It can be maintained with some certainty that cemeteries were formed at nodal points in the landscape, be they prehistoric monuments, crossing points, or assembly places. Their often
peripheral location has led to the theory that they were deliberately placed on estate boundaries (Goodier 1984; Petts 2002; Proudfoot 1996). Purposeful burial at boundary locations is well-known from early Irish and Anglo-Saxon contexts (Charles-Edwards 1976; O'Brien 2003; Reynolds 2002), and indicates a need for continuing engagement with the ‘powerful dead’ (Parker Pearson 1995), whether for legal, judicial or protective purposes. The correlation with burials and later medieval parish boundaries has often been noted, but proving direct continuity is fraught with difficulty as parishes were formalised centuries after the cemeteries under study (Goodier 1984). However, the correlation is too frequent to dismiss, and may best be understood as the parish boundaries forming around existing landscapes of assembly and movement, with burial sites (contemporary and ancient) playing a key role in negotiating these (Williams 1999; 2006: 186-187, 195-198).
Figure 6.4: Pictish stones and medieval parish boundaries in Aberdeenshire (RCAHMS 2007). Image Crown copyright © RCAHMS.
To gauge whether parish boundaries and cemeteries have any correlation in Scotland we must ideally use the oldest possible records and reconstruct medieval parish boundaries.
This is particularly difficult in Atlantic Scotland, where parish formation seems to have taken place later than other parts of the country (Cowan 1967; Gibbon 2007). In upland areas, the diminishing availability of good land requires a different sort of territorial management that may not be readily archaeologically visible.
In parts of the Lowland zone, we are on safer ground, as recent studies have shown the long-lived nature of the existing territorial organisation (Barrow 2003; Rogers 1997; Ross 2006). For instance, Pictish sculpture has been mapped onto reconstructed medieval parish boundaries in the Don valley of Aberdeenshire, demonstrating a strong correlation there (RCAHMS 2007); however, there are too few burials in the area to test for these (Figure 6.4). Luckily, the medieval parishes of Fife have recently been reconstructed as part of the
research on place-names (Taylor and Márkus 2006). When burials are mapped onto this, a disparity between types of cemeteries emerges (Figure 6.5). Some parishes, like St Andrews/St Leonards and Crail, have various flat grave cemeteries scattered within them.
However, square barrows tend to occur in clusters which correlate closely with parish boundaries. The correlation with Pictish sculpture is not borne out as strongly as in Aberdeenshire, and it may be that these are fulfilling lower-level estate-marking roles (cf.
Driscoll 1998c; Halliday 2006). Alternatively, they may be marking much higher-level boundaries: the distribution of symbol stones across the neck of the peninsula seems to echo the boundary of the deanery of St Andrews (Gondek 2003: 232), which may perpetuate the boundary between the ancient Pictish territories of Fife and Fothrif (Taylor and Márkus 2006). It is interesting that the square barrows also cluster along this line, as well as the county boundary itself, which mean they are playing a similar boundary-marking role.
Figure 6.5: Burials and early carved stones on Fife reconstructed medieval parishes; the boundary between ancient Fif and Fothrif are in heavy black (boundaries after Taylor and Márkus 2006).
The modern region of Dumfries and Galloway also has a good deal of closely-dateable early sculpture, diagnostic early burial, and partially reconstructed parish boundaries (Brooke 1994). Unfortunately, all of the square barrows in this area remain unconfirmed cropmarks (Cowley 1996), but if we accept for now the possibility that they are indeed contemporary burial sites, we can say that, much like Fife, the correlation between
sculpture and flat graves is rather weak, but rather stronger with regard to barrows (Figure 6.6). However, the distribution of cropmark sites in this area is severely restricted (Cowley 2002) and sites found thus far correlate strongly with major rivers, which in turn are often used as parish boundaries. In this region, burial does not correlate strongly with parish boundaries, and these sites may have been more centrally located than in eastern Scotland;
however, it is worth noting the different levels of soil acidity, land-use, and development in both regions which may affect the nature of the available evidence (above, 3.1).
