

BARROW-DIGGING AT MARTINSTOWN. 35 



natural depression, and in general form was that of an inverted 

 cone with the apex missing ; average diameter at surface of 

 chalk floor r8 foot, at bottom 5 inches, the sides tapering off 

 very considerably. The depth of the hole in the solid chalk was 

 i '5 foot. In it were found the larger portion of an anterior 

 vertebra of a cetacean and part of the tibia of a red-deer (Cervus 

 elaphtis) ; * also a lot of decomposed cellular bone, with some 

 small yellow particles, like sulphur, scattered through the mass. 



These excavations at Martinstown, extending over a fortnight 

 in all, have, therefore, in addition to the miscellaneous relics, 

 produced four primary interments by inhumation and two 

 secondary interments by cremation. None of them, we think, 

 judging from the circumstances of the finding, and the relics 

 both associated with them and found in other parts of the 

 barrows, are more recent than the middle of the Bronze Period, 

 and we are inclined to assign some of them to a time slightly 

 earlier in the Bronze Age. As types of prehistoric ceramic art 

 in Britain, it is now generally understood that the beaker was 

 earlier than the food-vessel, and that the cinerary urn was the 

 latest. 



APPENDIX. 



NOTES ON THE SKELETON FEOM BAEEOW I., MAETINSTOWN, 

 DOECHESTEE, 1903. 



BY J. G. GAESON, M.D., &c. 



The human remains placed in my hands for examination by Messrs. Gray and 

 Prideaux consist of a skull nearly complete but which had been much broken, the 

 sacrum, the left innominate, and several of the long bones of the limbs, belonging 

 to one skeleton. There were also sent some small portions of the skull and other 

 parts of the skeleton of one or more infants, but these were so fragmentary that 

 little can be made oat regarding them with any degree of certainty. I, therefore, 

 think it better to confine my notes to the skeleton of the more adult individual, 

 beginning with the skull. 



* Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins, F.E.S., has seen these bones. 



