Posted on 01/01/2008 10:59:34 AM PST by SunkenCiv
[W]ith pagan Britain's conversion to Christianity, the Bronze Age burial mounds came to be regarded with suspicion as places where devils and dragons lurked. It was at one such site in East Yorkshire that the Anglo-Saxons chose to bury the worst kind of criminals, away from hallowed ground, leaving their heads to rot on stakes... The dozen skeletons -- 10 without their heads -- were discovered by archaeologists in the late 1960s in a Bronze Age barrow at Walkington Wold... [A] new study by two Yorkshire archaeologists... Jo Buckberry, from Bradford University and Dawn Hadley, from Sheffield University have confirmed the site was an execution cemetery, maybe used for as long as 200 years... Evidence of a "botched decapitation" was found in one case where a young male, aged between 18 and 25 had suffered three blows to the back of his skull, probably when he was bent over with his head resting on his chest. Three or four others "suffered sharp force trauma to the back of the head/neck region that is consistent with the use of a large bladed weapon, for example an axe or a sword". Two suffered from cuts to the front of the neck "which can be interpreted as blood-letting, throat slitting or decapitation from the front"... Rod Mackey, who first excavated the site along with John Bartlett between 1967 and 1969, said... "When we were digging in the 60s, we spoke to an old farm labourer and told him we'd found all these bodies and he said when he was a lad he knew it as Hell's Gate -- suggesting there was a folk memory possibly even existing from that time when it was used as an execution site."
(Excerpt) Read more at yorkshirepost.co.uk ...
|
|
|||
Gods |
Thanks Blam. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
Pardon my stupidity, but how do you “botch” a decapitation?
Failure to do it properly can keep you from getting ahead.
btt
Well that is true, a young aspire axeman would definitely want to get ahead, lol.
aspire=aspiring. I really should proofread better.
How did you know I’ve botched a- uh, I mean, I have no idea. It’s totally mysterious to me too.
ping
......sharp force trauma ......
A new phrase for Ducky.
as in “Well Jethro, it appears the good fellow died from sharp force trauma to the neck”
:’)
Could have been on purpose, as has been said about the executions of Essex and Mary Queen of Scots:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_I_of_Scotland
“In Lady Antonia Fraser’s biography, Mary Queen of Scots, the author writes that it took two strikes to decapitate Mary: the first blow missed her neck and struck the back of her head, at which point the queen’s lips moved (her servants reported they thought she had whispered the words “Sweet Jesus”). The second blow severed the neck, all but a small bit of sinew which the executioner severed by using the axe as a saw.
“It has been suggested that it took three strikes to decapitate Mary instead of two. If so, then Mary would have been executed with the same number of axe strikes as Essex. It has been postulated that said number was part of a ritual devised to protract the suffering of the victim.[6]
Effective - and just - if the punishment was deserved.
That's gotta hurt.
“It was at one such site in East Yorkshire that the Anglo-Saxons chose to bury the worst kind of criminals, away from hallowed ground, leaving their heads to rot on stakes...”
I’ve tried this technique on gophers and other vermin, to mixed effect.
:’)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
