128 ON SOME DIGGINGS NEAR BRASSINGTON, DERBYSHIRE. 



is the case, was rudely paved, like those of Ringham Low 

 and Long Low, Wetton. The coverstone, with little doubt, 

 was the large slab (b), pushed off on some former occasion. 

 We know little of the original mound. If the circle represents 

 its outline, its arrangement must have been peculiar, for 

 the chamber, instead of being within would be at the edge, 

 and the gallery pointing towards the centre. There are 

 indications of, at least, one more chamber, and its position, with 

 regard to the ring, is perplexing, and suggests a barrow of the 

 type of Mule Hill, Man, or that of St. Helier, Jersey, rather than 

 Mininglow, in which the chambers were placed around the centre, 

 about midway between it and the circumference, and the galleries 

 entered from the side, which was finished off with a retaining-wall. 

 It is quite possible that the circle is accidental, and that the wall- 

 like structure at a, is a fragment of such a podium. The bones, 

 representing sixteen or more individuals, both within and without 

 the chamber, were in the usual condition of barrow-bones — friable 

 and porous through the disappearance of their gelatinous matters. 

 The skulls,* as will be seen in the measurements to follow, were 

 typically dolicho-cephalic, and the skeletons, as already noticed, 

 were laid on their sides, in a contracted attitude, across the 

 chamber. They afforded no direct evidence as to whether they 

 were placed there, as anatomically arranged skeletons, for the 

 minor displacements of lower jaw bones, &c., could well have 

 been caused by subsequent interments of corpses. It was clear, 

 however, that the central portion of the chamber had been dis- 

 arranged at some comparatively recent date In no case could a 

 perfect limb bone be built up out of the fragments — hence we 

 cannot ascertain the stature. The total number of teeth found, 

 whether free or attached, was 148 ; many of these were very much 



* The disparity of the skulls as to size has been frequently observed before 

 in barrows of this era. Compare, for instance, the adult female and male 

 skulls (D, 5 and 6). This disproportion is held to indicate a hard and 

 miserable life, where the weakest were overworked and constantly stinted of 

 their food. If D, 6 be a female skull (some long barrows, as that of Nether- 

 Swell, Gloucestershire, had a similar dispropoition among the female skulls) 

 it corroborates the late Prof. Rolleston's surmise, that there was a privileged 

 class of women, better fed and less hard-worked. 



