The Malham Pipe A Reassessment of Its Context Dating and Significance

Northern History
ISSN: 0078-172X (Print) 1745-8706 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ynhi20
The Malham Pipe: A Reassessment of Its Context,

Dating and Significance
Richard Sermon & John F.J. Todd
To cite this article: Richard Sermon & John F.J. Todd (2018) The Malham Pipe: A
Reassessment of Its Context, Dating and Significance, Northern History, 55:1, 5-43, DOI:
10.1080/0078172X.2018.1426178
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0078172X.2018.1426178
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Northern History, LV:1, March 2018, 5–43
THE MALHAM PIPE: A REASSESSMENT OF ITS

CONTEXT, DATING AND SIGNIFICANCE
Richard Sermona and John F.J. Toddb

a
Bath and North East Somerset Council, UK, bUniversity of Kent, UK
The Malham Pipe is a musical instrument formed from the tibia of a sheep, and was discovered
in 1950 among artefacts revealed during the excavation of a Bronze Age burial mound at Seaty
Hill on Malham Moor in the Yorkshire Dales. On the basis of associated finds the pipe was
dated originally to the Iron Age, and in a study published in 1952 the musical properties of the
pipe were examined physically at a level of detail that set a benchmark for the characterization
of other such objects discovered subsequently. However, in the intervening period the dating
of the pipe has been questioned. In this paper, following a detailed reappraisal of the Seaty
Hill finds and dating evidence, including burial practice and settlement remains in the locality,
and their wider historical context, we have concluded that the Malham Pipe is of post-Roman
date. We believe, therefore, that although the Malham Pipe may no longer be claimed to be
the earliest known duct flute found in the British Isles, nevertheless it appears to be the first
recorded bone flute found in a post-Roman (Anglo-Saxon) burial context.
Introduction
In September of 1950 and 1951 the late Arthur Raistrick directed the excavation of a Bronze
Age burial mound at the summit of Seaty Hill on Malham Moor in the Yorkshire Dales
(Ordnance Survey Grid Reference SD907654). He was teaching a group of field archaeology
students based at the nearby Malham Tarn House, which still operates as a busy educational
centre for the Field Studies Council. During the course of the excavation, a sheep bone (tibia)
pipe or flute was discovered with one of thirteen shallow secondary burials, and on the basis
of other associated finds, principally two fragmentary iron knives, dated by Raistrick to the
Iron Age. The ‘Malham Pipe’, as it has come to be known, was subsequently donated to
Leeds City Museum where it is now on permanent display.1
Following its cleaning and consolidation, the pipe was examined by Leeds schoolteacher
Eric Todd who, with colleagues from the Department of Physics at Leeds University, man-
aged to record and analyse the musical properties of the pipe. This pioneering work was then
Richard Sermon, Senior Archaeological Officer, Bath and North East Somerset Council, BA1 1JG, <richard_sermon@
bathnes.gov.uk>; John F.J.Todd, Emeritus Professor of Mass Spectroscopy, School of Physical Sciences, University of
Kent, CT2 7NH, <J.F.J.Todd@kent.ac.uk>.
1
Leeds City Museum, acc. no. LEEDM.D.1964.0281.
© The University of Leeds 2018 DOI: 10.1080/0078172X.2018.1426178

