when the latter described the witch-bottle's contents as ‘Nails and Pins,

and such Instruments ... as carry a shew of Torture with them'.^ In the eighteenth century bellarmines were no longer made, but a variety of bottles was used for the same purpose over a wider area of England, with a number of local variations of the custom. The usc of small glass phials containing urine alone, that were buried under church walls in Leicestershire, was discussed in Chapter 1 (pp 17-20). A similar ‘steeple’ bottle that had probably been used for the same purpose was found

under

the

floor

of

Ely

Court,

at

Staplehurst,

Kent,"

and

a

cylindrical glass phial probably of about the same date, containing only ‘the alkali salt of an organic acid’ was found under the floor of

Thornhaugh Rectory, Northamptonshire. A variant of a different sort was a brown-glazed

jug, attributed to the eighteenth century, found

under the hearth of the Mill House, Wonersh, Surrey; it contained bits

of nails, pins and some non-local red gravel. The jug lay on its side, handle up, spout down, about half a metre below the hearth-stone.^ A ‘glass bottle with a long neck’, found in the mid-nineteenth century inverted under the clay floor of an old farmhouse in northern Staffordshire, contained dark water in which were about nine pins, ‘curiously bent’; it was recognised by the farmer as a charm against witchcraft.” A particularly interesting eighteenth-century witch-bottle is the first recorded find of this nature from the United States. It is a glass winebottle that can be closely dated to about 1740-50, found in an

Charms against witchcraft / archaeological

excavation

in 1976

in Governor

Printz

State Park,

175 on

Tinicum Island in the Delaware River, Essington, Pennsylvania. Like so many English witch-bottles, it had been buried in an inverted position. It had been stoppered with a whittled wooden plug and contained six

brass pins, not in this case bent. The small hole containing it had been dug deeply just outside the seventeenth-century building that the residence of the Swedish colonial governor, Johan Printz, mid-eighteenth century was owned by a Quaker family called was immediately adjacent to the base of what seems to have projecting chimney of a fireplace, built against the wall where

had been but in the Taylor. It been the there had

formerly been a door. The base of the bottle, which was uppermost, was below the lowest course of masonry in the foundation wall. In the hole and beneath the shoulder of the bottle were a fragment of pottery and

the bone of a medium-sized bird, possibly a partridge, and the excavator,

Professor

MJ

Becker,

believes

that

their

inclusion

was

not

accidental.’ Witches’ familiars As we can see from the account of the Suffolk witch-bottle in Sadducismus Triumphatus, there was some doubt in the minds of the learned

gentlemen who pondered these matters about the way that witch-bottles actually worked. It might not have been a straightforward case of image sorcery by magical sympathy, as Blagrave seems to suggest. Brearley’s story, as related by Glanvil, is of witchcraft by means of a spirit in the shape of a bird that haunted the victim, and could somehow be trapped in the witch-bottle. It tried to get out of the bottle when it was heated, first on one side and then on the other, and finally proved to be ‘too nimble’ for the victim’s husband and escaped.

There is a widespread

belief, extending far beyond

Europe, that

witches are able to appear as animals, reptiles or birds when performing their evil exploits. Stories of such appearances, emanating in some way from the witch, are common for example in many parts of Africa.” These are sometimes regarded as doubles or spirits of the witch herself, Sometimes as separate imps or devils that served her, and were allocated to her by Satan, her master. These familiar spirits in animal form are Particularly prominent in English witch-beliefs, no doubt reflecting a well-known national characteristic. Many lonely old ladies have pets that to others are repellent, and such people were often feared by their neighbours and suspected of witchcraft on account of eccentricity or Senility. Imps with the appearance of cats, dogs, toads, frogs, rats, mice,

176

/ Charms against witchcraft

ferrets,

weasels

and

birds

are common

sented at English witch-trials. They trial records

north

counties of England.

of Lancashire,

features

of the evidence

are not apparently and

are commonest

mentioned

pre.

in

in the eastern

Familiars are said to have been kept in pots or

other vessels, often on a bed of wool, and were fed with

milk, bread,

chicken and with the witch's blood, which they sucked from special nipples. The search for extra nipples or Devil's marks on witches’ bodies played a prominent part in the work of the notorious witchfinders, such as Matthew

Hopkins.

It was believed that familiars were

acquired by gift from the Devil or a fellow-witch, or quite commonly by inheritance." Sometimes witches’ imps appeared in human form as children or adults, usually of opposite sex to the witch, who can be male but is more commonly female. There is an interesting account by Catherine Parsons of a belief in witches' familiars surviving at Horseheath in Cambridgeshire in the early years of the present century." The local witch had five imps, said to be something like white mice. Their names are intriguing: ‘Bonnie’, ‘Blue Cap’, ‘Red Cap’, ‘Jupiter’ and ‘Venus’. Two have the names of pagan gods, and it would not be difficult to imagine a connection between the other three names and either the attributes or title of Roman

deities. Nothing comparable can be found, however,

in the list

of 73 names of familiars contained in Margaret Murray's index to Ihe Witch Cult in Western Europe." The only divine names among them are ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus’, and mostly they are the sort of name that any old lady might call her pet—‘Dainty’,

‘Fancie’,

‘Pretty’, ‘Tib’, ‘Tom’,

‘Tyttey’ and the like,—with a few uncomplimentary ones like ‘Greedigut’ and ‘Vinegar Tom’. It may therefore be suspected that the two undoubtedly pagan names from Horseheath, though collected as a genuine folk tradition by Catherine Parsons, perhaps owe something to speculations by scholars two or three centuries earlier on the origins of demons. The proximity of a great university may not be coincidental, and every folklorist knows the danger of reaping a harvest sown by himself or his predecessors. For ‘Red Cap’ and ‘Blue Cap’, however, we need look no further than traditional fairy lore, and ‘Bonnie’ is a typical

‘pet’ name. With relief, therefore, we may dismiss the idea that the great gods of Imperial Rome could have fallen to such squalor. For squalor it undoubtedly was, and the principal duty of the Horseheath imps seems

to have been to spy on the witch’s neighbours. Mrs B saw one sitting ON a salt box in old Mrs C’s chimney corner, and described it as looking something like a mouse, with very large eyes that changed in size. She noticed that it had ‘a little mite of a tail about two inches long’. Before

Charms against witchcraft /

177

she could see it properly, however, it scuttled up the chimney, calling out ‘Wee, wee, wee’. She believed it had been sent down the chimney to see what was going on in the cottage. The usual role of the familiar was

of course much more sinister, for it was the witch's agent in attacking her victims, who were fortunate if they survived very long. The Horseheath imps had been acquired by the local

witch

by

inheritance from her sister who had died at the nearby hamlet of Castle

Camps, and had been brought from there in a securely corded box upon which their owner sat during the journey. She would permit nobody to

touch the box, even to help lift it in or out of the cart. There was a belief that imps had to be kept solely under the control of their owner, otherwise no cords or even iron bars could keep them within bounds. They were in fact a great responsibility, and were said to be a terrific torment to their owners unless given plenty of work to do. Also it is said to have been impossible for a witch to die until her imps had been disposed of, and Catherine Parsons has an unpleasant story of imps

being buried in a witch's coffin at West Wickham after an unsuccessful attempt to burn them.” It is clear that familiars were spirits with supernormal powers that were in no way limited by the physical capabilities of the animals in whose forms they appeared. They could, however, be bound by higher demonic powers to material objects or persons, as by traditional ritual magic a spirit could be bound to a ring, mirror or crystal in the service

of a magician." A vessel or bottle could be used for the same purpose, to enclose even a very powerful spirit, and there is a story of a Toledo Master of Arts, who in the thirteenth century at Maestricht sacrificed two doves to the great fiend Epanamon, whom he then conjured into a glass bottle. Similarly a troublesome ghost could be confined to a bottle by ritual magic, and the wicked Lady Jeffrey’s spirit was persuaded to enter a bottle by a conjuror at Llanidloes, Powys. It was then corked down securely and thrown into the pool under the Short Bridge at Llanidloes. The local legend is that the lady will remain there until the ivy growing up the buttresses of the bridge reaches the parapet; It is said that the ivy was regularly cut back to ensure this never

happened.? There are similar stories of bottled ghosts from Shropshire, Where the spirit of a Madam Brown was exorcised in this way by a party of priests, who then buried the bottle under the church at Stanton. A Squire Blount of Kinlet likewise was troublesome

after death, and his

Xorcised and bottled spirit was placed near his tomb in Kinlet church.” It seems likely that witches’ familiars were also believed to be Somehow bound to the pots or boxes in which they were normally kept,

178

/ Charms against witchcraft

and that these were not merely hutches or kennels. The idea that they could also be trapped in a witch-bottle, when sent on their nefarious errands,

is consistent

with

the belief in exorcism

discussion of the legitimacy of this allowed for the possibility that it did or natural magic, which he regarded the witches’ use of familiars. We can

by

bottling.

In his

counter-measure, Joseph Glanil not operate solely by sympathetic as lawful, but was complicated by only echo his comment that this ‘is

a point too nice and prolix to enter upon here', and concerning the legitimacy of the practice must also endorse his view that ‘it is most safe not to tamper

at all with these things, and

most

happy

to have no

occasion for it!"

Recent charms against witchcraft Cambridgeshire was not the only part of England where a strong belief in witchcraft survived into the twentieth century, and the material evidence for counter-measures against it is frequently found. There is no terminal date for archaeology, so finds of this nature of recent date are as much our concern as those of the earlier periods, and in some respects are of even greater interest, as demonstrating the extraordinary tenacity of traditional superstitious ritual in a rational age. As we saw in the last chapter, the ‘cunning men’, conjurors and white witches continued to practise their ancient craft throughout the nincteenth century and well into the twentieth. They flourished in rural communities, but were not by any means confined to remote areas like the Welsh hills. One of the most successful and famous of these exponents of white magic lived on the Thames estuary, barely thirty miles (sokm) from the centre of London. This was James Murrell of Hadleigh in Essex, who died in his cottage near the ruins of Hadleigh Castle in 1860. His living-room is said to have been filled with the material of his trade, with bundles of herbs on the walls, strange brews in bottles on the shelves, and a great chest of magic books and papers. This was a witch-infested district, and according to his own dictum there would be ‘witches in Leigh for a hundred years; nine in Canewdon; and three in Hadleigh for ever’. His services were sought over a much wider area, however, and his enormous daily correspondence came from as far afield as Suffolk, Kent and London. He was not only the scourge of witches, but was also able to trace lost and stolen

property. ‘Cunning’ Murrell was particularly noted for a development of the witch-bottle technique that seems to have been his own invention. The

Charms against witchcraft /

179

snag about the drastic method by heating was that, although it is said to have dealt with the witch very promptly, it was hardly less dangerous to the operator. Murrell, however, had two iron bottles made by the local

smith, with a plug at the mouth that was soldered up before the bottle was placed on the fire. With these there was no danger from flying

fragments, and the bottles could be used again and again. All that happened was that the solder melted and the plug blew out, but this was technically an ‘explosion’, as the bottle appeared to have an intact and solid surface before it was heated.

A curious story was told locally after Murrell's death that he had himself been killed by a witch-bottle, following an unfortunate lapse from the ‘white’ magic he normally professed to practise. A man believed that Murrell had bewitched his donkey and caused its death, so he prepared a bottle in which he placed some of the donkey's hair and parings of his own finger-nails. He threw the bottle into the fire, and whert it burst a loud banging was heard at the door. This he ignored, and the next day ‘Cunning’ Murrell was found dead.” The story hardly tallies with the circumstances of Murrell's death, as told by his daughter, and is probably entirely apocryphal, but demonstrates the ambivalent reputation of these *white' witches and wizards, who were sometimes suspected of evil witchcraft themselves. A better authenticated account of Murrell's death is that he took to his bed before it occurred, and told his daughter to send away the curate if he came to visit him, muttering ‘For I be the devil's master as be well knowed. Clargymen den't bother me in the oad time, they shan't now.' The only supernatural element in this version is that Murrell foretold the exact time of his own death to the minute.” The witch-bottle tradition evidently remained strong until recent times, and there is a story dating from 1903 about a man who asked a barber at Bishops Stortford to save a piece of hair from the nape of his neck, so that he could put it in a bottle to be placed on the fire at night, thereby casting a spell on the enemy who had injured him, presumably

by witchcraft.” As in the seventeenth century, however, it is the less dramatic method of using a witch-bottle, by burying it in open ground or concealing it in a house, that has left material evidence of the practice in modern times. At Halton East, near Skipton in North Yorkshire, a nineteenth-century

cylindrical stoneware bottle was found near the edge of a field remote from the village, when the field, normally used as grassland, was Ploughed for re-seeding in 1960-1. It was buried in an inverted position with its base just visible at the bottom of a furrow. The cork was still

180

/ Charms against witchcraft

intact and the bottle contained lumps of wet clayey soil, each stuck through with pins and nails. There were in all 22 nails, 35 pins and 16

needles."' A witch-bottle of a distinctive kind, that seems to be characteristic of

the west of England, was found in 1934 in a chimney, during alterations to the back kitchen of a shop in Padstow, Cornwall. It was a perfectly

ordinary cod-liver-oil bottle that had been labelled by a firm in Exeter, and is dated to the early years of the twentieth century by the printers of the label, also of Exeter. Eight slightly bent pins and a needle were stuck in the outside

of the cork.

