Thomas Batemans Ten Years Diggings :: Archaeology Archaeological Essays

Thomas Batemans Ten Years DiggingsThomas Bateman at Calver Low, Derbyshire in 1860 Having been informed, on the 30th of August, that roughly skeletons had been discovered the day onward, by men baring the rock preparatory to quarrying it, at the marge of the cliff overlooking the limekilns at Calver Low, I immediately went to the place and free-base that there had been five skeletons buried in a line attitude by side, a few feet apart, in graves sunk squander to the rock which is there about two feet below the turf. The bodies were all lengthy at length with the heads to the west, so as non merely to shoot of the corpses facing the east, as is the Christian custom of burial yet observed, hardly in this case also to face the village, and the pleasant valley extending towards Baslow--either causative may have prompted the arrangement, as there is reason to believe the interments to be of the Anglo-Saxon period, although it was suggested at the time, in one of the local paper s, that they were remains of some who perished during the ravages of the plague at Eyam in 1666.In returning to the narrative, it will be best to describe the several skeletons, numbering from the north, premising that the legs of all had been cut away, owe to their being so near the border of a cliff, which descends for a massive distance almost perpendicularly, having long been quarried for lime burning.1.-A young person with actually slender bones, the femur 17 1/2 inches long, undisturbed with the censure of the skull, which had been broken and robbed of the teeth previous to our visit a small moment of coarse red pottery was picked up amongst the earth near the bones.2.-Removed before our arrival, but from the few bones preserved, it appears that the person was older than the first, although the femur measures 16 1/2 inches only-the skull thin, a good deal decayed and truly imperfect.3.-Removed-the skull very perfect when found, since despoiled of the whole of the facial b ones. The calvarium and lower ride have been recovered. The former presents, when viewed from above, an oval outline with a very wide occipital protuberance the latter is well formed, and the state of the teeth indicates an archeozoic adult age. Imperfection in the thigh bones prevents measurement, they do not however appear to have been very long.