Sublime

It was clear that Iron Age burial rites varied considerably across Britain. That even seemed to fit quite well with the picture of the political landscape that the Romans give us, both before and after much of Britain becomes subsumed into that huge, literate empire. They tell us that Britain was divided up into territories, a different tribe

There is a possible archaeological image of cross-dressing men on two Gotlandic picture-stones from Lärbro Tängelgårda. These show figures in the flowing dress that typically seems to signal women, some of them holding drinking horns, but a number of them appear to have beards and perhaps helmets. On one of the stones are four of these figures side

‘If we just look at Britain; at the time we’re getting offerings to the gods in rivers, bodies are being excarnated or cremated. This could reflect a divide between the gods of the sky and the gods of the earth: objects are being given to the gods of the earth, and the bodies and spirits are being given to the gods of the sky. It doesn’t work for

Again, these grave goods are most easily interpreted as having a ritual function.

But the numbers and proportions of bones found in the tombs suggest that some purposeful movement of certain elements was going on. And some arrangements seem very deliberate – such as the finger bones stuck into the nasal aperture of the skull from Belas Knap in Wiltshire, or the careful arrangement of skulls around the edge of a chamber at