None

were

enclosed

in the bottle,

which

contained a malodorous brown, slightly turbid liquid (pl 58). It was subsequently analysed and its composition was found to be consistent with that of decayed urine, in which the original urea had been changed in the course of time to ammonium carbonate. The bottle is now in the Horniman

Museum,

London.

There is little doubt that this variation was the result of contact with another anti-witchcraft device, also common in the west of England, in which the heart of an animal supposed to have been killed by witchcraft was stuck with pins and put in the chimney. It was yet another version of the widespread belief that the witch could be hurt or killed by an injury to something that came from her victim. Familiarity with this practice must have suggested both the external application of the pins and the disposal of the bottle in a chimney. There is a record of a green glass bottle with cork similarly stuck with pins from Monkleigh in north Devon, but in this case it had been buried in the churchyard near the door of the church, where it was found and reburied by the sexton when digging a grave. Witch-bottles were also used in the East Anglian way in the west of England in the nineteenth century as, for example, a green glass bottle that was found in 1970, buried neck downwards in the floor of a cottage at Chagford, near Dartmoor. It contained an evil-smelling fluid, 17 perfectly preserved blackthorns and several hand-made pins; from an illustration the bottle is likely to date from the early nineteenth

century.” A find that is at present unique, and may be a charm of a different kind, was an ordinary wine-bottle of fairly dark glass found in a bricked-up cupboard, concealed under the stairs in a cottage at Trevone, near Padstow, Cornwall, when the cottage was renovated about 1952. There was a piece of ragged red ribbon round the neck and a red seal on the cork. The bottle was filled to the base of the neck with a somewhat cloudy liquid. It contained no nails, pins or thorns, but fixed to a platform of miniature planks at the bottom were quite finely made

BE

2 lath ee ae

181

CM

INCHES

Charms against witchcraft /

rn

58 Witch-bottle found in chimney

in Padstow, Cornwall; a codliver-oil bottle

of about 1900, with cork stuck with pins and a needle, containing decayed urine (Author)

182

/ Charms against witchcraft

wooden

models

of a cross, a ladder, two

spades,

two

axes, a pair of

pincers and two stakes, with the cross extending above the other models to the base of the neck of the bottle." The nature of the carving is not in doubt;

models

of the Instruments

of the Passion

of Christ, carved

in

wood or bone, were put into bottles in the nineteenth century by the same technique as the much more familiar ships in bottles, and were presumably also made by sailors with time on their hands. They are occasionally encountered in museum collections of Bygones, but are usually in bottles of plain glass that contain no liquid. There is a possibility that this was a charm of a purely religious nature, made more potent by the addition of holy water. On the other hand, local people

have told the owner that it is likely to be a witch-bottle, and certainly the Instruments of the Passion conform with Cotton Mather's description of its contents, as ‘such Instruments ... as carry a shew of Torture

with them'. The mingling of religious symbolism with the most squalid superstition, to an extent that most people would consider blasphemous, is by no means inconceivable in folk-customs of this kind. Let us finally return to the capital for a curious find of quite recent origin, the significance of which is equally uncertain. St Augustine's Church, Wembley Park, was demolished early in 1973 after being used recently as a church hall, and a deposit consisting of a complete glass bottle and a small pottery figurine was found under the concrete floor of a side-room or vestry, where it had evidently been placed when the church was built in 1908. The bottle, described as ‘a small French wine bottle' contained an unspecified liquid, possibly merely water. The figure, which was complete apart from a missing arm, represented a bent old woman wearing a mob-cap and carrying a basket. This was brought to the author's attention because his informant thought the deposit might have been deliberate, possibly representing some form of

foundation deposit.” The figure, which could not have been much older than the church, seemed so like the twentieth-century stereotype of à witch, however, as to suggest that this might have been a very recent

example of a witch-bottle. The bottle contained no pins or nails, but this is equally buried under In this case a number of

true of the glass phials of the eighteenth century found church walls and house-floors (pp 17-20, 174). the identification is dubious but, as we have seen, there are instances of undoubted witch-bottles that were placed

under domestic floors apparently before the floor was laid. Many others

were found under hearths and thresholds where they could have been placed after the structure was complete, but only with considerable difficulty, e.g. by lifting a hearth-stone. This raises the question whether

Charms against witchcraft / 183 the charm was sometimes prophylactic, intended as a safeguard against

future attacks, rather than a cure for witchcraft from which the victim was already suffering. Yet all the anecdotes about witch-bottles relate to the latter use, and nowhere in seventeenth-century discussions of the ractice is there a suggestion that it could give protection against witchcraft that had not yet occurred. The only possible explanation of this apparent contradiction must be that, at times when there was a widespread belief in witchcraft, there often was a victim who was eager

to take advantage of a structural alteration by depositing a witch-bottle in a secure place. Since illnesses of any kind or a run of misfortune of

any description could be attributed to witchcraft, and since both are the common lot of humanity, there was never a shortage of victims on whose behalf a witch-bottle might be deposited on a convenient Occasion.

8 Theritualof superstition: recognition and potential for study

Superstitious ritual can be studied objectively like any other human behaviour, and archacology can make a major contribution towards its investigation, in the historic periods down to the present day no less than in prehistory. It is hoped that this book will have demonstrated that there is no lack of the material evidence to which archaeological methods can usefully be applied. It will also have shown that more often than not our information about it is woefully inadequate. In most cases the reason for this is that it was not retrieved and recorded by archaeologists but by casual finders, who merely noted what they considered to be interesting, without fully understanding the signifcance of their find. Unfortunately this is also sometimes true of evidence found in the course of excavation, by archaeologists who have failed to ask the right questions at the time when they could perhaps have been answered, or who have buried significant information in a supposedly total recovery of data, from which it is virtually impossible to extract it. It would probably be fair to say that archaeological investigation of ritual activity today is at about the same level of development as were environmental studies in the excavations of thirty years ago. This is partly due to failure to recognise the evidence for such activity when it is encountered, for it is usually not difficult to dismiss an individual instance either as an accident or as the result of some purely rational action in imagined circumstances; the existence of a custom

1S

revealed only by repetition, and a principal purpose of this book has been to make more widely known to archaeologists and others some common patterns of ritual activity of this nature in the historical period.

The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study / 185 Through fundamental changes of religious belief, from primitive animism to developed paganism, from paganism to Christianity, from traditional Catholicism to Protestantism, and even from religious faith to scientific rationalism, the same kinds of simple ritual have survived to

give comfort and a sense of security to humble people. They have required drastic reinterpretation from time to time to make them acceptable in the current religious ideology, and to justify their continuation, but changes in the ritual itself from prehistory to the present day have

been

remarkably

small.

This

makes

recognition

easier,

and

the

possibility of ritual activity ought to be considered whenever its principal recurrent characteristics are encountered, whatever their date. Animal sacrifice in some form is one of these, and animals or birds, or some significant part of them,

the bodies of have been a

characteristic of ritual deposits throughout, whether these were intended to placate a god or spirit, to give protection to a building or destroy a witch. The close relationship between pagan sacrifice and some counter-measures against witchcraft, involving the burning of an animal bewitched, was perceived in the reign of Elizabeth I by the remarkably enlightened George Gifford, who asked: Doe they burn the thing to God, or is it as a verie burnt sacrifice to the Devill? In the time of the (Old Testament) law burnt sacrifices were offered to God: the devill among the heathen drewe the like to himself: And now by his sleight he doth after some sort

procure the same at their hands that professe to be Christians, and thus worshipping him, he ceaseth from hurting their bodies, or

their cattell, as gaining a greater matter.' This was not, of course, how the practice was viewed by the ‘cunning men’ and ‘wise women’ who prescribed it, believing they were employ-

ing some kind of natural magic that made use of the bond of sympathy established between witch and victim. Similarly, there is little doubt that the horse-skulls buried beneath the doorway of a fourteenth-century house at Thuxton, Norfolk (p 118),

would be explained quite differently from the one similarly placed under the threshold of a late Roman building at Bourton Grounds, GloucesterShire (p 54), if we could question the people who put them there. If we May judge from Medicina de Quadrupedibus (p 119), such animal deposits had lost their votive significance long before the Middle Ages and had taken on a vaguely protective function. The horse-skull enclosed in a chimneypiece at South Ockendon, Essex, in the sixteenth— S€venteenth century (p 124) was likewise undoubtedly for protection,

186

/ The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study

but at that time and place is likely to have been intended specifically to ward off witchcraft. The ultimate justification for a custom in more recent times was the discovery of a practical purpose for it, as was successfully achieved when it was demonstrated that a horse's skull in the right place in a building could serve as a resonator. Similarly the cruel practice of killing a cat as a builder's sacrifice was revived by the

notion that the body of a cat set in a lifelike attitude in a hidden place would frighten vermin from a building (pp 129-31). In both cases the practical effect is at best doubtful, but the mere suggestion of utility seems to have been sufficient justification. Yet it can hardly be doubted that the superstitious motive was primary, and was probably never entirely forgotten. It is interesting that the most recent ritual burial of. a horse's head recorded—its use as a foundation deposit in the Cambridgeshire fens in 1897—seems to have been purely superstitious in its intention (p 126). Even in London the building trade seems to have clung to its ancient superstitions at a late date. There is a curious story of the discovery of what appears to have been a traditional foundation deposit beneath the first Blackfriars Bridge, built in 1760-8. When it was demolished for rebuilding in 1867, beneath the foundations of the second arch on the City side was found a quantity of bones of cattle and sheep, with (it is said) some human bones, at a depth of 4.5m (15ft) below the bed of the Thames. On these the foundations had been laid.” Another recurrent feature of ritual activity is the deliberate abandonment of serviceable possessions. They are rarely valuable, but would not under normal circumstances be thrown away as rubbish. Evidence of this kind should always at least raise the question of ritual activity, though in many cases it may be impossible to distinguish deliberate abandonment

from

accidental

loss,

which

is of course

much

more

common, or from temporary concealment with a view to recovery. Another complication that may tend to disguise a ritual deposit às rubbish is the damage not infrequently deliberately inflicted on an inanimate object as part of the ritual, as if, on analogy with animal sacrifice, it has to be ‘killed’ to make it effective. Fortunately the damage is often of a characteristic nature, that may with caution, be considered

diagnostic of this kind of activity. It may seem a far cry from the bent

sword of Llyn Cerrig Bach (pl 7) to the bent pins dropped in the holy well of a Welsh saint in the nineteenth century (p 112), but most people

would recognise in the later custom a scaled down-version of the earlier. In between, however, we have encountered at various periods numerous

examples of ritual bending and folding, sometimes votive, sometimes not, but always apparently intended somehow to transfer the object

e ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study / 187 created to another world, as if the bending could move it into a different dimension, though that is a modern concept remote from the ideas of those who did the bending. Thus we have the Romano-British bent tongs in the Waltham hoard (pl 8), and the mediaeval coins bent as

offerings to the saints, with their post-mediaeval progeny of ‘lucky’ bent coins given as love-tokens or used as a charm to drive a witch from the milk-churn (p 162). In a more sinister ritual we have the folded or rolled Roman lead curses, which seem to have been so treated as an alternative

to piercing with nails, another method of activating them (pp 138-9). We also have the bent pins reappearing in the witch-bottles used as counter-measures against witchcraft from the seventeenth century to recent times (pl 54, 55). It is therefore suggested that bending or folding might sometimes be a useful indicator of superstitious ritual, but one to be used with caution as giving a measure of confirmation in circum-

stances where such ritual might be expected. Thus suspected that the abundance of mediaeval pilgrim

we have long badges in the

Thames and other rivers indicated that they were deposited there in accordance with some superstitious custom. A certain amount of support is given to this idea by the deliberate folding of some of them (see pl 37), and also by the occurrence in the river of bent mediaeval coins and tokens that may well be votive (pl 34, 35). Other explanations are possible for the bent knives and daggers of the sixteenth century found in the Thames near St Paul's (pl 36), but the discovery of a late seventeenth-century witch-bottle in the same part of the river-bed demonstrates that the use of the Thames for superstitious practices did not end with the Middle Ages. It is interesting to note that seventeenth-century Londoners were depositing their witch-charms in the same river that had received offerings to the gods in prehistory, and perhaps, as we have seen, had continued to be a means of communication with supernatural powers, however they were imagined, at intervening periods. People not only continued to perform similar ritual acts; they did so in similar places. Although no longer consciously concerned with placating spirits of Water and earth, they continued to place ritual deposits for many different purposes

in rivers, pools and

marshes,

and also in the earth,

Sometimes in pits and shafts, but often in association with buildings. Whether the purpose of these was to make an offering to a deity of the earth for allowing the building to stand, to provide it with a tutelary Spirit, to trap demons or witches, to ensure good luck, or merely to leave

