Anglo
Saxon Norton
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In
the summer of 1982, school children playing on
a rope-swing beside Mill Lane, Norton, unearthed
human bones and jewellery from a shallow grave.
The bones were those of a woman aged between 25
and 35, who had been buried with some of her personal
possessions, including a bronze brooch and a necklace
of glass and amber beads. These finds were dated
to the 6 th century A.D. – a pagan Saxon burial
site had been discovered!
Excavations
by Cleveland County Archaeology Section (now Tees
Archaeology), between 1984-1985, revealed the
full extent of the cemetery.
Bounded
by earlier Romano-British ditches to the south
and west, by Billingham Bottom marshes to the
east, and a trackway (now Mill Lane), to the north,
the site was found to contain 120 burials, nearly
all of them aligned north-south. Of these, 32
were crouched burials, 46 extended
, 7 prone (i.e. lying
face-down), and three cremations .
It is the burial position of these people and
the presence of grave goods that identify the
community as pagan.
It
has been suggested that the people found in the
prone position may well have been buried alive
– a treatment often considered to be reserved
for witches, acts of cowardice or treason. Crouched
burials were very common in Britain, before and
during the Roman period, particularly in the north
of the country and may simply indicate a strong
native British presence within this Anglo-Saxon
community at Norton. A further 32 graves had been
heavily disturbed and could not be allocated to
a particular burial form.
From
a detailed study of the bones and grave goods
contained within each grave, it was possible to
identify 37 adult male burials and 35 adult female
burials; the gender of the remaining 48 burials
could not be determined, mainly due to the fragile
and fragmentary nature of the surviving bones.
intro
|the burials | gallery
| reports | further
information |
