Description

Summary: 1 bone handle for a bronze flanged chisel (STHEAD 167) found with a primary inhumation in Bell Barrow Wilsford G58, excavated by William Cunnington.

Research results

A Bronze Age antler handle found with a primary inhumation in Bell Barrow Wilsford G58, excavated by William Cunnington. The handle is one of a number of grave goods found with this richly furnished burial, many of which are unusual. In addition to a musical instrument made from a human femur and an as yet unique pronged object, this handle originally held a flanged axehead - rare as an Early Bronze Age grave good.

This object was examined as part of the research published in Ritual in Early Bronze Age Grave Goods; a six-year research project carried out by Professor John Hunter and Dr Anne Woodward and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Aided by a large number of other specialists the pair undertood an exhuastive study examining over 1000 objects held in 13 museums across the country in order to provide an extensive overview of burial practices in the period and identify regional practices.

Wilkin (2011) discusses this grave group alongside a number of other Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age graves in Wiltshire, Dorset, and Oxfordshire, in order to explore the significance of the inclusion of animal remains in graves of this period for human-animal relationships. They suggest that whilst these are not frequent inclusions, only appearing in 15% of graves, they are disproportionately non-meat bearing elements such as skulls, horns, and antlers and may have had symbolic connotations. He suggests that animal remains linked practical and cosmological concerns; for example: the quality of a year’s antler harvest may have impacted communities’ ability to construct a monument, tying social identities to natural cycles. The inclusion of domestic cattle and wild deer in the same graves may have had significance in terms of how the dichotomy of hunting and farming was viewed by contemporary communities, whilst the animal remains themselves may have referenced the inherent characteristic of the animals themselves and assisted in the evocation of spirits or powers, or have had symbolic potential.