“What could be more universal than death? Yet what an incredible variety of responses it evokes. Corpses are burned or buried, with or without animal or human sacrifice; they are preserved by smoking, embalming, or pickling; they are eaten – raw, cooked, or rotten; they are ritually exposed as carrion or simply abandoned; or they are dismembered and treated in a variety of these ways. Funerals are the occasion for avoiding people or holding parties, for fighting or having sexual orgies, for weeping or laughing, in a thousand different combinations. The diversity of cultural reaction is a measure of the universal impact of death. But it is not a random reaction; always it is meaningful and expressive” (Huntington and Metcalf 1979: 1).
Rhagymadrodd/An Introduction
The Annwn BCE project is an AHRC funded PhD undertaken through Amgueddfa Cymru and Manchester Metropolitan University (although all opinions expressed are my own). The project takes a long view of the treatment of human remains in pre-Roman Cymru. It spans from the Neanderthal teeth excavated within Pontnewydd Cave through to the Late Iron Age and beyond. It seeks to identify patterns in funerary practices and to illustrate how these have remained, developed and changed across time.
This website has been created to share results and items of interest produced or encountered during the course of my PhD. An important element of this AHRC funded work is that the PhD includes a significant element of Continuing Professional Development which for me is based partially around improving my Welsh language skills. Content will therefore be produced in both Cymraeg and English – at the moment I am far from fluent in Cymraeg so material will be relatively simple initially and will hopefully develop as my fluency increases. Fingers crossed I will slowly translate the majority of the site content and I am hoping that it will provide some alternative content for fellow dysgwyr Cymraeg (Welsh learners).
Y Prosiect/The Project
Death is simultaneously both a universal and an intensely personal experience. The knowledge of one’s own mortality can be both comforting and unsettling, death a tragedy or a release. It connects generations in a continuous stream with those who have gone before and those who will follow in the future. How this change of being is marked – the ceremony, the treatment and disposal of the body, the actions of the survivors can be strongly mandated by communities or be subject to modification and personalisation. Practise can change gradually or rapidly, and recurrent themes identified in disparate periods and areas.
This project examines these key factors in understanding, interpreting and analysing approaches to death by taking a long view of the pre-Roman treatment of human remains in Cymru. It spans from the earliest human occupation at Pontnewydd Cave through to the end of the Iron Age, identifying patterns in funerary practices and illustrating how these have been exhibited across space and time. As the nature of the Late Iron Age/Romano-British period in much of Cymru can be somewhat amorphous, rather than taking an absolute end date the project includes Pre-Christian burials that do not show obvious signs of Romanisation. An important element in the presentation of this project is to create a narrative of pre-Roman Cymru – centring Cymru within wider discourse and placing Cymru within a wider context at different within the project timeline. It examines how burial in Cymru has been studied and presented in the past and the legacy of this approach. It also identifies similarities and differences between burial practices in Cymru and the rest of the Britain and Ireland and, where appropriate, within a wider European perspective.
Something which has always absolutely fascinated me is the rich tradition of myths, legends and folklore in Cymru, and inspired by the fantastic writings of Marion Dowd on Irish cave archaeology my work will seek to use examples from within these stories to examine past practises. This is not to position Cymru as having a timeless or backward looking history, but rather the aim is to demonstrate that there exists a wealth of material which has to potential to provide interesting hints or alternative interpretations of what is observed in the archaeological record – and to show that no matter how alien past practices can seem, some current and historic practices can be equally intriguing.
Annwn BC 