160 StoneJienge and its Barrows. 



leaving his description of the chambered long barrows of North 

 Wilts and Gloucestershire, the writer will as briefly as possible, give 

 a resum^ of the Doctor's account of the other barrows which encircle 

 Stonehena:e. He classifies them as to external form as follows : — 



Total 354 



I. The bowl-shaped barrow is the simplest form of tumulus met 

 with throughout the whole of the British Isles. The variety in the 

 shape and size of the bowl-barrow is considerable. The form of 

 the majority may be compared to that of the third of an orange cut 

 horizontally. The prevailing height is from three to five feet. In 

 diameter the usual limits are between twenty and sixty feet, though 

 in rare instances one hundred feet is reached and even exceeded. 

 Dr. Thurnam believes it must be allowed that the bowl-shaped is the 

 primitive form of the circular barrow. Occasionally it is surrounded 

 by a slight ditch. 



was reached, where were the remains of the original interment ; viz., the skele- 

 ton of a man laid on the right side, with the knees drawn up in a closely-con- 

 tracted posture, and the head to the south-west. Close to the right arm, lay a 

 natural bludgeon-shaped flint, about 8 inches long, well adapted for being 

 grasped in the hand ; from one end of which numerous flakes had been knocked 

 ofi". The skull was dolichocephalic ; though less decidedly so than many of the 

 crania from the chambered barrows. Near the back of the head was a round 

 'cist' or hole, scooped out of the chalk rock, about 18 inches wide and the same 

 in depth. Two feet lurther to the north, were two similar cists of oval form, 

 but somewhat larger, and scarcely so deep. These holes, like others beneath 

 the long barrows of South Wilts, had perhaps been used for deposits of meat 

 and drink, as a viaticum for the dead ; or possibly for the blood of human 

 victims, whose mangled remains appear often to have been buried with the body 

 of their chief in this class of tumuli. A few scattered bones of sheep and other 

 animals were found near the summit, and about a yard from the feet of the 

 primary interment, was the symphysis of the ischium of an old horse. The 

 skeleton was that of man of less than middle stature ; viz., about 5 feet 6 

 inches." (Dr. Thurnam's paper on " Principal Forms of Ancient British and 

 Gaulish Skulls," printed in vol. i. of Memoirs of the Anthropological Society 

 of London, 1865.) 



