Disposing of the dead on medieval battlefields

[Erpingham]

For those who wonder where all the burial pits are :

Anne Curry & Glenn Foard (2016) Where are the dead of medieval
battles? A preliminary survey

[Prufrock]

Interesting read. Thanks Anthony!

[Imperial Dave]

its definitely one of those mainly unanswered questions for me and there must be more lurking waiting to be found....

[Erpingham]

One minor thing that occured to me was they didn't pick up one assemblage which came from a burial pit in a church; Sandbjerget in Denmark, which contained 60 bodies from the early 14th century, buried in St Mary's church.  I've not yet found a detailed publication of it in English but there's a summary here

[Imperial Dave]

great link and summary - the discussion part was very interesting in terms of the possible manner in which the injuries were delivered

[John GL]

Recently I read some theorising about the site of the battle of Barnet, proposing moving the battlefield northwards from the generally accepted Hadley Common site.  Part of the rationale was the absence of grave pits on Hadley Common.

Fifty years ago I knew an elderly chap who'd spent his working life with Barnet Urban District Council.  He told me that many years before, probably in the 1930s, he'd been involved with pipe-laying works across Hadley Common and they'd unearthed many old bones, bits of rusty metal etc.  Not wanting to delay the works, they'd sent all the old rubbish to landfill.  No doubt this has happened in many cases, especially where battlefields are in areas which are now urban.

[Patrick Waterson]

So a few decades from now we might see a bright new theory that Barnet was fought on the site of the landfill ...

This is a significant caveat to bear in mind, because if a battlefield site has been developed the clues could have perished without trace.

[Erpingham]

One of the problems of stories like the Barnet one is, of course, "bones and bits of metal" could be many things.  They could have dug through an Anglo-Saxon cemetery, for example.  There are other development stories that unearthed large piles of bones which demonstrate the "destruction by development" case.  Building the railway near Lewes is one that springs to mind.  A quick Google shows that another three pits were found when building the Prison there a few years earlier.  The pit disturbed by the railway was in the grounds of Lewes Priory, which would be an example of the processes for collection and interment discussed in the article.