AN ANGLO-SAXON DECAPITATION AND BURIAL AT STONEHENGE 



133 



description) that it was female. Keith's full report 

 (perhaps no more than a letter) does not appear to 

 have survived. 



Richard Atkinson, whose book was the key 

 published source for Stonehenge archaeology in the 

 second half of the last century, favoured a later date. 

 He was influenced by the nature of the grave: 'the 

 [body's] extended attitude (if such it was) and the 

 somewhat perfunctory disposal . . . point to a date 

 not earlier than the Romano-British period' 

 (Atkinson 1979, 62). In the recent detailed 

 Stonehenge report, the authors reverted to Hawley's 

 original argument. The lack of debris in the grave 

 fill pointed to an early date in the site's history, 

 'before the interior became littered with stone 

 fragments' (Cleal etal. 1995, 267-8). 



Rediscovery 



Pursuing a trail created by Wessex Archaeology 

 (who had prepared the recent monograph: Cleal er 

 al. 1995), I found that much of the Royal College 

 of Surgeons' ancient human remains collection 

 (from perhaps as many as 800 individuals) had 

 survived the 1941 bombing. Recovered items had 

 been driven out to country houses around London. 

 After the war they had come back, eventually to be 

 sorted and, in the case of the archaeological human 

 bones, given to the Natural History Museum 

 (4.10.4's post-cranial remains in 1948, the skull in 

 1955). There are many other items of interest to 

 archaeology in this collection, not least the medieval 

 'barber-surgeon' from Avebury (Pitts 2001, 

 chapters 16 and 30). 



Unknown to archaeologists, skeleton 4.10.4 had 

 already been 'discovered' in 1975. Wystan Peach, a 

 Welsh dentist who believed the remains were of 

 King Arthur, paid for a radiocarbon date (see 

 below). Some of the details of this date emerged 

 during the production of the television film, when 

 we interviewed Penrhyn Peach about his late father's 

 work. 



W. Peach submitted a paper to Antiquity in 

 August 1977 (4.10.4 had been dated the year 

 before). We have not been able to find a copy of 

 this paper, which was rejected by the editor. Peach 

 had earlier described his ideas in a privately 

 published booklet (Peach 1961). He believed 

 Arthur, the architect of Stonehenge, was alive in 

 1800 BC (then thought to be the construction date). 

 This suggestion derived from an eccentric reading 

 of the Mabinogion, a collection of medieval Welsh 

 tales (Pitts 2001, chapter 30). 



I brought Jacqueline McKinley, who had 

 recently completed an analysis of all surviving 

 human remains from Stonehenge (McKinley 1995), 

 to see the skeleton. She identified the lesions in the 

 cervical vertebra. Anthea Boylston kindly later 

 conducted a fuller examination. (The full sequence 

 of events from excavation to examination is 

 described at www.hengeworld.co.uk/news.html ). 



The grave 



Hawley and assistant Robert Newall left both a 

 written description of the excavation and a section 

 drawing of the pit, making 4.10.4's grave one of 

 the better recorded Stonehenge features (Figure 2). 

 The published report (Hawley 1925, 31-3) briefly 

 summarises the field diary (1920-26, November 2- 

 3,6). 



Hawley found the grave with a workman named 

 Player on a Friday, and it was excavated by Hawley 

 and Newall the next day. Much of the diary entry 

 is devoted to the bones (confirming identification 

 of 4.10.4 with the skeleton in this grave). The pit 

 'was very roughly cut and only sufficiently cut in 

 the solid chalk [26 inches/66 cm 'below ground 

 level'] to contain the trunk of the body'. It was also 

 'insufficiently long [64 inches/1.63 m] so that the 

 neck and shoulders had to be forced into a curve 

 and pressure seems to have been exerted upon the 

 pictoral [sic] portion as all the ribs were contracted 

 and forced together and all were in a broken state 

 with the exception of two'. The skull, too, was in 

 poor condition, 'from being near the surface [16 

 inches/40 cm 'below ground level'] and also from 

 pressure exerted upon it'. Measurement of the 

 skeleton (see below) confirms that the man was 

 probably slightly too tall to fit comfortably in the 

 pit. 



Other measurements recorded are the pit's 

 'width at upper end' (24 inches/61 cm) and 'at lower 

 end' (17 inches/43 cm), probably the ends 

 containing head and feet, respectively. The 'direction 

 of the grave was towards ENE', which might imply 

 that the head was at the easterly end. The grave fill 

 is described as 'earthy chalk ... much compacted 

 by pressure and of quite a different nature to the 

 loose stuff filling the [adjacent] post holes', and 

 'hardened chalk ... returned to the grave'. This fill 

 'contained nothing'; a footnote in the diary states 

 that 'contents of grave [were] sifted without any 

 result'. Over the fill ('upon the hardened upper 

 surface') was 'loose chalky earth of a later period 

 which contained 3 pieces of rhyolite and 1 of 



