On the Curious Date of the Rylstone Log-Coffin Burial

Abstract

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Reassessing Community Cemeteries: Cremation Burials in Britain during the Middle Bronze Age (c.1600–1150 calbc)

“…In southern Britain, Late Bronze Age cremation burials are predominately found in roundhouses and associated ditches (see Brück 1995; Roth 2012; Davies 2016), comprise smaller quantities of human bone, and are rarely accompanied by ceramic vessels. In northern Britain, similarly small quantities of cremated and unburnt human bone are found in settlements, caves, ditches, and in both earlier and contemporary funerary monuments (Thomson 2011; Melton et al 2016; Warden et al 2016). The cremated remains in these studies (referenced above) also appear to be generally smaller in cremation deposit weight than the average Middle Bronze Age cremation burial.…”

Excavation of a Neolithic House at Yarnbury, near Grassington, North Yorkshire

“…The upland pasture regime has not seen the 19th century land improvements that prompted much of Mortimer’s work in the Yorkshire Wolds (Mortimer 1905). The area was also largely untouched by the avid collector William Greenwell who worked on the eastern Wolds and in Northumberland and Durham (Greenwell 1877) though he did re-open a barrow containing an Early Bronze Age oak coffin at Rylstone, 8 km south-west of Grassington, where he found traces of textile within the coffin ( ibid ., 375–7; Melton et al 2016). Bateman (1848) concentrated his barrow opening in the Peak District in the Southern Pennines.…”

“…Middle Neolithic and Beaker material is known from many of the cave sites (King 1974) and associated human burials and domesticated faunal remains date from the earliest Neolithic until the Early Bronze Age (Leach 2015; Taylor 2011). The recent redating of the Rylestone log coffin burial to the Early Bronze Age is intriguing (Melton et al 2016). Artefact scatters including Neolithic pottery are documented at Lea Green, to the west-north-west of Yarnbury within the area of axial field system (Manby in Cherry 1998) and at Conistone to the north-west (Cherry 2014).…”

Loose Howe; A North Yorkshire Log Coffin Boat Burial(s) Revisited

“…Indeed, the recently redated classic Yorkshire log coffin burial at Rylestone, now ascribed to the Late Bronze Age (Melton et al . ), could arguably have been a result of later encounters with earlier log coffin burials. Given the preservation conditions at Loose Howe, it is unlikely that any trace of a displaced burial from the first log coffin burial would have survived for identification by the excavators.…”