6 THE MALHAM PIPE
published in the Galpin Society Journal,2 following which Todd was asked to examine a
possible ox bone instrument from excavations at Lachish in Palestine.3 Sadly, Todd was not
to see his second work published, as he had died the year before. Furthermore, his pioneering
work and experiments on both the Malham and Lachish finds have until now not been fully
described or recognized.
Since its discovery the age of the Malham Pipe has been subject to question. During the
Seaty Hill excavations grave goods were only found with the secondary burials. These finds
included the bone pipe, a small quantity of pottery, three beads and four fragmentary iron
objects, two of which were identified as knives. Unfortunately, none of the human remains
or associated finds, apart from the pipe, appear to have survived. Nevertheless, Raistrick did
compare the Seaty Hill knives to those from neighbouring settlements, which he had described
and illustrated in his earlier work on Iron Age sites in the region.4 A reassessment of these
knives, settlements and similar burials in the region, including more recent discoveries with
secure radiocarbon dates, would now suggest that the Seaty Hill secondary burials and pipe
are more likely to be post-Roman or Anglo-Saxon in date.
Eric Todd of Leeds
Eric Todd was born in October 1899 into an aspiring working-class Leeds family. In 1918,
at the end of the First World War, he joined the Royal Navy as a wireless operator. After the
war, and being scientifically minded, he was taken on by the Leeds Gas Works as a labora-
tory assistant, and then as the chief chemist for the Birkenhead Gas Works. He later studied
to be a teacher at the Leeds Training College in Beckett Park, graduating in about 1927–28,
and then for most of his career taught at Green Lane School in Wortley until 1956. He was
a gifted amateur musician and, though not professionally trained, taught himself to play the
recorder, flute, piano and the French horn, which he played for the Leeds Symphony Society.
He was music critic for the Yorkshire Evening News and knew Carl Dolmetsch, the virtuoso
recorder player. At that time recorders were not widely available and Todd’s interest inspired
him to make instruments with his pupils from lengths of bamboo with cork blocks for the
mouthpiece, as part of a wider inter-war period educational initiative known as the Bamboo
Pipe Movement.5 Leeds City Museum would often host music events for groups of children
from the local schools. It was probably through this connection that Eric knew the curator
David Owen, who coordinated the research and publication of the Malham Pipe.
Todd’s pioneering work on the Malham Pipe, which will be discussed in more detail
below, brought him both local and national attention. An article appeared in the Yorkshire
Post in December 1951 entitled ‘Tune Played on Iron Age Pipe’ and his recording of the
pipe was broadcast on BBC radio.6 A photograph of Todd holding the pipe was taken by the
Yorkshire Post, and although not used in the final article a copy survives with his family papers
(see Fig. 1). However, it was likely to have been the publication of his work in the Galpin
2
A. Raistrick, E. Spaul and E. Todd, ‘The Malham Iron Age Pipe’, Galpin Society Journal, 5 (1952), 28–38.
3
O. Tufnell, Lachish (Tell ed Duweir) IV: The Bronze Age, Published for the Trustees of the late Sir Henry Wellcome
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958).
4
A. Raistrick, ‘Iron Age Settlements in West Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 34 (1939), 115–50.
5
M. James, The Pipers Guild Handbook: The Origin and History of the Pipe Movement, with Full Instructions How to
Make Bamboo Pipes with Diagrams (London: Cramer, 1932).
6
‘Tune Played on Iron Age Pipe’, The Yorkshire Post, Saturday, 1 December 1950, p. 8; Raistrick et al., ‘The Malham
Iron Age Pipe’, p. 32.
Richard Sermon and John F.J. Todd 7
Figure 1. Photograph of Eric Todd in 1951 holding the Malham Pipe, which has been outlined in
ink to aid newspaper printing. Picture courtesy of Yorkshire Post Newspapers.
Society Journal that brought him to the attention of a more academic audience. This would
include the respected prehistorian Stuart Piggott, who loaned his personal copy of Todd’s
Malham Pipe recording to his graduate student, Vincent Megaw. In 1960 Megaw published a
ground-breaking article on the subject of bone flutes in European archaeology. This article is
widely recognized as the starting point for research in this area of music and archaeology, in
which Megaw clearly cites Todd’s work and recording as the original impetus for his article.7
7
J.V.S. Megaw, ‘Penny Whistles and Prehistory’, Antiquity, 34 (1960), 6–13 (p. 10, n. 40).
8 THE MALHAM PIPE
Much of Todd’s research, including his work on the Lachish pipe in 1954, took place at the
family home in Leeds (20 Montagu Crescent, ls8). Eric Todd died in January 1957, leaving
his wife Lewin and son John, who is the co-author of this article.
Seaty Hill Excavation
Arthur Raistrick’s long and significant contribution to British archaeology is well recorded.
His excavations at Seaty Hill were part of an annual series of one-week courses in field
archaeology that he directed from 1949 to 1960. The courses were hosted by the Council for
the Promotion of Field Studies (today’s Field Studies Council) and based at their field cen-
tre at Malham Tarn House, which also served as the archive for the excavation records and
finds.8 However, at some point after 1960, or possibly following Raistrick’s death in 1991,
most of this excavation archive appears to have been lost. A search of various museums and
archives connected with Raistrick’s work has included Craven Museum, Skipton Library,
Lower Winskill, Tolson Museum, Leeds City Museum, Bradford University Library and
the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. Whilst a number of these collections hold some secondary
material relating to the Malham Pipe and Seaty Hill excavations, of the original excavation
archive only four items appear to survive — the Malham Pipe, which is on display at Leeds
City Museum, and three drawings in the Elizabeth and Arthur Raistrick collection at the
University of Bradford Special Collections:
Seaty Hill, CPFS 1950–51, sketch plan and section (map 1474F).
Seaty Hill, Malham Moor, 1950, ink plan and section (map 1475F).
Seaty How, Malham Moor, undated, pencil plan and section (map 1476J).
The first element of the place name almost certainly derives from the Old Norse sæti or sætr,
meaning either a high place (natural seat) or summer pasture. The second element derives
from the Old English hyll, which has retained its original meaning. However, it is interesting
to note that one of Raistrick’s plans (map 1476J) uses the alternative name Seaty How, where
both elements are of Old Norse origin, the second element deriving from haugr, meaning
hillock, mound or cairn. This is particularly significant when we consider the large number of
prehistoric barrows and cairns in northern England and Scotland that bear the name How(e).
Similar place names occur in Cumbria at Seat Hill (NY650177), Seat How (NY213256 and
SD165971) and Seat Knott (SD646953). The last example was formerly in Yorkshire and
still lies within the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
The earliest published account of the Seaty Hill excavation was an article in the Manchester
Guardian (today’s Guardian newspaper) in October 1950, entitled ‘Bronze Age Finds at
Malham’, which also announced the discovery of the Malham Pipe.9 A more detailed descrip-
tion of the excavation was given by Raistrick as his introduction to the article for the Galpin
Society Journal, and a shorter summary in his article for the Field Studies Journal.10 From
these published descriptions, and with the benefit of the three archive drawings listed above,
it is now possible to give a fuller account of the Seaty Hill excavation.
8
A. Raistrick and P.F. Holmes, ‘The Archaeology of Malham Moor’, Field Studies Journal, 1.4 (1962), 73–100 (p. 78).
9
‘Bronze Age Finds at Malham’, Manchester Guardian, Friday, 6 October 1950, p. 4.
10
Raistrick et al., ‘The Malham Iron Age Pipe’, pp. 28–32; Raistrick and Holmes, ‘The Archaeology of Malham Moor’,
pp. 78–79.
Figure 2. Location plan of Seaty Hill and Malham Moor, based on survey by Arthur Raistrick
(Field Studies Journal, vol. 1.4 (1962), fig. 1). Courtesy of the Field Studies Council.
Seaty Hill is a low, conical hill located at the north end of New Close Pasture to the west
of Goredale Beck and east of Malham Rakes (lane), which runs from Malham Tarn to the
village of Malham about 2 miles to the south-west (see Fig. 2). The hill rises to a height of
10 THE MALHAM PIPE
399 m OD and sits within a rich archaeological landscape, with large areas of the underlying
Great Scar (Carboniferous) Limestone exposed, forming extensive stone pavements and out-
crops.11 At the summit of the hill is a low, circular mound measuring about 20 m in diameter
and 1 m in height. The mound is surrounded by a shallow 2 m wide ditch with a maximum
depth of 0.3 m and possible causeway to the north-west. The ditch is surrounded in turn by
a very low bank, giving an overall monument diameter of about 26 m. This hilltop feature
has long been identified as a tumulus or Bronze Age round barrow (Yorkshire Dales Historic
Environment Record: MYD4071), and following Raistrick’s excavations was given statutory
protection as a Scheduled Ancient Monument in February1964.12
Excavation began in September 1950 (see Fig. 3), with Raistrick and his students digging
a long trench 0.9 × 18.3 m (3 × 60 ft) running diagonally north-west to south-east across the
top of the barrow. This trench was then expanded with a rectangular area 2.4 × 4.3 m (8 × 14
ft) located over the centre of the mound. Two smaller trenches 0.9 × 1.8 m and 0.9 × 1.2 m
(3 × 6 ft and 3 × 4 ft) were located to south-west and south-east of the barrow centre, and a
further trench 0.9 × 4.3 m (3 × 14 ft) to the south-west across the outer ditch. These trenches
revealed the overall structure of the barrow, the original or primary burial over which the
cairn was constructed (Fig. 3: A and B) and seven secondary burials (Fig. 3: a–g) inserted
into the surface of the mound at a later date. The 1951 season went on to reveal six further
secondary burials (Fig. 3: h–m). The following stratigraphic sequence now combines all the
available published and archive material.
Cut into the natural surface of the hill top were two sub-circular pits (A and B), both
measuring 1.4 m (4½ ft) in diameter at the top, 0.9 m (3 ft) in diameter at the base, and with
a depth 1.1 m (3½ ft) below the original ground surface. These two pits were slightly intercut
at the top, with the westerly pit (A) found to contain the barrow’s central primary burial.
The skeleton was virtually complete and revealed that the body had been carefully placed in
a sitting position with the knees drawn well up towards the body, and, although somewhat
crushed, the bones of the hands and feet were reported to be unusually large. The burial was
positioned to face the easterly pit (B), which was almost completely filled by a well-built
cairn of moderate-sized limestone boulders. No other artefacts were found in either of the
two pits, which were filled with a fine sandy and gravelly loam up to the original level of the
hilltop. These pits were then covered by a 4.6 m (15 ft) diameter and 0.3 m (1 ft) high inner
mound made of coarse gravel and small boulders, within which several larger boulders had
been placed. This was then sealed by a larger second mound measuring 20.1 m (66 ft) in
diameter and 0.9 m (3 ft) high, made of limestone rubble and local boulder clay, with a kerb
of large limestone boulders buried in the toe of the mound. Surrounding this mound was a
shallow 0.3 m (1 ft) deep ditch, from which the spoil had been thrown outwards to form a
low outer bank.
Cut into the surface of the larger mound and lying just below the turf were at least thirteen
secondary burials (a–m). These burials lay in shallow saucer-shaped depressions approxi-
mately 23 cm (9 in.) deep and filled with a fine gravelly loam. The skeletal remains were
all incomplete and extremely fragmentary. They included pieces of skull and jaw bone with
occasional teeth, a few ribs but no vertebrae, the larger limb bones, a few bones of the hands
11
A. Raistrick, Malham and Malham Moor (Skipton: Dalesman Books, 1947, reprinted 1983); Raistrick and Holmes,
‘The Archaeology of Malham Moor’, pp. 73–78.
12
Historic England, national heritage list no. 1010444.
Figure 3. Composite plan and section of the Seaty Hill excavations in 1950 showing positions of
primary (A and B) and secondary (a to f) burials (map 1475F), with additional secondary burial (g)
excavated in 1950 (map 1476J), and approximate positions of six further secondary burials (h to m)
excavated in 1951 (map 1474F). Letter ‘p’ indicates secondary burial found with pottery, whilst the
dotted circle symbol is assumed to indicate three secondary burials found with single beads. Image
courtesy of the University of Bradford Special Collections and the copyright holder.
and feet, and in one case part of a scapular. Three of the secondary burials (g, h and i) were
each found to contain a single bead: one made of polished jet, one of carved ochre or limonite,
and one of white glass with a band of blue inlay. One of these same burials (g) also contained
some small sherds of unidentified pottery. Two of the burials (within j–m) contained frag-
mentary but recognizable iron knives, whilst the central burial (a) and one of its neighbours
(within b–f) contained fragmentary iron objects assumed to have been knives. According
12 THE MALHAM PIPE
to Raistrick, these four iron objects/knives were all located under the long bones, and in a
position that would equate to the knee of a more complete skeleton. The central secondary
burial (a) lay almost directly above the primary burial (A), and in the same position as the
aforementioned iron objects contained a sheep bone pipe or flute along with several small
bones of the hand and wrist.
Given the broken and incomplete nature of the skeletal remains, Raistrick suggested that
the bodies may have been exposed after death to allow natural excarnation (defleshing) by
weathering and scavenging animals. The remaining bones were then ‘placed carefully with
the limb bones approximately in the position of a crouched skeleton’.13 However, he also
noted that the burials were in a very exposed hilltop position, with only a thin cover of turf
offering little protection from extreme weather and the trampling of cattle. He also noted
widespread disturbance from burrowing rodents. These factors, along with the generally acidic
soil conditions around Seaty Hill, could also account for the poor survival and condition of
the skeletal remains.14 The preservation of the bone pipe was largely due to it being pressed
into an underlying layer of clayey soil, which both cushioned the object and prevented the
migration of ground water.
Dating Evidence
Raistrick’s dating of the primary burial to the Early Bronze Age is not in question. Using the
Historic England (formerly English Heritage) classification system, the Seaty Hill monument
appears to be either a type 6 (kerbed with continuous ditch) or type 7 (kerbed with penannu-
lar ditch) bowl barrow. This is the most numerous class of round barrow, with the majority
constructed during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (2400–1500 bc). However,
his dating of the secondary burials and finds to the Late Iron Age or early Roman period is
somewhat more problematic:
The iron objects, the beads and the method of burial agree with comparable secondary burials intruded
into older mounds, in many adjacent parts of Craven. The fragmentary nature of the remains, and all
features of these burials are a commonplace of a very large number which have been investigated.
Many of the Craven burials can be dated to the Iron Age with a date which may range between the
second century bc and the second century ad. The knives can be paralleled from several of the Iron
Age hutments and are there associated with dateable pottery. The presence of beads suggests three
female burials.15
The age of the pipe, and by association the secondary burials, was first called into question
in June 1951 in letters between Rupert Bruce-Mitford of the British Museum and David Owen
at Leeds City Museum (see museum object file). In this correspondence Bruce-Mitford com-
pared the Malham Pipe to other excavated bone flutes dated to the Anglo-Saxon and Viking
periods. Owen’s response appeared grateful for the advice, but confirmed that Raistrick was
in no doubt the pipe was Iron Age. Nevertheless, this question over the date of the pipe was
alluded to in Todd’s final report:
13
Raistrick et al., ‘The Malham Iron Age Pipe’, p. 29.
14
P. Bullock, ‘The Soils of the Malham Tarn Area’, Field Studies Journal, 3.3 (1970), 381–408.
15
Fragments of similar instruments have been discovered from Saxon period excavations and, according
to Mr Bruce-Mitford of the British Museum, such whistles were common in northern Europe in the
late Saxon or Viking period. The discovery at Malham anticipates this by several centuries.16
To understand how Raistrick arrived at an Iron Age date for the Seaty Hill knives and
secondary burials we need to re-examine his three underlying assumptions: (a) that the
knives could be paralleled with examples from several ‘hutments’ in the region, (b) that these
settlement sites were thought to be largely Iron Age in date, and (c) that similar secondary
barrow inhumations found in Craven had also been attributed to the Iron Age. However, in the
absence of any independent dating evidence or wider comparison of these knife, settlement
and burial types, Raistrick’s arguments appear to have been rather circular.
Dating Evidence: (a) Iron Knives
According to Raistrick, the Seaty Hill knives could be paralleled with finds from several
neighbouring settlements. In making this comparison he was almost certainly referring to
the iron whittle tang knives he had described and illustrated in an earlier article on Iron
Age sites in the region. These knives were said to be ‘fairly true to two types — the slender
tanged blade, and the larger chopper type, with a fairly substantial tang or haft’.17 In this
article Raistrick made particular reference to a collection of knives found in 1893 by Ernest
Speight and William Boyd Dawkins at Lea Green near Grassington, during the excavation
of an enclosed settlement and nearby round barrow with multiple inhumations.18 Whilst
Raistrick did not record the exact provenance of the knives illustrated in his 1939 article, or
whether they were meant to portray any of the knives found at Lea Green in 1893, they were
clearly intended to be representative of knives found in the region that he attributed to the
Iron Age. However, given the various orientations of the knives in his original illustration,
he may have confused some of the blade backs with the cutting edge.19 Nevertheless, we can
be guided by the fact that the cutting edge normally exhibits a higher level of alteration from
accidental damage, wear or sharpening. When placed in the same orientation, Raistrick’s knife
illustrations can be compared with profiles of the Lea Green knives found in 1893, five of
which survive in the collections of Craven Museum in Skipton.20 In Figure 4 these two groups
of knives are shown side by side to aid comparison with each other and their identification
using the standard knife typologies discussed below.
One of the most commonly used typologies for the identification of Late Iron Age and
Romano-British iron knives was developed by William Manning, based largely on exam-
ples held at the British Museum, and comparing these with knives from other collections
around the country.21 Knives 1 and 7 (see Fig. 4) have an angular-shaped blade back similar
to Manning’s knife type 7A, that is ‘characterized by a blade which is initially more or less
16
17
Raistrick, ‘Iron Age Settlements in West Yorkshire’, p. 141.
18
Ibid., p. 127; E.E. Speight, ‘Upper Wharfedale Exploration Committee, First Annual Report, 1893’, Proceedings of the
Yorkshire Geological Society, 12 (1895), 374–84 (pp. 378–80); A. King, R. Spence, L. Butler, P. Fethney and H. Ramm,
Early Grassington: An Archaeological and Historical Trail (Leeds: Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1995), map 2,
locations 4 and 5.
19
Raistrick, ‘Iron Age Settlements in West Yorkshire’, fig. IV, nos 7–11.
20
Craven Museum, acc. nos SKIPM.A108.1–5.
21
W.H. Manning, Catalogue of the Romano-British Iron Tools, Fittings and Weapons in the British Museum (London:
British Museum Press, 1985), pp. 108–23.
14 THE MALHAM PIPE
Figure 4. Iron knives and a cleaver used by Raistrick to illustrate examples of Iron Age tools
found in the region (courtesy of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society), compared
with the profiles of iron knives and a cleaver found at Lea Green in 1893 (courtesy of Craven
Museum). It should be noted that the knife reference numbers used here and in Table 2 have been
taken from the original numbering systems used by Raistrick (knives 7–11) and Craven Museum
(knives 1–5), resulting in there being no knife number 6.
straight before turning sharply downwards […] The sloping section of the back of the blade is
straight or slightly convex; the edge usually has a rather shallow curve’, although in Manning’s
typology this knife type is only found in combination with scale tang handles, often with a
loop at the end. Knives 2–4 and 9–11 are broadly consistent with Manning’s knife type 14,
which is described as having ‘the tang set more or less on the midline of the blade, which
has a straight, or slightly concave edge (usually caused by repeated whetting), and a back
which is either level or slightly arched before it drops to the tip’. Knives 5 and 8 are small
iron cleavers and have a distinctive triangular-shaped blade, which corresponds very closely
with the Manning’s knife type 11A. These knives are described as having a back which
continues the line of the handle and is more or less straight; the edge is straight or slightly convex,
rising to the tip which may be pointed or rounded. The majority of examples are tanged (group A), but
a group exist with rod handles terminating in loops (group B).
The British Museum collection includes one example of Manning’s knife type 7A and six
examples of type 11A, all but one of which came from excavations at Hod Hill in Dorset and
date to the mid-first century ad.22
In recent years a significant number of iron knives and other tools/weapons have been
found by metal detectorists in the upper Wharfedale area and reported under the Portable
Antiquities Scheme (see Table 1). They include a further knife and cleaver from Lea Green
and three knives from Grassington that closely match the examples described and illustrated
22
Ibid., pp. 11–12, 14–15, fig. 28.
Table 1
Iron knives (K) and spearheads (S) found in Craven District and reported under the Portable Antiq-
uities Scheme
Location K S Reference Numbers
Threshfield 4 0 SWYOR: BDBFE4, FF7D03, FF9D54, FFB344
Kettlewell 6 1 SWYOR: 13FF91, 142DD2, 145073, 146DF7, 148980, 14A685, EB7AA1
Grassington 3 2 LANCUM: 203977, 2045E8, 205548, 2029C4, 201CB7
Lea Green 2 0 LANCUM: 9D8577, 9D9585
Hawkswick 2 0 LVLP: 1514, 1515
by Raistrick in 1939. However, these knives have been attributed to the post-Roman period,
with those from Threshfield and Kettlewell described using Patrick Ottaway’s typology, which
classifies knives by the shape of the blade back located between the shoulder (with the tang)
and the tip of the blade. This classification system was first developed in the 1980s for the
study of Anglo-Scandinavian knives from excavations at Coppergate in York, and has more
recently been applied to Anglo-Saxon knives from Flixborough in Lincolnshire:
One of the main problems of classifying knives is that their original form may have been altered by
wear and sharpening; however, a feature which is unlikely to have been greatly affected in this way
is the blade back, and so it is here that the analysis of blade form may begin. In the study of Anglo-
Scandinavian knives from 16–22 Coppergate, York, and other Anglo-Saxon sites, five basic blade
back forms (A–E) have been identified. In form A, the blade back has two straight parts meeting at
an angle. Knives of this form are often described as having an ‘angle-back’. In form B, the rear part
of the back is straight and the front part is concave, while in form C, the front part is convex. Blade
backs of form D are convex from shoulder to tip, and those of form E are straight from shoulder to
tip. Further subdivision of forms A–C is sometimes possible, according to whether, when the knife
is placed on a horizontal line between the blade and tang tips, the straight rear part of the blade back
appears horizontal (forms Al, B1, C1), or slopes up (forms A2, B2, C2), or slopes down (forms A3,
B3, C3). If the blade or tang tips do not survive, then it will not usually be possible to assign the knife
to one of the three variants, and they are referred to as Ai, Bi or Ci (i = indeterminate).23
Applying Ottaway’s blade-back typology to the knives illustrated in Figure 4, knives 1
and 7 correspond very closely with form A. This is the typical angle-back blade, and though
scarce in early Anglo-Saxon contexts was common from the eighth to tenth centuries ad.
Knives 2–4 and 9–11 are consistent with Ottaway’s form C and possibly form D (knife 10).
Knives with these blade-back forms were common throughout the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-
Scandinavian period. Knives 5 and 8 with their triangular-shaped blades are not explicitly
identified in Ottaway’s typology, although their straight blade back is similar to form E.
From this reappraisal of the knives discussed and illustrated by Raistrick in his 1939 arti-
cle, we now appear to have examples of both Romano-British and post-Roman knife forms
(see Table 2). The two most likely explanations for this are that: (a) the knives represent a
mixed assemblage from different periods of activity, due to the limitations of nineteenth- and
early twentieth-century excavation and recording techniques, or (b) the knives reveal the
continued use, and possible production, of earlier knife forms into later periods. This would
23
P. Ottaway, ‘Knives’, in Life and Economy at Early Medieval Flixborough, c. ad 600–1000: The Artefact Evidence,
Excavations at Flixborough, 2, ed. D.H. Evans and C. Loveluck (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2009), section 5.6.
16 THE MALHAM PIPE
Table 2
Identification of knives illustrated in Figure 4 using two standard knife typologies, with their corre-
spondence rated high (1), medium (2) or low (3)
Manning Typology Ottaway Typology
Example Source (1985) (2009)
Knife 1 Lea Green (1893), SKIPM.A108.1 Type 7A 3 Form A2 1
Knife 2 Lea Green (1893), SKIPM.A108.2 Type 14 2 Form C1 1
Knife 5 Lea Green (1893), SKIPM.A108.5 Type 11A 1 Form E 3
Knife 7 Raistrick (1939), fig. IV, 7 Type 7A 3 Form A1 1
Knife 9 Raistrick (1939), fig. IV, 9 Type 14 2 Form C1 1
Knife 10 Raistrick (1939), fig. IV, 10 Type 14 2 Form C2 or D 2
Knife 11 Raistrick (1939), fig. IV, 11 Type 14 2 Form C1 1
Knife 8 Raistrick (1939), fig. IV, 8 Type 11A 1 Form E 3
particularly apply to Manning’s knife type 11A, which due to its functional form could
have survived in remote upland areas, along with the introduction of new Anglo-Saxon and
Anglo-Scandinavian knife types. Whilst the knife evidence is now somewhat inconclusive,
it nevertheless casts serious doubt on the reliability of the Iron Age knife types identified
by Raistrick, and therefore his dating of the Seaty Hill knives. Craven Museum currently
favours a post-Roman (Anglo-Saxon) date for the Lea Green knife assemblage, based on an
examination by Roger Martlew of Leeds University.24
Dating Evidence: (b) Settlements
The dating of ancient settlement remains in the Yorkshire Dales has also been problematic,
given the limited amount of archaeological investigation or secure dating evidence. More than
seven hundred hut circles have been mapped in the region, many of which are clearly visible
on aerial photographs, particularly in the limestone areas of Craven.25 These settlements range
from isolated enclosures containing one or two hut circles to larger enclosures containing
groups of fifteen or more, and have generally been ascribed an Iron Age to Romano-British
date, based on the work of Raistrick.26 Whilst these hut circle settlements would appear to
be late prehistoric in character, Raistrick also attributed a significant number of settlements
containing small rectangular enclosures or structures to the same period, including the pre-
viously mentioned enclosed settlement at Lea Green near Grassington.
The Lea Green settlement (MYD4034; SD996662) consists of about 20 small, mainly rec-
tangular enclosures, their boulder walls standing to a height of about 0.5 m, with the whole
settlement surrounded by a massive limestone wall.27 The site was excavated by Speight
and Boyd Dawkins in 1893 and identified by Raistrick as being Iron Age or Romano-British
in date.28 However, the finds assemblage recorded by Boyd Dawkins, and the pottery in
24
Martin Wills, Collections Officer, Craven Museum, pers. comm., 16 July 2015.
25
R. White, The Yorkshire Dales, A Landscape Through Time (Ilkley: Great Northern, 2005), pp. 27–28.
26
Raistrick, ‘Iron Age Settlements in West Yorkshire’, pp. 117–21.
27
King, Early Grassington, map 2, location 5.
28
Speight, ‘Upper Wharfedale Exploration Committee’, pp. 378–79; Raistrick, ‘Iron Age Settlements in West Yorkshire’,
p. 119.
Table 3
Radiocarbon dates from three settlement sites excavated by the Ingleborough Archaeology Group
(Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, calibrated dates 95.4% probability)
Years Calibrated SUERC
Site SFN Context Building Material bp ad Code
Upper Pasture 161 108 1 charcoal (hazel) 1295±30 660–780 35384
Upper Pasture 144 108 1 charcoal (hawthorn) 1300±30 660–780 35385
Brows Pasture 124 404 FS1-A charcoal (blackthorn) 1317±30 653–772 43771
Brows Pasture 131 305 FS1-A charcoal (alder/hazel) 1346±27 642–766 44506
Brows Pasture 168 705 FS2-C charcoal (alder/hazel) 1221±30 692–887 43777
Crummack Dale 116 202 BS1-2 tooth collagen 1133±30 782–988 47662
Crummack Dale 116 202 BS1-2 tooth enamel 1151±28 780–972 47666
Crummack Dale 116 202 BS1-2 bone collagen 1108±30 881–1014 47661
Crummack Dale 187 605 BS2-6 charcoal (hazel) 1195±39 693–952 56306
Crummack Dale 199 605 BS2-6 charcoal (alder/hazel) 1167±39 769–974 56307
Crummack Dale 139 407 BS3-3 charcoal (hazel) 1186±27 730–943 49208
Note: Years BP (before present) from AD 1950.
particular, is now thought to suggest a much wider date range: ‘The settlement was in use
from Roman to Anglo-Saxon times and has yielded a range of Roman and post-Roman pot-
tery forms, a post-Roman disc-headed pin, and what appears to be a metal strap end’.29 The
site has also been re-examined by Yvonne Luke, who argues that the internal structures are
more likely to be Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Scandinavian in date, and represent a number of
rectangular houses with outbuildings and adjoining crofts that developed around a primary
central steading or farmstead (MYD4029; SD996662).30 The settlement’s perimeter wall
was observed to pre-date some if not all of the internal structures, and could therefore date
to an earlier Romano-British phase of occupation. Luke’s reinterpretation of the settlement
remains clearly provides a better context for understanding the Lea Green finds and knife
assemblage discussed above.
Until recently, the only settlement with similar rectangular structures to have been firmly
dated was at Gauber High Pasture near the former Ribblehead quarry (MYD3669; SD765784).
The site was excavated by Alan King between 1974 and 1976, revealing the remains of three
rectangular buildings arranged around a small enclosure.31 The dating evidence included a
socketed iron spearhead, two angle-back knives and four Northumbrian stycas, two of which
could be dated to the second half of the ninth century (these coins having been struck for King
Æthelred II of Northumbria and Archbishop Wulfhere of York). However, excavations by the
Ingleborough Archaeology Group at three other sites containing rectangular buildings are
now providing calibrated AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) radiocarbon dates, which
also indicate occupation in the post-Roman period (see Table 3). These sites include: a small
shieling or herdsman’s shelter at Upper Pasture near Horton in Ribblesdale (MYD55685;
SD776741) with two charcoal samples providing a date range from the mid-seventh to late
King, Early Grassington, p. 8.

