The Bioarchaeology of Pocklington and other ‘Warrior Graves’

The Bioarchaeology of Pocklington and other ‘Warrior Graves’

       Recent discoveries of an Iron Age cemetery at Pocklington has recently had a lot of press attention due to the presence of grave goods such as swords in some of the graves.  This discovery immediately interested me as I have been looking into Iron Age burial rites as part of my course on Bioarchaeology. When reading the various news articles surrounding the excavations, I realised that the Iron Age burials are repeatedly referred to as burials of ‘Warrior Kings’. The interpretation of a grave with a weapon as a grave belonging to a warrior is a problem in archaeology, often leading to the excavator to immediately jumping to the conclusion that burial was a ‘High-Satus Warrior’ without looking at other factors.

Figure 1: Article showing the recent discoveries at Pocklington

The discipline of Bioarchaeology looks at the scientific evidence available from the wider context to look at possible interpretations of burials. The warrior burials found in the Prehistoric period show a specific style of mortuary treatment which involves burying an individual with a weapon. However the mortuary treatment of the individual may not represent the lived reality of the individual. By interpreting just the grave goods, the archaeologist will only be interpreting the mortuary event, not the individual’s lifestyle. Therefore I believe without further analysis on the individuals and there lifestyle, it is impossible to say whether they were warriors, and even more impossible to say they were kings!

       I believe that is more likely that the burial of individuals with swords is more likely to be a burial rite, rather than an indication of their identity in life. This is shown by the large number of burials in Prehistoric and Medieval Britain with weaponry and the high levels of variation between them. 
           Although a very different period to the Iron Age, an example of this is the Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Buckland in Dover. One of the graves included a male and a female, accompanied by a number of grave goods, usually typical of a warrior burial (See figure 2). However as one of the individuals in the grave was female and the grave was for two individuals, it was looked at as a variant of the ‘Warrior Grave’ theory. The excavator interpreted the double grave instead as ‘It raises the possibility that homo-sexuality was sufficiently socially acceptable to the Anglo-Saxons’ due to the presence of a female and that there were two individuals in one grave (Evison 1987 p.126). Although this may be true, I believe that it is more likely that the two individuals were buried following a typical burial rite at the time, which was a burial with weaponry, which may not have reflected there identity in life. 

       Figure 2: Illustration of Grave good found in the double grave at Buckland. Evison 1987.

           Although a large number of these individuals may have been warriors, I believe that it is important to take a ‘Bioarchaeological’ approach to the remains, and look at the wider context and area first, only making an interpretation when there is sufficient evidence to do so. An important aspect of this is realising that what we see in the grave, is part of a mortuary ritual, and may not represent what the individual is like in life. Looking at the Identity of the individual needs to take into account other contextual information such as the individual’s skeletal remains and the time period and area the individual lived in.

Bibliography/Further Reading

Evison, V I., 1987. Dover: The Buckland Anglo-Saxon Cemetery. London: Historic England.

Larsen, C S., 2015. 2^nd Edition. Bioarchaeology: Interpreting Behaviour From The Human Skeleton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.