156 Danish Cromlechs and Burial Customs, 8fc. 



near Collingbourne Kingston, 126 feet long, is east ani west; so 

 also is the one near Shepherd's Shore (opened by Dr. \i "•nam). 

 There are about thirty long barrows in Wilts, and only i -e of 

 them are north and south. 



Pass we now to the Burial Customs of these primeval races. 

 Mr. Worsaae states that in the Danish tombs of the stone period 

 the bodies of the deceased were generally deposited entire, and 

 that cremation was not regularly practised until the succeeding, or 

 bronze, period. "We have seen how the aborigines lived and 

 laboured, let us now briefly consider in what way they interred 

 their dead. The bodies were not burned but placed in chambers 

 which were formed of large flat stones within elevated mounds or 

 barrows, &c. The bodies were also occasionally deposited in vessels 

 of burnt clay," (p. 20.) " The tombs of the stone period usually 

 contain unburnt corpses, while those in the barrows of the bronze 

 period, generally speaking, have been burnt," (p. 99.) 



This seems to me, so far as my investigations have gone, to be 

 unsubstantiated as regards the Channel Islands. It is certain that 

 cremation was practised in the earliest period of the stone age in 

 Guernsey, for one third of the area of the large stone chamber at 

 L'ancresse was occupied by burnt corpses, and this too in the lowest 

 stratum of human remains. I cannot speak with any certainty 

 respecting the practice in England, so very many cromlechs having 

 been carelessly opened, and their contents scattered without any 

 record. The long barrow at Stoney Littleton, and the cromlech at 

 Temple Bottom near Marlborough examined by myself, contained 

 both burnt and unburnt bones. Mr. Cunnington mentions a crom- 

 lech in a long barrow, which he opened, in which there was a large 

 quantity of burnt human bones. In the Morbihan I observed, in 

 almost every instance where cromlechs had been recently explored, 

 portions of burnt bones lying near. It is probable therefore that 

 both customs were in use at the same time, or else that the practice 

 changed during the long period of the stone age. Mr. Thomas 

 Wright thinks " there is no evidence to support the conjectures 

 of some writers that these different modes of burial belong to 

 different dates. It seems more probable that they were fashions 