29
Y. Luke, ‘Lea Green Settlement, Grassington: Fieldwork Project’ (University of York, 2003 unpublished).
30
A. King, ‘Ribblehead’, Current Archaeology, 61 (1978), 38–41; A. King, ‘Gauber High Pasture, Ribblehead: An Interim
31
Report’, in Viking Age York and the North, ed. R.A. Hall, CBA Research Report, 27 (1978),21–25; White, The Yorkshire
Dales, pp. 49–50.
18 THE MALHAM PIPE
eighth century ad, two enclosed farmsteads at Brows Pasture in Chapel-le-Dale (MYD57698;
SD733771 and MYD40287; SD732771) with five charcoal samples providing an overall date
range from the mid-seventh to the early tenth century ad, and three steadings or farmsteads
at Crummack Dale (MYD3689; SD777724) with three charcoal and three faunal samples
providing a possible date range from the late seventh to the early eleventh century ad.32
Ironwork found during these recent excavations included an angle-back knife from Brows
Pasture, and at least fourteen iron tools and other post-Roman objects from Crummack Dale.
Whilst many of the hut circle settlements identified by Raistrick may well prove to be Iron
Age or Romano-British in date, his coeval dating of numerous other settlements containing
mainly rectangular structures now appears unreliable. Such settlements would include the
farmstead at Gauber Hill Pasture with its ninth-century coin evidence, along with those at
Brows Pasture and Crummack Dale where similar rectangular buildings have all been securely
radiocarbon dated to the post-Roman period. Furthermore, these sites have all produced
examples of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Scandinavian ironwork, including three typical angle-
back knives. The revised dating of the Crummack Dale farmsteads is particularly significant
as Raistrick had previously identified these as Iron Age settlements.33 But perhaps more
importantly, and given the doubts already expressed regarding Raistrick’s dating its knife
assemblage, the enclosed settlement remains at Lea Green are now also thought to be largely
post-Roman in date.34
Dating Evidence: (c) Burial Practice
Raistrick compared the Seaty Hill burials, their iron objects and beads to similar secondary
barrow inhumations found in neighbouring parts of Craven that were also thought to be Iron
Age in date.35 However, this was rather a circular argument, given that the dates attributed
to these other burials were again based on Raistrick’s interpretations, including the knife
evidence discussed above.36 Challis and Harding, in their assessment of later prehistoric sites
between the rivers Trent and Tyne, cautiously listed Raistrick’s Iron Age burials as being
possibly first millennium bc, but with the caveat that the Lea Green secondary burials and
iron knives were possibly post-Roman.37 When these burials (see Table 4) were reviewed in
their national context by Rowan Whimster in his doctoral thesis on burial practice in Iron
Age Britain, he echoed the doubts expressed by Challis and Harding, but went further in
suggesting that such secondary burials with iron knives and spearheads were more common
in the early Anglo-Saxon period:
Similarly difficult to interpret, but more easily recognized as examples of a distinct local cultural tra-
dition, are a series of single and multiple inhumations from a restricted area in the limestone uplands
32
D.S. Johnson, Excavation of an Early Medieval Structure in Upper Pasture, Horton in Ribblesdale (Ingleton: Ingleborough
Archaeology Group, 2012); D.S. Johnson, Excavation of Two Anglo-Saxon-period farmsteads in Brows Pasture, Chapel-le-
Dale (Ingleton: Ingleborough Archaeology Group, 2013); D.S. Johnson and H. Russ, ‘Excavation of a Late Seventh Century
Structure in Upper Ribblesdale’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 86 (2014), 80–105; D.S. Johnson, The Crummack
Dale Project: Excavation of Three Early Medieval Steadings (Ingleton: Ingleborough Archaeology Group, 2015).
33
Raistrick, ‘Iron Age Settlements in West Yorkshire’, p. 119.
34
Luke, Lee Green Settlement; White, The Yorkshire Dales, p. 42, fig. 27.
35
36
Raistrick, ‘Iron Age Settlements in West Yorkshire’, pp. 126–28, 140–43.
37
A.J. Challis and D.W. Harding, Later Prehistory from the Trent to the Tyne, 2, BAR British Series 20 (Oxford: British
Archaeological Reports, 1975), 56–57.
Table 4
Craven burials discussed by Whimster with primary barrow/cist inhumations, secondary barrow
inhumations, and iron knives or spearheads
HER Location Grid Ref. Primary Secondary Knives Spears
MYD3640 Feizor, Stainforth (grike burials) SD799672 5 0 2 0
PRN149 Brockhall Eases, Billington SD699375 1 0 0 1
MYD3947 Lower Colgarth Hill, Airton SD904573 1 0 0 1
MYD3798 Sheriff Hill, Maham SD899640 1 ? 0 1
MYD4033 Sweet Side, Grassington SD998663 1 0 2 0
MYD4025 Capstick Back Pasture, Conistone SD995673 1 4 1 0
MYD4032 Lea Green, Grassington SD996658 1 6 4 0
MYD4071 Seaty Hill, Malham SD907654 1 13 4 0
Note: Challis and Harding, Later Prehistory, pp. 56–57; W. Howson, An Illustrated Guide to the Curiosities of
Craven (London: Whittaker, 1850) p. 39; J.R. Luck, ‘An Account of the Opening of a Large Tumulus Near Stony-
hurst, Lancashire’, Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, 12 (1894), 30–41 (p. 32);
J.W. Morkill, The Parish of Kirkby Malhamdale in the West Riding of Yorkshire (Gloucester: John Bellows, 1933),
pp. 7–8; F.R. Raines, ed., Notitia Cestriensis or Historical Notices of the Diocese of Chester by Francis Gastrell,
2 (Chetham Society, 1850), 286; Raistrick, ‘Iron Age Settlements in West Yorkshire’, pp. 126–28, 141; Raistrick,
Malham and Malham Moor, pp. 59–60; Raistrick et al., ‘The Malham Iron Age Pipe’, pp. 28–38; Raistrick and
Holmes, ‘The Archaeology of Malham Moor’, pp. 78–82; Speight, ‘Upper Wharfedale Exploration Committee’,
pp. 377–80.
of western Yorkshire, between Airedale and Wharfedale […] In some instances these burials were
performed within limestone clints [grikes] beneath dry stone walls, but more frequently bodies appear
to have been laid as primary burials in cists beneath barrows or stone cairns, or as secondary interments
within the fabric of pre-existing mounds […] These burials lack closely dateable grave-goods, but
are almost invariably provided with iron knives or iron spearheads […] Fragments of further knives
were also found with at least two of the 13 deposits of disarticulated human bone placed as secondary
burials in the surface of the well known Bronze Age barrow at Seaty Hill […] Although this and other
more orthodox barrow inhumations from the Malham-Grassington area have been classed as Iron Age
performances, the evidence for such an early attribution seems at best equivocal […] The practice of
providing secondary barrow inhumations with iron knives and spearheads is, moreover, common in
the pagan Saxon period […]38
More recent discoveries within the Craven District, and in particular the upper Wharfedale
area, are now lending considerable weight to Whimster’s argument with comparable and more
securely dated burial evidence. These burials include two boundary bank/wall interments,
a crouched cairn burial and a possible grike or cist burial, but with AMS radiocarbon dates
clearly placing them in the post-Roman period. In 1997, during a watching brief on the instal-
lation of new electricity poles north of Kettlewell, a male skull was exposed in a bedrock cut
below a boundary bank/wall (MYD54536; SD964730). In the same locality a crouched female
inhumation was found below a possible cairn (MYD36680; SD966728), with the remains
dated to the late seventh century ad.39 In 2000, an Anglo-Saxon reliquary or work box was
discovered by a metal detectorist in a field bank/wall at Carr Farm in Arncliffe (MYD50093;
38
R.P. Whimster, ‘Burial Practices in Iron Age Britain’ (doctoral thesis, Durham University, 1979), pp. 228–29, 498–500;
R.P. Whimster, Burial Practices in Iron Age Britain, BAR British Series 90 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports,
1981), 170.
39
K.J. Cale, ‘Was the Skeleton Lady Dead?’, in Archaeology and Historic Landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales, ed. R.F.
White and P.R. Wilson, Occasional Papers 2 (Leeds: Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 2004), pp. 105–10.
20 THE MALHAM PIPE
SD934717). Subsequent excavation revealed a female and juvenile double burial with one of
the teeth providing a mid-sixth- to mid-seventh-century ad date, whilst at Over Pasture near
Horton in Ribblesdale (MYD3699; SD785741) a grike or possible cist burial, found in 1936
along with a Neolithic polished stone axe, has now been dated to the post-Roman period.40
This new evidence is particularly relevant to the dating of another grike burial discovered in
the 1930s at Feizor Thwaite (see Table 4), which contained two iron knives now thought ‘to
be of an Early Medieval (Anglo-Saxon) form contrary to an identification by Raistrick who
believed they were Iron Age’.41
If we now reconsider the Seaty Hill secondary burials in the wider context of post-Roman
burial practice, using the Historic England monument class description for inhumation cem-
eteries of this period, further parallels become apparent:
In many cases a prehistoric barrow appears to have provided a focus for an Anglo-Saxon cemetery.
At both Bishopstone (Sussex) and West Heslerton (former East Riding of Yorkshire) for example,
inhumation cemeteries developed from primary burials associated with Bronze Age round barrows,
which may have been used to justify an ancestral claim to land ownership. In the Peak District and the
Yorkshire Wolds Anglo-Saxon inhumations are regularly placed as secondary burials in prehistoric
barrows. In the seventh century cemetery at Uncleby (former East Riding of Yorkshire), for example,
there were over 70 Anglo-Saxon inhumations radiating from a primary Bronze Age interment in a
large barrow, c.20m in diameter.42
Prehistoric burial mounds were highly significant features in the Anglo-Saxon landscape,
and given their Old English place names were often interpreted as resting places of the gods
or distant mythological ancestors.43 For these post-Roman communities and their elites, it is
thought that burial in and around such monuments asserted a direct link with these distant
ancestors, and thereby reinforced their shared sense of identity, belonging and land ownership.
Statistical analysis of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries and prehistoric monument reuse has revealed
that between the late fifth and early eighth centuries the most frequently reused monuments
were Bronze Age round barrows, accounting for 61 per cent of recorded monument reuse in
England as a whole and 62 per cent in Yorkshire to Northumberland.44 Such monument reuse
has been recognized as a characteristic feature of the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in the Yorkshire
Wolds, which include the exemplar excavation at West Heslerton.45 The site was discovered
in 1977 as a result of sand quarrying, and then excavated over the next ten years. The cem-
etery dated from the late fifth to early seventh century and was focused on an existing Late
40
K.J. Cale, ‘Interim Statement, Archaeological Investigation, Carr Farm, Arncliffe’ (unpublished archaeological con-
sultant report, 2004); D.A. Weston, ‘Human Skeletal Report, Carr Farm, Arncliffe’ (unpublished, University of Bradford,
2000); T.C. Lord, Notes on Work and Discoveries at a Number of Caves in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, to Amend
and Supplement Site Entries in the YDNPA Historic Environment Record (Settle: Winskill Farm Visitor Centre, 2004),
pp. 13–15, 26.
41
P. Hudson and T.C. Lord, ‘The Giggleswick Scar Project’ in Re-thinking Craven’s Limestone Landscape, North Craven
Historical Research Group, Workshop Proceedings, ed. P. Hudson, T.C. Lord and P. Vincent (Settle: Hudson History,
2006), p. 60.
42
English Heritage, ‘Monument Class Description for Post-Roman Inhumation Cemeteries’ (Monuments Protection
Programme, 1986–96).
43
S.J. Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England: Religion, Ritual and Rulership in the Landscape
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
44
W. Howard, ‘Ancient Landscapes and the Dead: The Reuse of Prehistoric and Roman Monuments as Early Anglo-Saxon
Burial Sites’, Medieval Archaeology, 41 (1997), 1–32 (p. 6).
45
S.J. Lucy, The Early Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries of East Yorkshire, BAR British Series 272 (Oxford: British Archaeological
Reports, 1998), p. 3; C. Haughton and D. Powlesland, West Heslerton: The Anglian Cemetery, Volumes 1 and 2 with
Specialist Contributions (London: English Heritage, 1999).
Neolithic to Early Bronze Age ritual site, which included a hengiform enclosure, post-circle,
seven round barrows and eleven associated burials. The excavation revealed a further 201
Anglo-Saxon burials, which comprised 186 inhumations and fifteen cremations, although
it is not known how many were lost due to the earlier quarrying. Where sufficient skeletal
material survived, around 55 per cent of the burials were crouched or flexed and 14 per cent
were extended. Almost all burials contained grave goods, many with multiple finds. However,
of particular interest are eighteen burials (9 per cent) that each contained just one artefact
— four burials with a buckle, nine with a knife and five with a single bead.46
Similar to iron knives and spearheads, the placing of beads with the dead was a common
feature of early Anglo-Saxon burial practice, either individually or as strings of beads. The
bulk of Anglo-Saxon bead assemblages have therefore come from cemetery excavations,
and were made from a wide variety of materials including glass, amber, quartz, amethyst,
jet, shell, metal and stone.47 Whilst beads are predominantly found in female graves, single
beads or pairs are occasionally found in male graves where they are thought to have been
used as clothes fastenings, belt toggles or sword ornaments. Conversely, whilst knives and
weaponry are largely found in male graves, they can appear in the graves of women and chil-
dren, particularly those of high-status individuals. The descriptions given by Raistrick of the
three Seaty Hill beads, although brief, are consistent with bead types found in Anglo-Saxon
burials. However it should be noted that these assemblages can include reused late Roman
or earlier beads. The polished jet (lignite) bead is likely to have been made from material
found along the north Yorkshire coast, whilst the carved ochre (limonite) bead could have
been made from stone sourced locally within the Yorkshire Dales. White glass beads with a
blue band, spiral or wave pattern are commonly found within Anglo-Saxon bead assemblages.
The Seaty Hill secondary burials are therefore consistent with early Anglo-Saxon burial
practice, in that they are: (a) secondary burials in a prehistoric barrow, (b) crouched or flexed
inhumations, (c) interred with iron knives, or (d) single beads made from coloured glass, min-
erals and semi-precious stones. Whilst these upland burials are less well furnished than those
found in the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries of the Yorkshire Wolds, this could simply reflect the
relative wealth of these communities. Within the Seaty Hill burial group, status may also have
been inferred by the location of the burials and presence or absence of grave goods. Raistrick
suggested that the central secondary burial, with its bone pipe and iron knife fragments, was
the first and most important of the group, around which the remaining twelve burials were
subsequently located, possibly representing a family group of one or more generations.48
During the seventh century Christian missionaries were actively converting the pagan
Anglo-Saxons, which led to a steady decline in the deposition of grave goods.49 However,
the practice would continue for at least another hundred years, with furnished burials finally
disappearing in the middle of the eighth century.50 By the time the Scandinavians were settling
46
E. O’Brien, ‘Post-Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England: The Burial Evidence Reviewed’ (doctoral thesis, Oxford
University, 1996), p. 157; E. O’Brien, Post-Roman Britain to Anglo-Saxon England: The Burial Practices Reviewed,
BAR British Series 289 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1999), p. 76.
47
M. Guido and M. Welch, The Glass Beads of Anglo-Saxon England c. ad 400–700, Rochester: Society of Antiquaries,
Research Report 56 (1999); B. Brugmann, Glass Beads from Anglo-Saxon Graves (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2004).
48
49
S.J. Lucy, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death: Burial Rites in Early England (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2000), p. 5.
50
H. Geake, ‘The Use of Grave-goods in Conversion-period England, c.600–c.850 ad’ (doctoral thesis, Oxford University,
1995), p. 309; H. Geake, The Use of Grave-goods in Conversion-period England, c.600–c.850 ad, BAR British Series
261 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1997).
22 THE MALHAM PIPE
in northern England in the late ninth to tenth century, the focus for Anglo-Saxon burials
had moved away from earlier Prehistoric monuments, with the population now burying
their dead according to Christian rite in organized churchyards. In the Yorkshire Dales, the
Scandinavian settlers appear to have followed local practice with their burials also taking place
in existing churchyards, but retaining some pagan (Viking) symbolism. A burial discovered
at Wensley churchyard in 1915 (MYD3673; SE092895) was aligned east–west in a Christian
manner, but had been interred with a ninth-/tenth-century sword, an iron spearhead, knife
and sickle.51 Whilst at Burnsall in Wharfedale (MYD4402; SE033615) the remains of three
Anglo-Scandinavian hogback tombstones, dating to the tenth century, were found during
church restoration works in 1858.52
Historical Context
We must now consider how this reinterpretation of the Seaty Hill secondary burials, and
in particular their location, would compare with the historical evidence and geography of
the post-Roman period. Prior to the region’s annexation by the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of
Northumbria, Malham sat at the centre of what is suggested to have been a post-Roman
British kingdom or polity subsequently called Craven.53 This regional name is thought to be
topographic in origin and related to the modern Welsh word craf or crafu, meaning either
‘wild garlic’ or ‘scratch/scrape’. Wood prefers the second of these two options, which he
suggests is a reference to the extensive limestone pavements and scars in the region and that
Craven therefore means ‘the scratched/scraped land’. The earliest reference to Craven occurs
in the Domesday Book of ad 1086, where, unlike the rest of Yorkshire with its division into
hundreds and wapentakes, the entries for this region are prefixed In Crave (in Craven) along
with a summary under the heading Cravescire (Cravenshire). These entries include the village
Malham (Malgun) and clearly show that Craven existed as a secular unit in late Anglo-Saxon
England. Whilst it was subsequently renamed the Staincliffe Wapentake, Craven survived
from the late eleventh to the twentieth century as a ecclesiastical deanery of the English
Church, covering the parishes around Ribblesdale, Airedale and Wharfedale (see Fig. 5).
Following local government reorganization in 1974 the secular name was re-established in
