By William Long, Esq. 153 



with in the remains of the slaves and retainers slaughtered in his 

 honour. And in accordance with this conclusion it is not unusual, 

 as already stated, to find one of the central skeletons with the skull 

 entire, whilst in all the others it is more or less extensively cleft. 

 The solitary skeleton which formed the primary interment in the 

 Winterbourne Stoke long barrow was entire and unmutilated, 

 and the absence of associated skulls with cleft skulls rendered 

 it probable that the usual funeral rites were in this instance never 

 completed. In the Tilshead Lodge long barrow, in which were 

 two skeletons, the skull of one was cleft, while that of the other 

 was intact. Dr. Thuruam, more over, considers it very probable 

 that at this period anthropophagism prevailed, and sees "no 

 difficulty in acceding to the conclusion of Mr. Greenwell, that 

 in the disjointed, cleft, and broken condition of the human bones in 

 many of the long barrows, and especially in those examined by him 

 at Scamridge, near Ebberston, and near Rudston, Yorkshire, we have 

 indications of funeral ' feasts, where slaves, captives, and others were 

 slain and eaten.^ " ^ 



Dr. Thurnam often found not far from the human remains, though 

 at a somewhat higher level, the bones of oxen, those of the skull 

 and feet being the portions of the skeletons most generally met 

 with. These he found to be of the small short-horned species, the 

 bos longifrons or bos brachyceros. He concludes that oxen were 

 slaughtered at the time o£ the obsequies for the supply of the funeral 

 feast, and that the heads and feet, not being used for food, were 

 thrown on the yet incomplete barrow, as offerings, perhaps, to the 

 manes or other deities. 



Out of thirty-one long barrows there are three cases in which the 

 burial was attended by the burning of the dead. " The cremation how- 

 ever seems to have been of animperfectanddefectivesort,quitedifferent 

 from that of the round barrow period; when, moreover, instead of 

 the burning having been practised at the most in a tithe of the in- 

 stances (in Wilts and the south-west of England), it was decidedly 

 the more usual mode.^' According to Dr. Thurnam's enumeration 



' Archajological Journal, 1865, xxii., 107. 



