A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE 



While on the one hand the pre-historic people of Derbyshire may 

 often have buried their dead without any attempt to mark off the inter- 

 ment from the surrounding soil, there is evidence on the other hand that 

 their regard sometimes went beyond the mere providing of protective 

 devices in stone or wood. Occasionally the receptacle was paved, or it 

 contained finely broken stones, gravel, clay, or fine earth, upon which the 

 body was laid, or in which it was embedded. On Stanton and Hartle 

 Moors several cists containing cremated remains were filled with fine sand 

 which in one rested upon a bed of heath. In a grave at Shuttlestone 

 near Parwich * the body had been wrapped in a skin and laid upon a 

 couch of fern leaves, traces of both of which still remained. In another 

 grave near Kings Sterndale 2 Mr. Salt found a tenacious clay mixed with 

 grass and leaves which still retained their greenness, but the skeleton had 

 almost disappeared. The preservation of these perishable substances, 

 which under ordinary circumstances must have long since disappeared, 

 was due in the one case to the unusual depth of the grave, and in the 

 other to the clay. It is probable, therefore, that instead of being an 

 exceptional feature they represent a general custom. 



From the occasional presence of weapons, pins, buttons, studs and 

 the like, occupying positions in natural relation to the body unburnt 

 when associated with unburnt skeletons, and in a burnt condition when 

 mixed with cremated remains, we may infer that the bodies were 

 buried in the one case, and burned in the other, in their ordinary 

 clothing. 



Burial in barrows in Derbyshire was not confined to one sex or to 

 any particular age. The remains of women and children are found in 

 graves and cists as carefully prepared and associated with implements 

 and ornaments as elaborate as those which appertain to the men, indi- 

 cating, surely, that the family tie was strong and that the lot of the 

 women was not servile. Many of the interments have consisted of more 

 than a single individual. The frequency with which an infant has been 

 found buried with an adult, usually a woman, and presumably the mother, 

 points to infanticide upon the demise of the parent. Similarly, the 

 presence of a woman's remains with those of a man seems to indicate 

 suttee. In other cases we meet with a deposit of burnt bones placed 

 with a skeleton, representing probably a human sacrifice. These in 

 themselves do not necessarily indicate a state of savagery, as the recent 

 prevalence of the practice of suttee in India and of infanticide in China 

 amply prove. 



Little significance can be attached to the direction of the body and 

 the side upon which it was laid, to judge from the comparatively few 

 cases in which these positions have been recorded. They certainly had 

 no reference to age or sex, at least in Derbyshire ; and this is the 

 Rev. Canon Greenwell's experience in the north. The following 

 table expresses the direction of the body in the 58 known Derbyshire 

 examples : 



1 Diggings, p. 34. * Proc. Soc. Ant. ser. z, vol. xvii. 



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