Wednesday 21 March 2012

Bed burials evidence of double monasteries?

Having looked through some of the archaeology, admittedly rather briefly at this stage, I have formed the theory that the 13 bed burials discovered in Britain are possible evidence of double monasteries (ie male and female residents) run by a woman.  They are scattered across the country and several have been found in the East which gives the lie to the idea taught to me in school that on the arrival of the Saxons in the East the Brits all upped sticks and moved to the West.  These settlements are British not Saxon although they may have included Saxons among their number.  The key features I am looking for are

  • a bed burial
  • other Christian Druid symbolism eg the cross found at Trumpington, the coins found at Street House, glass beads indicating the woman may have been holding a rosary, orientation of the graves
  • mixed burials - double houses were for both men and women
  • a British settlement nearby as at Collingbourne and Coddenham - the servants and tenants of the monastery would not live within the enclosure but a couple of miles away
  • is the cemetery within an Iron Age enclosure - this is the case at Coddenham and Street House and fits the pattern of monastic foundation within the Celtic Church
  • does the cemetery end use around 700 AD? - this seems to be the case with most of them and is most illuminating - after the Synod of Whitby the double monasteries were closed, moved to wholly Christian sites and segregated - the women Abbots who had been accorded equality within the Celtic Church were downgraded by the Roman Catholic Church to an inferior status - one explanation for the bed burials is that there was no precedent for the funeral of a woman Abbot or Bishop so they invented one marking their high status
One outcome of this research is that I can refine the date of The Wonderful History of the Sword in the Stone slightly as somewhere between 454 AD and 650 AD but as all the burials are around 650 AD possibly it is later than I thought.  However there is a cemetery at Great Chesterford which fits the bill which is dated between 450 and 600 AD, precisely my period, and it will be interesting to see what evidence if any turns up there which might bring the dating of the book forward again.  Lots to think about!


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