Prehistoric
Burials
Scotland’s prehistory
stretched for some 9500 years from the earliest settlers to around AD
1000. There was some written history during the last thousand years
of that period, but so little that it was effectively still a
prehistoric era, and we rely upon archaeology to provide details of
how people treated their dead. I should note at this point that these
are not the normal everyday people but people whose remains for some
reason were treated in an exceptional way; in a way that provides us
archaeological evidence. The majority of the people are not
archaeologically visible. Their remains used in a way that rendered
their decomposition complete. We will only be concerned here with the
sites that have left physical evidence.
So
let us now go in search of what remains of the prehistoric burials of
the coast of East Lothian.
Barrows:
Ancient burial mounds.
The
earliest formal burials in Scotland that we know about, and which
involved any kind of grave structure, took place after about 4000 BC.
These took the form of a chambered tomb which were often constructed
form large stones or as was the case in lowland Scotland, timber,
turf and earthi.
Into these tombs would be placed the decomposed and disarticulated
remains of the deceased. The chambered tomb was then covered with a
mound of earth or a stone cairn. The later mounds were often round in
shape but the earliest were long and rectangular. Evidence for such
long barrows in our area of interest can be found (Table 1) near
Luffness Mains (NE47 NE5) (illustration 1)and Aberlady (NT47 NE1).
| RCAHMS SITE NUMBER | LOCATION OF FIND | SITE TYPE |
| NT47NW 1 | Aberlady Parish | BARROW(S), CIST, LONG CIST(S) |
| NT47NE 1 | Aberlady, St Mary's Chapel | BURIAL GROUND, CHAPEL, CIST(S), CROSS SLAB |
| NT48SE 1.01 | Luffness House | CIST(S) |
| NT48SE 4 | Luffness House | CIST |
| NT48NE 1 | Gullane Links | CAIRN(S) |
| NT48SE 21 | Gullane Sands | CINERARY URN, MOULD (CLAY) |
| NT48NE 6 | Gullane Links | LONG CIST |
| NT48SE 19 | Gullane Golf Course | LONG CIST(S) |
| NT48SE 24 | Gala Law | CINERARY URN |
| NT48SE 53 | Gala Law | BURIAL |
| NT48SE 5 | Kilspindie Golf Course | CIST(S) |
| NT47NW 7 | Longniddry Golf Course | CIST(S), BEAKER, CINERARY URN(S) |
| NT48SE 14 | Park Hills (West Fenton) | CIST |
| NT58NW 6 | West Links (not far from the Eel Burn) | CIST(S), CINERARY URN(S) |
| NT77NW 16 | Broxmouth (Dunbar) | BURIAL(S), CIST(S) |
Table
1: Prehistoric burials of the East Lothian coast
Illustration 1: Luffness Mains: RCAHMS Aerial Photography Digital Oblique aerial view of the cropmarks of the settlement and barrows, taken from the E. DP070181 Copyright RCAHMSImage
However, these sites have not been explored in any detail. For a well excavated site we have to go to Eweford near Dunbar, which was thoroughly excavated and revealed evidence of burial practice relating to this time period. Archaeological excavations were carried out between 2001 and 2004, in preparation for the upgrading of the A1 to dual carriageway between Haddington and Dunbar. At Eweford they found evidence that suggested people started to bring human remains to the site about six thousand years ago. Here they built and rebuilt a large mound and capped it with a stone cairn. Their funereal practices also involved the construction of a timber enclosure and successive mortuary structures; mortuary enclosures are considered to have been used for the exposure of human remains prior to secondary burial. These wooden constructions were eventually destroyed by fireii.
The
long barrows are also considered to have had some sort of territorial
symbolism; perhaps signifying that the area adjacent to the barrow is
owned by the group whose ancestors are entombed insideiii.
The burial mounds are very prone to erosion by the elements and stone
cairns have often vanished due to the stone being robbed out for
another purpose. The mounds that were in the fertile land of East
Lothian are vulnerable to damage by ploughing; often it is just
aerial photography that reveals where they once were.
On
the other hand, the act of ploughing has revealed to us hidden
graves, especially the stone lined box grave we know as a 'cist' and
it is to this form of burial that we now turn.
Cists
The cist burial can be
separated into two distinct types: the short cist and the long cist.
The one main thing that they have in common is that they are
basically a hole lined with stone slabs, into which was put human
remains and sometimes artefacts. The trend towards placing remains in
cists started in the late third millennium BC. The earliest form was
the short cist, which was used for the burial of single, multiple,
articulated, cremated and mixed cremated remainsiv.
