THE AGM LECTURE, 2004

THE ARTE AND CRAFTE TO KNOWE WELL TO DIE.

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MEDIEVAL BURIALS

Barney Sloane (English Heritage)

The archaeology of medieval death and burial has often been beset by a presumption that burials after the Norman Conquest and up to the Reformation of the mid-I6th Century do not have a huge amount to contribute to our understanding of medieval life and beliefs.  Burials had no grave finds, they all lay east- west, and they intercut terribly so are very laborious to excavate.

Development booms in London and other historic towns in the 1980s and  1990s led to a large number of medieval graveyards being excavated.

Support from English Heritage and the Arts and Humanities Research Board has allowed detailed research into the information contained in these cemeteries. It is now becoming clear that the contribution of medieval mortuary studies is very significant indeed.

This is a very brief summary of the results of research conducted over the last four years by myself and Professor Roberta Gilchrist of the University of Reading.  A major monograph will be published by the Museum of London Archaeology Service in September, 2005.

The medieval funeral was a complex process involving rituals at the death-bed, preparation of the body and coffin, procession to the church, the funeral service at the  church, another procession to the grave side and further rituals there.  Many people left money to have even more funeral rites every year on the anniversary of their death. The root of all this preparation was to ensure that the souls of the dead were not taken to Hell. and that their trip through the fires of Purgatory were as brief and painless as possible.  

Our research suggests that the structure and layout of medieval graves and their contents opens a brand new window onto these various stages of the funeral.  Firstly, there is evidence of the preparation of the body.

Following death the body was washed carefully by the woman of the household. It is usually believed that the corpse was stripped of all clothing and accoutrements for this.  However, finds of bracelets, rings, earrings, or jewellery show that some  people deliberately left favoured items with the dead. More curious rites have been encountered: the mouths of three men were stopped up with ash in one Norwich cemetery and another man, buried in the priory of St Ethernan on the Isle of May, had part of a scallop shell and a sheep bone placed in his mouth. We do not know quite what these rites meant, but it is clear that they were important. Many people were buried in clothing as indicated by finds of buckles, hooks and strapends, and occasionally the clothing itself.  At Hull Friary, waterlogging led to the survival of whole woollen gowns and even undergarments.  The clothing was of a quality to show that these people (15^th Century date mainly) were buried in their "Sunday best", and so we can see that there was pride in the appearance of the deceased.

We can also tell that several kinds of items were deliberately placed with the dead as part of their preparation before the body was put in its coffin.

These include lead crosses,  pilgrim badges perhaps from holy sites that they had visited during life, and interestingly, bullae, the round lead seals from Papal Indulgences. The latter were documents that cancelled the time that might be spent in Purgatory, and the seals carried the name of the Pope who issued the document and pictures of St Peter and St Paul.   These finds are of enormous importance as their inclusion in graves was not formally prescribed by the Church, and only very rarely is their use mentioned in documents.  They thus represent the beliefs of ordinary people that totems with holy symbols might ward off evil and perhaps   transfer their protection to the soul.

The most remarkable finds, perhaps, are those of a medical nature. In several graves we have found thin metal caps designed to protect parts of the arm, knee or elbow. The best preserved show that they were sewn together around damaged bones or joints, and would have had poultices sandwiched between them. They were easily removed, so why were they left for burial?  If their size might mean that they were overlooked (hardly likely), the same cannot be said for a full hernia truss found around the midriff of a man at Merton priory. It seems that people believed these items would in some way help the dead person, or were an integral part of their earthly form.

It is almost certain that most of these items were placed with the corpse before its shrouding and placement in the coffin. They were therefore probably chosen by the family of the dead person and represent evidence of a new kind for the private devotion and mourning of medieval people.

The coffin itself also tells us something of medieval Britons. Most people do not appear to have been buried in one, as far as we can tell, although dowelled wooden coffins would not necessarily leave any evidence. Medieval Jews used coffins almost all the time (from the two sites that have been excavated - Winchester and York), and coffins were used extensively in the Black Death cemetery at East Smithfield. Interestingly, it seems that a greater percentage of women were buried in coffins than men.

Coffins could be decorated and specially shaped, such as those with bow-sides and bow-tops found at Hull, and they could be painted, lined, and provided with carrying rings if one was wealthy enough. Not only wood was used - lead and stone coffins were also employed. Sometimes linings were placed in the coffins. The most intriguing is the use of ash as bedding for the corpse.  Where the ashes have been analysed, they are filled with domestic waste (fragments of burned pottery, seeds, bones, nails, mollusc shell, etc), and so were presumably being taken from the home hearth.

The body, prepared and placed in its container, was now ready to make its way to church. Bells would be rung, and as many mourners as possible were enticed to join the cortege. To bolster numbers, gifts of money, clothing, food or shoes would often be distributed by the executors of the better-off to the poor, if they attended.

While the funeral service was in progress, the gravedigger would be preparing the grave. Here again there is a huge variety of evidence.   Graves could be specially shaped so that there was a head-niche.

They sometimes had linings of chalk, green sandstone chippings or wooden boards. Often they could be walled with stones, mortar or even roof tiles. All this strongly suggests an element of display and again allows us to think of the nature of the funeral in a new light.

A further category of finds could be placed in graves once the body or coffin had been positioned. These include chalices and patens (for priests almost certainly - with some made of beeswax remarkably surviving), staffs or wands, occasionally glass vessels and  sometimes lead or wooden crosses, or plaques. These were almost certainly placed at the time of burial, so must represent a different form of commemoration or reparation.

They seem to be more closely linked to orthodox church teachings, such as those of John Mirk, a 14th century liturgist who described the need for a cross and a staff to be placed with the deceased.

Finally, the grave was backfilled and the mourners would leave the graveyard. This was not the end of the matter however, as markers or slabs were often placed over the grave at some point. Archaeology can show that these could not have been set up immediately following the burial: the ground above the corpse would have to settle and be levelled. Often, when such stone, or tile markers are found, they can be shown to be not quite exactly over the body, suggesting that the erectors knew roughly, but not precisely where the body lay.  External cemetery markers were far less common it seems than intramural monuments, but that they are found shows that medieval people were intent on maintaining commemoration of their loved ones.

Graves could be reopened for good or bad reasons, and the bones disturbed or removed. The motivations could be to remove unauthorised burials, to remove a particularly holy person's remains to a grander location, to take bones from their original burial location to a new one favoured by the descendants, or even to rob out lead or valuables as occurred at the  Dissolution  of  the Monasteries in the 1530s.  Archaeological evidence of this occurs in several forms. At Bermondsey Abbey were found four cleaned out graves, but we only know their purpose because an arm remained in one of them. At Lindisfarne Priory, a lead plaque was deposited with the reburied remains of three monks stating that their bones had been moved from the priory garden to the cemetery in 1215.  At St Mary Graces, Tower Hill, robbed graves were found in the church, with almost no evidence of the former occupants left intact.

When examined on a broad scale, the archaeology of medieval graves has a great deal to tell us about how medieval people approached death and the afterlife.  Almost all of these belief systems are undocumented in historical records, therefore excavation and careful analysis adds greatly to our understanding, and justifies the labour and resources expended many times over.