the form of Craven District Council, although its boundaries differ from those of the historic
deanery and wapentake.
Anglo-Saxon expansion into the Dales appears to have advanced from the east along the
main river valleys.54 In lower Wensleydale there is a predominance of Old English place
names, and it is here at Fleets Farm near East Witton (MYD5125; SE150865) that one or more
pagan Anglo-Saxon burials were uncovered in 1884, possibly within an earlier barrow. The
finds (on display at the Dales Countryside Museum) are typical of other Anglo-Saxon graves
in Yorkshire and include: an iron knife and shield boss, a strap end, three bronze annular
brooches and a pair of blue glass beads with red applied dots.55 Higher up the river valleys
51
British Museum, acc. nos BM.1965.0703.1–4; D.M. Wilson, ‘Some Neglected Late Anglo-Saxon Swords’, Medieval
Archaeology, 9 (1965), 32–54 (pp. 41–42); White, The Yorkshire Dales, p. 47.
52
W.G. Collingwood, Northumbrian Crosses of the Pre-Norman Age (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1927), p. 169.
53
T.D. Whitaker, The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven in the County of York, 3rd edn (Leeds: Joseph
Dodgson, 1878); P.N. Wood, ‘On the Little British Kingdom of Craven’, Northern History, 32 (1996), 1–20.
54
White, The Yorkshire Dales, pp. 47–48.
55
H. Speight, Romantic Richmondshire (London: Elliot Stock, 1897), p. 349; T.G. Manby, ‘Anglian Objects from
Wensleydale’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 41 (1966), 340–44.
Figure 5. Map showing parishes within the historic Deanery of Craven from Whitaker’s History
and Antiquities of Craven (3rd edition, 1878), with location of Seaty Hill indicated.
are a number of linear earthworks, which may have marked the boundaries between native
British and Anglo-Saxon held territory. At Grinton and Fremington (MYD4514; SE045988)
a system of large linear dykes with ditches on their eastern side controlled access to upper
Swaledale. Tor Dyke (MYD4145; SD978755), on the watershed between Wharfedale and
Coverdale, is thought to have formed the north-eastern boundary of British Craven.56 This
2 km long earthwork is still a significant landscape feature, marking a number of historic
boundaries including Kettlewell Parish, Craven Deanery, Staincliffe Wapentake and the for-
mer West Riding of Yorkshire.
To the south-east of Craven and occupying the lower reaches of the rivers Aire and Wharfe
was the documented British kingdom of Elmet, with its name derived from the Latin ulmo
and meaning ‘elm forest’.57 The kingdom was annexed by Edwin of Northumbria in ad 617
when he expelled Ceretic, its last king. Until its demise Elmet would have blocked any Anglo-
Saxon advance from the south-east along its two river valleys and into the Craven dales.
This may help to explain the importance of Tor Dyke, which controlled the route from the
56
White, The Yorkshire Dales, pp. 45–47.
57
Wood, ‘On the Little British Kingdom of Craven’, p. 2; I. Sanderson and S. Wrathmell, Research Agenda: Archaeology
from the End of the Roman Period to the Norman Conquest (Wakefield: West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory Service,
2005), pp. 4–8.
24 THE MALHAM PIPE
north-east through Coverdale, and where Craven may have directly bordered Anglo-Saxon
held territory. Significantly, it is in the upper Wharfedale area that we find some of the earliest
evidence of Anglo-Saxon material culture and influence, including the Arncliffe burial with
its distinctive reliquary or work box.58
Northumbrian control of land within and around Craven is first documented in the Life
of Saint Wilfrid by Stephen of Ripon, which describes land grants made to Bishop Wilfrid
by Kings Alhfrith, Ecgfrith and Aelfwine, including the newly founded monastery at Ripon.
The first reference is in ad 658–60 for ten hides of land at Stanforda, which Wood suggests
may be Stainforth in Ribblesdale, although this identification is by no means certain.59 The
second reference occurs in ad 671–78 during the church consecration ceremony at Ripon,
when Wilfrid reads out a list of the lands granted to him by the kings:
Then Saint Wilfrid the bishop stood in front of the altar, and, turning to the people, in the presence of
the kings, read out clearly a list of the lands which the kings, for the good of their souls, had previously,
and on that very day as well, presented to him, with the agreement and over the signatures of the bish-
ops and all the chief men, and also a list of the consecrated places (loca sancti) in various parts which
the British clergy had deserted when fleeing from the hostile sword (gladii hostilis) wielded by the
warriors of our own nation. It was truly a gift well pleasing to God that the pious kings had assigned
so many lands to our bishop for the service of God; these are the names of the regions: around Ribble
(Rippel) and Yeadon (Ingaedyne) and the region of Dent (Dunutinga) and Catlow (Incaetlaevum) and
other places.60
These royal grants of land near the river Ribble, and Dent to the north-west, would cer-
tainly suggest that by Wilfrid’s time Craven had come under Northumbrian control. The
other two locations are likely to be Yeadon in the Aire valley and Catlow near Burnley, which
could only have come under Northumbrian control following the conquest of Elmet in ad
617. This could point to a similar early seventh-century date for the annexation of Craven,
although based on the available documentary evidence and radiocarbon dates (discussed
above) it may be safer to assume a date more towards the middle of the century. This may
also provide a context for Raistrick’s suggested ‘priest’s house’ at Great Close near Malham
Tarn (MYD3750; SD897674). This two-celled rectangular building was found to contain a
number of post-Roman bronze objects, including a ﬁnely cast circular brooch head, similar
to the late eighth-century Witham Pins,61 a small penannular brooch and buckle, possible
book fittings and a tag end.62 We await the results of recent investigations at two medieval
chapel sites in the area: one at Chapel Fell on Malham Moor (MYD3758; SD885675) and
the other at Chapel Gate near the village of Malham (MYD56793; SD899626), which may
throw further light on this period of political and cultural change.63
58
Cale, Carr Farm, Arncliffe.
59
B. Colgrave, ed., The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927),
pp. 16–17; Wood, ‘On the Little British Kingdom of Craven’, p. 19.
60
Colgrave, Life of Bishop Wilfrid, pp. 36–37.
61
British Museum, acc. no. BM.1858.1116.4.
62
Raistrick and Holmes, ‘The Archaeology of Malham Moor’, pp. 90–91.
63
V. Spence, ‘The Ancient Chapel of St Helen, Malham in Craven: Dissolution and Discovery’, Northern History, 52
(2015), 52–67.
The Malham Pipe
Following its discovery in September 1950, the Malham Pipe was obscured by heavy clay and
filled with a fine loam, its importance not being fully recognized until it had received an initial
clean. It was then loaned to Edward Aubrook, a colleague of Raistrick and curator of the Tolson
(Ravensknowle) Museum in Huddersfield, who carefully completed the cleaning. Aubrook is
reported to have inserted a plasticine block or fipple into the mouthpiece and was then able to
play a series of musical notes on the pipe.64 However, an examination of the pipe in Leeds City
Museum and a sketch by Raistrick published in the Manchester Guardian reveal that a longitudinal
fragment of bone had been missing from the top of the mouthpiece running down to the window.65
This missing fragment was almost certainly reconstructed by Aubrook, as it would have been
essential in order to produce any musical notes on the pipe. His repair and the section he inserted
can be distinguished by its slight difference in colour and smoother appearance (see Fig. 6).
In addition to this consolidation and repair, Aubrook also made a number of plaster casts of
the pipe for display at local museums and Malham Tarn House.66 Six of these plaster casts are
still held in the Tolson Museum collections, two of which have been painted to resemble the
original pipe, and a further two painted casts at Craven Museum and Leeds City Museum.67 A
letter from Aubrook discussing the Malham Pipe and the making of these plaster casts, along
with a photograph showing four of the casts at different angles, survives amongst Raistrick’s
papers at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum.68 However, the use of rubber solution moulds and
organic glues, common at this time, may have contaminated the pipe and hinder any future
chemical analysis or dating.
The pipe was subsequently examined by Carl Dolmetsch, the twentieth-century virtuoso
and advocate of the recorder, although no further information survives on what conclusions
he may have drawn. It was then officially donated to Leeds City Museum where the director
and curator, David Owen, then encouraged further research on the pipe, and loaned it to Eric
Todd in order to carry out his musical analysis. From Owen’s correspondence held at Leeds
City Museum, including a copy of Todd’s draft report, it is clear that he was largely respon-
sible for coordinating the contributions of the three named authors, and the submission of
their article to the editor of the Galpin Society Journal:
April 1951 — Letter to Eric Todd suggesting that he submits an article describing his research on
the Malham Pipe to the Galpin Society, including a note on the archaeological background by Arthur
Raistrick.
May 1951 — Letters to Thomas Kendrick (British Museum) and George Dyson (Royal College of
Music) enquiring about similar Iron Age, Roman or Anglo-Saxon pipes in their collections. Response
from Dyson, who had no knowledge of instruments before the sixteenth century, but suggested con-
tacting Adam Carse (woodwind collection at the Horniman Museum).
June 1951 — Responses from Adam Carse and Rupert Bruce-Mitford (British Museum). Carse had no
knowledge of pre-medieval instruments, but points out that the Malham Pipe’s tone hole arrangement
is similar to the tabor pipe and picco pipe. Bruce-Mitford confirmed there was nothing similar in the
British Museum collections, but compared the Malham Pipe to Anglo-Saxon and Viking examples.
64
Raistrick et al., ‘The Malham Iron Age Pipe’, pp. 30–32.
65
Manchester Guardian, 6 October 1950, p. 4.
66
Raistrick and Holmes, ‘The Archaeology of Malham Moor’, p. 78.
67
Tolson Museum, acc. nos KLMUS.1994.223.1–6.
68
Ironbridge Gorge Museum, library ref. RS1036.19.
26 THE MALHAM PIPE
Figure 6. Photograph of the Malham Pipe. Edward Aubrook’s repair of the mouthpiece in 1950
and the section he inserted can be distinguished by its slight difference in colour and smoother
appearance. © Leeds Museums and Galleries / Bridgeman Images.
June 1951 — Letter of thanks to Bruce-Mitford, stating that Raistrick was in no doubt the Malham
Pipe is Iron Age. Letter to Eric Todd enclosing the responses from Dyson, Carse and Bruce-Mitford,
and concluding that the Malham Pipe was the only known Iron Age example from Britain.
Table 5
Malham Pipe principal dimensions to the nearest 0.05 cm (all three tone holes are tapered with an
external diameter of 0.45 cm)
Maximum tube length 11.90 cm Tone hole A centre to end 1.70 cm
Sounding length 8.90 cm Tone hole B centre to end 4.00 cm
Window height 0.40 cm Tone hole C centre to end 4.50 cm
Window width 0.60 cm Tone hole A diameter 0.25 cm
Tube wall thickness ≈ 0.25 cm Tone hole B diameter 0.25 cm
Tube end diameter ≈ 0.80 cm Tone hole C diameter 0.20 cm
September 1951 — Letters to Eric Todd, Eric Spaul (Department of Zoology, Leeds University) and Thurston
Dart (editor of the Galpin Society Journal), informing Todd that the pipe had now been identified as sheep
bone and suggesting that Spaul should be a third contributor to the article.
The examination by Eric Spaul found the pipe to have been made from the right tibia (shank
or shin-bone) of a sheep, or possibly goat, with an original length between 17 cm and 18 cm,
the proximal (knee) and distal (ankle) ends or epiphyses having been removed to leave a 12
cm hollow shaft of bone. The larger proximal end has a pronounced ridge on the anterior
(frontal) surface called the cnemial crest, which curves towards the side of the limb nearest
the body of the animal. After comparison with material held at the British Museum, Spaul
concluded that the animal would have been similar to other ancient breeds, and in particular
the Soay sheep of St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides.
The tibia had clearly been modified to make a simple whistle or duct flute with a distinct
mouthpiece, rectangular-shaped window and three circular tone holes (see Table 5 for dimen-
sions). The maker’s first task would have been to remove the two articular ends of the bone and
soft internal marrow to form a hollow tube. At the larger proximal end this was done with a
diagonal cut to create a mouthpiece in which the underside projects beyond the upper anterior
surface (see Fig. 7), the reverse of later instruments like the recorder. The window, which
is characteristic of duct flutes, was in this case formed by cutting a notch with a V-shaped
profile across the cnemial crest to expose a rectangular opening with a sharp lip on the lower
edge. The distance from the top of the window to the foot (open end) of the pipe is known
as the Sounding Length, and is the principal factor in determining the fundamental pitch or
frequency of the instrument. At the lower end of the pipe three tone holes were cut using
a tapered blade such as a knife point or awl — two finger holes on the front and a slightly
higher thumb hole on the back. Opening the tone holes (by releasing the fingers and/or thumb)
effectively shortens the length of the air column (and thereby raises the frequency), so the
player is able to finger a discreet scale of musical tones.
The defining feature of a duct flute is its mouthpiece where the tube is partly closed by a
plug conventionally termed the block or fipple, leaving a narrow duct (wind-way), through
which the player’s breath is directed across the window (voicing hole) towards the opposing
sharp edge known as the lip. This sets up vibrations called edge tones, which are then trans-
mitted to the air column in the tube, producing an audible standing wave. Whilst the Malham
Pipe’s fipple had not survived, it was reconstructed in plasticine by Edward Aubrook, and
not by Carl Dolmetsch, as Todd later assumed.
Eric Todd began his work on the Malham Pipe by restoring the lip with a small wedge also
made of plasticine ‘so that the pipe spoke again with a series of sweet, clear and well defined
notes, which […] so strongly suggested a musical scale that it appeared imperative to establish
28 THE MALHAM PIPE
Figure 7. Drawing of the Malham Pipe by Arthur Raistrick (Field Studies Journal, vol. 1.4
(1962), fig. 12). Courtesy of the Field Studies Council.
their pitch and frequency relationships’.69 John Todd (co-author of this paper) was fourteen
at the time, and clearly remembers his father sitting at the kitchen table working on the pipe
and restoring the missing part of the lip. Suddenly, a clear tone sounded throughout the house,
and Eric said excitedly, ‘Listen to this’, after which John and his mother were allowed to play
the instrument. He also recalls his father composing and playing a simple tune on the pipe.
To establish the exact frequencies of pipe, Todd enlisted the help of John McDougall and
Ronald (Fred) Youell of the Department of Physics at Leeds University, where he had previous
connections with members of the Fuel Science Research Department. The method they used
was to calibrate a sonometer (monochord) with tuning forks of a known pitch, and then take
sonometer readings for each note played manually on the pipe. As a further check on their
results the tests were repeated using a mechanical air supply with a manometer attached to
measure the air pressure. These experiments produced a curve of pitch against pressure for
each note, with the middle frequency of each curve broadly matching that obtained when the
pipe was blown by mouth. It was intended to publish a more detailed scientific paper on their
experimental methods in the Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society
but, although Fred Youell contacted John Todd in the mid-1960s with a view to reviving the
project, the paper was unfortunately never finished.
Having completed their tests, the pipe was then recorded at a sound studio in central Leeds
(Yorkshire Gramophone Library and Recording Studio, 166–68 Lower Briggate, ls1), which
advertised nationally in Wireless World magazine and The Gramophone.70 About six cop-
ies of the 78 rpm direct disc recording were made for the main contributors to the project,
including Leeds City Museum and Malham Tarn House. These lacquer-coated discs have
an aluminium core with the recording track cut directly into the comparatively soft surface,
which can be easily damaged and degrade with prolonged use. On the recording Todd both
demonstrates and explains the musical characteristics of the instrument, and plays a series
of improvisations followed by the tune he composed for pipe (see Table 6).
Table 7 shows the reported frequencies and their intervals calculated in Savarts, favoured
by Todd, and modern Cents.71 These logarithmic units enable a comparison of the Malham
Pipe intervals with the ancient Greek (Pythagorean) musical intervals, which formed the
basis of Western music theory until the Renaissance (see Table 8).
Todd identified four features of the Malham Pipe tuning that appeared to him to correspond
with the Pythagorean system: (a) the intervals between the four fundamental tones broadly
agreed with those of the ancient Greek Dorian mode, (b) the interval between the highest
and lowest notes (494.73 cents) was very close to a perfect fourth, (c) the interval between
the first and second notes (87.14 cents) was less than a modern semitone (100 cents) but very
close to a diatonic semitone, and (d) the interval between Todd’s ‘normal’ and ‘alternative’
fingering for the third note (27.14 cents) was very close to a Pythagorean comma. However,
Megaw, in his later article on bone flutes in European archaeology, was somewhat critical of
Todd’s observations on the Malham Pipe intervals:
It has been observed that the intervals of the Malham Pipe — semitone, tone, tone — correspond
to the Dorian, or oldest mode of the Pythagorean scale. However this may be, to use the admittedly
69
70
Wireless World (August 1948), p. 294; The Gramophone (November 1949), p. xv; ibid. (April 1951), p. xx.
71
A separate article discussing a modern reassessment of Todd’s original frequency measurements is in preparation for
publication elsewhere.
30 THE MALHAM PIPE
Table 6
Transcription of Eric Todd playing the Malham Pipe
The Yorkshire Gramophone Library and Recording Studio
Side 1: ‘[tones 4, 3a, 2 and 1] These notes are the fundamental tones of the Malham Pipe pro-
duced by fingering the three holes in the normal manner. A few other harmonic notes are possible
[tone 1 then harmonic, tone 2 then harmonic] but are difficult to produce and of indifferent quality.
The fundamental notes [tones 4, 3a, 2 and 1] have several points of interest. In the first place they
strongly suggest the Dorian mode which was the earliest of the Greek modes. [tones 4 and 1] The
highest and lowest notes are only one-twelfth of a semitone from a perfect fourth, regarded as
the most important interval in Grecian music. [tones 1, 2, 1 and 2] That interval, which is the one