The Bronze Age short cist does not tend to have grave-goodsv
but some have been found to contain cinerary urns (for it was at this
time that the use of cinerary urns was being adopted in Scotlandvi)
into which the cremated remains would be placed and then inhumed in
the cist. Usually only the remains of one person would be placed in
the urn but sometimes there would be two or more. However, at one
site near Dunbar the remains of at least 21 individuals were found in
one massive cist that dates to the Iron Agevii.
What is not known is whether these people died at the same time or
were they kept aside until a specific person died and their remains
would join the first?
The next phase of cist
burial was the long cist. This was as the name suggests, a full
length stone lined burial. These graves appear more frequently in the
archaeological record from the first few centuries AD onwardsviii.
Cist burials are the
most numerous of prehistoric burial types that are found in the
Luffness and surrounding area and we should now take a look at the
cist burials that have been recorded.
Coastal Cists
We
can see from the excavations and finds that have been recorded that
the coastal plain of East Lothian has numerous prehistoric
inhumations of the short cist type. All along the coast from Dunbar
to Longniddry, on the elevated spots of Kingston common (NT58SW 152)
and around North Berwick Law (NT58SE 13) can be found short cist
burials. In fact the site at Kingston has evidence of burials
spanning the Neolithic to the early second millennium ADix.
If
we move down the coast a little from North Berwick onto the West
Links,there is an area near the Eel Burn (NT58NW 6) where Bronze Age
cists were found. A total of twenty three cists, three of which had
urns. Human bones without cists were also found at the burn side.
There
is no evidence of burials from the Eel Burn to Marine Villa but a
little further along the coast there is another site that was popular
for cist burials in the Iron Age (NT48NE 1). The site was visited in
1902 and the investigatorsx
found bones protruding from the dunes and the remains of small
cairns. Some of the cairns had cists underneath them (illustration
2).
Illustration
2: One of the cists was described as being
of a different type from the others and had a 'circular flattish
mound of sand and stones, about two yards in diameter and one and a
half feet high.' This grave contained the well preserved skeletons
of three adults.Proc Soc Antiq Scot May 12 1902. Page 654- 658
This
site in 1902 was around 200m South of Eyebroughy, in a windswept
valley between two sand dunes. In 1962 the cairns had vanished,
believed to have been covered in wind blown sand. However, they were
rediscovered (NT48NE 1) forty years later when the cairns became
visible again. This just goes to show you the changing nature of this
wind blown landscape.
Now
we continue along the coast to the other side of Gullane where we
find Gullane Golf Club. Here in 1968 there was discovered the site of
a long cist cemetery (NT48SE 19).It is described thus:
'A group of long cists was discovered on the 26th December 1968 during the removal of sand on Gullane No 3 Golf Course. Four adult graves, each containing a well-preserved skeleton, aligned roughly ENE-WSW, were arranged in a row side by side, about 2ft 9 ins apart, and a fifth cist, 2ft 3 ins long, containing the inhumation of a baby, lay to the N. An exploratory trench to the W of these cists revealed the capstones of a sixth long cist, which was not fully excavated. The total number of cists at this site is unknown, but the fact that at least a second row of graves exists suggests that there is a well organised cemetery. There is no record of a chapel. Following the excavation, the cists were left intact, and covered over with sand and turf.'
It
seems that the land under what is now the sacred turf of many a
championship links course, once provided the community with a
hallowed site to conceal the remains of their dead; or to put it
another way – we have gone from burials to bunkers!
The
Gullane burials could well have been visible from the vantage point
of Gala Law, which is a place that has drawn people to it over the
ages. Here was also found evidence of burial activity. Finds here
have included several pieces of cinerary urn (NT48SE 24) which were
found in 1880 and in April 1984 (NT48SE 53) two incomplete male
skeletons were found by some children playing by the erosion face of
a sandy bank. However, inspection of the site revealed no traces of a
cist or pit, nor were there any artefacts.
Further
down the hill we find the site (NT48SE 1.01) of the supposed Viking
graves; these we discussed in the previous chapter. These were not
the only graves found at Luffness as another skeleton was found in a
long cist in a field between the house and the Avenue (NT48SE
4)though no claims are made about its origin. A little further inland
at (NT48SE 14) Park Hills near West Fenton a cist was discovered in
December 1943 when ploughing a field. This cist was about 1m deep and
50cm wide and contained the inhumation of a child, accompanied by a
beaker. The beaker was thought to be from the Early Bronze Age.xi
The
practice of placing of beakers into graves is thought to have arrived
from Scandinavia with the so called 'Beaker People' who it is
suggested introduced metal working to Britain 4000 years ago. Beakers
were fancy pots for drink or food. Another example from a cist
containing a child's grave was found at Thornton at Innerwickxii.
