ORGANIGRAMA

Rather than expect to find richly-furnished Anglo-Saxon style burial in which the deceased was dressed and other intact objects such as vessels and weapons were added to the grave,

in Scotland the use of grave goods is much rarer and often consists of fragmented objects instead. One Another class of grave goods comes in the form of reused Roman artefacts.

These have been discussed above (5.2.4), where it was argued that fragments of fine vessels like samian bowls and glass cups found in graves at Whithorn WIG and Hallow Hill, FIF represent early medieval reuse of curated Roman material (see also Campbell 2011). The best example of this is Whithorn WIG (discussed in depth in Chapter 7), where four graves contained Roman artefacts: two with sherds of abraded samian, and two with well-worn fragments of Roman glass bangles (P Hill 1997: 294-296). No radiocarbon dates were obtained from the earliest graves at Whithorn, but they are unlikely to be earlier than the late 5^th century, the date of the Latin inscription on the Latinus Stone (Forsyth 2009), so Roman inclusions are best interpreted as curated objects. Whithorn is, however, unique in many ways, yet there are nearby parallels. Not far from Whithorn is the 9-11^th century church at Barhobble, Mochrum WIG, where an undated grave contained a fragment of a Romano-British glass bangle among other objects (Cormack 1995: 72). Another 9-11^th century church at The Hirsel, Coldstream BWK had sherds of samian in graves, and a stray find of a Romano-British glass bangle, although in this case, the site reused an Iron Age settlement platform and the finds may be residual (Cramp 1985).

Many Anglo-Saxon graves include curated Roman material as grave goods, and whether these were intended as amulets, grave gifts, or cherished possessions, it seems to be the antiquity of the objects which tie them into wider patterns of funerary deposition, rather than any knowledge of their cultural origin (Eckardt and Williams 2003; White 1988). The most northerly instance of such Anglo-Saxon reuse of Roman material is actually from Scotland, where the Hound Point, Dalmeny WLO string of beads has a pierced sherd of Roman glass as its centrepiece (Meaney 1964: 304). A long cist in Airlie ANG also contained a Roman glass cup (Davidson 1886), and it is likely to be another example. The curation of such wares for eventual deposition in Scotland would tend to argue against this being solely an Anglo-Saxon practice. Furthermore, Whithorn, Hallow Hill and Barhobble also include other instances of furnished burial, indicating that the reuse of Roman material is simply part of the funerary practice in these cemeteries.

A wider trend of commemorating the dead with heirlooms and other keepsakes (Williams 2006: 77-78) can be seen in Scotland. Fragmentation seems to be an important part of this process, and this ties in with wider patterns of Iron Age ritual deposition (Hunter 1997a).

Among the objects in the ‘purse’ in cist 54 of Hallow Hill was a third of a silver bracelet (Proudfoot 1996: 418, 437). A fragmented iron ring was included in a grave at Whithorn WIG (P Hill 1997: 88). A small number of fragmentary shale or cannel coal armlets have

been found in or associated with graves at Lasswade MLO (Henshall 1956), Whithorn ring-pendants found associated with graves (5.2.2). This raises the possibility that fragmented jewellery functioned within the funerary ritual as a sort of ‘gift’ distributed among mourners, perhaps as keepsake joining them with the deceased (cf Brück 2006b). Another possibility is that shale-working went on either before or during the use of the place as a cemetery, as is the case with a number of early monastic burial grounds; it may be significant that shale-working occurs at a number of early monastic sites in the west (Hunter 2008a), and the earliest graves at these sites are often associated with craftworking areas (Chapter 8).

Whatever their association with the dead, the manufacture of some shale/cannel coal jewellery on holy sites may mean they retained amuletic or symbolic properties, and their presence at non-monastic burial grounds may be significant. The best example of this may be the monastery at Inchmarnock BTE, which may be where the shale armlet found in a grave at nearby St Ninian’s Point BTE was made (below, 8.1.3). A parallel may be found at Lochhead ANG: a single amber bead was associated with an individual with a cyst in the skull, and amber was thought to have healing properties in the medieval period (Dunbar forthcoming). Shale and glass are not known to be intrinsically amuletic materials, but their production on high-status holy sites in the Late Iron Age may have lent them some added value. The partition of such valued ornamental objects, then, may be significant when found in burial contexts, and may have carried significant mnemonic associations, whether as a protective amulet, or as a symbol of the partible, dividual identity of the discussion elsewhere (Blackwell in prep). But the use of grave goods in pre-Anglian layers at Whithorn shows the need for a more nuanced approach. Furnished burial may not be the reliable ethnic marker it is thought to be; whatever social role they had was presumably performed in other ways in north Britain, perhaps by the sculptured stones (Driscoll

1998c). Rather, we should see the act of furnishing a grave as one of many options mourners had when deciding how to display the body at the time of the funeral. This also links burial rites with wider patterns of votive deposition, a reminder of the continuing Iron Age ritual activity we can see amidst the changes of the 5^th century.