Dying Embers: Fire-lighting Technology and Mortuary Practice in Early Bronze Age Britain

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expireConsum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.Shakespeare, Sonnet 73We examine the known examples of strike-a-light kits within prehistoric mortuary contexts in mainland Britain. Building on the seminal work of Clarke in the 1970s, and Needham’s recent work on Beaker grave groups, many further examples of this burial practice...