Time Team
Burying a great hunter;
a tale from the Beaker people some time between 2000 and 1800 BC
We heard the cries when the men were still some way off, and, at first, we thought it was shouts of triumph we could hear.
But just as the womenfolk began cheerfully to prepare for a feast, we heard the sounds more clearly and knew that the men were not celebrating a successful hunt. I could only have been about six years old at the time, yet I never will forget their haunting cries. As the hunting party came into view we could see that on their shoulders they carried not a deer, but a slumped and bleeding body.
I remember the noise all around me as the women's screams began to echo those of the men. They ran from the fire leaving me terrified and alone. Darkness fell and still I sat there, bemused at the rituals that had begun and which continued late into the night. It was my first experience of death and I had never felt so alone.
Only later did I discover that the man they had carried home was my uncle; our most skilled and fearless hunter. There had been some mistake by a less experienced huntsman with a flint and feather arrow, but there was little talk of that; all anybody would speak about was the funeral.
Our people had always had strict traditions about how to bury our dead. Even generations ago when we lived in our original homeland southeast of here, everything had to be carefully planned to ensure the best possible afterlife.
We brought these customs across the freezing North Sea with us when we landed on the sandy beaches of Aberdeenshire, and even at the age of six I knew that they were sacred.
My uncle was buried on his side with his arms and legs bent, but still wearing his precious flint wrist-guards in honour of the great hunter he had been. The shallow hole they had dug for him looked like it would only fit a child of my height, but I learned that it is our custom to bury our dead in the curled up shape of a baby before it is born.
The sides of the grave were lined with big, flat stones and someone had carefully smoothed the bottom and covered it with a layer of sand. The fourth, and largest, of the stones was placed on top of the grave, but not before my aunt and cousin had ceremoniously positioned my uncle's tools and weapons by his side, along with a clay beaker.
He would need these, I was told, in the next world. That day, the day they buried my uncle, was the day I began to fashion my own small tools from flint. I wanted to be a great hunter like he had been, but most of all, I was determined not to die without an impressive array of weapons to take with me into the afterlife.