The bank (007) consisted of a dark brown sandy silt with frequent medium to large stones and frequent small root inclusions. A third disturbed cremation burial with associated cordoned urn was present within cairn material between the inner and outer kerbs. Experimental studies examining the different fracture patterns produced by burning fleshed and dry bone, however, have produced conflicting results (Correia, 1997, 279). Cremated remains were often either placed in an urn or an urn was placed upside down over cremated remains in a pit or cist. It is a loan from Middle French espee rapiere, first recorded in 1474. Colour change is thought to relate to decomposition of the organic component (Shipman et al, 1984, 322.). These formed an annular kerb approximately 14m in diameter and relatively uniform around its circumference. Its displacement sadly removed any chance we may have had at establishing its chronological and spatial relationship with cairn and burials; it may, for example, have accompanied a cist or burial incorporated into the upper cairn material and subsequently destroyed. It was nonetheless possible to establish that the midrib was rounded in section and to identify five grooves flanking each side of the midrib on both sides. The lower cairn material was located in patches, mainly within the area encompassed by the inner kerb; it may represent an interface between the main, upper, cairn material and underlying natural subsoil (026). Scottish Archaeological Journal is abstracted and indexed in the following: Excavation of two burnt mounds and a wooden trough near Ryeriggs, Fochabers, MorayGary Savory The cairn was located on the summit, lying just southwest of the highest point. It was generally about 110mm in depth but reached 500mm deep in places. With the introduction of copper, and eventually bronze, daggers could be made longer, and evolved into swords.The evolution of the dagger into the sword is thus gradual, and in 2004 the first "swords" have been claimed for the Early Bronze Age (c. 33rd to 31st centuries), based on finds at Arslantepe, weapo… We must not consider these early swords in comparison to later, more robust types. The origin of the rapier is more than likely Spanish. One of the bronze handled pieces from Ireland has such a small handle as to indicate suggest the intriguing possibility that some were belonging to female warriors. Forgotten your password? As the upper cairn material (011) was removed from the centre of the cairn a marked change in colour, if not overall composition, of the cairn fabric was noted at several points. The fifth and final phase relates to the modern destruction and removal of much of the upper cairn material (011). Rapier / Dirk; Dirk or Rapier; Dirk or Dagger; Dagger; Rapier/dirk; Dirk or Dagger. Now all we can say is that the rapier was associated in some way with the burial mound, and placed here deliberately, perhaps in an act of commemoration or veneration. This extension of the cairn through the addition of an outer kerb can be observed in other Bronze Age cairns such as Cairnwell in Aberdeenshire where an outer kerb was constructed to incorporate an earlier stone circle into the monument (Rees 1997). Its modern origins were inferred from the fact that its character differed markedly from the parent cairn material: the deposit was only moderately compacted, with no regular pattern of deposition evident amongst the stone component and residual lenses of topsoil (001) occurring on a regular basis. They could also have been used for the insertion of burials or ritual deposits. The authors would like to thank Cloburn Quarry Developments for funding this project and for their support throughout. All the material suggests a Bronze Age date which ties in with the radiocarbon dates recovered from the cists’ fills. Seen in the wider context of Great Britain and Ireland, the presence of a complete rapier in a funerary monument is not entirely unprecedented (see Turner – forthcoming). The initial construction of the two stone lined cists belongs to this first phase but the contents and two-tiered nature of Cist 1 and the fact that only fragments of cremated bone were found within Cist 2 would suggest that both had remains added or taken away. The authors are particularly thankful to Thomas Rees and Louise Turner who gave much support and guidance during the writing and editing of this publication. The hilting arrangement of latest in this class begins to have similarities with the earliest of the leaf-shaped swords of the following Late Bronze Age, known as Ballintober swords. Sherds from two Bronze Age urns – a collared urn and an urn of undetermined type – were recovered from the excavations at Swaites Hill. Welcome to the forums! The assemblage was dominated by quartz (160 lithics) that were small chunks or gravel-sized pieces. The Bronze Age rapier was recovered from a spread of redeposited cairn material (009). The deposit was irregular in plan, measuring up to 0.85m in length by 0.65m in width and up to 250mm in depth. Beneath the upper cairn material, (011), an inner ‘ring’ of kerb stones [014] was identified. The object falls within Burgess and Gerloff's (1981) Group 1 category of dirks and rapiers, namely ‘Weapons with Multiple Grooves, Ribs and Channels.’ Within this particular group, it falls within the first subgroup – ‘Weapons with Multiple Grooves.’ A total of 17 examples of this subgroup were noted in Dirks and Rapiers in Great Britain and Ireland (Burgess & Gerloff 1981), with two further examples identified in Scotland in the 1990s and late 2000s and subsequently published in O’Connor and Cowie (1995) and Cowie and Hall (2010) respectively. Visit www.glasarchsoc.org.uk for further information about the Glasgow Archaeological Society. Sherds comprising the fragmentary remains of part of a collared urn – 1 rim sherd, 22 body sherds and a basal sherd (<26> and <53>) were recovered from disturbed cremation burial (017), and one rim sherd (<29>) was recovered from (011), the upper cairn material. C O N T E N T S: KEY TOPICS. Fig 2 Location of Significant Prehistoric Monuments. The lines are sharply incised and roughly 0.5mm wide. Published in Scottish Archaeological Journal 42. (1992), as adapted to working practice through consideration of Ballin (2000). I hope you … There is a possible part perforation 5mm in diameter, 35mm below the lip. The bones from Swaites Hill had probably therefore been cremated at temperatures of at least 645°C, and possibly higher. The compaction of the lower cairn fabrics, (029) and (018), is at odds with the loosely-compacted nature of the upper cairn material (011) which suggests they derive from different phases, with the location of disturbed cremation (017), which lay between lower cairn material (029) and upper cairn material (011) confirming that the lower cairn material located between the inner and outer kerbs was earlier. The Dalrymple Curators utilise the bequest to support an annual series of lectures by eminent archaeologists. The sherds from vessel 1 were identified as from a collared urn, but it is not certain if that vessel was bipartite or tripartite. Before bronze, stone (flint, obsidian f.e.) The context of their use is of course of great interest to a student of the past, but one that is often only an ephemeral vision today. This suggested pre-cairn anthropic activity such as clearance or agriculture in the immediate environs of the site, with any such activity potentially occurring closer to Zone 3. Bronze Age Flat Axe Head ... Related products. For the thrust, they could certainly deliver a lethal wound. The site, now a clay quarry owned by Forterra, is close to Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire and sits astride a prehistoric watercourse inside the Flag Fen basin. The upper cairn material (011) consisted of a loose mid grey-brown sandy silt, with frequent small to medium and infrequent large stones. New here? A further layer of cairn material (029) that exhibited marked differentiation from (011) and (018) was situated between the outer and inner kerbs, [012] and [014]. The rapier is cast in bronze and measures 337mm in length, with a maximum blade width of 18mm. There are no dates for the Sketewan urns. Thus, it is not impossible to suggest that the rapier originally derived from a ritual deposit within the cairn or accompanied a later burial. Thank you to Peterborough Museum for permission to photograph and use image of rapier. Of note was the infrequent but regular appearance of well-rounded (i.e. The journal includes a range of papers reporting on fieldwork, discussion of museum collections and consideration of the social and intellectual context of Scottish archaeology. This was followed by an archaeological evaluation in April 2015 (Gordon 2015): this comprised an 8% evaluation of the ground and the targeted investigation of several probable clearance cairns. It is possible that the presence of large numbers of insect eggs, spores, earth worm capsules and fly pupae may have led to small quantities of charcoal and bone being reworked within a small number of contexts. The handle were simple, literally a handle. The authors’ thanks also go to the members of the site excavation team: Claire Williamson, Diane Gorman, Joss Durnan, Pauric Logue, Alex Wood and Andrew Kouzoukis. A radiocarbon date obtained from the cremated bone in (017) gave a date of 3654 ± 30 (cal BC 2136–1943 at 2 Sigma, SUERC- 71909 (GU43374)). Some seven pieces of debitage (<10mm) were recovered, all chunks from the