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Mysterious Animal Burials / Animal Graves

JamesWhitehead

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Knife twists mystery of dog burials

Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
Tuesday January 1, 2002
The Guardian

The discovery of a unique knife, carved with an image of two dogs mating, has deepened the mystery of a Roman site which seems to be a graveyard of dead dogs, ritually buried for reasons which archaeologists are struggling to understand.
The dogs of Silchester are beginning to haunt Michael Fulford, and his team from Reading University, who have been working for years at the Hampshire site, one of the most enigmatic Roman sites in Britain.
He has found half a dozen burials, probably spanning two centuries. Three are of two dogs buried together, one where the dog was buried with the body of an infant, and one extraordinary burial where the dog was carefully positioned standing up as if on guard, with the earth meticulously packed in around to support it upright in its grave. The implication is that these were buried as guardians, though it has not been possible to tell whether they died naturally or were killed.
"We are either dealing with something quite extraordinary, or something absolutely typi cal which may have happened at many other Roman sites but the evidence has been missed or misinterpreted," he said.
The beautifully carved knife, a luxury imported object, was found in a pit together with the bodies of two dogs. Although the bones had been disturbed by the foundations of a much later wall, Professor Fulford believes they were originally carefully laid out.
Their grave had been used as a cesspit, but their burial seems to coincide with its abandonment, and the change of use of the site.
The knife could have been dropped by accident, but if it was a ritual offering it was an extravagant one.
The clasp knife is believed to date from the second century AD, when the town was at the height of its wealth and power. It is made of elephant ivory, and may have been made in Germany. However, the subject is unique: human and animal figures cast in metal or carved in bone, ivory, amber and jet have been found across the Roman world, but nothing comparable to the Silchester knife.
It shows the two animals in naturalistic style, their fur shown in incised lines, with meticulous detail, including the milk glands of the female. The blunt-muzzled dogs do not look like any of the dogs commonly depicted in Roman sculptures and mosaics, which are usually either lap-dogs or tall hunting dogs.
Archaeologists have been poking around at Silchester for two centuries, without re solving its conundrum. Almost all major Roman towns in Britain evolved into modern towns and cities, but Silchester was abandoned and never built on again. Although the town was built on Iron Age foundations, and became important and wealthy in Roman times, the site now stands among green fields, miles from the nearest town.
The Reading team has evidence that when the town was abandoned, in the late fifth or early sixth centuries, as the Roman grip on England crumbled, the wells vital in a town without a river were sealed.
When Prof Fulford found the first dog burials, he believed he had found evidence of the deliberate "killing" and abandonment of the site, possibly by Anglo-Saxons. "The latest discoveries are forcing me to tear up all my theories. The answer now is I don't know why Silchester was abandoned, but it seems clear that these rituals had been carried out for centuries earlier. They seem to be associated with the end of a period of occupation of a plot."
 
Thanks for takeing the time to post that.. ive never heard of it and now im intreeged. any links to more about it all?
 
Fasinateing!... i know its not unknown for Romano britains to bury Dogs and horses in seemingly human orientated Place...the injuries to the Silchester dog puts me in mind of a faithful friend injured in hunting/war?... prapse a dog cult methinks at work here.
 
Sorry, as usual this is going to be a bit vague.

In the first half of last year Radio 4 ran a series of archaeological programmes with Julian Richards. One of these concerned Silchester. At the end of the programme it was suggested that the site may have been treated with great superstition, even fear, by the Anglo-Saxons. Buried at what would have been an entrance to the town was, and this is where my memory fails me, either a human skull (or skulls) or a skeleton (or skeletons). There was, I think, a suggestion that these were of a later date to the occupation of the town and may have been part of some sort of ritual concerning the bad medicine associated with it.

All of the above might be complete bobbins because although I would normally listen to a programme like this with great interest I was plastering my bathroom ceiling and had a job hearing the radio over my enthusiastic profanity.


Spook - Any vaguer and I’d be invisible!
 
This has to be the most interesting piece of Forteana for many weeks, hope there are follow ups from archaeologists among us.
 