Figure 6.6: Burials, early sculpture and parish boundaries in southwest Scotland; heavy black lines indicate reconstructed medieval boundaries (after Brooke 1994).
If we attempt the same kind of comparison in areas with good evidence for burial and early sculpture but without reconstructed medieval parish boundaries, we get a hint of what future study may reveal. A model of one-cemetery-per-parish has been proposed for the Lothians by Audrey Henshall’s landmark study (1956), but discoveries since then mean this can no longer be sustained. Being the area with the strongest tradition of inhumation burial, the Lothian evidence must be sorted into confirmed and unconfirmed sites (as discussed previously, 3.1). Rather than one cemetery per parish, we can see that some parishes have a number of cemeteries with a particularly strong correlation with boundaries (Figure 6.7). Where a site is not on or near a parish boundary, it is most often because it is on a river crossing, church site or other nodal point. There are too few early carved stones in the area to test for a correlation, although as noted above, the 5th or 6th century Latin inscription on the Catstane is in a long cist cemetery placed near a crossing of the river
Almond (Cowie 1978; Forsyth 2005). Once again, the situation in the Lothians proves unique within a Scottish context: in no other region is the correlation between flat grave cemeteries and (modern) parish boundaries quite as striking.
Figure 6.7: Burials and modern parish boundaries in the Lothians.
In contrast, the Atlantic zone shows a much greater tendency toward clustering of sites at parish centres rather than peripheries (Figure 6.8). However, as discussed above, this clustering may be more to do with the combined factors of restricted availability of well-drained arable land and modern normalization of parishes due to the reduced population.
Despite this, it is clear that, just as in the Lowlands, the natural geography was a strong factor of the placement of cemeteries and early carved stones, as the majority were placed at the mouths of rivers and coastal landing places.
These last three maps can only be a tantalising glimpse into the history of territorial organisation until medieval boundaries are fully reconstructed. In most cases, however, it is safest to assume that parish boundaries did not become formalised until centuries after these cemeteries were in use. The strength or weakness of the correlation then must be explained by the lingering cultural memory associated with these sites after they are
‘abandoned’ in the late first millennium AD. Where parish boundaries form on the sites of cemeteries no longer in use, the ‘use’ of these cemeteries can be said to continue, outlasting their physical function as burial places. Where burial does not correlate with
parish boundaries, the chronological gap between the use of the cemetery for burial and the formation of bounded territories may have been too large to be bridged by local memories.
Figure 6.8: Burials, Class I stones and modern parish boundaries in Caithness and Sutherland.
What we can say with some confidence is that there is a strong correlation between burial and parish boundaries in the Lowland zone, but that this changes depending on the local traditions of monumental territorial markers. In the Lothians, an area with few inscribed stones or monumental graves, long cist cemeteries were used to mark out territorial bounds. In the southwest, where barrows, inscribed stones, and inhumation cemeteries are all in use, only barrows seem to correlate with territorial bounds, however weakly, while the inscribed stones like the Petrus Stone (P Hill 1997: 616) instead marked individual estates within the larger parish. In Fife, barrows more clearly served as parish boundary markers, with long cist cemeteries and early sculpture placed at other nodal points in the landscape, including church centres, landing places, and river crossings. Why barrows and sculpture seem to play similar roles yet rarely appear together (as they often do in the Atlantic zone) has yet to be explained, and merits further exploration. In Aberdeenshire, the strong correlation between Pictish stones and parish boundaries may indicate a closer relationship with burial sites in this area, but more burial evidence is still needed. In all cases, we can be sure that burial played an important, if fluctuating, role in the creation and negotiation of contemporary and later boundaries. Burial in cemeteries was a new
statement in Scotland in the 5th and 6th centuries AD, and we can now begin to glimpse the reasons behind such purposeful burial practices.