3 sentimental record of the builders in accordance with tradition, deposits of a similar nature continued to be placed under foundations,

188 / The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study in walls

and

under

floors,

hearths and chimney-pieces

with

when

a special

it was

preference

intended

for

thresholds,

to give protection

against external dangers. The location of a ritual deposit may therefore be a useful aid to recognition. Burial grounds, for example, were often the scene of practices that had nothing to do with the funerary rites of the dead, including Roman cursing and eighteenth-century countermeasures against witchcraft. Amphitheatres likewise were considered by the Romans to be sufficiently ghost-haunted to be suitable repositories for curses, and were also used by sixteenth-century necromancers for summoning demons for a variety of purposes, though it is doubtful whether any material evidence has survived of these later activities. Benvenuto Cellini, however, has a dramatic account in his autobiog.

raphy of such a rite conducted in the Colosseum at Rome by a Sicilian priest in the 1520s. It involved the drawing of protective circles and the burning both of incense and unpleasant-smelling material such as asafoetida. Apart from animal remains, the commonest feature of a ritual deposit

at all periods is a vessel of some kind, usually of pottery, but sometimes of glass or metal. It will normally have been complete when deposited, but may of course have suffered damage subsequently, or even in the act of depositing. In certain kinds of ritual deposit that are less easily distinguished from refuse, the damage may have been deliberate. The completeness of a number of pots, even though fragmented, may, however, in certain circumstances suggest that a deposit is not ordinary rubbish, particularly when they are accompanied by distinctive animal remains, such as many skulls or more than one complete body. An association with deer antlers may also be significant, for these, which grow to great size and strength in a single season, have always been regarded as symbols of regenerative power. The presence of a human skull must of course always arouse suspicion, for it is unlikely ever to have been treated as normal rubbish. Forms of pottery used in ritual deposits may show a certain uniformity within a period. In Roman times the emphasis was on amphorae, flagons, bowls and drinking

vessels, all of which may be associated with libations. In the Middle Ages the choice was more limited, and both jugs and cooking-pots were used, with some preference for the former. In post-mediaeval England,

narrow-necked bottles of stoneware or glass were best suited for the current anti-witch measures. It must be emphasised that the pottery and glass vessels used were in all cases merely containers, and in most of the

earlier instances no evidence will have survived of their original contents. In themselves they may have had little significance, and

The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study / 189 although they had to be complete for use, were not necessarily perfect. Since they were in any case to be abandoned, there may even have been a conscious preference for cracked or chipped vessels, or potters' ‘seconds’,

provided

they did not leak. Such

things are not unusual

in

what appear to be ritual deposits, and we may assume that the rite was not invalidated by being performed economically. One special feature deserves notice, alhough it occurs in only a minority of cases, for it is a very distinctive ritual act. This is the deliberate inversion of the vessel,

so that it is buried upside down. As we have seen, witch-bottles were quite commonly treated in that way, although it must have increased the risk of leaking, which would presumably have made the charm ineffective. So also were the pots of various kinds that were buried under thresholds in the Netherlands from the fifteenth century. Inversion of pottery also sometimes occurs in ritual deposits of the Roman period. What connection, if any, these practices have with prehistoric inversions of cinerary urns is unknown. Perhaps, like prone burial (p 76), they were all meant to indicate a downward path as the only exit. Whatever the significance of inversion, it can be a useful additional

indication of ritual activity—as for example in a find from Fenchurch Street in the City of London, excavated in 1983. Here three unbroken late Roman pots had been deposited upside-down in a pit cut in the back-fill at the top of a third century well; all contained charcoal and one an eroded coin, probably of the mid-third century. The completeness of the pots and the presence of the coin suggest that this was a common type of Roman votive deposit (cf p 54), probably to mark the completion of the fill of the shaft (cf pp 48-54), or perhaps as a

foundation deposit for a subsequent building. The inversion of all three pots emphasises the deliberation with which they were buried, and gives confirmation to this interpretation. It is suggested that there was an element of image-magic in the seventeenth-century preference for the anthropomorphic bellarmines as witch-bottles, and in Roman times there appears occasionally to have been selection of pots with religious symbolism, including face-pots and motto-beakers, for ritual use other than in temples and cemeteries (e.g. pl

17,

p

55).

This,

however,

as

with

the

bellarmines,

was

in

all

probability a secondary use of pots not designed for that purpose. It is of limited value as a diagnostic feature, but may give some measure of confirmation where ritual activity is suspected for other reasons. Representational

imagery,

however,

plays

an

important

part

in

magical and religious ritual, and may be suspected as a possible reason for the manufacture of models of various kinds. Such things are very

190

/ The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study

familiar to us today as ornaments and children’s toys, and are often interpreted as such when found in an archaeological context. In earlier times, however, they were more commonly used for votive purposes, and the possibility of a ritual function of some kind should be borne in mind when they are found in circumstances where it might be suspected. In this book

attention

has

been

drawn

to certain

model

weapons

of

various periods, full-size or miniature (pls 3, 38, pp 24-5, 112-13), simply because they were found in the Thames, where, it is suggested, ritual deposits of actual weapons have been made at many different

periods. The propositions that the models are votive substitutes and that actual weapons in the river were sometimes deliberately deposited as votives are both unproved, but may give each other some measure of mutual support. The votive significance of anatomical models in rituals of healing is generally known and accepted (pls 28, 32), and it has been suggested here that the deliberate mutilation of some Roman statues may be connected with this practice (pp 101-4). The ultimate fate of works of art is in fact no less interesting than their origin or the purpose for which they were commissioned and used. Yet questions about it are seldom asked when such discoveries are made. The deliberate breaking of a sculpture must always have been accompanied by some emotion, which must

have

been

enhanced

when,

as was

often

the case,

it was

of a

religious nature. We have tended to assume that such acts of iconoclasm are invariably due to religious hostility, and can therefore be attributed to certain known periods of confrontation: Christian against pagan in the fourth century, Protestant against Catholic in the sixteenth, Puritan against the Established Church in the English Civil War, militant deism and atheism against Christianity in the French and Russian revolutions, and so on. Superstition as well as religious fanaticism could lead to such acts, however,

even

at periods

when

the established

religion

was

not

being challenged. Two remarkable sacrilegious customs of this kind in the Rhineland were described by Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer in the late fifteenth century. On Good Friday three or four arrows were shot at an image of Christ on the Cross, as at a target, with the purpose of ensuring that in battle the archer would infallibly kill the same number of enemies with his arrows each day.” Similarly Crucifixes were deliberately mutilated by soldiers in order to make the corresponding parts of their own bodies invulnerable. For example,

if they

wish

their head

to be immune

from

a

weapon or from any blow, they take off the head of the Crucifix; if

they wish their neck to be invulnerable, they take off its neck; if

The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study / 191 their arm,

they take off, or at least shorten, the arm,

And sometimes they And in proof of this, cross-roads or in the some carry the limbs

and

so on.

take away all above the waist, or below it. hardly one in ten of the Crucifixes set up at fields can be found whole and intact. And thus broken off about with them .... ^

Archaeological evidence for this apparently common late mediaeval ractice must survive, in the form of mutilated crucifixes and limbs or heads broken from them, but has it ever been correctly identihed? We know that the Inquisition was trying to suppress the custom in Germany

in the late Middle Ages, but when did it begin, and what was its distribution? Is a similar belief the explanation for the earlier small mutilated crucifixes found in and near London, such as the small headless, armless and feetless ivory torso of the twelfth century from Worship Street, the similarly damaged bronze torso from Richmond, both .in the Museum

of London,

and

the armless

and

feetless bronze

Christ from London in the Cambridge University Museum?^ The numerous headless effigies of saints such as St Thomas of Canterbury on medieval pewter pilgrim badges from the Thames were probably broken by accident, but the possibility of deliberate mutilation in accordance with a superstitious practice of this kind cannot be ruled out. We recall also the deliberately damaged Roman figurines of pagan gods and the fragments of larger statues, deposited in circumstances where ritual behaviour must be suspected (pp 99-104). Even in the present day sacrilegious damage to holy images sometimes occurs in circumstances where a superstitious motive seems more likely than malice. It was reported in The Times of 21 June 1986 that Ireland's bestknown 'moving statue', the stone figure of the Virgin Mary at Ballinspittle, Co. Cork, had been vandalised for a second time. Its hands had

been damaged and a rosary removed in an attack on 19 June— probably with the intention of obtaining a potent talisman. It seems evident that damage to sacred works of art is not always the result of religious hostility, still less of disbelief, but may be due to a wish to pervert their power to one's own ends. Like the magical use of the Holy Sacrament, which constantly recurs in superstitious practices, It implies faith of a sort. As GK Chesterton once pointed out, blasphemy is impossible without belief, and nobody can now think blasphemous thoughts about Thor. It is possible that in more than one phase of image-breaking, in which the leaders were motivated by pure fanaticism, some of the rank and file may have had a superstitious axe of their own to grind. When fragments of sculptures or figurines are found, we should

always

consider

not only the circumstances

in which

they

192 / The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study were broken, but also those in which they were finally deposited. The repetition of a similar pattern of behaviour may indicate the existence of a custom, even if we can now only surmise its purpose. Museum collections abound in fragmentary sculptures and figurines of all periods that we might usefully study with these problems in mind. In the Museum of Antiquities at Rouen, from a stone figurine of a woman,

for example, there is a head broken with characteristic head-dress of the

mid-sixteenth century. It was found with many other mutilated statues

in the well of the sixteenth-century Protestant church of St Eloi, Rouen, where they had evidently been deposited after a post-medieval episode of image-breaking, probably during the Wars of Religion. An ancient pattern of behaviour was followed precisely, but was it by chance, as a natural expression of hostility in similar circumstances, or was someone present consciously following a tradition that had never been forgotten? We would need to collect examples of comparable behaviour from the intervening centuries to establish the survival of a tradition from late Roman

times.

Potential for future study In this book more questions have been asked than answered. Many, indeed, cannot possibly be answered until much more information has been accumulated. It is hoped, however, that a case has been made for the proper study, recording and publication of evidence for ritual activity arising from superstitious belief, at all periods down to the present day. It is a subject not lacking in interest, with a special appeal to those who are fascinated by the quirks and oddities of human behaviour. Others may find it unedifying, as a reminder of human weakness,

but must

recognise

that

it has always

existed,

and

cannot

therefore be disregarded without risk of misinterpretation. Superstitious ritual has been treated here only in its material aspects as an archaeological study, but using written sources wherever possible to throw further light upon it. The psychological, social and religious aspects of the subject have been left to those better qualified to discuss them. Yet the material evidence for superstitious practices deserves to be studied no less than that for technological processes, and may be even more informative on such subjects as the movement of peoples and

cultural contact. It was the study of the burial rites at the Lankhills cemetery that demonstrated the arrival in late Roman Winchester of immigrants from the Danube (p 70), for details of ritual may be as archaeologically distinctive as details of ornament, and much more so than any technological variations.

The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study / 193 The distribution in space and time of a custom is of obvious importance, but the necessary data may be difficult to obtain. In particular, we need

much

more

information

from

the Continent.

Was

votive coin-bending a purely English custom, for example, as the papal commissioners who visited Hereford seemed to imply (pp 91—2)? Its full history would be a fascinating subject for investigation, and much information must remain to be discovered in the records of saintly cults

and in coin hoards containing bent coins that may have been loot from shrines. The whole question of ritual bending at all periods and its distribution is of great interest. Is it specially characteristic of the western world, as the evidence cited here might suggest, or was it more

generally practised? For some other customs the western evidence seems to be distinctly peripheral. There is apparently no clear connection in the west between acoustic pots in churches and horse-skulls used acoustically, or between either and the use of acoustic vessels in the theatres of antiquity. If a direct relationship exists, as might be expected, it should perhaps be sought in eastern Europe or western Asia, in contacts between Hellenistic cities and the horse-centred cultures of the Steppes. This is a problem that demands a major research project, and considerable linguistic ability might be needed for access to the evidence. The survey in this book suggests that, although customs sometimes travelled widely, there could also be a long succession of practices with certain common elements within quite a restricted area. We have noted, for example, the recurrent preference for horse-skulls in the eastern counties of England, for use in a whole series of somewhat similar customs from Roman times to the late nineteenth century. We have also remarked on a continuing habit in the Thames valley through several

millennia of using the river or its tributaries for ritual deposits. To call this a continuing tradition would be to imply some continuity of local Population in the area through all the great cultural and linguistic changes that have taken place. On existing evidence that would be unwise, especially in the presence of a great river that may have Produced similar emotions in a succession of populations occupying its banks. Nevertheless ‘the drums and tramplings of three conquests’ now seem much less obliterative than they did, and it would be even more unwise to deny all possibility of a local tradition continuing within a

region over a long period of time. This is a question on which a fuller

and broader study of the archaeology of folk customs might be expected to throw further light. What is needed most is a more general recognition by archaeologists that such things occur at all periods and are quite likely to be

194

/ The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study

encountered. When they are, it is important that they should be fully recorded and published in a way that facilitates comparison with similar finds elsewhere. This will be the only means of establishing the existence of a common pattern, without which no custom can be confirmed. The responsibility for recognition of the possibility of such an interpretation must rest with the excavator, who may remain legitimately sceptical and should certainly also put forward any alternative explanation that may occur

to

him.