between the two lowest tones is less than a semitone and corresponds very closely with a Pythag-
orean hemitone. An alternative fingering for the second [third?] note [tones 4, 3a, 4, 3a, 3b and 3b]
gives a note which differs from the note produced by normal fingering by a Pythagorean comma,
which is roughly a quarter of a semitone, and which is the difference between seven octaves and
twelve perfect fifths. All these suggest Grecian influence in the making of the pipe. One further
point of interest is that the highest note [tone 4], which is practically f iv in the modern scale, is
roughly the point of maximum sensitivity in the whole gamut of sound, which means that for a
given expenditure of energy the Malham Pipe’s highest note [tone 4] would carry the maximum
distance.’
Side 2: Eric Todd playing various improvised musical phrases, followed by a jig tune he com-
posed specifically for the Malham Pipe:
Note: E. Todd, Malham Pipe Played by Eric Todd (Leeds: Yorkshire Gramophone Library and Recording Studio,
1951, sound recording), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBaz3WHlp4w [accessed 15 March 2017].
Table 7
Malham Pipe recorded fundamental frequencies and calculated intervals
Malham Pipe Tone holes open = O and closed = C
Tone reference numbers used in table 6 above 1 2 3a 3b 4
Tone hole C — thumb C C C C O
Tone hole B — first finger C C O O O
Tone hole A — second finger C O C O O
Published frequencies (Hertz) 2092 2200 2532 2572 2784
Intervals (cents) 0.00 87.14 243.33 27.14 137.12
Cumulative intervals (cents) 0.00 87.14 330.47 357.61 494.73
Intervals (savarts) 0.00 21.86 61.04 6.81 34.40
Cumulative intervals (savarts) 0.00 21.86 82.90 89.71 124.11
Nearest standard pitch notes C D♭ E♭ E♭+ F
Note: Tone reference numbers 1, 2, 3a, 3b and 4 equate to Todd’s reference letters W, X, Y, Y’ and Z.
Table 8
Ancient Greek (Pythagorean) harmonics and principal diatonic musical intervals
Pythagorean Intervals Cents Savarts Frequency Ratio
Diapason (octave = second harmonic) 1200.00 301.03 2/1 = 2:1
Diapente (perfect fifth = third harmonic) 701.96 176.09 3/2 = 3:2
Diatessaron (perfect fourth = fourth harmonic) 498.04 124.94 22/3 = 4:3
Epogdoon / Tonos (tone) 203.91 51.15 32/23 = 9:8
Leimma / Hemitonos (diatonic semitone) 90.22 22.63 28/35 = 256:243
Komma (comma) 23.46 5.89 312/219 = 531441:524288
interesting parallel as evidence for the spread of Greek musical theory to the impoverished Iron Age
communities of the Yorkshire moors seems to the present writer at least, a case of putting the theoretical
cart before the practical horse.72
Whilst this criticism may be justified, it should be noted that Todd was a pioneer in the
field of experimental music archaeology, and had carried out the most complete examination
of any bone pipe or flute at that time. It was at least four years until anything comparable
was available with publication of the Upper Palaeolithic find from Istállóskö in Hungary.73
Furthermore, given that Raistrick had identified the Seaty Hill secondary burials as being
either Late Iron Age or early Roman in date, it was not unreasonable for Todd to compare the
Malham Pipe intervals with the contemporary Graeco-Roman (Pythagorean) tonal system.
Bone Pipes in Britain
Bone pipes are amongst the oldest known musical instruments. Animal bone was a common
by-product and raw material for our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors, from which they
fashioned many different tools and implements. We might imagine how these early humans,
having removed the nutritious marrow from a long bone, then blew across the end of the
tube to discover that it made a sound, and that by blowing harder and softer or opening and
stopping the other end of the tube they could get different tones. With the addition of finger
holes along the side of the tube, the number of possible tones could be increased yet further.
Vincent Megaw’s article ‘Penny Whistles and Prehistory’ provided the first overview of
European examples from the Upper Palaeolithic through to the medieval period.74
In Britain, bone pipes start to appear in the Neolithic period with the first farmers and
monument builders and continue into the Bronze Age. These finds are often fragmentary and
include possible sheep bone pipes from Penywyrlod chambered tomb in Brecon and Skara
Brae coastal settlement in Orkney, and a crane bone pipe from Wilsford bowl barrow on
Normanton Down south of Stonehenge.75 A complete example was found during the exca-
vation of a round barrow near Avebury in the nineteenth century, but is unfortunately now
72
Megaw, ‘Penny Whistles and Prehistory’, pp. 11–12.
73
Z. Horusitzky, ‘Eine Knochenflöte aus der Höhle von Istállóskö’, Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae
(Budapest), 5 (1955), 133–45.
74
75
National Museum of Wales, acc. no. NMW.74.23H/6; National Museum of Scotland, acc. no. NMS.SB.II.13.119;
Wiltshire Museum, acc. no. DZSWS.STHEAD.121.
32 THE MALHAM PIPE
lost.76 These prehistoric pipes would appear to have been either transverse side-blown flutes
with a blow-hole mouthpiece like the modern flute, or simple end-blown flutes like the Arabic
ney. Another bone pipe, which may be of prehistoric date, was found during excavations
at Raven Scar Cave (SD729756; MYD3688), near Ingleton in the Yorkshire Dales. These
investigations revealed a number of Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age burials and associated
finds, including what appears to be a simple bone whistle with a notch cut across the face
of the bone at the distal end, but no finger holes.77 Like the Malham Pipe, it is reported to
have been made from sheep or goat tibia, although this identification has been questioned.78
Whilst bone pipes of various dates have been found on archaeological sites in Britain,
the vast majority are from the medieval period, with over a hundred examples recorded in
England. These pipes are almost exclusively of the duct flute type, like the modern recorder
and penny whistle, and although many are broken or fragmentary about a third are com-
plete.79 The Malham Pipe has until now been regarded as the earliest example of a duct flute
found in the British Isles, and, although it may now have to relinquish this title, it sits more
comfortably within this similar group of medieval artefacts.
Eric Todd suggested that the Malham Pipe’s original owner could have ‘employed one
hand to manipulate the notes’,80 whilst Adam Carse (see above) had commented on its tone
hole arrangement being similar to that of the pipe and tabor. This combination of melody and
rhythm instruments is played by one person — the pipe has two finger holes on the front and a
thumb hole on the back, and is normally played with the left hand, leaving the right hand free
to play the tabor (drum). Megaw subsequently suggested that ‘the prevalence of pipes with
three finger holes may be explained by the fact that this is the maximum number which can
be utilized when holding the instrument with one hand’, and that these pipes were ‘probably
to be played with one hand in the manner of the pipe and tabor’.81 These observations have
prompted an ongoing debate over this question, and, whilst it is true that pipes or flutes with
three to four finger holes can be played with one hand, it does not necessarily follow that the
other hand was playing a tabor or percussion instrument.
Jeremy Montagu has presented an alternative theory, suggesting that the three-hole tabor
pipe developed in the late fourteenth century from an earlier multi-hole flute, similar to
the traditional Catalonian flabiol — an instrument that can be played with two hands like
the recorder or one hand like the tabor pipe.82 For supporting evidence he points to a four-
teenth-century sculpture in Lincoln Cathedral depicting an angel playing the pipe and tabor.
The sculpture has attributes similar to the flabiol, with the angel’s left hand holding the middle
part of a short and relatively broad pipe. He also points to a late thirteenth-century red deer
76
Megaw, ‘Penny Whistles and Prehistory’, p. 9; S. Wyatt, ‘Soul Music: Instruments in an Animistic Age’, in The Sounds
of Stonehenge, ed. S. Banfield , BAR British Series 504 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2009), 11–16 (p. 12).
77
J.A. Gilks, ‘Excavations in a Cave on Raven Scar, Ingleton, 1973–5’, Transactions of the British Cave Research
Association, 3 (1976), 95–99; J.A. Gilks, ‘A Bone Whistle from Raven Scar Cave, North Yorkshire’, Antiquity, 59 (1985),
124–25.
78
Tom Lord, pers. comm., 10 November 2014.
79
A. MacGregor, Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn: The Technology of Skeletal Materials Since the Roman Period (London:
Croom Helm, 1985), pp. 148–51; H. Leaf, ‘English Medieval Bone Flutes: A Brief Introduction’, Galpin Society Journal,
59 (2006), 13–19; H. Leaf, ‘English Medieval Bone Flutes, c.450–c.1550 ad’ (doctoral thesis, University College London,
2008).
80
81
Megaw, ‘Penny Whistles and Prehistory’, p. 12; J.V.S. Megaw, ‘An End Blown Flute or Flageolet from White Castle,
Monmouthshire’, Medieval Archaeology, 5 (1961), pp. 176–80 (p. 178).
82
J. Montagu, ‘Was the Tabor Pipe always as we know it?’, Galpin Society Journal, 50 (1997), pp. 16–30.
metatarsus flute found at White Castle in Monmouthshire, which like the flabiol has five
finger holes on the front and two thumb holes on the back.83 A similar deer metatarsus flute
from Keynsham Abbey in Somerset, dated by coin evidence to the mid-fourteenth century,
has five finger holes on the front but only one thumb hole on the back.84 Both instruments
would have required two hands to close all of their tone holes, but could theoretically have
been played with one hand like the flabiol.
However, Montagu’s theory does not take full account of Graeme Lawson’s earlier work
on a four-hole flute found in Norwich. This swan ulna pipe dates to the twelfth or thirteenth
century and, being of greater length than other bone flutes, it is capable of playing a diatonic
scale spanning at least one and a half octaves. This can be achieved by making use of the
instrument’s natural harmonics or overtones, in the same way as a tabor pipe:
That such instruments with distally grouped finger holes may have been ancestral to the later wooden
three-hole pipes played one-handed to the accompaniment of a drum (pipe and tabor) is suggested by
their characteristically small number of finger holes, supported here by the trace wear evidence for single
thumb support at the rear. The reduced range of fundamental pitches available from such a format, in
this case only five notes, is compensated for by the availability of harmonics […]85
These longer flutes with three to four tone holes, that are capable of being played like a tabor
pipe, start to appear in the archaeological record long before the multi-hole flutes from White
Castle and Keynsham. They include a ninth-century example from Thetford and a twelfth- or
thirteenth-century example from Canterbury, both made of crane tarsometatarsus with three
finger holes at their distal end.86 There is also a strong ethnographic parallel with traditional
tabor pipes made of vulture ulna from the Salamanca region of Spain, which happen to share
the same tone-hole positions and intervals as the Malham Pipe.87 Nevertheless, Helen Leaf,
who has made a detailed study of English medieval bone flutes from ad 450 to 1550 for her
doctoral thesis, questions any direct relationship with the tabor pipe:
Even with the bird bone flutes with three or four tone holes, which could potentially be considered
the ‘ancestor’ of the tabor pipe, the tone holes are all on the front surface. The instruments could have
been played in the manner of a tabor pipe, and Lawson notes that the swan bone flute from Norwich
appears to have an area of wear on its rear surface that corresponds to the position of a thumb whilst
playing in this way. However, more research is needed in this area; in my museum visits, I have up to the
present noted no obvious surface wear patterns that could inform understanding of musical practices.88
Leaf’s work has confirmed that the most commonly used materials for English medieval bone
flutes were goose ulna and sheep tibia, but include examples made from swan, crane and deer
bone (see Table 9). The wing bones of water fowl and raptores and leg bones of larger wading
birds are notable for providing long and relatively narrow diameter tubes (24:1 to 32:1) that
can be over-blown to provide a range of additional harmonic tones, whereas mammal long
bones have a much lower length to internal diameter ratio (12:1 to 16:1) and therefore tend
83
Megaw, ‘Penny Whistles and Prehistory’, pp. 176–80; J.V.S. Megaw, ‘A Medieval Bone Pipe from White Castle,
Monmouthshire’, Galpin Society Journal, 16 (1963), 85–94.
84
J.H. Barrett, ‘A Fipple Flute or Pipe from the Site of Keynsham Abbey’, Galpin Society Journal, 22 (1969), 47–50.
85
G. Lawson, ‘Bone Flute’, in Medieval and Post Medieval Finds from Norwich Survey Excavations 1972–1977,
S. Margeson, East Anglian Archaeology Report 58 (1993), 211–12.
86
G. Lawson, ‘Flutes’, in Excavations in Thetford 1948–1959 and 1973–1980, A. Rogerson and C. Dallas, East Anglian
Archaeology Report 22 (1984), 182–83; J.V.S. Megaw, ‘An End Blown Flute from Medieval Canterbury’, Medieval
Archaeology, 12 (1969), 149–50.
87
Exhibit at the Fundación Joaquín Díaz, Urueña, Valladolid.
88
Leaf, Galpin Society Journal, 59, p. 17.
34 THE MALHAM PIPE
Table 9
Materials used for English medieval bone flutes
Goose ulna 36 30.5% Crane tarsometatarsus 3 2.5%
Goose humerus 4 3.4% Sheep tibia 31 26.3%
Goose tibiotarsus 2 1.7% Sheep metatarsus 5 4.2%
Swan ulna 8 6.8% Sheep femur 1 0.8%
Swan / Crane ulna 1 0.8% Deer tibia 4 3.4%
Crane ulna 4 3.4% Deer metatarsus 5 4.2%
Crane tibiotarsus 4 3.4% Unspecified bones 10 8.5%
Note: Leaf, ‘English Medieval Bone Flutes’ (doctoral thesis), tables 38 and 53.
to be restricted to their fundamental tones. All of these animals were potential food sources,
with sheep and goose being more widely available than swan and deer, which are elite diet
indicators. However, this invites the question whether the bones were cooked or raw before
being made into flutes, and whether this was in a domestic or artisan context. The more
complex multi-hole flutes from White Castle and Keynsham Abbey exhibit a higher level
of boneworking. These flutes have an elaborate square-shaped window and ramp, requiring
a range of specialist tools for their manufacture such as saws, awls and files. However, the
vast majority of bone flutes are relatively basic in construction, with a simple D-shaped
window and fewer finger holes. These flutes can be easily made with just a pointed knife,
which would tend to favour a domestic origin. Two flutes from Gloucester with three tone
holes that reflect this more basic construction were made from crane tibiotarsus (previously
misidentified as dog tibia) and goose ulna.89
The blocks or fipples do not generally survive in the archaeological record, having been
either lost or decayed. Suggested materials have included wood, clay, beeswax or a resinous
paste.90 The use of wood is favoured by Leaf, but is time-consuming to shape and requires a
wax or resin to hold the fipple in place; clay was suggested as an alternative by Megaw but
shrinks on drying and is liable to drop out, whereas beeswax can be easily moulded to the
irregular internal shape of bone and provides a good airtight seal. Ethnographic examples
from South America include bone flutes with wax blocks,91 which may support the suggestion
of beeswax or a similar pliable material in European examples.
Reassigning the Malham Pipe to the post-Roman period may inform some of Leaf’s pre-
vious conclusions.92 Almost all the flutes she examined had their ends trimmed across the
bone at right angles, with only one sheep tibia flute from Castle Acre in Norfolk having more
bone removed to form a beak.93 The Malham Pipe with its diagonal cut (in profile) across
the proximal end has created a ‘back to front’ beak that provides another somewhat unusual
example. Thumb holes are also rare, with Leaf identifying them on only seven mammal bone
flutes from the twelfth century or later.94 The Malham Pipe does not significantly alter their
89
R. Sermon, ‘Two Medieval Whistles from Gloucester’, Glevensis, 30 (1997), pp. 51–52.
90
Megaw, ‘An End Blown Flute or Flageolet from White Castle, Monmouthshire’, p. 177; Leaf, Galpin Society Journal,
59, p. 16.
91
Pitt Rivers Museum, acc. nos PRM.1931.13.1 and PRM.1938.34.279.
92
93
G. Lawson, ‘Note on the Musical Instrument’, in Excavations at Castle Acre Castle, Norfolk, 1972–77, J. G. Coad and
A.D. Streeten, Archaeological Journal, 139 (1982), 252–54.
94
Leaf, ‘English Medieval Bone Flutes’ (doctoral thesis), pp. 148–50.
Table 10
Bone flutes having three to four tone holes, with their reported fundamental tones and semitone
intervals (using the Helmholtz notational system where Middle C = c’ and a’ above = 440 Hertz or
cycles per second)
Provenance Material Fundamental Tones Intervals
Malham Sheep tibia c’’’’ c#’’’’ d#’’’’ f’’’’ – 1-2-2
Exeter Sheep tibia c’’’’ d’’’’ f’’’’ a’’’’ – 2-3-4
Gloucester Goose ulna e’’’ f#’’’ a’’’ c#’’’’ – 2-3-4
Southampton Goose ulna e’’’ f#’’’ g#’’’ b’’’ – 2-2-3
Thetford Goose ulna g#’’’ a#’’’ c#’’’’ e’’’’ – 2-3-3
Thetford Crane tarsometatarsus a#’’ c’’’ d’’’ f’’’ – 2-2-3
Canterbury Crane tarsometatarsus b’’ d’’’ e’’’ f#’’’ – 3-2-2
Norwich Swan ulna f’’ g’’ a’’ b’’ c’’’ 2-2-2-1
Note: Lawson, East Anglian Archaeology Report 22, pp. 182–83 (using mechanical air supply); Lawson, East
Anglian Archaeology Report 58, pp. 211–12 (using replica flute); G. Lawson, ‘Bone Flutes’, in Excavations in
Thetford 1964–1970, C. Dallas, East Anglian Archaeology Report 62 (1993), 159–60, 163 (using replica flute);
Megaw, ‘An End Blown Flute from Medieval Canterbury’, pp. 149–50; J.V.S. Megaw, ‘The Bone Pipe’, in Ex-
cavations in Medieval Southampton, 2, C. Platt and R. Coleman-Smith (Leicester: Leicester University Press,
1975), 252–53; J.V.S. Megaw, ‘Bone Musical Instruments from Medieval Exeter’, in Medieval and Post-Medi-
eval Finds from Exeter, J. Allan, Exeter Archaeological Reports, 3 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1984),
349–51; Sermon, ‘Two Medieval Whistles from Gloucester’, pp. 51–52; Raistrick et al., ‘The Malham Iron Age
Pipe’, pp. 28–38.
rarity, but does take the existence of thumb holes back at least another 400 years. But perhaps
most importantly, Leaf commented that ‘In contrast to instruments like the Sutton Hoo lyre,
no flutes have been found as grave goods’.95 Whilst bone pipes have been found in associ-
ation with prehistoric burials at Penywyrlod, Normanton Down and Avebury, the Malham
Pipe now provides the first example in Britain from a post-Roman burial context; and more
specifically the first bone pipe to be found as part of an Anglo-Saxon funerary assemblage.
From his previous experience making bamboo pipes and the difficulty he encountered
tuning such instruments with an irregular internal diameter, Todd was convinced that the
Malham pipe had been purposely tuned to its known intervals.96 However, this conclusion
was reached in the absence of any similar studies or comparison with other bone flutes.
Following Todd’s example a number of the subsequent discoveries were also fitted with
plasticine blocks (fipples) to establish their tonal potential. However, this practice has been
discouraged by Graeme Lawson, whose methodology is based on the use of replicas and
