14 Notes on the Opening of a Bronze Age Barrow at Manton. 



The wood fibre detected by Mr. Powell came from about the 

 head, and his report thus satisfactorily accounts for the red in- 

 crustation ; the vegetable fibre of the garment round the body 

 (linen) and the wood about the head had been to some extent re- 

 placed by iron oxide from the surrounding clay, tlius forming a 

 layer or incrustation of red colour. 



Previous to this discovery there seem to have been only six 

 recorded finds of Grape Cups.^ They were so named by Sir R. 

 Colt Hoare, and re-named " nodulated cups " by Dr. Thurnam,- who 

 included among their number a small rude cup, now in the Museum 

 at Devizes,'^ which thougli nodulated, can by no stretch of the 

 imagination l)e classed as a Grape Cup. Four of these cups are in 

 the Museum at Devizes, one is in the Bristol Museum, and one has 

 been lost sight of. With the exception of the one at Bristol that 

 was found in a barrow at Priddy, in the neighbouring county of 

 Somerset, they have all been found in Wiltshire barrows. 



It is just a hundred years ago since the last recorded find of gold 

 in a Bronze Age barrow in Wiltshire,^ and the present one makes 

 only the eighth similar find in the county, while in the whole of 

 the rest of England and Wales there have been scarcely as many 

 more. Five of tlie gold-bearing barrows were on Salisbury Plain 

 — one close to its edge at Upton Lovel in the valley of the Wyly, 

 and one at Mei'e in the extreme west of the county, about eight 



' Upton Lovel Golden Barrow, with burnt interment. Ancient Wilts, p. 99, 

 at Devizes ; Amesbury, barrow 133, burnt, ibid, p. 199, at Devizes ; 

 Normanton, barrow 156, unburnt, ibid, p. 202, at Devizes. Barrow on 

 Windmill Hill, near Avebury, see Eev. A. C. Smith's Map, Section VI., 

 F. IV.b., unburnt interment; Arch. Instit., Salisbury, p. 108. at Devizes. 

 Barrow south-east of Kennet, unburnt interment, LOST. Diary of a Dean, 

 p. 44, fig. 2. Barrow near Priddy, burnt interment, at Bristol Museum, 

 Arch. Joitrn., XVI., p. 149. Of the seven grape cups now known it will be 

 seen that three were with burnt and four with unburnt burials. 



^ Archoeologia, XLIII., p. 364. 



« Stourhead Cat., No. 187. 



* Upton Lovel Golden Barrow, Hoare and Cunnington, 1803, re-opened, 

 with further finds, in 1807. 



