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1 - Death, memory and material culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Howard Williams
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
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Summary

In a Field of old Walsingham, not many moneths past, were digged up between fourty and fifty Vrnes, deposited in a dry sandy soile, not a yeard deep, nor farre from one another: Not all strictly of one figure, but most answering these described: Some containing two pounds of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jawes, thigh-bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion. Besides the extraneous substances, like peeces of small boxes, or combes handsomely wrought, handles of small brasse instruments, brazen nippers and in one some kinde of Opale.

(Browne 1658: 21–2)

Had they made as good provision for their names, as they had done for their Reliques, they had not so grosly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but Pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes, which in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves, a fruitlesse continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as Emblemes of mortall vanities; Antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last for ever had encouragement for ambition and finding not Atropos unto the immortality of their Names, were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion.

(Browne 1658: 74)

Introduction

This study begins with two quotations from the 1658 work entitled Hydrotaphia by the Norfolk antiquary Sir Thomas Browne.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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