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A Skeleton of the Early Bronze Age Found in the Fens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2013

Gordon Fowler
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Extract

The skeleton described below was discovered recently in Southery Fen, Norfolk, by men employed in widening and deepening a drainage ditch. It was unfortunately removed before it could be seen in situ, but I was able by an examination of the ground not only to determine the exact level of the skeleton, but also to recover the lady's bronze pin or awl. She had lain on top of a layer of compressed sedges 2ins.-3ins. thick, which rested directly on undisturbed clay, and she was covered by 1ft. 9ins. of peat. The place where she was found was 28 yards away from one of the second type of Major Fowler's extinct waterways (“Old Run,” Plate XXXII.). There was no evidence of burial, and we conjecture that she had been drowned, carried down by this river, dropped among the sedges bordering it when the flood subsided, and subsequently covered by the growth of peat.

According to the workmen's account she was lying face downwards with one arm across her face and the other arm extended. The bracelet of jet beads (Plate XXXIII., a) is said to have been round the wrist of the extended arm; pin or awl (Plate XXXIII., b) must have been worn near the waist.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , 1932 , pp. 362 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1932

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References

page 362 note 1 Mr. Horace Beck, F.S.A., has kindly examined the beads and describes them as follows:— ‘Eight jet barrel-beads found round the wrist of a Bronze Age skeleton. All the beads are slightly elliptical in section, the amount varying from rather under ·02 in. up to ·08 in. Except for one or two flaws which were there when the beads were being worn, these beads were singularly free from flaws and well polished. It will be interesting to see if flaws develop later. The lengths vary from 1·08 in. to ·50 in. and the sections from ·37 in. to ·26 in.’

page 362 note 2 cf. Mortimer, ‘Forty Years' Researches in … Burial Mounds of East Yorkshire,’ Pl. xxxix., Fig 275; Pl. xliv., Fig. 362; Pl. liii., Fig. 418a; Pl. liv., Fig. 426, etc.

Anderson, ‘Scotland in Pagan Times,’ Figs. 53, 58, 60, 61, etc.

British Museum Bronze Age Guide, pp. 85-87.

page 362 note 3 Figured by Mr.Beck, Horace in Archaeologia, lxxvii.Google Scholar, ‘Classification and Nomenclature of Beads and Pendants,’ Fig. 44, where he describes it as ‘a terminal spacing bead with rocked line decoration.’

page 363 note 1 Jones and Griffiths, Aerial Surveying by Rapid Methods, p. 33 (Cambridge University Press, 1925). This and other air photographs from the same source are now in possession of H.M. Survey Office, Southampton.