ON RAINS CAVE, LONGCLIFFE, DERBYSHIRE. 43 



metal has not even yet displaced everywhere the use of stone for 

 implements. It is this overlap of ages (Neolithic, Bronze, Iron), if 

 ages they can be called — rather stages of culture — which makes the 

 presence and absence of these materials no safe guide as to order in 

 time. 



It must not be overlooked that we have no proof of the contem- 

 poraneity of the two kinds of pottery in this cave. The hand-made 

 may be centuries older than the wheel-made. The large hand-made 

 bowl, at least, was found broken very near the surface, apparently 

 where it was placed, and whether it had been there 1,300 or 2,000 

 years, it shows how little changed and disturbed has been the cave 

 during this long period. It could well occur then that objects of 

 pre-Roman, Roman, and even Medieval date might lie commingled 

 in the loose upper soil of a cave floor. 



The age of the older human bones still remains untouched. The 

 great majority of British and Continental caves hitherto explored 

 have been at one time or other burial places ; and the modes of 

 burial were similar to those of the barrows, that is, the skeletons, 

 when not disturbed, have usually been found in a sitting or con- 

 tracted attitude. In fact, the chambered (and perhaps oldest) 

 barrows may be regarded as artificial caves. The half-exposed 

 chambers, constructed of massive slabs of limestone, of Minninglow, 

 not far from Rains Cave, instantly suggest this idea. To judge 

 from the celebrated cave of Aurignac, in France, and that of 

 Perthi-chwareu, Pembroke, both of which seem to have remained 

 undisturbed up to the time of their modern discovery, burial caves 

 had their entrances blocked up with large stones, and thus those at 

 the mouth of Rains Cave may be explained. If the parallels 

 between caves as a burying place and the chambered barrows be 

 accepted as proofs of their contemporaneity, then we must, indeed, 

 give a greater antiquity to these human remains of Rains Cave than 

 fhe period of the Roman occupation. 



This cave has also been used as a dwelling-place ; the condition 

 of many of the animal bones already alluded to, the fragments of 

 charcoal, and the domestic pottery, all tend to prove this. One can 

 scarcely think that so low, wretched, and damp a place was ever 