Might it's abandonment have been connected with the doggies? How much later was the later wall? I'm building up a whole weird sort of horror story around this in my little brain...
 
wow...dogs and abandonment Jones..put me in mind of a local story..... About the Lizard... A ship returning from the Crimea was wrecked on the lizard it was carrying familys and men, packed to the gunnels they all perished and were washed up drowned on the coast at the foot of the clifs. (along with hundreds of pistols from the hold) And villages spent days carring the dead up the cliff to bury then decently. At night the local dogs attacked the corpses! They were buried in a field still known as pistol Meadows. And the dogs rapidly became Ex-dogs. Wilkie Collins in rambles beond railways commented on the lack of dogs on the Lizard.....creepy ah
 
sidecar_jon said:
wow...dogs and abandonment Jones..put me in mind of a local story..... About the Lizard... A ship returning from the Crimea was wrecked on the lizard it was carrying familys and men, packed to the gunnels they all perished and were washed up drowned on the coast at the foot of the clifs. (along with hundreds of pistols from the hold) And villages spent days carring the dead up the cliff to bury then decently. At night the local dogs attacked the corpses! They were buried in a field still known as pistol Meadows. And the dogs rapidly became Ex-dogs. Wilkie Collins in rambles beond railways commented on the lack of dogs on the Lizard.....creepy ah

Hey Sidecar_Jon !

That's just the sort of gruesome sea story I like - Why don't you start a new thread about this... ? as I'm sure all of us crusty Sea Dogs have some grisley tales to tell..... Actually if it's ok with you I'll start one up in a minute under General Forteana...

Haarp
 
be my guest... tho im no salty sea dog!..i just lived on a boat for 5 yrs.....
 
Walrus remains found buried under St Pancras station in London
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildli ... ondon.html

A Pacific walrus has been discovered among a 19th century human burial underneath St Pancras Station in London.
n.
Photo: Reuters

By Daniel Johnson11:11AM BST 23 Jul 2013

Archaeologists found the four-metre-long walrus with 1,500 human bodies as part of excavations at the station in 2003, amid the renovation of the station into the Eurostar terminal.

The bones were in a coffin with eight other sets of human remains, which are thought to have been used for medical research some time after 1822.
Both the archaeologist who discovered the bones, Phil Emery, and the zoologist who studied them for the Museum of London Archaeology, Alan Pipe, are not sure how the bones came to be in St Pancras Church on the northern side of the station.

“It’s a bit of a mystery”, Mr Emery told The Times.

“We did some research to see if we could find any record of a walrus being dealt with, for example, by the London Zoological Society, but we drew a blank.”

Mr Emery said there was a reference to Prince Albert “riding on the back of a giant tortoise”, but added that this was not relevant to the bones they found.

“It is possible the animal bones were being dissected as practice, but it does seem to be a rather exotic animal to be dealing with”, he added.
The most plausible reason for the walrus being in London was that it was brought to the city by whalers and sold for medical research or as a curiosity, they said.

While Mr Pipe has found the remains of an ostrich and big cats on archaeological excavations in London, this was his first encounter with a walrus.

“Although we have considerable evidence of whales in London, from porpoises up to blue whales, in all my experience we haven’t had any other bones of walruses except small fragments of skull which have been chipped to get out the tusks”, he told the newspaper.
He said that walrus skins were used for buffing metal and there was a trade in their tusks for ivory.

While how it came to be in St Pancras is a mystery even to experts, the remains can now be viewed by researchers at the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre in Hackney, east London.
telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildli ... ondon.html
Link is dead. The MIA article (quoted in full above) can be accessed at the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2013072...uried-under-St-Pancras-station-in-London.html
 
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I missed this thread first time around, and as most of the links are dead I've dug out the best images of the knife/razor mentioned in the opening post. I confess, it wasn't what I was expecting from the description, and I'm not even certain that I would have called the animals dogs if I hadn't read it in the text--the rear creature looks almost bear-like at the front with semi-humanoid rear quarters. Given the wealth of metamorphoses in Greek and Roman myth, I did wonder whether it could have been a creature in the final stages of transformation, its beast form culminating in congress with a wild animal--purest speculation.

Side and front views.

Folding-knife-or-razor-ivory-handle-form-of-mating-dogs-2-AD.jpg
dog-faces.jpg
 
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Despite having started the thread, I had forgotten it completely and never stumbled across it in occasional delves into the older threads. I suppose fifteen years is a long time.

The pics are charming - a bit mucky in every sense! I wanted to take a brush to them - which is what my grannie did if she spotted such wheelbarrow goings-on in the garden! :)
 
Hi James, I stumbled on this thread just now and it piqued my interest because it triggered a memory of dogs having been (possibly) venerated in a healing cult during Romano-British times at Lydney in Gloucestershire, just under a hundred miles from Silchester. Dog figureens have been recovered there, mostly depicting long legged hunting dogs. I read that Lydney is associated with the British deity Nodens.

I was disapointed to find the link earlier on in the thread broken and delighted to find your recent posting of the photographs as I read on. Not as I had imagined with my 'civilised' 'modern' imagination but far more appropriate for our British ancestors.