techniques that avoid contaminating the original finds.97
The fundamental tones and intervals shown in Table 10 were obtained by playing each flute
(or replica flute) with all its tone holes closed, and then successively opening its tone holes
from bottom to top until all were open (CCC, OCC, OOC and OOO). Whilst some of these
95
96
Raistrick et al., ‘The Malham Iron Age Pipe’, pp. 37–38.
97
G. Lawson, ‘Conservation Versus Restoration: Towards a Handling and Performance Policy for Excavated Musical
Instruments’, in Second Conference of the ICTM Study Group on Music Archaeology (Stockholm), ed. C. Lund, i (1986),
123–30; G. Lawson, ‘Conservation Protocol: Preserving and Sampling Ancient Musical Instruments for Scientific
Analysis, Part I — Bone Flutes and Pipes’ (Cambridge: Music Archaeological Survey, 1997, consultation draft);
G. Lawson, ‘Conserving the Future of Music’s Distant Past: Some Thoughts on the Development of Music-archaeological
Conservation’, in Studien zur Musikarchäologie, vi, ed. A. Both, R. Eichmann, E. Hickmann and L. Koch (Rahden: Marie
Leidorf, 2008), 389–400.
36 THE MALHAM PIPE
flutes may appear to share the same sequence of intervals, we must bear in mind that the notes
were identified to the nearest standard pitch semitone, but may be up to a quarter-tone flat
or sharp in either direction. It was previously thought that such approximations might aid an
understanding of medieval vernacular tonality, but today they are considered imprecise and
rather outmoded, no longer reflecting modern research methods or agenda.98 Nevertheless,
they provide interesting comparanda with Todd’s earlier results.
Conclusions
Since its discovery in 1950 the Malham Pipe has continued to interest archaeologists, histo-
rians and musicologists. Whilst its form and function are clear, belonging to a familiar class
of similar artefacts, its archaeological context and dating have been more problematic. This
is largely due to Arthur Raistrick’s insistence on an Iron Age attribution for the Seaty Hill
secondary burials and associated finds, including the bone pipe. As a result, the Malham Pipe
is often quoted as being the earliest find of its type in the British Isles, but an outlier from the
majority of bone duct flutes, which date from the medieval period.
Raistrick’s dating of the Seaty Hill burials was primarily based on the form of the iron
knives, which he had also noticed in examples from neighbouring settlement sites, and the
similarity of the burials to other secondary barrow inhumations in the region. However,
subsequent discoveries and research have cast doubt over his dating of these knives, settle-
ments and burials. Whilst the Seaty Hill knives are now lost, many of the other knives he
identified as being Iron Age are now thought to be post-Roman in date, exhibiting common
Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian knife forms. Furthermore, many of the neighbouring
settlements where such knives have been found, notably those with rectangular buildings
rather than hut circles, are now also thought to be post-Roman in date. But perhaps most
significantly, and as first noted by Rowan Whimster in his doctoral thesis on burial practice
in Iron Age Britain,99 the Seaty Hill secondary burials and finds are more consistent with
early Anglo-Saxon burial practice.
Seaty Hill is located on Malham Moor at the centre of what is thought to have been a
post-Roman British kingdom or polity today called Craven. Based on grants of land made to
Saint Wilfrid and radiocarbon dates from recent settlement excavations, the region appears
to have come under Northumbrian control around the middle of seventh century. Whilst this
was a period during which Northumbria and many of the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were
being actively converted to Christianity, pagan forms of burial with grave goods would con-
tinue for at least another hundred years, often focused on earlier prehistoric burial mounds.
As a result of this revised dating evidence, the Malham Pipe may have to relinquish any
claim to being the earliest known duct flute found in the British Isles. Nevertheless, an
archaeological context in seventh to eighth century ad would place the pipe more securely
within the same date range as the vast majority of similar bone flutes. It would also confirm
Rupert Bruce-Mitford’s initial comparison of the Malham Pipe to other Anglo-Saxon and
98
G. Lawson, ‘Getting to Grips with Music’s Prehistory: Experimental Approaches to Function, Design and Operational
Wear in Excavated Musical Instruments’, in Experiment and Design: Archaeological Studies in Honour of John Coles,
ed. A. Harding (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 1999), pp. 133–38; G. Lawson, ‘Music, Intentionality and Tradition: Identifying
Purpose, and Continuity of Purpose, in the Music-archaeological Record’, in Studien zur Musikarchäologie, iv (2004),
ed. E Hickmann and R. Eichmann (Rahden: Marie Leidorf), 61–97.
99
Whimster, ‘Burial Practice in Iron Age Britain’ (doctoral thesis), pp. 228–29.
Viking period examples, and his doubts regarding Raistrick’s dating evidence.100 Regrettably
Helen Leaf’s comprehensive study of English medieval bone flutes from ad 450 to 1550 did
not include the Malham Pipe.101 Nevertheless, the pipe’s crudely cut window, three circular
tone holes and construction from sheep tibia, are common features of the flutes she recorded,
which further support its revised dating.
If we now accept that the Malham Pipe is more likely to be post-Roman in date, it calls
into question at least two of Leaf’s observations.102 Namely, it is the earliest such bone flute
(Old English hwistle or pipe) to exhibit a thumb hole, with a tone-hole configuration similar
to that of the tabor pipe; but, perhaps more importantly, it is the first recorded bone flute
from a post-Roman burial context. This increases the significance of the Seaty Hill discovery,
making it one of a growing number of Anglo-Saxon burials known to have been interred with
musical instruments. Unlike the Malham Pipe, these other instruments were stringed wooden
lyres (Old English hearpe), with two broad patterns of deposition. In the richly furnished
aristocratic burials discovered at Sutton Hoo, Taplow and more recently Prittlewell, lyres were
found some distance away from the body, whereas in the more modestly furnished burials
at Abingdon, Bergh Apton, Dover, Morning Thorpe and Snape, lyres were found close to,
or in the arms of, the dead. Graeme Lawson has suggested that these two patterns reflect not
only the social status of the musicians, but the difference between: (a) royal burials for whom
playing the lyre was one of their many accomplishments, as attributed to the legendary King
Hrothgar, and (b) the graves of actual musicians or poets (Old English gleomen and scopas)
who had a stronger bond with their instruments.103 Although the Malham Pipe was almost
certainly a lower-status instrument, its discovery amongst the small bones of the hand and
wrist appears to echo this more personal connection with the deceased.104
Since its publication in 1952, Eric Todd’s work on the Malham Pipe has been quoted
many times in both popular and academic sources. However, the wider significance and
influence of his work is not always fully appreciated. Todd brought an analytical and scien-
tific approach to understanding the musical properties of both the Malham and Lachish finds
(see also the addendum to this article), including practical experiments and reconstructions
that anticipated later developments in music archaeology. He was a pioneer in this field and,
whilst the prehistorian Vincent Megaw provided the first detailed overview of bone flutes in
Britain and Europe, Todd’s work was clearly cited as the original impetus for Megaw’s 1960
article.105 His work on the Malham Pipe was subsequently discussed by ethnomusicologist
Klaus Wachsmann, in an article on prehistoric musical instruments for the New Scientist
magazine, as being one of only two bone flutes to have undergone detailed testing at that
time.106 Although Todd’s research activities were cut short by his untimely death in 1957,
Megaw’s interest in bone pipes would continue, with the publication of many further articles
100
101
Leaf, ‘English Medieval Bone Flutes’ (doctoral thesis).
102
Leaf, Galpin Society Journal, 59, pp. 16–17.
103
G. Lawson, ‘The Lyre Remains’, in The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Morning Thorpe, Norfolk, B. Green, A. Rogerson
and S.G. White, East Anglian Archaeology Report 36 (1987), 166–71; Beowulf, lines 89–90 and 2107–08.
104
Raistrick and Holmes, ‘The Archaeology of Malham Moor’, p. 80.
105
106
K.P. Wachsmann, ‘The Earliest Musical Instruments’, New Scientist, 315 (29 November 1962), 511–14 (p. 514);
Horusitzky, ‘Eine Knochenflöte aus der Höhle von Istállóskö’, pp. 133–45.
38 THE MALHAM PIPE
and papers.107 Later contributors to the subject have notably included Graeme Lawson,108
Arthur MacGregor109 and, more recently, Helen Leaf in her doctoral thesis on English medi-
eval bone flutes.110
Whilst its form, function and musical properties have been established for at least sixty-five
years, the Malham Pipe has languished in something of a cultural vacuum with no real Iron
Age dating evidence for the Seaty Hill secondary burials. By setting out the evidence for a
post-Roman date within an Anglo-Saxon burial context, the authors hope to have presented a
more coherent explanation for this important find, and its rightful place in British archaeology
and musicology. This evidence now suggests that lyres, like that found at Sutton Hoo, were
not the only melodic instruments the Anglo-Saxons buried with their dead.
Addendum: The Lachish Pipe
In 1932 James Leslie Starkey, one of Flinders Petrie’s assistants, began excavations at Tell
ed-Duweir in what was then the British mandate of Palestine. He was joined in this work
by other archaeologists, including Olga Tufnell, who had previously been working in Egypt
with Petrie. In six seasons of excavation, funded by the Wellcome-Marston Archaeological
Research Expedition, they revealed evidence of the biblical city of Lachish, with occupation
evidence spanning almost 5000 years from the Pottery Neolithic to the collapse of the Persian
Empire. In 1938 Starkey was attacked and killed on his way to Jerusalem, following which
his colleagues decided to complete that season’s excavation, and then bring the results of
his work to publication. This task was coordinated by Olga Tufnell, based at the Institute of
Archaeology in London, and took twenty years to complete, in which time she wrote up the
stratigraphic sequence and commissioned various specialist reports on the finds assemblage.
One of the many finds from the Lachish excavation, now held at the British Museum,
was a possible musical instrument made from a bovine foreleg or cannon bone.111 The find
(FN.2236) came from the cave 1553 in the north-west part of the settlement and was dated
from associated pottery to the Upper Chalcolithic (Copper Age) or Early Bronze Age. The
object (length 17 cm; width 3 cm; thickness 2 cm) was described as part of the metacarpal
of an ox with the knuckle ends (processes) sawn off leaving two large holes at each end.
Six smaller holes (diameter 4–7 mm) were bored symmetrically in the side of the bone near
the distal end (see Fig. 8). Following the publication of Todd’s work on the Malham Pipe
in 1952, he was contacted by Tufnell and asked to examine the Lachish find ‘to discover if
107
Megaw, ‘An End Blown Flute or Flageolet from White Castle, Monmouthshire’, pp. 176–80; Megaw, ‘A Medieval
Bone Pipe from White Castle, Monmouthshire’, pp. 85–94; J.V.S. Megaw, ‘Problems and Non-problems in Palaeo-
organology: A Musical Miscellany’, in Studies in Ancient Europe, ed. J.M. Coles and D.D.A. Simpson (Leicester: Leicester
University Press, 1968), pp. 333–58; Megaw, ‘An End Blown Flute from Medieval Canterbury’, pp. 149–50; Megaw,
‘The Bone Pipe’, pp. 252–53; Megaw, ‘Bone Musical Instruments from Medieval Exeter’, pp. 349–51; J.V.S. Megaw,
‘Bone Whistles and Related Objects’, in Object and Economy in Medieval Winchester, 2, M. Biddle, Winchester Studies
7 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 718–23.
108
Lawson, Archaeological Journal, 139, pp. 252–54; Lawson, East Anglian Archaeology Report 22, pp. 182–83; Lawson,
Second Conference of the ICTM, pp. 123–30; Lawson, East Anglian Archaeology Report 58, pp. 211–12; Lawson, East
Anglian Archaeology Report 62, pp. 159–60, 163; G. Lawson, ‘Flute’, in Excavations at Redcastle Furze, Thetford 1988–
1999, P. Andrews, East Anglian Archaeology Report 72 (1995), 116, 118 (microfiche 1: D1–D6); Lawson, Conservation
Protocol; Lawson, Experiment and Design, pp. 133–38; Lawson, Studien zur Musikarchäologie, iv, 61–97; Lawson,
Studien zur Musikarchäologie, vi, 389–400.
109
MacGregor, Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn, pp. 148–51.
110
Leaf, Galpin Society Journal, 59, pp. 13–19: Leaf, ‘English Medieval Bone Flutes’ (doctoral thesis).
111
British Museum, acc. no. BM.1980.1214.14680.
the bone could have been a primitive musical instrument’. The results of his ‘elaborate tests’
were edited by Tufnell and a summary included in the final publication.112 Sadly, this was not
printed until after Todd’s death, and did not fully describe the various experiments and tests
he carried out. Thankfully, a copy of the original report survives among his family papers
and is reproduced as an Appendix to this article.
Having been loaned the artefact, Todd began his work by considering the different types
of musical instrument to which it could have belonged. His first test was to establish if it
could have been a sound tool similar to the traditional English bull-roarer or native Australian
turndun. After attaching a piece of string to the bone and then swinging it at speed through the
air, Todd was unable to produce a noticeable tone and therefore drew a negative conclusion.
To examine whether it could have been a blast-horn type instrument Todd enlisted the help of
an experienced shofar (ram’s horn) player, presumably one of his many musical friends from
Leeds Jewish community. Unfortunately, this test, along with the use of a cupped mouthpiece
from Todd’s own French horn, still produced negative results.
Todd then considered the reed family of instruments that were common in the ancient Near
East, and survive in the traditional music of the region, such as the double clarinet (Egyptian
zummara) and the Near Eastern oboe or shawm (Egyptian mizmar). The Lachish pipe was
fitted with zummara reeds, but with little success as the tone they produced was no different to
that of the reed by itself. As a further test he made a reconstruction of the Lachish pipe using
modern cow metacarpal, and observed that in both pipes the bone’s two internal marrow cav-
ities were connected, and thus, unlike the zummara, operated as a single resonance chamber.
Todd subsequently experimented with an oboe reed, but found that the larger bassoon reed
gave better results. When connected to one of the two large holes at the proximal end of the
bone, with the adjacent hole blocked, he was able to produce a fundamental tone of E and
harmonic tone of C# (incorrectly published as G#). An additional fundamental tone of G#
was possible by unblocking the hole adjacent to the reed. The six small side holes at the distal
end of the bone were interpreted as possible resonance holes to clarify the tone of the pipe.
Having completed his tests, Todd posted his report to the Institute of Archaeology in
London, and received the following response from Olga Tufnell (letter dated 6 December
1954):
I was delighted to get your long and interesting report by this morning’s post. It certainly clarifies
the position. If our pipe is a musical instrument, it is quite possible that the later Jericho ones are a
reminiscence, no longer intended to be played and included with the funerary equipment on traditional
grounds. Do you think it worthwhile examining some of the Jericho pipes yourself? If so, I am sure the
respective museums would loan them to you. I think it is most enterprising of you to suggest playing
the pipe over the phone, and I will phone through on Thursday evening at 6.45 and shall listen to the
dulcet tones with interest.
In her response, Tufnell makes reference to similar finds from the Bronze Age tombs at
Jericho, the first of which were discovered by John Garstang during his excavations from
1930 to 1936 and identified as possible flutes.113 Between 1952 and 1958, during Kathleen
Kenyon’s excavations, yet more bones were found with side holes pierced at one end, and
112
Tufnell, Lachish, pp. 72–73, pl. 21.5.
113
J. Garstang, ‘Jericho: City and Necropolis’, Liverpool Annals of Archaeology and Anthropology, xix (1932), 3–54,
pl. XXIIa.
40 THE MALHAM PIPE
again interpreted as possible flutes or perhaps cult items/amulets.114 However, the majority
of these later finds had their processes intact, which Tufnell suggested might preclude their
use as musical instruments.115 Whilst the identification of the Lachish ox bone as a musical
instrument is by no means certain, a point clearly made by Todd in his report, his pioneering
and experimental approach to the question he was posed, working systematically through all
the likely types of wind instrument, has to be admired.
Figure 8. Possible ox bone instrument found during excavations at Lachish in Palestine, 1932–38.
Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express thanks to the following individuals and organizations for their help and
assistance in preparing this article: Katherine Baxter of Leeds City Museum, Alison Cullingford of the
University of Bradford Special Collections, Joe and Caroline Hillaby, Helen Leaf, Tom Lord of Lower
Winskill Visitor Centre, Averil Simpson of the Field Studies Council, Joanne Smith of the Ironbridge Gorge
114
K.M. Kenyon, Excavations at Jericho: The Tombs Excavated in 1952–1954, 1 (London: British School of Archaeology
in Jerusalem, 1960), fig. 29; K.M. Kenyon, Excavations at Jericho: The Tombs Excavated in 1955–1958, 2 (London:
British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1965), fig. 5.
115
Tufnell, Lachish, p. 73.
Museum, the staff of Skipton Library, Martin Wills of Craven Museum and Chris Yeates of the Tolson
Museum.
The authors are particularly grateful to Dr Graeme Lawson of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research at University of Cambridge, for his helpful comments, corrections and guidance in relation to the
musicological aspects of this paper.
42 THE MALHAM PIPE
Appendix
Report on bone pipe found at Lachish, Palestine, dated third millennium bc
Eric Todd (1954)
The bone pipe is part of the metacarpal of an ox with the knuckle ends sawn off leaving two
holes at each end. Six holes have been bored symmetrically near one end. I am of the opinion
that the bone is a primitive musical instrument, though this is by no means a forgone conclu-
sion. Any bone which has the ends removed is suggestive of musical notes for a hollow tube
is the sine qua non of wind instruments. Of other possible uses I am not competent to judge,
though the layman might hazard a guess that it was a storage receptacle. Against this is the
existence of the six holes in the side of the bone near one end. These suggest irresistibly a
musical use for the pipe and that they are resonance holes to clarify the tone.
Tests
1. Is the bone an aerophonic instrument of the tundun or bull-roarer type?