If, however,

he

fails

to

draw

attention

to

finds

and

associations of this kind in their proper context, but simply passes on the material evidence for separate study by specialists as animal bones, pottery or small finds, their significance is likely to be missed completely and may never be recovered. It ought to be recognised in the first instance as evidence for an event, possibly complex, that is part of the history of the site, and may indicate a crisis in the lives of its occupants. The accumulation of sufficient data should make it possible to identify recurrent patterns of behaviour as ritual customs, and to study their distribution in space and time like any other archaeological phenomenon. This may not necessarily provide us with a key to some new 'archaeology of mind', for the purpose and true significance of a custom may remain a matter for conjecture unless there is further illumination from contemporary historical sources. As we have seen, the

inert conservatism of ritual behaviour ensured the continuation of similar basic practices through many changes of belief, so that their interpretation at a particular time may not be possible from archaeological evidence

alone.

In this, as in other

fields of study,

archaeology

requires the help of history and anthropology, but can make its own special contribution to both these subjects, to an extent that has not yet

been fully realised. Ritual activity now requires systematic investigation, not least in the historical periods for which we have more background information. It has been possible here to cite only a few examples from each of the various categories of behaviour discussed, which are themselves by no means comprehensive. Much more data can

be recovered from archaeological reports, both published and archival, for with experience this type of activity can be detected in using the criteria indicated in this chapter, even if the failed to recognise it. By subjecting as much information rigorous analysis, on the lines already attempted for Iron

a good report, excavator has as possible to Age Britain by

Gerald Wait," we should have a clearer idea of the questions that future excavators may reasonably be expected to answer. They may in due course have at their command much more sophisticated scientific assistance, such as the study of trace-elements, as Barry Cunliffe has

The ritual of superstition: recognition and potential for study / 195

suggested, and these may throw a new light on aspects of ritual like the use of liquids for libations, now indicated only by the presence of the vessels that probably contained them. A wide territory that is almost completely unexplored lies open; it should never be out-of-bounds for archaeologists.

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Antiquaries Journal Archaeologia Cambrensis Archaeologia Cantiana Archaeological Journal Bulletin Historical and Archaeological Journal of the British Archaeological Association Journal of Roman Studies Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland Medieval Archaeology Proceedings of the Cambridgeshire Antiquarian Society Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Proceedings of tbe Suffolk Institute of Archaeology Royal Commission on Historical

RIB

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Ant Journ Arch Cambr Arch Cant

Arch Journ Bull Hist and Arch

JBAA ]RS

Journ Royal Soc Ant Ireland Med Arch Proc Camb

Ant Soc

Proc Prehist Soc Proc

Soc

Ant

Proc Soc Ant Scot

Proc Suffolk Inst Arch

Sx Arch

Coll

Sy Arch Coll Trans

VCH

I.MAS

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‘On

Remedies

in the Sloane

Collections,

and

on

Alchemical

Symbols', Arch Journ, June 1894, 81-98 IM Stead, J B Bourke & D Brothwell, Lindow Man — The Body in tbe Bog, 1986

J M Swann, 'Shoes concealed in buildings', Northampton Gallery, Journal 6, December

Museums

and Art

1969, 8-21

P J Tester, ‘Medieval Pottery found in Bexley Church’, Arch Cant, Lxx, 1956, 260-1

C Thomas,

Christianity in Roman

Britain to AD 500, 1981

W A Thorpe, English Glass, 2nd ed, 1949 R L Tongue,

‘Odds

and

Ends

of Somerset

Folklore’,

Folklore,

xix,

March

1958, 43-5 J M

€ Toynbee,

Art in Britain under the Romans,

1964

J M € Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World, 1971 E Turner, ‘Fictile Vessel found in Buxted Church’, Sx Arch Coll, xxi, 1869, 202—6

P Tyers, ‘An Assemblage of Roman Ceramics from London’, London Archaeologist, IV, No 14, Spring 1984, 367-74 GA

Wait, Ritual and Religion in Iron Age Britain, 1985

R E M & Tessa Wheeler, Verulamium — a Belgic and two Roman Cities, 1936 R E M Wheeler, Maiden Castle, 1943 R Whimster, 'Harlyn Bay Reconsidered . . .', Cornish Archaeology, XVI, 1977, 61—88

R Whimster, Burial Practices in Iron Age Britain, 1981 T Wilmott, ‘Excavations at Queen Street, City of London,

1953 and

1960’,

Trans LMAS, xxxii, 1982, 1-78 D M Wilson, ‘Some Neglected Late Anglo-Saxon Swords’, Med Arch, 1x, 1965,

50-2 M M

Wood,

‘Dried Cats’, Man,

November

1951, 252

L Woolley, Excavations at Ur, 1954 C J Young, ‘Excavations at the Churchill Oxoniensia, XXXVII, 1972, 10-31

Hospital,

1971; Interim

Report’,

B Yule, ‘A Third Century Well Group ...’, London Archaeologist, ıv, 9, Winter

1982, 243-9

Notes and references

bk hw

=

1 Ritual and the archaeologist (pages 1—21) Wait, 1985, 64ff. Orme 1981, 218; quoted by kind permission of Mrs Coles Renfrew 1982, 19-21 Claims for stellar orientations are far less convincing, according to Burl

1976, 329 5 This may include social as well as religious ritual; usually in primitive society they are hardly separable 6 Burl 1976, 24-5. Drewett 1977 suggests that causewayed enclosures may have been exposure burial sites that sometimes acquired other functions 7 Fox

1943,

109-10

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Fg Bird et al 1978, 44, 225, 305-6 Cunliffe 1983, 156-7 Smith 1977, 31-129 Philp 1984, 32 Celoria and Macdonald 1969, 29-35 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, xxXvil, c. 9 Adkins 1985, 69-75

15 16

Horne and King Evans 1897, 64

1980, pt 2, 362-493

passim

17 Qui caste gerit hunc a fulmine non ferietur, Nec domus

aut villae, quibus affuerit lapis ille;

Sed neque navigio per flumina vel mare vectus, Turbine mergetur, nec fulmine percutietur; Ad

causas

etiam,

vincendaque

proelia

prodest,

Et dulces somnos, et dulcia somnia praestat. 18 Green 1963 19 Lambert 1921, 94-5, 107 (fig 27) 20

Evans

1897, 58

21 lbid, 57 22 Castle 1974, 258 (fig 6), 263

Notes and references / 207

23

Adkins 1985, 69—75. They cite instances at Bredon Hill (Glos.), Bishopstone (Sussex) and Boscombe Down West (Wilts.).

24 25

Horne and King 1980, 433-4 Campbell 1902, 92 Horne and King 1980, 401, 417

26

Ibid, 407-8 Thorpe 1949, 85—6

27 28

Ibid, pl xvb

29 30

An example of Thorpe's intermediate phase, with very slight taper, was found recently in a large pit group from Crosswall, London, dated about 1770. Trans LMAS, xxxii 1981, 169, fig 8, 47 Pownall 1867-70, 184-6 Pownall 1870-73, 114-121 Fowler 1876, 133-4 The author is unable to confirm this. He did once smell the contents of the early twentieth-century witch-bottle shown in pl 58, and finds it hard to believe that anything in the Pharmocopeia could smell so vile. Perhaps, however, decay had not proceeded far enough in this case

31 32 33 34

2 Offerings to earth and water in pre-Roman and Roman times (pages 22—57) In Ghana offerings to the Sky-god are placed in a bowl set above ground in a forked branch. This often contained, as well as other offerings, a Neolithic

©

00

2 Am

9

axe (cf pp 10-11,

IO

II I2 I3 I4 I5 I6

16) (Rattray

1923, 142)

Powell 1958, 128, 154 Caesar, De Bello Gallico, vi, 13-16 Blog 1971, 99, 107ff Musty 1985, 370; Stead, Bourke & Brothwell 1986 Cunliffe 1974, 297; Fitzpatrick in Cunliffe & Miles 1984, 178—90 Burgess, c in Renfrew 1974, 195-8 Gerloff 1975, 175-6 Personal information based on Museum records from Miss J Macdonald. See p 16, however, for the suggestion that some may have been deposited in post-Neolithic times The various interpretations of Bronze Age finds in the Thames have been impartially examined by Margaret Ehrenberg 1980, 1-15 Jope 1961, 307-43; Macdonald 1978, 44-51 Roach Smith 1842, 160-6 Guildhall Museum booklet, Small Finds from the Walbrook, 1954-55 Marsh & West 1981, 86-102 Greep 1981, 103-6 Frere

1974, 370

208 / Notes and references 17

Wake Smart 1876, 6off. The well-known votive finds from the Source of the Seine are cited as parallels

18

Fox

19 20 21

Piggott 1953, ıff Manning 1972, 242 Cunliffe 1984, vol 1, 12. Professor Cunliffe suggests that there may have been a ring of posts demarcating an area of social or religious importance either within the earliest fort or subsequently enclosed by it Personal information from Mr F J Collins; the unpublished records are in the archive of the Historic Buildings Department of the GLC H J M Green 1975, 201; 1986, 48. Green 1986, which appeared after this chapter was written, states that some large pits, on use over a long period, contained up to 22 dogs. Some contained a single dog, and hares as well as dogs were buried in pairs An admirable survey and analysis of these deposits, with a discussion of their ritual character, is given in Annie Grant’s report on Animal Husbandry, in Cunliffe 1984, vol 2, 533-43 Smith 1977, 64, 111. It is considered unlikely that the deer fell into a pit 1.65m deep and 2m wide and was unable to extricate itself, and it was evidently buried with its skin virtually intact Alcock 1972, 136, 153 Cunliffe 1983, 156-7, 159-60 Cunliffe 1983, fig 71, pl 26 Dunning 1966, 1-5, fig 1 Alcock 1972, 84 Downey, King and Soffe, 1980, 290-4, 298

22

23

24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31

1946

34

Britannia XV, 1984, 298 RIB. 2071 Britannia XV, 1984, 297, 337

35

Information

36

1984 Drury

32 33

37 38 39 40

from Mr D Whipp, Greater London

Archaeological Service,

1973, 272-3

] Bird et al, eds, 1978, 44, 64-5 Trans L.M.A.S., 22 pt ı, 1968, 9

Bowler 1983, 13 At TO 46786758. Information from Mrs M Bowen. An interesting parallel to this deposit though not from a ditch, was a group of two lamps and a pot of the early second century, found just south of Ratcliffe Highway, East London, in the unpublished excavation by Tony Johnson near St Katharine's Dock in 1974. They had not been buried, but lay on the natural

surface, presumably protected by a mound, and do not appear to have been 41 42

accompanied by a cremation Cited by Rose 1948, 16 Duplicated note by P J Fowler 1967. On this downland field the edge was marked not by a ditch but a fence. Also The Times, 31 August 1965

Notes and references / 209 Ross, in Coles and Simpson

1968. Not all are wholly convincing

Abstracts of the Proceedings of the Ashmolean Society II (1843-52), $5; cited by Ross, loc cit, 266-7, fig 64, 261 Arch Journ xxxn, (1875), 108; XLVI (1889), 352; cited by Ross, loc cit, 258-9 Arch Cant Lxxvill, 1963, I-li

Henault 1930, 5-9 Booklet, L’Archéologie à Paris. Découvertes Anciennes — Fouilles Actuelles,

1974, 18 Fouet

1958, 115-196

Ant Journ xil

(1963), 286-7

Ashbee 1963, 116-20 Ross 1967, 61-126

Marsden 1980, 63-5. Wilmott 1982, 1-78 Rowsome, 1985, 277. It seems possible that the wooden 'box' was the frame of the well Neal 1976, The Times, 26 July 1971. Young 1972, 10-31. Marsh and West 1981, 99 O'Neil in Jope 1961, 36. Another well on this site contained an animal deposit of one dog and bones of young cattle, again overlaid by stone debris Neal 1974, 27 Yule, 1982, 243-5 Information from Mr John Chapman, the excavator Hammerson,

Autumn

1978, 206-11

Cunliffe 1975, 172ff, 412

Birley 1973, 34 Britannia

M, 1971,

273;

IX,

1978,

449

Marsh in Bird et al 1978, 1, 221-32 Graham

and

Millett

1980,

18.

