By William Long, Esq. 167 



The writer has drawn largely upon Dr. Thurnam's work (which 

 must always be the standard book on Wiltshire barrows) because it 

 seemed of importance to set before those who are interested in 

 Stonehenge the characteristics of those traces which these ^rave- 

 mounds afford us of the civilization and customs of the builders and 

 frequenters of this sacred place. But it is impossible to follow him 

 far into all the details relating to the pottery, and stone, bone, and 

 bronze implements, discovered in the South Wilts barrows. They 

 can only be touched upon here very cursorily. 



Pottery. 

 The pottery is all more or less rude, formed of clay, mixed with 

 minute pebbles, or fragments of broken flint or quartz, or sometimes 

 with pounded chalk or shells, recent or fossil. For the finer vessels 

 the clay has been tempered by the admixture of some sort of grit or 

 sharp sand. All seems to have been hand-made; to have been partly 

 dried by exposure to the air, and then baked, rather than burnt, in 

 the ashes of a fire lighted over and around it. The ornamentation 

 was generally made by the finger or finger-nail, and from the size 

 of the markings Dr. Thurnam is inclined to think that the makers 

 of our British fictilia, like the potters of existing American and 

 African tribes, and lately even in the Hebrides, were of the female 

 sex. Other modes of ornamentation were by means of twisted cord, 

 sticks serrated at the edge, and pieces of wood or bone. Dr. Thurnam 

 arranges these fictile vessels as follows : — 



I. Culinary vessels. 

 II. Sepulchral vessels. 

 With burnt bodies. "With unburnt bodies. 



1. Cinerary urns. 3. Food vessels. 



"l. Incense cups. 4. Drinking cups. 



3. Food vessels (rarely) . 



Of the sepulchral pottery three forms were discriminated by Hoare, 

 the cinerary urn, the drinking cup, and incense cup. To these, Mr. 

 Bateman added the food vessel. The true cinerary urn was probably 

 made to contain ashes, and the incense cup may likewise have been 

 usually designed for funereal rites. The decorated food vase and 

 drinking cup seem, however, to have belonged to what we may term 