The bone was whirled on a string. No note was produced. Conclusion negative.
2. Was the bone instrument played by vibration of the lips as the shofar?
No note could be produced by this method by an experienced shofar player.
3. Cupped mouthpiece? Trial with a French horn mouthpiece produced a negative result.
4. Reeds. Experiments under this head resolved themselves into two parts:
(a) trials with a beating reed as used in the zamara and in various bagpipes,
(b) trials with a double reed of the oboe-bassoon type.
Beating reeds (4a)
The fact that the pipe has two entry and exit holes suggests an instrument of the double clar-
inet (zamara) type, which has a long history in the Near East. These instruments are sounded
by a beating reed, the beating ligament being within the mouth which acts a wind chest. The
resemblance of the pipe to a double clarinet (zamara) is, however, purely superficial. The
Lachish pipe does not consist of two separate tubes as does the zamara, for the entrance and
exit holes lead to and from a central common chamber. The two separate pipes is an integral
feature of the double clarinet type instrument. No evidence could be found that this central
chamber had ever had a complete division forming two tubes. The structure of the bone was
such that the central chamber was partially divided by processes stretching from each end
towards the middle, but nevertheless the whole resonated as one chamber. In order to satisfy
myself that the dividing processes had never stretched the full length of the chamber, forming
two tubes, I obtained a fresh metacarpal of a cow and reconstructed the Lachish pipe. Save for
being on a larger scale this pipe was in all aspects similar to the Lachish pipe and the internal
processes partially divided the central chamber in exactly similar manner. This pipe is now in
Leeds City Museum.
From these observations I concluded the Lachish pipe is not, and never was, a double tube in-
strument. As to whether it was played by a beating reed of the zamara type, we must consider
the necessity of forming a coupled system. In this there is a definite relationship between the
size of the vibration producing agent and the size of the resonance chamber which is to am-
plify the vibrations. I found that ordinary zamara reeds connected to the pipe were so loosely
coupled acoustically that the note produced was merely that of the reed itself. Larger reeds
were obviously needed and — as afterwards I found — only a reed the size of a bassoon
reed would form a close couple so that the note produced was that of the resonance chamber,
i.e. the note of the pipe. Even an oboe reed could not be made to sound the note of the pipe.
Now the beating edge of a zamara type of reed is about one third of the diameter of the cane
forming the reed. To sound the Lachish pipe with a reed of the zamara type therefore, a cane
diameter of about one and a half inches would have to be used. And if we are to use two of
these reeds as in the double clarinet type of instrument two pieces of cane, each one and a
half inches diameter, would have to be placed side by side in the pipe. This is patently absurd.
Two such reeds would not fit into the pipe, nor could they be accommodated in the mouth.
Double reeds (4b)
We therefore pass to the double reed as the solution of the problem. There is a large class of
Near Eastern instruments with two pipes connected to one reed — the Egyptian oboe being
a case in point. This class of instrument has a long history, stretching back, I believe, to the
period of the Lachish pipe. As previously stated, no close couple could be formed with an
oboe reed, i.e. any note sounded was that given by the reed itself, the resonance chamber
being unaffected. When I tried, however, a bassoon reed, I obtained a clear note, quite distinct
from the reed itself and undoubtedly the result of a close couple between reed and pipe. By
compressing the reed and increasing the pressure I obtained another note, approximately a
sixth above the previous note. This note was related to the former in some rather obscure
fashion and it is of interest that the notes obtained are numbers three and five in the harmonic
series, though I am of the opinion that the relationship in not a true one. Normally the second
note should be either an octave or a twelfth above the first according to whether the system is
acting as an open pipe as in flute or oboe, or a stopped pipe as in orchestral clarinet.
In this test the reed was attached by means of a short length of tubing to one of the holes
in the end opposite to the resonance holes. The other hole, near the reed was closed by the
thumb. The notes obtained were (approximately):
1. with thumb on hole — E,