Also

Excavation

at

Neatham,

Hants,

1969-79, Hants Field Club Monograph, forthcoming Noel Hume 1956, 160—7 Philp 1984, 32 Dennis in Bird et al 1978, 1, 305-6 Sheldon in Bird et al 1978, 1, 36-9

Tyers 1984, 367-74 Space does not permit a discussion of the important series of ritual pits at Newstead, reassessed by Ross and Feacham

(Megaw

1976, 230-7), but most

of these may reflect the comings and goings of the Roman army in Scotland Merrifield

1983,

146-8

Wheeler 1943, 38 and pl xLıv. Richmond Alcock 1970, 16-17 Kenyon 1954, 12 Whimster 1977, 69 Ross 1968, 268. Ross and Feachem

1968, 16

in Megaw

Personal information from B J Philp

1976, 235-6

210 / Notes and references 81

Penn

82.

88 89

Penn 1964, 177. Fourteen more babies were buried in the temple precinct in the mid-second century, but there is nothing to show that they were sacrificed, and the excavator suggested they may have died from plaguc (ibid 176—7) Kenyon 1940, 188 Wheeler 1936, 139 Ashby et al 1902, 151-2 Roskams 1980, 406-7; Cunliffe 1964, li, 43 St John Hope 1902, 19-20 Dunnett 1966, 31 American School ... at Athens 1971

90

Britannia x, 1979, 285; XV, 1984, 115, 125

9I

Casey 1983, 54-5

85 84 85 86 87

92.

1960,

121-2

Norman and Reader 1912, 274 Detsicas

1963, 132; and unpublished interim report by A Millard 93 Green 1965, 361; Hanworth 1968, 11 94 95 Information from Dartford Museum; Surrey Arch Coll xxxvi pt 2, 1929, 135, 137; Bird et al 1978, i11, 296-7; Kenyon 96

Marsden

1959, 21

1967, 36-7; 1965, 33-4

3 Rituals of death (pages 58—82) I

A letter in The Times of 18 July 1985, refers sympathetically to a belief that the destruction of Missenden Abbey by fire was due to the fact that remains of monks buried in the chancel *were exposed to public gaze before being archaeological

Briard 1979, 60 Fox

I M2

14

and

expresses

fear

of more

sacred remains be

1954, 60-70

Oo

Woolley

Rattray 1927, 104-12 Brendsted 1960, 280-4

12

examination',

Kenyon 1957, 60-4 Hook 1982, 304 Kinnes 1981, 83—91 Davies 1977, 13-19

O

mM —

off for

catastrophes 'unless, without further ado, the monks' returned to the abbey for reverent re-burial' Covarrubias 1937, 359-88

m"

CON

AM

Ro

Bb

carted

1959, 99-102

Millett and Russell 1982, 69-90 Funerary sacrifices in pairs are not confined to the Celtic world; offerings of two calves at a tomb are represented on one side of a late Minoan sarcophagus from Hagia Triadha, and two goats tied up and awaiting sacrifice on the other (pl 21) Whimster 1981, 106

Notes and references / 211 Ibid, 25 Ibid, 23; Dechelette 1914, 1275-7 17 Marsden 1969, 4-6 18 Personal information from Tony Johnson 19 Macdonald 1979, 421-3 20 Grinsell 1957, 257—69 21 Woolley 1954, 65, pl 9b Sakellarakis 1983, 113-5 22 Clarke 1979, 202-5, 358-9 23 Grinsell 1957, 262-3, 265 15 16

24 25

Mackenzie,

nd, 95-8

Dean and Hammerson 1980, note by Mrs J Hall, p 20 26 Clarke 1979, Table 24, 172; Table 30, 203-5. See also discussion, 410-14 27 lbid, 377-85 28 Ibid, 413-14 29 Ibid, 172-3, 410-11 30 Current Archaeology, 61, April 1978 (v1, No 2), 58-9. As this was a ritual site of long standing, however, it is possible that in this case both babies and dogs were sacrifices (cf Springhead, p 51) 31

Britannia vin, 1977, 419; Clarke

32

Marsden 1969, 4-6. The sex of the deceased is indicated by a bone spindle in the corner between amphora and cist, and also by the presence of ashes of a child Whimster 1977, 77 Harman, Molleson and Price 1981, 145-88 Macdonald 1979, 416-17 The legend of the head of Bran is contained in the story of Branwen the Daugbter of Llyr, the second portion of the Mabinogion, which may be partly based on a tradition of the settlement in west Wales of pagan Irish in late Roman times (see Powell 1958, 122) Macdonald 1979, 419-20 Harman, Molleson and Price 1981, 167; Liversidge 1973, 477 O'Shea 1981, 43

33 34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42

Harman, Molleson Ibid, 160

1979, 423 n1

and Price 1981, 165

Ibid, 166-8; Bidder and Morris 1959, 62, Graves 44, 45 Tongue 1958, 44 43 44 "To be seen in Durham Cathedral 45 Grinsell 1957, 268-9 46 Grimes 1968, 184; Macdonald 1979, 428-9 47 Green 1977, 46-53; an important paper to which the reader is referred for

details and references Toynbee 1971, 41-2 49 Cited by Brown 1981, 71, from 213 48

Gregory's

Liber

Vitae Patrum

1, praef:

212

/ Notes and references

SO

Rahtz 1977, 58-9

SI

Cited

by Brown

Latina

1981, 88, from

Miracula

sancti Stepbani,

2, 6, Patrilogia

41, 847

Cited by Brown 1981, 7, from Julian, Epistulae et Leges, eds J Birley and F Cumont (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1922), 194-5 53 Marsh and West 1981, 99; Henig 1984, 24, 226

52

4 From Paganism to Christianity (pages 83—106) I

Brown

1981, 109-10. Possession by major pagan deities, notably Apollo,

M C^

m O

Wo

CN

2 Am

M

had been well-known

BF M 0M Am bh

xn w

I2

17

18

19

20 21 22

23 24

in the classical world, and had been institutionalised

by the great oracles. It was not of course considered evil or harmful—quite the reverse. Cited from Patrologia Graeca by Hunt 1982, 2 12ff Brown 1981, 97-8 Finucane 1977, 29

Ibid, 131-5 Bonser 1962, 236, 241 Finucane

1977, 26-7

Radford

1949, 164-8

Lanciani

1892, 64-7, 62

Martin 1965, 247f Henig 1984, 151-2 Finucane

1977, 95-6

Ibid, 94-5 Rahtz 1970, 56. Also information from Miss Marion Archibald Metcalf 1981, 196-7 I am much indebted to Miss M Archibald of the British Museum Department of Coins and Medals for information on the contents of these hoards, but she is in no way responsible for the views expressed here Spencer 1978, 243 As n 16 C Roach Smith described similar tokens as 'leaden' (1854, 156-7), but they are of a silver-coloured alloy resembling pewter, and are thinner and harder than the later lead tokens. Tokens of the same type have been excavated from thirteenth-century contexts in Dublin Penn

1962, 121

Cunliffe 1969, 34-5 Thomas 1981, 170-5, 183-5 Grimes

1968, 182-7

Curtayne 1955, 108-9, 112. A church dedicated to St Brigid at Camerlata, near Como, north Italy, is said to date from the ninth century, suggesting that there was some dispersal of her relics at that time. Her feast-day drew crowds of pilgrims to Camerlata, and this would be unlikely in the absence of a relic. The earliest known reference to St Brigid's church in London,

Notes and references / 213 however,

is in 1222 (Liber Albus), so the dedication there may

be of later

date. Her relics are said to have been rediscovered in the twelfth when there may have been a further distribution. Her skull was Lumiar in Portugal, supposedly by three Irish would-be crusaders 25 Gelling 1953, 101-3 26 RCHM, 1928, 147, 164-5 27 In London there is evidence of a substantial but isolated Roman with a hypocaust under Westminster Abbey, and more doubtfully Martin-in-the-Fields (RCHM, 1928, 148, 147) 28 Brown 1981, 125-6 citing Gregory of Tours, Liber vitae patrum 29 Bede, Book 1, 3o 30 Thomas 1981, 219 31 Ellison 1980, 310-19 32 Esperandieu 1907-66,

century, taken to in 1283

building under St

Nos 7760-7792

33 Esperandieu 1931 34 Esperandieu 1907-66, 11, 419 35 Hammerson Autumn 1978, 206-12. The church was rebuilt in the mid-ninth century, and according to legend the first church was built in the seventh century by a ferryman, who grew rich by ferrying people across at a time when the bridge did not exist. This now seems less unlikely than it did, in the light of the new hypothesis that the port described by Bede was in the neighbourhood of the Strand. This would hardly have been possible if the Roman bridge still existed, since the use of a sophisticated draw-bridge at this time is not credible. The date of the dumping of the sculptures, however, is more likely to be late Roman, see p 103 36 O’Neil 1961, 36. See also JRS 48, 1958, 49-55 37 Toynbee 1964, 156. See also JRS 48, 1958, 141 38 Espérandieu 1907-66, Nos 1548, 1622, 1782, 1836, 2083, 2109, 2187, 2213,

2560, 3774, 4665, 4668—70, 4831, 4897, 4900, 5988, 6540, 6701, 6856, 7705, 7642

39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Espérandieu 1931, Nos 69, Roach Smith 1859, 68—71 Esperandieu 1907-66, Nos JRS 35, 1945, 84, pl 2, fig Espérandieu 1931, No 439 Antiq Journ 59 pt 2, 1979, Merrifield 1977, 392—6 Toynbee 1964, 46-7 Franzoni 1965, pl 49 Merrifield 1977, 389 Espérandieu 1907-66, Nos Meates Price

1955, 75—9

1880,

27

Bishop 1983, 44 Hartland

1913, vi, 114

93-4, 101, 116, 240, 242, 329, 466, 545 6590, 7235, 7086 1; Esperandieu 1907-66, Nos 7094, 4304, 7220; 420, pl LXxv

2384-90, 2433

214

/ Notes and references

Soc

Survivals, revivals and reinterpretations (pages 107-136) Dent 1984, 251-3 Wilson 1965, 50-2

hw

East, Larkin and Winser

Smith ON ON

1985, 6

Spencer 1978, 250, 263 n78, where he also points out that pilgrim badges have been found under house foundations in Buckinghamshire, Northampton and Oxford, suggesting that they may on occasion have been used as foundation offerings These tokens, with characteristically hatched decoration, often bear representations of birds and animals. They were first described by Roach (1854,

156-7),

and

have

since

been

found

in a

thirteenth-century

context in Dublin Marsden 1971, r1-12 Longman & Lock 1911, 59, 61-2, 63 Finucane 1977, 98

I5 I6

Translated by O Cockayne, 1864-6, 1, 329 Information from Mr S McCracken, the excavator

No

I4

E C Brewer, The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1978 ed), under ‘Bowed Money’, quotes from Coney-catching (temp Elizabeth) ‘Taking forth a bowed groat and an old penny bowed he gave it her’. Hope-Taylor 1977, 67—9, 200-3, 245 Millett & James 1983, 221 Gelling 1969, 69 Down 1978, 84-5 Personal information from Prof L A S Butler, May 1982

IO II I2 13

17

18

L Hänselmann 1876-7, 393—405, citing Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, 4th Canto Letter to the author from Dr J G N Renaud, of the State Service for Archaeological Investigations in the Netherlands, dated 3 February 1954

19

De Bruyn

20

Information from Dr H B M Essink of s'Hertogenbosch

2I 22

1936, 152-3

De Bruyn, op cit, and 1929, 12-16 Personal information from Dr J G N Renaud, State Service for Archaeologi-

cal Investigations in the Netherlands

23 24

Barton

28

Hutchinson

29

L'Abbe Cochet 1857, 399-423; 1859, 117-133

1974,

174, No 23

Letter to Country Life, 16 May 1968, 1294. The pot is now in the Willis Museum, Basingstoke Down and Rule 1971, 134, 139-41 25 26 Oswald 1940, 510-11. Also note in Guildhall Museum Accessions Book. relating to one of the jugs, now in the Museum of London 27 Tester 1956, 260-1

30 M

1876, 535; Turner

1869, 202-6

Vitruvius Pollo, De Architectura, Book

31

Minns 1872, 93ff

32

Hughes

1915, 70-1

v, trans

M H Morgan,

1914

Notes and references / 21$ Mrs M S Brown, ‘Buried Horse-skulls in a Welsh House’, letter in Folklore,

