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Time Team R.I.P. ?
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Branwen
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Re: Time Team R.I.P. ?
Jan 10, 2010, 19:14
dodge one wrote:
I speculated a bit about the bones and votive offerings. Much like today's people throwing pennies into wishing wells...I'd think such things might be typical finds.
But the bodies? Was it typically just 1 body?
That's what had me thinking of quickly disposed of murder victims.
Either way, what alot of trouble to take as a burial or offering.
My practical side says a hole that deep is only going to be dug for a well.
Also another question comes to mind...did the body have any sort of special back fill on top of it {IE; stones} before the tons of clay and dirt?
That would certainly indicate a purposeful internment.
This is a curious subject and the first I've gotten to hear of it.


Backfilled very quickly after the shaft was dug seems to be the reason they know it wasn't used as a well. I saw one googling that was a whole body.

So many celtic customs revolve around waters. Silver and gold art works, broken, sacrificed to the waters, and rediscovered centuries later in treasure hoards always speaks to me of the origin of the wishing well. Why break it? If not to let the soul of the artwork escape and take our wish with it to the gods? Custom survived as putting white stones into the waters in the highlands, if you were too poor to use yer siller.

Murder brings us back to the Wearie O Wells which I did to death on another thread and added to the Arthur's Seat page about the Wearie Well too. Traditional gaelic death song has a refrain (bheir me Oh) sounds like "Weary Oh" and means "Woe is Me". (listen to the corries sing a version from 1542. Most wearie well legends are about murders.

The backfill was immediate, meaning not used for a well. The placement of bones and votive offerings like little hound sculptures together suggests more than just a murder to me. Sometimes its whole skeletons, sometimes just a few bones, possibly being reinterred from somewhere else, or at least, defleshed. Most bones are animal ones though. Would you be murdering an animal, adding a carving of the animal and a few human bones if it was murder?
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