primary fills of Cists 1 and 2. The profile of <29> shows that the rim has a deep interior bevel and that the exterior profile of the rim slopes out below the level of the bevel. No. Bronze Age rapiers are long blades optimised for thrusting but still with a cutting edge, and a thick central rib down the length of the blade to make up for the relatively poor choice of bronze for a thin pointy weapon (it's too bendy). Its displacement sadly removed any chance we may have had at establishing its chronological and spatial relationship with cairn and burials; it may, for example, have accompanied a cist or burial incorporated into the upper cairn material and subsequently destroyed. The other miscellaneous contexts consisted of single bones or very small deposits, from which very little information could be extracted. Within the area enclosed by the inner kerb [014], two cists [015] and [016] were revealed beneath the upper cairn material (011), south of the centre of the cairn in Zone 2. The third phase was the construction of the outer kerb [012] and the deposition of compacted cairn fabric (029) between the inner and outer kerbs. This would suggest that all of the funerary activity located beneath the upper cairn material took place over one to two centuries. The earliest of the rapiers had a complex cross-section consisting of ribs and grooves, with clear ancestry in the dagger series which had begun in the Early Bronze Age. The exterior of the collar is decorated with alternating bands of vertical and horizontal lines (<29>, <26.2> and <26.3>). Bronze Age; Daggers, knives, rapiers and swords; Similar Records. To join contact the Membership Secretary (Mrs Susan Hunter, 69 Craighill Drive, Glasgow, G76 7TD.). The example at the bottom, a rapier or 'thrusting sword' (1884.119.315), is the older of the two, dating from the Middle Bronze Age (1400-1250 BC). These are described below. Both cists also contained lithic material, possibly waste: this included chert and flint chunks, outnumbered by small chunks of quartz and quartz gravel. Three other finds by metal detectorists … Infrequent inclusions of hazelnut shell were found within this lower cairn material. The upper cairn material (011) formed a circular shape 14m in diameter and between 200–460mm thick beneath the re-deposited material. The floor consisted of a paved surface [031], formed from sub-angular flat stones between 80–460mm in length and less than 30mm thick. The Society provides research grants to members of the society. There is also a hint, however, that its final shape resulted from the sequential construction of a series of smaller kerbed compartments which were eventually restructured into a single, final, inner kerb, with – presumably – parts of these smaller kerbed compartments removed in the process. All potential struck lithics were cleaned, inspected and catalogued. Caution should be noted in this assertion: the sampling and processing strategy focused on burial contexts and related structural features, and hence we do not have a robust means of recognising the normal range in quartz gravel present within sediments. Excavation instead showed that the lower cairn material and the cists and features beneath remained untouched. Sherds <29>, <26.1>, <26.2>, <26.7> and <26.8> indicate the shape of the rim and collar. There was also one chert platform rejuvenation flake <014> showing management of cores. The fabric is fine sandy clay with roughly 60% of angular rock fragments, some up to 13mm, which has fired hard and is grey with a brown exterior surface. Stone is however very fragile, and therefore not practical to be used as swords. Frequent references to these first Bronze Age swords highlight their insubstantial hilting arrangement, and the relative flimsiness of their blades, and conclude that they were not serviceable weapons. Their similarity with the grooved daggers of Gerloff's Armorico-British type (Gerloff 1975), combined with their largely complementary distribution, has led to the suggestion that these objects may be contemporary with some of the later dagger types and that the Group 1 rapiers may have their origins as early as 1600–1500 BC (Cowie 1995, 349). Indeed, dating evidence obtained from hearth (032) – located in a gap within the inner kerb and beneath upper cairn material (011) and initially thought to be contemporary with Bronze Age activities at the cairn – suggested an 18th or early 19th century AD date (see dating). Code: AA268. Both pieces came from the topsoil. These demonstrated a certain amount of complexity, with three cremation burials contained within the cists and another disturbed cremation burial with an associated cordoned urn identified beneath the cairn material. 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