33

77, 1966, 65-6; and personal information from Mr F J Collins, GLC Historic Buildings Section, May 1967 34 O’Suilleabhain 1945, 45-52 35 Sandklef 1949, passim 36 A film on the life of ten different Finno-Ugrian groups, made by the Esthonian director, Lennart Meri, in 1977 37 It is called by Virgil mystica vannus lacchi (Georgics 1, 166), ‘the mystic

winnowing-fan of lacchus’, a minor agrarian deity sometimes said to be the son or consort of Demeter 38 Shown in the film cited; see n36 39 Virgil, Aeneid 1, 433-62 40 Porter 1969, 181 4I Hughes 1915, 66-8 42 Hutcheson 1883, 426-32; 1904-5, 387-93; 1906, 354 43 Wood 1951, 252 44 Surrey Advertiser and County Times, 25 August, 1972 45 Swann 1969, 8-21 46 Personal information, Miss J Swann, in letter of 13 February

1986 47 There is a reference by John Heywood in 1598, ‘And home again hitherwards quicke as a bee, now for good luck cast an old shoe after me' 48 R B Rice, citing J H Thornton, Sussex Life, December 1970 49 Porter 1969, 394

N

ON

BW

M

oM

6 Written spells and charms (pages 137—158) Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier 1984, 187 (d), fig 74d Audollent 1905, 433-4 RIB 323 RIB 154

RIB 7

Hassall and Tomlin 1979, 343-4 A pewter plate folded twice to a quadrant and enclosing a names, found in the Roman

list of incised

reservoir at Bath, had evidently been used as a

defixio (Hassall and Tomlin, 1985, 322-3), but pewter has a large lead content. Exceptionally, a silver tablet from the Trier amphitheatre, only very partially deciphered, may have been used for the same purpose : (Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier 1984, 189) ibid 9 Hassall and Tomlin 1979, 353 and n70, which gives a full account with references II

Nowotny 1949, 46—57 Revelation, Ch 15, 18

I2

The spelling ‘Daemon’

has been retained, as the anglicised ‘Demon’

Satanic implications not present in the original term, which Genius or Spirit

merely

has

meant

216

/ Notes and references

13

Nowotny

14

a great deal of traditional magic in his De Occulta Philosophia, Lyons, 1533. It was mostly derived from translations of medieval Arabic books, but he may have originated some of the astrological emblems Hartland, 1897, 140-50. He also describes two similar post-mediaeval lead curses found on Gatherley Moor, Yorkshire Harland 1852, 81-5 Information and photocopies received from the Curator, Towneley Hall

IS 16

Museum, 17 18

1949, 46-57. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) synthesised

Burnley, Lancs

‘Suckers’ is the local word for foals Davies

1938, 162, and letters from

I C Peate and F G Payne, Curator and

Deputy-Curator of the Welsh Folk Museum, July-September 1954 Letters from Mr A N Mason, 17 April and 8 May 1955. National Library of I9 Wales Ms 15557 20 National Library of Wales Ms 1248, 9140 2I Personal information from Mr T A Lloyd, 1954. Mr Lloyd's father, who had been a veterinary surgeon, died in 1947, at the age of 86 22 W O Stanley, note in Notes and Queries, 9, 4th series, 30 March 1872, 2556. Pipkin and slate are now in the Museum of Welsh Antiquities, Bangor 23 Baynes 1925, 115—16 24 Spurrell 1894, 92-3. He writes that he has examined a large number of English prescriptions for this letter and finds no variation of importance for over 500 years. He comments that the French use instead the sign for Jupiter (a barred Z) and that he has seen the sign for Mercury on an old German prescription 25 The names of the Magi also occur in Lombardic lettering on a pewter disc brooch from a water-front deposit not later than c. 1360 at Trig Lane, London. Brian Spencer comments that they were frequently inscribed on jewellery, belts, boxes and jettons in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and were also written on parchment to be worn about the person for general talismanic purposes, as a prophylactic against disease, or to recover lost property (Trans LM AS xxxii, 1982, 309)

7 Charms against witchcraft (pages 159—183)

Nm bh

w

1 Hughson 1808, 5, 460-2 The reader is referred to H R Trevor-Roper, The European Witch-Craze of the 16th and 17th Centuries, 1969, and the relevant chapters of N Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, 1975 Parrinder 1958, 93-4 Sprenger and Kramer, Question 2, Chapters 5 and 6 Increase Mather 1684, 269, 279 Aubrey 1857, 140

Notes and references / 217 Baker

1974, 38, quotes an old rhyme:

‘Hang up Hooks and Sheers to scare Hence the Hag that rides the Mare’ Parsons 1915, 40 Brand

1913, 606, footnote

Baker 1974, 50 Letter to the author from M S

Maloney A

letter

Scholes, 8 August

1962

1980, 157-8 from

the

late

Norman

Smedley,

then

President

of the

Suffolk

Institute 14 from Smedley Blagrave Aubrey

of Archacology, dated 28 January 1967, states that he then knew of Suffolk alone 1954, 229 1671, 154-5 1857, 140 (1st edition, 1696)

Glanvil

1681, and Part, 169-70

Parsons 1915, 42-3 Sprenger and Kramer 1968, 155, 163 (1st edition, 1486) Holmes 1951, 173-9. Holmes points out that the bearded mask originated before the rise to fame of Cardinal

Bellarmino,

and is not a caricature of

him. The jugs were also called ‘d’Alva bottles', after the Duke of Alva, in the seventeenth century 2I

22

23 24 25 26

Connoisseur vil, Sept-Dec

1903, 207; Trans Cambs and Hunts Arch Soc 1v

pt 4, 1923, 125; Notes and Queries 1st series VI, 1852, 271: 4th series v1, 1870, 114 Kent Archaeological Review 15, Feb 1969, 19-20; letters to the author from E Holden and G W R Harrison Increase Mather

1684, 269, 279; Cotton

Mather

1691, 59-61

Arch Cant LXxInl, 1959, 231 Personal information from Dr E Dance of Guildford Museum ment Room Beresford 1866-7,

101

Becker 1980, 19-23; Merrifield 1980, 12 28 Parrinder 1958, 140-2 27

29 30 3I

Murray Parsons

1963, 204-37 1915, 33-4

Murray

1963, indexed under ‘Names of familiars’, 297-8

32

Parsons, 1915, 33-4, 44

33

‘Cohn 1976, 171 Kittredge 1928, 105, with ref to Albericus Trium Fontium, 437

34 35 36

Davies

37 38

Glanvil

1938, 169

Hughes 1977, 32-3 Adshead

1681, 2nd part, 171

1953-4, 46—7

and Muni-

218 39

/ Notes and references ‘Death of a Wizard’, The Times, 15 December 1960. See also Morrison 1900, a fictionalised account but based on actual characters and local

traditions collected by the author. Quoted from East London Advertiser of August 1905, in A Clifton Kelsey, 40 Memorials of Old Essex, London, 1908, 251 41 42

43 44

Personal

information

from

finder, Mr J G Dent of Halton

East

Coe 1975, 5 Personal information Lady Barttelot, owner of the cottage Personal information from Mr A Ruffell of Wembley Park

8 The ritual of superstition (pages 184—195) 1 Giffard 1593, G1 2 Hartland 1913, vi, 113-4, citing Illustrated London News, 2 March 1867 Britannia xv, 1984, 308; The London Archaeologist, v, No 14, Spring 1984,

XA

376, 384 Sprenger and Kramer 1968, 144-5 Ibid, 150-1 Museum of London Accession Nos. 4980, A24736; Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Z.11502; Catalogue of English Romanesque Art 1066-1200, 1984, Nos 200, 233; London Museum Medieval Catalogue, 1940, pl Lxxxi, 1 Votive 'killing' of coins has antecedents in Roman Gaul. Roman coins were too thick for bending, but were sometimes cut. At Argenton (Indre), a concentration of coins cut into two or four pieces was found in the cella of a temple

(Fauduet

Wait 1985

1986, 27)

Index

Numerals in bold type refer to Plate numbers. Those in italics refer to Figure numbers

Aberhafesp (Powys) Abingdon (Oxon) ABRACADABRA

153

bellarmines bending,

acoustic devices 121-3, 124-5, 126-8, 193; 4, 5 Adkins, Lesley and Roy 10, 15 adze 107 after-life, belief in 59, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 78 Agrippina I 101 All Hallows, Lombard Street, City of London 121 All Hallows, London Wall, City of London altars 27, 28, 35, 36, 43, 97, 99; 5, 26

54

portable 77 amphitheatres 139, 188 amphorae 43, 47, 49, 67, 71; 24, 2 amulets 11, 17, 109, 150 anatomical 32

votives

88—91,

103,

104,

190; 27, 28, 31,

146,

52

Aubrey,

John

148,

152, 154

162,

170

Augustine of Hippo, St 85 Auvergne,

France

axes, Neolithic miniature

85, 95-6

9-16, 25-6, 125; 1, 2

115; 38

ritual

Bexley

Bablock Hythe (Oxon) Bacchus 99 badger 32, 119 Balinese 59-60 Ballinspittle (Co Cork) Barrett, W H 126 Barnmouth (Northumb)

120

99

91-3,

(Kent)

110-12,

Battle Abbey (E Sussex) Bavay (Nord) 43 Beddington (Surrey)

Belgium

99

115-16,

186-7,

193;

121, 156

boats, model

67-8

bird 32, 42, 54, 175 human 27, 54, 59, 60, 72, 82, 94, 186; 6, 23, 25

preservation of 60 see also skulls Bonn, boots

W Germany 66, 75

81, 97

Borough High Street, Southwark Bo8poc 44

188-9;

see also bellarmines land

bowls

38, 119

185

37, 38, 49, 66

Brearley, William Brigid, St 94-5

191

37, 46

bottles, cod-liver-oil 180; 58 glass 17-21, 153, 156, 171-3, 176-7, 180, 58, 7 stoneware 151, 168-9, 179, 188-9; 56 wine 174-5, 180, 182

Bran the Blessed braziers 121

74 171,

174, 175

Brislington (Avon) 46 Brittany, France 13

67

Brockley Hill, Gter London 14 Bronze Age 4-5, 15, 16, 24, 25, 26, 44, 58, 65, 76, 108, 116; 3 bronze statues 99, 101, 103, 191; 31

139

brooches

barrows 5, 35, 58, 65 basin, bronze 48 Basingstoke (Hants) 117 Bath (Avon) 90, 93, 101,

189; 52, 53,

Birdlip (Glos) 66 birds 32, 42, 54, 129, 175 Bishop, M C 105 Bishops Stortford (Herts) 179 Blackburn Mill (Borders) 30 Blackfriars, City of London 54; 18, 19 Blackfriars Bridge, City of London 186 Blagrave, Joseph 169-70, 175

boundaries,

Netherlands

174,

34-37, 39

Bourton Grounds (Glos) Baardwijk,

173,

bones, animal 2, 3, 29, 30, 44, 45, 46, 54, 96, 107, 127, 129, 186; 10 see also burials, animal

archaeologists, attitudes of 1-9, 20-1, 184, 193-4 Ariosto, Ludovico 119 arrowheads, flint 16, 65 Ashanti 65 Ashburton (Devon) 122 ash-chest 101 Ashill (Norfolk) 42 Athens

171,

bodies, preserved 234 bogs 23-4, 29, 30

97; 30

astrology

167-8,

Blessed Dead, cult of 79, 81-2, 84, 93 boar 35, 42, 43

Andaman Islanders 59, 60 Anthony, St 27 antlers 36, 42, 47, 188 Apollo

163-5,

55 see also 'grcybeards'

70 152; 48

91

10, 14

Brown,

26, 42 Prof Peter

85-6

building debris 45, 46, 47, 49, 99 Bungay (Suffolk) 124 Burgess, Colin 24

220 / Index burial ceremonies 71 grounds 68, 70, 71, 76, 78, 79, 81, 188 practices 24, 58-61, 78 burials, animal 2, 3, 8, 30, 32, 34, 35, 53, 54, 65, 67, 117; 9, 10, 13, 15, 16 bird 8, 36, 47, 51

Christian 77—9 heart 121

74, 77, 78, 90, 91-2, 93, 115, 124, bent

91—3,

109,

115-16,

Colchester (Essex) 52, 94 Coles, Bryony (nee Orme) combs, hair 70, 77-8 weaving 66

2

pot

‘conjuror’ 153, 154, 178 Constantinople 85, 87

buzzard

189;

162, 187, 193; 34, 35, 39

commencement, rites of 48, 50—2, 54

119-21

162,

‘ghost’ 68

human 5, 24, 43, 51, 52, 58, 64—6, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, 77-9, 117; 22-25 plaster 78-9; 25 Burnley (Lancs) 150 Buxted (F Sussex) 121

125,

18, 19

Compostella,

confessors

Santiago de, Spain

85

86

Corfe Castle (Dorset) 42 corn-grinding stones 33-4

42

Cornwall 15, 51, 66, 71, 112, 180; 58 Coventina's Well, Carrawburgh (Northumb)

Caerleon (Gwent) 61, 139; 22 Caerwent (Gwent) 52, 54, 46 Caesar, C Julius 23 Cambridgeshire 30, 35, 75, 129, 134, 162, Camomile Strect bastion, City of London 106; 3