It is thought to date from sometime between 2300 and 1800 BC. We can
only surmise at the reasons why beakers were placed in graves.
I
can't find any evidence for burials in the Nature Reserve area but I
suppose that this isn't surprising given the changing nature of this
landscape. Once over the Peffer Burn this all changes, as the coast
from Aberlady to Longniddry was once a very popular place for burial.
It was (NT47NW 1) described in 1792xiii
as having:
'…...a great many stone graves, all of them that have been opened containing human bones; particularly in Gosford Links, they are laid almost as thick as in a churchyard; many of them lie nearly south and north.'
The
orientation of these graves indicates that they were Pagan due to the
fact that Christian graves are usually orientated east west. The
author also described the presence of two large tumuli close
to the graves.
This
abundance of ancient burials continues into the area that is now home
to Longniddry golf course and into the private gardens of the
residents of Longniddry (NT47NW 6, 7, 10, 13, 14, 39). Excavations at
Longniddry have unearthed at least forty different cist burials. The
largest of these was in the garden of a house called Four Windsxiv,
where a cemetery was found containing at least twenty seven graves.
It is likely that the cemetery was in use from the first half of the
fifth to the beginning of the eighth century AD. This time span shows
a continuity of use into the Christian period and I wonder if it
ceased perhaps when they moved to a burial site close to a chapel?
Continuity and conclusion
One
of the most captivating elements of this subject is the continuity
that can be found at different sites. A site such as the burial mound
at Eweford was intermittently used for thousands of years; remaining
significant throughout many different burial practices and belief
systems. Archaeologists found evidence that when the mound at Eweford
was two thousand years old, people started digging pits around the
base of the mound and depositing burnt human remains in them. This
practice is thought to have continued for about six hundred years.
Then later generations covered these pits with stone cairns and into
the cairn material they incorporated bone and other artefacts. A
later generation then started removing stones from the cairn so that
they could create hollows into which they placed human remains. By
the time this was happening the mound was an ancient monument which
had been the focus point for ceremony for millennia. It was to this
site that the people came in 700 BC to start a new phase; they cut
into the mound and placed a cist to hold the remains of a funeral
pyre. Evidence for similar activity was found at a site close by
called Pencraig Hill. This was the site of an ancient mortuary into
which the people inserted a cist precisely in relation to the earlier
monument, which had been built and burned a millennia earlierxv.
However,
the enthusiasm for such burials did not continue into subsequent
generations. Burials in the Christian period moved into the
churchyard in what was becoming the medieval world. Therefore, we
must end our tour through the burial
sites of time and place, even though we have just scratched the
surface of this fascinating subject.
References
iHistoric
Scotland Leaflet: Prehistoric Burials, 2011
iiThe
Lands of Ancient Lothian, O. Lelong and G. MacGregor 2008. ISBN13:
978 0903903 417: Page xxi
iiiThe
countryside Encyclopaedia. R. Muir. 1988. ISBN. 0-333-43621-0:)Page
118
ivThe
Lands of Ancient Lothian, O. Lelong and G. MacGregor 2008. ISBN13:
978 0903903 417: Page 230
vThe
Lands of Ancient Lothian, O. Lelong and G. MacGregor 2008. ISBN13:
978 0903903 417: Page 110
viHistoric
Scotland Leaflet: Prehistoric Burials, 2011
viiBrothwell
and Powers, D R and R (1967) 'A massive cist with multiple Burials
of Iron Age date, Lochend, Dunbar, Part II:The Iron Age people of
Dunbar', Proc Soc Antiq Scot, vol.98
viii
Historic Scotland Leaflet: Prehistoric Burials, 2011
ix
SAIR34Two prehistoric short-cists and an early medieval long-cist
cemetery with dug graves on Kingston Common, North Berwick, East
Lothian by Ian Suddaby: http://www.sair.org.uk/sair34/
xJ
T Richardson and J S Richardson Proc Soc Antiq Scot May 12 1902.
Page 654- 658
xi
http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_078/78_106_119.pdf
xii
http://nms.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-100-035-072-C&scache=2f0361o2ki&searchdb=scra
xiii
Roy, N (1792) 'Topographical description of the parish of Aberlady',
Archaeol Scot, vol.1 Page 517
xiv
Long cist burials at Four Winds, Longniddry,East Lothian: Magnar
Dalland, Proc SocAntiq Scot, 122 (1992), 197-206
xv
The Lands of Ancient Lothian, O. Lelong and G. MacGregor 2008.
ISBN13: 978 0903903 417: Pages 115 - 124
