Bronze age burial and culture in Northern England
The Gristhorpe Man and his world.
Gristhorpe is a small village on the North Yorkshire coast
in northern England, about 5 miles south of Scarborough, just on the edge of the Yorkshire
Wolds. The area is rich in prehistoric
barrows. One such barrow, now known as the Gristhorpe barrow or Gristhorpe
tumulus, was dug into in july 1834 by the then landowner William Beswick and a
group of his friends. The Gristhorpe tumulus was the most prominent of a group
of three barrows which stood close to the cliff top, overlooking the North Sea.
It had originally been a stone cairn which was later covered with clay and
turf. What they found inside the barrow was a large wooden coffin made from a
hollowed out trunk of an oak tree.
Unfortunately only the lid of the coffin now
remains intact. Oddly, the barrow seems to have been dug into about 500 years
after the original burial, and oak branches had been laid over the top of the
coffin. No one seems to know why this took place but it makes you wonder why
the occupant of the grave was still being in some way venerated or remembered
after such a long time. The coffin lid has a carving at one end which is in the
rough form of a human face, though it was more discernible when first excavated
than it is today. The coffin was buried in a north / south position with the head
end facing south. Inside was the perfectly preserved skeleton of a tall man,
stained black from the oak tannins, and wrapped in animal furs. He was lying on
his right side facing the sea (to the East). The waterlogged clay had kept the remains in
almost perfect condition. It is now
known that the burial took place around 2,200 b.c, in what was the early bronze
age in Britain and the Gristhorpe man is one of the best preserved bronze age
burials in Europe.
Log coffin burials from this period are extremely rare in
Britain. They are more common in Denmark but the Gristhorpe burial is about 700
years older than any yet found there. There are also log coffin burials from
this time known from Germany and the Netherlands. People were probably
migrating or exchanging ideas back and forth across the North Sea, possibly
settling in different areas, as they always had. It should be remembered that
only a few thousand years before this the area of the North Sea between
Yorkshire and Denmark was actually dry land (Doggerland) which was slowly
overwhelmed by the sea as the sea levels
rose after the last ice age. This was quite a long time but a memory of the
bond between these cultures could have remained in folklore and stories as well
as family ties, especially given the degree of travel and trade which is now
known to have existed.
Anyway, the man was about 6 ft tall, and had been around 60
years old when he died, He also had an almost full set of teeth. Tests showed
he had had a high quality diet all his life, mainly of vegetables and meat, and
oddly not much seafood even though he lived very close to the sea. Maybe he
just didn't like fish. All this makes a
lie of the old idea that prehistoric people were undernourished and unhealthy,
lived a brutal life and then died young. By this period in time the people in
this area were probably growing barley and possibly rearing animals for food as
well as hunting wild animals and gathering wild fruit and other foods, in a
climate probably warmer than the present, where water chestnuts grew in the
east Yorkshire wetlands.
He had been born locally (In the Scarborough area
rather than the Yorkshire Wolds which are close by) and probably lived in the
area all his life, though contrary to popular belief people travelled widely in
bronze age Europe, trading between the Mediterranean, Ireland, Scandinavia,
etc. in amber, metals, flint and other resources. Scarborough would have been a
busy place at that time with the easily defended headland being an economic
centre for bronze working and trade from distant sources. Keep in mind that
this is the period in Britain when the main structure at Stonehenge had already
been built, and when most stone circles were already old. Examples of remains from
around this period are everywhere to be seen in the area, including Rudston
Monolith (the tallest standing stone in Britain) which is not far to the south
across the Wolds, and many other barrows etc in the immediate vicinity, one of
which contained the famous Folkton 'drums' which are now in the British Museum
(why are they too not in the Scarborough museum ?), and the varied remains of
prehistoric rock art and other remains on the North York Moors a few miles to
the north. Thornborough Henges sacred landscape, a massive ritual centre including barrows, henges, and a cursus, which has been described as the most important prehistoric site in the north of England, lies just 50 miles to the west and must have been well known to the Gristhorpe people at this time. The famous Mesolithic village at Star Carr is also less than 5 miles
to the west, but this is from a much earlier period, about 8 - 9,000 b.c. about
6,000 years before Gristhorpe man lived, though this shows a long continuity of
habitation in this area. The bronze age in Britain was a rich, artistic and diverse
culture. Far from the 'primitive' people scraping a meagre living from the soil
that many people still imagine.
Archaeologists assume that because the Gristhorpe man had a
healthy diet and lived a long life he must have been a chieftain or some high
ranking member of society, but this doesn't have to be the case....maybe the
whole tribe was just well fed ! However,
the style of burial would seem to indicate someone important or maybe just well
liked.
There were several artefacts found with the body, a bronze
dagger ( the copper of which the bronze was made had originally come from
Ireland ) with a pommel made from a cetaceans (whales or dolphins ) jawbone, a
flint knife, a basket, and bones from the feet of a fox and a pine marten.
These may have been amulets just as people sometimes wear rabbits feet etc.
A couple of other interesting points....
It seems that the Gristhorpe man had some kind of benign
tumour growing in his brain, which although it probably wasn't the cause of his
death, would probably have given him severe headaches and probably epileptic
seizures. Many ancient cultures regard people with epilepsy as gifted or
special because during their seizures or trance states they are seen to have the ability to communicate with the
otherworld and gather important information from the spirits, or to possess
healing powers. This type of Shamanism would have been typical and commonly
practiced in bronze age Britain so this may be why he was still being venerated
long after his death. He was thought by his original discoverers to have
possibly been a druid or priest of some kind, and although technically speaking
druids were the priests of the Celtic peoples in the iron age, this is just
playing with words.....the bronze age shamans and Celtic druids would have
probably been indistinguishable from each other, with a continuity in their sacred beliefs and practices. Just a different name.
This leads me to the next point. Originally, one reason he
was thought to be a druid was because mistletoe berries were found in his
coffin, and mistletoe was a sacred plant to the druids because of its magical
and healing properties. Archaeologists now believe these berries are actually
gall stones or kidney stones, though this is disputed as a sample of the berries / stones could not actually be used for the analysis.
The Gristhorpe man was put on display in the Rotunda museum
in Scarborough soon after his discovery and is still there today with his grave
goods etc, though i have to say the modern display is not nearly as interesting
as the old one i remember as a child.
http://www.prehistory.yas.org.uk/content/gristhorpe.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gristhorpe_Man
http://www.uwhg.org.uk/reports/uwhg_meetings/04_mar_10/04_mar_10.html
https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/4426/Gristhorpe%20Man.pdf?sequence=6
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/229923572_Gristhorpe_Man_A_Raman_spectroscopic_study_of_'mistletoe_berries'_in_aBronze_Age_log_coffin_burial
Historical atlas of North yorkshire. R. Butlin 2003
The bronze age tree trunk coffin burial. W.C.Williamson 3rd
ed. 1872.