Cracouville (Eure) cremation 176-7 104-5,

cross, pectoral Cross, True crow 42

77

crucifix

canister, cremation 61; 22 Cannington (Somcersct) 81

Cunliffe, Prof Barry

190-1

Culemborg, curses

45, 47, 82

Canterbury (Kent) 87, 88, 94, 115 Cantilupe, St Thomas 87, 91, 112

Carlingwerk, Loch (Dumfries)

100

87, 154

candles 90-1 candlestick 129 Cannon Street, City of London

45,

16

43, 58, 59, 60-1, 65, 68; 22, 24

Netherlands

137-42,

120

8, 33, 195

147-8,

155,

156,

187; 44, 47

cursing wells 155 Cuthbert, St 77 Cutlers, Worshipful Company of 112

30

Carrawburgh (Northumb) 45 Carthage, Tunisia 126, 139 Cassington (Oxon) 76 cats 125, 129-31, 186 cattle 34, 66, 107, 117, 125, 186

daggers 26, 28, 111, 112, 187; 36 imitation 25; 3 Danebury (Hants) 1, 8, 30, 32, 33, 49; 9, 10

cauldrons

24, 30

dead, disposal of 24, 52, 58, 59-60, 64-6, 71, 77-9,

Caves

(Warwicks)

Inn

Dark Ages Davey,

46

Deal (Kent) 34, 67 death, rituals of 58-82 decapitation, ritual 46, 51, 67, 71-2, 74-6, 105 deer 32, 43, 49, 119 defixio 138 see also curses

cemeteries 68, 70, 76, 77, 79, 81, 95 cenotaph 72, 74 ceraunia 10-11 Cernunnos 70

Deventer,

Chagford (Devon) 180 chalice and paten 77 Chancton (W Sussex) 91 charioteers 139 chariot 66 fitting 16

dogs

Chester-le-Strect (Durham) 52; 17 Chesterton, G K 191 Chichester (W Sussex) 117-18, 121, 122

43, 49, 52, 125, 129; 41

children, burials of 5, 43, 51, 52, 65, 67, 70, 72, 74 chimney-pieces 128, 129—31, 136, 175, 180, 188; 49

China 59, 60 Chiswick Eyot, Gtr London 163 Christianity 76-103, 107, 142-3 churn-spell 162 Cirencester (Glos) Clarke, Giles

121,

122,

126; 4, 5

143; 45

70

coach, Lord Mayor's cocks

120

30, 32, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46-7, 49, 50, 52, 107, 125, 129; 9, 13, 15, 6, 17

Dorchester (Dorset) 178-83; 46,

48, 8 see also curses, magic squares Chelmsford (Essex) 47 Chertsey (Surrey) 108

93, 94-6,

Netherlands

Devil's Bridge (Dyfed) 153 devils 83, 85—6, 160; 26 dismemberment 75 ditches 37-40, 164; 12

Charlton Mackrell (Somerset) 75 charms 142-7, 148-54, 156, 159, 161-2,

churches

129

81-82

Cellini, Benvenuto 188 Celtic culture 11, 16, 23, 27, 37, 60, 74

chickens

116-17, 119

Dr Norman

115

35, 48

Coddenham (Suffolk) 168 cod-liver-oil bottle 180; 58 coffer 48 coffins 67, 77, 78, 79 coins 15, 26, 29, 35, 42, 43, 46, 49, 54, 57, 67-8, 69,

Druids

77, 79

23, 51

Dublin Cathedral 129 Duke's Place, Aldgate, City of London Dundee (Tayside) 127 Dunstable (Beds) 75 Dura-Europus, Syria 143 earth spirits, offerings to 22, 30-6, 40-54 Eccles (Kent)

54

Eckford (Borders) 30 Edward the Confessor, St 88 ‘elf-bolts’ 16 Elsdon (Northumb) 124 Embledon (Bucks) 99

Englisb Glass (Thorpe) Epanamon 177 Esperandieu, E. 97 Essarts (Seine-Maritime) Essington, Pa, USA 175

Evans, John

16

11, 13

Ewell (Surrey) 49 Exeter Cathedral (Devon)

face-pot

17

52, 189; 17

88; 28

164

119,

Index // 221 familiar spirits

131, 175-8

hammers,

favissa 44 Fenchurch Street, City of London fertility rites 6, 23, 160

figurines, ivory metal

miniature

Headington (Oxon) Healey

190; 30, 32

heart 180 burials 121

stone 192 terra cotta

cloth hearths

43

R C

folding, ritual see bending, ritual fork, table 168; 57 Foulridge

(Lancs)

150

186, 187,

Fowler, James fox 32

189; 16

20

Fox, Sir Cyril 5, 65 France 10-11, 15, 16, 17, 43-4, 48, 67, 85, 89, 95, 97, 99, 103, 120, 121, 121-3, 192

58-60, 61, 64, 71

symbolism 64 Fynnon Eilian (Anglesey) Gadebridge Park (Herts) Garnett, Richard 148

goats

Hereford

(Heref/Worcs)

heron 36 Hey wood

(Wilts)

Hilarius, St 95 Histon (Cambs)

155

46 129

horses 139,

142,

30, 32, 42, 43, 54, 66, 70, 107,

skulls

32, 47, 54, 70, 123-4,

185 128, 161, 171-2, 178

Horsham (W Sussex) Horton (Dorset) 29 174; 57,

118, 125,

126,

129, 170; 9, 10 heads 126 trappings 15, 26, 29, 35, 66 horseshoes 161, 162

125, 128-9,

185—6,

193

156; 49

Hughes, T M 123 hunter-god 97, 99 Hypnos 99

7

136 35, 42, 43, 66, 117-18

Godmanchester (Cambs) 30 Gracechurch Street, City of London

Ibn Fadlan 101; 31

Great Northern Diver

London

inhumation 25 inscriptions 163; 53

47

Great Tower Street, City of London Greece 52, 67, 68, 137

101; 31

Greek letters 137, 149, 150 Green, H J M 13 Gregory I, Popc 96 Gregory of Tours 79 ‘greybeards’ 127, 165, Grimes, Prof W F 94 grimoires 146

grindstones Grinsell, L V groma 117

Haddenham

173 see also bellarmines

36, 115,

Ireland 13, 23, 66, 124, 129, 191 Iron Age I, 7, 8, 15, 23, 24, 26, 32, 33, 50-1, 58, 65, 66, 71, 108 ironwork 24, 29, 30, 33, 35, 43, 48, 162 Isola Tiberina, Rome 89 Italy 61, 81, 89, 103, 106,

Jarrow

(Cambs)

142-3; 45

inversion of vessels 65, 121, 169, 174, 175, 179, 189 Ipswich (Suffolk) 167, 168; 55—7

James, St 85 James VI, King

67

Hadrian, Emperor

43, 51, 52, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 77, 78; 23,

Ixworth (Suffolk)

(Cambs)

103, 190-2

Ishtar 68

33, 43

Guilden Morden

101,

infants, burial of 51, 52, 70

grain, burnt 33 grave offerings 64, 65, 66, 70, 77; 23, 25 Gravesend (Kent) 163 College Street, Westminster,

65

iconoclasm 99, 100, imps 175, 176-7

graffiti 142-3, 156-8; 45, 49, 50 Graham, David 46

Great

92

99

Hod Hill (Dorset) 5t Horseheath (Cambs) 176-7

46

glass 17-21, 43, 127, 128, 129, 168, Glastonbury Tor (Somerset) 91

gloves

VI, King

Hercules

ornaments 36 stone axes 13, 16 Hoath (Kent) 174

155

Gaul 43, 89, 103 Germany 13, 15, 39, 65, 81, 97, 99, 137-8, 157-8; 50 ghosts 59, 64, 75, 95, 138-9, 177

Gibraltar 131 Giffard, George gladiators 139 Glanvil, Joseph

Henry

hoards, coins 91-2 implements 8, 15 ironwork 24, 29, 30, 48

frogs 30, 36, 155 funerary offerings 61 rites

99

helmet, horned 16, 26; 4 legionary 28 Helmingham (Suffolk) 75

foundation offerings 48, 54, 106, 116, 117-21, 126, 128, 182,

146

Heidelberg, W Germany Helena, St 87

91

150

163, 165, 167, 168, 173; $2, 53, 57 118, 120, 167, 168, 173, 174, 188

Hebrew 13

46

(Gter Manchester)

pipeclay 30, 49 pottery 182 Finland 125 Finsbury Circus, City of London

51, 71

Hatton East (N Yorks) 179 Hayling Island (Hants) 35 head-cult 37, 45, 60, 74, 82, 101

189

191

26, 99, 103,

Finucane,

48

on pot 52; 17 Harlyn Bay (Cornwall) Harvey, William 161

Farley heath (Surrey) 93 Farningham (Kent) 8, 49 Farnworth (Glos) 46

75

35

101

Hacgen (Bas-Rhin) 17 Hagia Triadha, Crete 61, 68; 22 hair 70, 163, 165, 168, 172, 179; 53, 57

143

55 161

(Tyne/Wear)

91

Jericho 60 jet 36 jewellery 68, 70 Jordan Hill (Somerset) 41-2 jugs 127, 163, 165, 168, 173, 174, 188; 54, 56 see also bellarmines, greybeards Julian, Emperor 77, 81-2

222 / Index Julian of Brioude, St 85

mice 129 Michael, St

Keshcarrigan (Co Leitrim) Keston (Kent) 42-3 Kettering (Northants)

131

keys 49 *killing' an object, symbolic

30, 35, 91, 112, 133, 186;

34-7

Kimmeridge (Dorset) 75 King's Lynn (Norfolk) 168 King Street, City of London

11; 1

Kingston-upon- Thames (Surrey) Kinlet (Shropshire) 177

Kiondroghad (I o M)

150,

154

Michelham Priory (E Sussex) Milford (Surrey) 131 military burials 74

66

Millett, Martin 48 mill-stones 33, 43 miniatures, votive 28, 112, miracles 81, 87, 88, 92 mirrors 15, 64, 66

Mitcham

(Surrey)

117

Monkleigh (Devon)

knives 41, 107, 111, 162, 187; 36, 51 Kramer, H 161

Monschau, W Mont Auxois,

Lacey, Bishop Edmund 88; 28 lamps, pottery 38, 49, 67, 71

Montmaurin Moon 148

115,

189-90; 27, 28, 38

76

models 25, 68, 190; 3 miniature 28, 112, 115,

9, 119

174

189—90; 27, 28, 38

180

Germany 157-8; 50 France 103

Montfort, Simon de 86-7 Lankhills, Winchester 77,

78,

(Hants)

67, 68, 70, 72, 74, 76,

192

Latin 137, 139-41, 143, 151, 152, 153, 154; 44-6 Laubingen, W Germany 65 Lauderdale House, Highgate, Gter London 129, 41 Lawrence, G F 11 lead 137—42, 147; 22, 44, 47, 7

Leeds (Kent)

131;

122

Leicestershire Lemuria 64

17, 18, 134,

(Haute-Garonne)

43-4

Moor Park, Rickmansworth (Herts) morris dancing 6 mundus 44 Muntham Court (W Sussex) 90 Murray, Dr Margaret 160, 176 Murrell, James (‘Cunning’) 178-9

54

Mursley (Bucks) 91 Musbury (Devon) 121

Museum of Leathercraft 133 Museum of London 115 mutilation of sculptures 97-106; 29, 31

174

libation pipes 61, 139; 22 Le Puy

(Haute-Loire)

Lincoln

97

nail-parings 165, 172, 173, 179; 53 nails 163, 165, 168, 173, 174, 180; 52, 55, 57

91

Liversidge, Joan

Llandow

Neatham

75

(S Glamorgan)

Llanidloes

(Powys)

65

153,

177

Lloyd, T A 154 Llyn Cerrig Bach (Anglesey) 24, 29, 112, 186; 7 Llyn Fawr (Glamorgan) 24 loom-weights 43 Loon op Zand, Netherlands 120 Lothbury, City of London 129 love tokens 116

Newstead

Lower

Norfolk

Slaughter

(Glos)

99

Lower Thames Street, City of London Lullingstone (Kent) 77, 79, 104; 33 Luppitt (Devon) 122 Lutterworth (Leics) 18;

101; 31

48

Netherlands

4-5, 9-11, 12-15, 16, 34, 58, 60; 1,

61, 120,

Newington

Causeway,

(Borders)

nuts

42, 118,

Orpington

Maiden Castle (Dorset) 50 Malleus Maleficarum (Sprenger and Kramer)

185

45

167,

168; 55

144, 146, 147

120

Netherlands

Orkneys 162 ornaments, personal {Kent)

120

35, 36; 25

38, 67; 14

O’Suilleabhain, S 124 Overton Down (Wiltshire)

