Ireland is famed for its High Crosses — their distinctive circular heads and complex sculptures have long been an instantly recognisable symbol of the culture that made Ireland the Celtic tiger of the Dark Ages. The design is also one of the most popular for modern gravestones.
The High Crosses are up to 14ft tall, date mainly from the 8th to 10th centuries, and are scattered across Ireland at sites such as Clonmacnoise and Monasterboice. Where and how they were made is debated, but the discovery of an unfinished cross at Ballintubber, Co Wicklow, has given new insight into the process. The Ballintubber cross, which broke while being carved, would have been close to 5m (16ft) high, although the lack of finished carving makes it difficult to date.
“The Ballintubber cross is enormous, yet its true scale is not obvious even when standing beside it,” Chris Corlett notes in Archaeology Ireland. “The stonemason decided to carve the cross and its shaft from a single piece of granite: the shape of the cross and shaft was carved out as it lay on the ground.”
Before finishing the accessible sides, the mason decided to turn the cross in order to begin work on the back, from the base upwards: he was aiming for a shaft thickness of about 60cms (2ft) and a span of the arms of about 2.2m (7ft). Soon, however, the cross snapped just below the arms, “presumably as a result of weight stress, implying that no measures were taken to support the stone,” Corlett says.
An unnoticed fault in the stone was the probable cause, since a second fault is also visible. It has lain in the field in western Wicklow ever since. “The hills must have resounded with the shouts and screams of frustration at all the work and effort that came to nothing in an instant,” Corlett says.
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Archaeology Ireland 25 No 2: 26-28
Burial mysteries
Three bizarre Roman burials from sites spread across Britain have surprised the archaeologists who found them. One may have involved lovers, the second murder and the last, a postmortem beheading. The possible lovers were found at Ebley in the Cotswolds, where a multiperiod site going back at least 4,000 years included a Roman enclosure. Fourteen burials were found within it, one grave being remarkable because it held two individuals lying side by side, one embracing the other from behind with legs intertwined.
The sex of the two people involved has not yet been reported, nor the precise date of the burials, but three of the 14 were interred wearing hobnailed footwear, “a practice that became popular in English rural settlements during the late second and third centuries AD,” according to Chris Campling, news editor of Current Archaeology. A coin of AD 324-330 was found near the mouth of one person, perhaps placed on the tongue as the ferry fare to the underworld.
A Roman settlement near Faversham in Kent has yielded the grave of a teenage girl who was probably murdered by soldiers and hastily buried in a shallow grave. “She was killed by a Roman sword stabbing her in the back of the head,” Dr Paul Wilkinson notes. “By the position of the entry wound she would have been kneeling at the time.”
The woman was between 16 and 22, the skeletal details suggest. “Invading armies act the same throughout history, one can only imagine what trauma this poor girl had to suffer,” Dr Wilkinson says.
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The Roman army may also have been involved in the third bizarre burial, which was found just outside the fort at Inveresk, near Edinburgh. “The most spectacular find was a group of Roman inhumations, many of which had been decapitated,” Campling reports.
A horse burial, eight cremations, and six inhumations were found. Four of the latter, “had been buried with their decapitated skull lying separately within the grave in a variety of positions, for example between the knees or behind the back”.
The beheadings seem to have taken place after death rather than being its cause. If they were coeval with the fort, occupied between AD 139 and 160, they may be some of the earliest Roman decapitation burials in Britain.
Current Archaeology 256: 7-10