Investigations into an Anglo-Saxon Cremation Urn

Among our 40,000 museum items is an Anglo-Saxon burial urn from Ingham, Suffolk. Urns of these types often contain items like jewellry and our Museum staff were curious to see if there were similar such items found in this one. However, as this urn did contain fragments of human remains, our staff wanted to be as respectful and careful to this object as possible and not search through the contents physically. Additionally, it was also important to know where in the urn any possible items were in relation to other contents.

Some good fortune struck when Robert Hill FSA turned up for the new Fellows Tour. As a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and Medical Director at The Portland Hospital for Women and Children, he had access to equipment that would allow us to investigate this object without any interference to the contents. He kindly invited us to The Portland Hospital to use the CT machine (computed tomography scan) to see the contents of the urn. The machine works by rotating an X-ray beam around a patient’s, or in this case object’s, body while the patient lies on a bed that moves through the machine. A computer uses the X-ray data to create a cross-sectional image in either 2D or 3D, and using the computer you can digitally adjust the images to highlight different areas, materials and results.

The results from scanning the urn produced some amazing images that gave Robert Hill FSA clear results. After using the computer to render the urn in various ways, he concluded that there is a metal brooch in the urn together with other metal fragments, including what looks like a nail and possible ‘studs’ from a comb. In terms of the remains, the urn does not contain an entire skeleton. The urn had also been repaired at some stage.

For an in-depth look at how Robert Hill FSA did the scanning and how he discerned results, you can watch him talk on this urn as part of our 2023 Collections & Research Day. See the video here, starting from the timestamp 2:58:25.

Thank you to Robert Hill FSA for inviting us to his place of work and allowing us to scan our object. Images courtesy of the Portland Hospital.

Additional information on burial urns

Stuart Brookes FSA (and our Antiquaries Journal editor) gave us this helpful insight into Anglo-Saxon cremation urns:

Cremation was the main way of disposing of the dead by people outside of the Roman Empire, particularly in continental northern Europe. The vast majority of Barbarians (non-Romans) were cremated and this includes the Angles and Saxons during the 5^th and 6^th centuries AD. Their remains were usually interred in pottery urns and placed in large urn fields, often with over 2000 such burials. In England the most fully excavated cremation cemetery is Spong Hill, Norfolk.

Cremation was a complex and costly exercise. An established burial ground with a formal pyre site would have been essential: resources available to supply sufficient kindling but also knowledgeable people to and oversee the process to ensure that combustion was effective and seen through. Wood was the main fuel, and it has been calculated that 146kg of pinewood would have been necessary, but ethnography shows over twice this amount can be burned. Analysis of charcoal from urns recovered from Spong Hill showed that oak, ash, pine and hawthorn were used as excellent burning woods.

As regards the rite, we can see that the collection process was rather haphazard, with more than one individual in an urn. The contamination of the remains from the main individual with the remains of other individuals may reflect the reuse or overlapping of pyres (e.g. at Spong Hill there is evidence of pyre reuse). Or deliberately comingling individuals in a single pot. There is a question of was there selective collection, or were the ashes deliberately spread over more than one container. It might represent a deliberate practice of adding ‘token’ bones of a relative or friend. Alternatively, once the spirit had been released was the body, the vehicle, no longer of importance, thus it was not considered important to keep remains separate. 

However, analysis of the cremated bones from urns shows that in the main only select bones were deposited in the formal way; these were usually from the head and chest, together with some long bones. They seem to have been initially placed in cloth bags, as separate groups of bone are visible within pots. The head may have been considered the most important element of the body, perhaps where the spirit resided.  Evidence of this may be found in the role of toilet items in presentation and shaving of head and facial hair, and the emphasis on selecting bone from the upper body and skull. 

The pots themselves are interesting. These are often decorated when clay still soft. This took the form of dimpling with the fingers, or pushing out the clay from inside into projecting bosses (especially ‘Buckelurnen’). In addition, the pot could have lines (curves were popular) or dots incised by a sharp tool, or stamping with a die cut from bone, horn or wood, or cast in metal, or draw freehand upon the pot.

For inhumations, over half of burials were furnished with objects. These can be divided four main categories of grave goods: weapons, jewellery/dress fastenings, personal equipment and furnishings (beds, boats and horses). Analysis of grave goods suggests different display was related to gender and life cycle, less so wealth or social rank, i.e. family-level structures. Cremations actually have many of the same groups – in miniature, or burnt, but never any weapons. We know that the body was laid out fully clothed, surrounded by objects, certainly vessels, and probably weapons, their identity in life maintained. At this stage we think that the same gender and age related messages are being given as during the inhumation funeral. 

Archaeologists are left with the residues from a second stage of cremation – the collection of the remains and their deposition in an urn. This stage perhaps should not be interpreted in the same way as the remains of the inhumations.  They should not analysed for gender and age because the process has now gone further. In fact, the cremation process may have provided another role that inhumation did not – the second stage, or creation of mortuary assemblages. Perhaps this can be tied in with religious belief – freeing of the spirit for passage to the afterlife but for this the sprit had to be transformed. The supernatural identity is almost shamanic mix of different sexes and animal elements. It is possibly this, which is why the practice was outlawed under Christianity.

According to Howard Williams FSA, cremation can be viewed as a rite of passage that was fundamentally involved with the ritual transformation of the corpse. The act of burning the body and the selection the remains for burial in an urn served to dissolve and reconstitute the identities of the deceased. Williams argues individuals were physically reconstituted into a new state and identity through the ritual transformation of the cremation and post-cremation rites. The comingling of the dead with the remains of sacrificed animals, artefacts and their inclusion in an urn created a new ‘social body’ for the individual. In addition, as we have noted in numerous urns, more than one body was present – was this joining of once separate identities in one? If he is right then we seem to have cremation which is actively about creating new social groups and identities, that is to say a process of social relations.