And another thing. I have a Ph D student who is working on death and commemoration in medieval Welsh poetry. He keeps coming across references to gravel in tombs - the dead are beneath the gravel, they have gravel as a cloak, as a gown, their faces are hidden with gravel, gravel is raked over them. The Welsh word is 'gro' and there are also references to 'pridd' (earth) and 'gweryd' (soil) - 'gro' is clearly something different.
So - has anyone come across any evidence for using gravel as a sort of 'clean earth' in coffins or shroud burials in the C14 and C15? This is I think different from the white stones that you get in 1st millennium burials - those sound more like single stones, whereas this seems to be something more bulky that covers at least the face of the corpse.
Best wishes (again)
Maddy