154

161,

oxen

London

128

Oldenzaal,

137, 138, 150-2,

52; 16

Southwark,

134, 168,

(Herts)

134,

Odell (Beds) 46 Odiham (Hants)

Magi 152-3, 158

189; 20

51

numerical squares

129

173,

Newgate Street, City of London

Norwich

/

Mabinogion 74 Magdalene College, Cambridge Macdonald, J L 70, 74 1, 6, 36, 133,

Neolithic period 2 Neptune 99

Northwood

Luxembourg Gardens, Paris 43 Lydney Park (Glos) 90, 93

magic

(Hants)

necromancy 36; 11 needles 169, 171, 180; 58

38

42, 43, 46, 47, 48, 116, 117

173, 190-1

Man, Isle of 117 Manning, Prof W H 30 Marbodaeus of Rennes 11 Marsh, Geoff 37 Martin of Tours, St 81, 83 martyrs

Padstow (Cornwall) 180; 58 Pagan's Hill (Somerset) 93

pairs of offerings 66—7 palaeolithic tools 16 Papillon Hall (Leics) 154 Parsons, Catherine 172-3, 176, 177 Passion, Instruments of 182

79, 81, 83, 86, 93

Mather, Cotton 174 Mather, Increase 161, 174 mausoleum 94, 95 Medicina

de Quadrupedibus

megalithic monuments Megetia

81

Mellitus

96

PATERNOSTER 142-3, 150 Paul’s Pier Wharf, City of London (Placitus)

4-5

Mercury, 83, 97, 99; 26, 29, 30 Metz (Moselle) 122-3

119,

185

163; 52

Peaslake (Surrey) 43 Pennington Street, Stepney, London 164 Penrhos Bradwen Farm (Anglescy) 155 pentagrams 125 Pentrenant (Powys)

Philp, Brian

42

150, 154; 48

30, 32

Index / 223 Piggott, Prof Stuart

30

pigs

125

35, 43, 66, 117,

pilgrimages pilgrim

79, 81, 85, 87, 88, 91, 92, 96, 108-9

badges

108-9,

Pilton (Northants) pins pits

Sadducismus St Andrew’s,

110,

134-5,

165,

168,

187,

191; 37, 6

129

49, 112, 163, 164, 186; 53-5, 57, 58 8, 32-3, 36; 11

173,

174,

175,

180,

see also shafts Plaisterers’ Hall, Noble Street, City of London

165;

special burial Rev

47, 49 123

52 17, 18

prescription 157 Price, J E 104-5 Prince's Street, City of London prone burial 76, 189

protective magic 'puits funeraires’

44

45, 48 38, 40; 12

rats 127, 129 ravens 32, 42, 115

Reculver (Kent) 51 relics 81, 82, 85-8, 93, 94, 96 1, 6, 36

serpents 125 Sewerby (Humberside) Sextus Placitus 119 shafts 40-4

77

sheep

35, 43, 46, 47, 52, 66, 107,

ships

54, 57, 88; 18

85, B6, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 97

107-15,

29

Somerset 41, 143; 46 sorcery 36, 137, 141 Sousse, Tunisia 139

definition of 6, 7 187

see also Thames, River Roach Smith, Charles 26 Roman period 2, 3, 7, 10-11, 14, 15, 16, 26, 35, 36, 37, 45, 46, 47-8, 49, 51, 61, 64, 68, 71, 77, 90, 96-106, 126, 127, 137—42, 186, 189; 18-20, 22-5, 44, 2 Rome 61, 81, 89, 106 Rose Ash (Devon) 66 Ross, Anne 40, 43, 44, 45 Rouen (Seine-Maritime) 48, 192

121

sacrifice, animal 22, 30, 34, 38, 47, 52, 72, 117, 118-19, 185, 186; 16 foundation 50-2, 117-18, 131, 186 human 5, 22-3, 43, 50-1, 52, 64-5, 66, 72, 75, 76, 77, 116, 134

South Cadbury (Somerset) 1, 9, 33, 34, 51 South Kilworth (Leics) 17, 18 South Ockenden (Essex) 124, 129, 185-6 Southwark, London 37, 47, 49, 50, 79, 129; 25 Southwark Cathedral, London 47, 97, 101 spearheads 29, 41, 42 spells, magical 154—5 Spencer, Brian 109

spills, wooden spoon

66-7,

168; 57 136

spoon-bit 107 Sprenger, J 161 Springhead (Kent) 51, 90, 93, 103, squares, magic 142-4, 146; 45, 46

staff, ceremonial

106; 32

117

Staines (Surrey) 9, 47 Stanton (Shropshire) 177

starling 42 statues, parts of 97, 99, 102,

190-1

118, 125, 186; 40

shrouds 78, 79 Siculus Flaccus 38 Silchester (Hants) 48, 52, 96 Simpelveld, Netherlands 61; 20 situla 43 Skerne (Humberside) 107 skulls, animal 29, 32, 33, 46, 47, 70, 123-5, 128-9,

slate 155 slave chains

Richborough (Kent) 97 ritual, attitudes to 2, 7-9, 45, 193-4

see also burials sacrilegious customs

Seine, River 89, 103 separation, rites of 71—6, 78

185-6, 188 human 27, 37, 38, 45-6, 47, 52, 60, 82, 86, 125, 188; 6

reliquaries 86 Renfrew, Prof Colin 3, 4 Revelation, Book of 143, 146

Ruxley Farm, Ewell (Surrey)

122; 5

61, 81

re-use of 97, 104-5; 3 seagull 51 sca-urchins, fossil 16

Christian

33, 42, 43

rivers, disposal in 99, 101, 103 offerings to 9, 15-16, 24—30,

120

shrew 36 shrines 34, 35, 138

Rangoon Street, City of London

religion

(Pas de Calais)

model 67-8 shoes 74, 129, 131, 133-6; 41-3

128-35 43

Queen Street, City of London quern

St Omer

131

Scholes, S 163 Scotland 16, 30, 51, 127, 159, 162 sculptures 96-106, 190, 191-2; 29, 33

129

Assheton

94

saints, cult of 81, 84, 86-7, 115 Sandklef, Albert 125 sarcophagus 61; 20, 21 Saxon period 12, 76, 94, 108, 117, 119; 2 Schorn, John 135; 6

pottery 3, 8, 33, 35, 36, 38, 41, 43, 46, 47-8, 49, 52, 54, 119-21, 127, 188; 17 acoustic pots 121—3, 124, 126-8; 4, 5 complete 3—8, 33, 36, 38, 42, 43, 47—8, 49, 52, 54, 71, 121, 188, 189; 11, 12, 14, 15 Pownall,

(Kent)

St Peter's Mancroft, Norwich 122 St Peter's per Mountergate, Norwich St Peter's, Rome

Inn (Heref/Worcs)

Potterne (Wilts)

Canterbury

127-8

94

St Michael Bassishaw, City of London 82 St Michael Paternoster Royal, City of London St Olave's, Chichester (W Sussex) 122

54

planets 146 plaque, votive 28; 5 plaster burials 78-9; 25 Pliny the Elder 10 Pogny (Marne) 67 Pompeii 143 Portchester Castle (Hants) Porter, Enid 126 Portway

St Clare Street, City of London 36; 11 St George's Chapel, Windsor (Berkshire) St Martin's,

34, 49

175

St Augustine’s, Wembley Park, Gter London 182 St Bride’s, Fleet Street, City of London 78, 94-5 St John's Abbey, Colchester (Essex)

refuse 32 ritual 30, 44, 49; 9-11 storage

Triumphatus (Glanvil) 161, 171-2, Holborn, City of London 95

statuettes see figurines

191; 29, 31

224 / Index steelyard

42

United States of America Upchurch (Kent) 49

‘steeple’ bottles 16-21, 174; Stephen, St 81, 85 Stepney, Gter London 67

7

Stone-by-Faversham (Kent)

94

stones, holed

161-2

standing 38 Stowmarket (Suffolk) Stradbroke

Ur (Iraq) 65, 67 urine 20, 163, 168-71,

168

Stratford St Mary (Suffolk) studs, upholstery 168; 57 substitute offerings

168

Vindolanda (Northumb) Virgin Mary 191

24-5, 28, 48, 68, 112,

115,

190; 3,

38 Suffolk 75, 124, 167, 168; 55-7 Sun

146,

superstition 1,6, 9, 134, 191 Sutton Walls (Heref/Worcs)

Swan Lane, City of London Swann, Miss ] M 133, 134 Sweden

(Hants)

51

110

Tarrant

pins

44

Rushton

(Dorset)

112, 115; 7

122; 4

Walking Dead

7

7, 11, 35, 51, 93, 95, 96, 99, 116, 125-6

termination, rite of 49, 50 terret-rings 66 Tewkesbury (Glos) 129 Thames, River 9, 15-16, 24, 25, 26, 99, 101, f07, 108, 109-11,

163, 174, 187, 190, 193; 4, 30

theatres, classical 121-2 Thomas Becket, St 87, 88, 115, 191 Thornhaugh (Northants) 174 thorns 169, 180 Thorpe, W A 17-18 threshing floors 124, 125, 126 thresholds 189

52, 54, 118,

119,

120,

112

Walbrook, River 26-7, 28, 50 Wales 24, 29, 46, 52, 54, 64, 65, 112, 177, 186; 7, 22, 48

Telegraph Street, City of London temples

Viroconium see Wroxcter Vitruvius Pollo 121-2, 126-7

Waalwijk, Netherlands 120 Wadhurst (E Sussex) 136 Wait, Gerald 194

125, 131

swords 26, 29, 41, 42, 107-8, miniature 28; 38

47

votive offerings 16, 24, 26, 35, 36, 48, 88-93, 103, 107-15, 189-90; 27, 28, 31, 32 anatomical 88—91, 103, 104, 190; 27, 28, 31, 32 miniature 28, 112, 115, 190; 27, 28, 38

77

Swanwick

180; 58

voles 36

148-9

sun-cult

172, 174,

Veii, Italy 89 Verona, Italy 103 Verulamium (Herts) 29, 52, 81 Vikings 65, 92, 107, 108, 125

55

(Suffolk)

174-5

173,

174, 187,

Wasperton (Warwicks) 36 water, deposits in 24, 25-30, 37, 99-100, 101, 103, 107-12,

wax figure

115,

163; 30, 31

155

103,

112,

Thuxten (Norfolk) toads 36, 161

Westminster, London 9, 13, 163; 53 Wetteren, Belgium 99

Dr AE

168

West Bradford (Lancs) 148; 8 West Malling (Kent) 162; 51

185

92-3, 110, 187; 35

tombs 5, 58, 60, 61, 84, 85, 93, 94, 139 tombstones 104-5 tongs 29, 187

on pot 52; 17 tools 27, 29-30, 48; 8 bone 43, 65

Wickford (Essex) 47 William I, King 88 Wilmslow

(Cheshire)

24

Wilsford (Wilts) 44 Wilson, (Sir) David 108 Wilton Place (Glos) 147-8; 47 Winchester (Hants) 52, 67, 68, 70, 72, 74, 76, 77, ^W. 192

miniature 48 on pot 52; 17 stone 65 torc 68—9; 23

Winds of tbe Milky Way (film) Windsor (Berkshire) 92, 127-8

Tournus (Saóne et Loire) 99 Tower of London 115, 131

witch-bottles 20, 163-75, 178-83, 187, 189; 52-8 witchcraft 131, 159-83, 186 witches 159-77, 179 white 150-2, 154, 161, 178, 179

Winklebury

transition, rites of Trier, Germany

71

180

137-8,

139,

Trig Lane, City of London ‘trindle’ 90 tripod-pitchers 120 tyres, chariot

(Glos)

Underhill, Union

witch-marks

142

118; 40

word reversal 129

126

161, 176

140, 148

word squares 142-4; 45 Wroxeter (Viroconium) (Shropshire)

35, 90, 96, 141; 29

F W

128

Street, Southwark,

125-6

8, 32

Witham (Essex) 96 Wonersh (Surrey) 174 Wood, MM 130, 131

29

Tyseley, Birmingham Uley

(Hants)

winnowing-fan

Trevone (Cornwall)

London

186,

cursing 155 *well-wishing' 155 Werner,

tobacco pipes 136 tokens, basce-metal

153-5,

75, 82

Thrimby Hall (Bedfordshire) 123 thunderbolts 10 ‘thunderstones’ 11, 12, 13, 15 118,

150,

Waltham Abbey (Essex) 30, 112, 153, 187; 8 Warcham St Mary (Norfolk) 134 Warwick Square, City of London 67; 24, 2

weapons, imitation 24-5; 3 miniature 28, 112, 115, 190; 38 ?votive 24, 26, 35, 190 wells 41, 43, 45-8, 51, 82, 97, 99, 101, 189, 192

167,

139,

47

Yeavering (Northumb) 116-17 Youlton (Cornwall) 66

52, 82