2. with thumb removed — G#,
3. with thumb on hole (harmonic of 1 above) — C# [incorrectly published as G sharp].
A piece of apparatus was made of glass — a form of T-tube — so that vibrations from the
reeds should communicate with the resonance chamber by means of both entrance holes.
Blowing now produced notes 1 and 3 above without any appreciable difference of tone or
pitch. When the six small holes near the exit holes were closed by means of plasticine the
tone produced was slightly muffled. I concluded these holes, which clarify the tone, are reso-
nance holes.

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The Malham Pipe: A Reassessment of Its Context,

Richard Sermon & John F.J. Todd

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THE MALHAM PIPE: A REASSESSMENT OF ITS

Richard Sermona and John F.J. Toddb

© The University of Leeds 2018 DOI: 10.1080/0078172X.2018.1426178

Eric Todd of Leeds

Seaty Hill Excavation

Dating Evidence: (a) Iron Knives

Dating Evidence: (b) Settlements

King, Early Grassington, p. 8.

Dating Evidence: (c) Burial Practice

The Malham Pipe

Bone Pipes in Britain

Addendum: The Lachish Pipe

Report on bone pipe found at Lachish, Palestine, dated third millennium bc

Eric Todd (1954)

1. Is the bone an aerophonic instrument of the tundun or bull-roarer type?

Beating reeds (4a)

Double reeds (4b)

1. with thumb on hole — E,

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