Like you, my first reaction was 'these are bears'. If they are dogs, their muzzles remind me of modern bull terrier type breeds, or perhaps mastiffs. I have read that our Anglo-Saxon ancestors used war dogs in battle and that it is conjectured they were mastiff type breeds. Perhaps this was a common trait of our ancient ancestors, they were cousins after all. Or maybe the Angles learnt this habit from the British. It might account for the dogs being buried in ritual poses, guarding.

Just my rambling thoughts. Fascinating thread, thanks.

Blind Davey
 
Medieval porpoise 'grave' on Channel island puzzles archaeologists.

Archaeologists digging at an island religious retreat have unearthed the remains of a porpoise that, mystifyingly, appears to have been carefully buried in its own medieval grave.


The team believe the marine animal found on the island of Chapelle Dom Hue, off the west coast of Guernsey, was buried in the 14th century. (c) The Guardian 2017

(Please move if needed)

 
Interesting thread!

I now work only 10 minutes walk from the Reading Museum and this has put me in the mood to spend my lunchtime today in the Silchester gallery.
 
Am wondering why...the dogs are pictured mating like this, rather than in the 'tie' position, ie, back to back? Perhaps it just makes a better handle this way, but to make it properly 'dog-like' I'd have thought they'd have been carved in a tie.

Don't think they are bears, bears have more rounded ears, whilst these 'prick' ears do look doggy.
 
Could they be wolves?

Not a million miles away from this:
image.jpg


Blunt face, pricked ears, visible teats?

As Rome was associated with the she wolf, could the depiction on the knife even be some kind of coded political message? Total speculation!
 
Saw lots of small animal sculptures - goats, cocks, eagles, horses, wild boar and this rather fine handle in the form of a big cat (jaguar?), but nothing obviously doggy.

PSX_20170920_141205.jpg
 
Apotropaic talisman?

Caiman skeleton discovered under Pentre primary school floor
2 August 2019

The skeleton was found when the floor of one of the classrooms at Ysgol Bodringallt, in Pentre, Rhondda Cynon Taff, was lifted during renovation work on Wednesday.

Head teacher Dr Neil Pike said workers were "shocked" and "didn't expect to find such a thing".

He said people had talked for decades of a crocodile being buried at the site.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-49209737
 
Apotropaic talisman?

There is a theory that crocs were a free-gift or novelty which salesmen offered to apothecaries. Almost every image of ye old drugge-shoppes has one on display, almost becoming the emblem of the trade. They were probably representative of the Nile Crocodile, as Egypt was the supposed source of so many powders and potions. I doubt it the suppliers were too fussy about the source of their crocs or their stocks.

The school may have acquired the thing as a teaching-aid or a sporting mascot. Primary Schools are often in buildings which once covered a wider age-range.

It is interesting that there was an oral tradition of the burial: maybe a tribe of kids were once compelled to witness some laying of the foundations and the decaying specimen was given a decent send-off. Could it once have been a rugby mascot? I doubt if a Welsh school would be encouraging belief in talismans, despite their pointy hats! :)
 
This updated item about the porpoise grave on ScienceAlert suggests the porpoise was buried with an intention to use it as food, but for some reason it was never revisited. In any case, there's probably too little evidence to ever demonstrate why this mysterious burial was done.
Archaeologists Found a Truly Bizarre Burial in an Isolated Medieval Graveyard

The discovery, made on the small island of Chapelle Dom Hue off the coast of Guernsey in September 2017, revealed the ancient remains of a medieval porpoise buried in the earth, and archaeologists were at a loss to explain the story behind this mysterious animal tomb.

"It's very peculiar, I don't know what to make of it," archaeologist Philip de Jersey from Oxford University in the UK told The Guardian at the time.

"Why go to the trouble of burying a porpoise in what looks like a grave?" ...

It's possible that the porpoise was killed for food, since these mammals were eaten in medieval times.

But if that's the case, the researchers say it would have made a lot more sense for people to have disposed of the remains in the sea – located just 10 meters (32 ft) from the site, and the small island is surrounded by water on all sides. ...

One possibility is that the animal may have been killed for food and carefully stored until it was needed, but the preserved remains were never used, de Jersey thinks.

"It may have been packed in salt and then for some reason they didn't come back to it," he told The Guardian. ...

In a follow up in late 2018, de Jersey told the BBC he now believed it was most likely the animal had indeed been stored for food purposes, but that we would probably never reach a definitive answer, since so little is left of Chapelle Dom Hue. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/archae...arre-burial-in-an-isolated-medieval-graveyard
 
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