212 The Neio Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



frame some theory from these results. I, however, here prefer 

 to allow the simple facts to remain. As we have seen, the 

 barrows in this part of the Forest, like all others of the same 

 period, contained nothing, with the exception of the single stone- 

 hammer, and the slinging pebbles, and the flake of flint, but 

 nearly plain urns, full of only burnt earth, charcoal, and human 

 bones. No iron, bronze, nor bone-work of any sort, was found, 

 Avhich would still further go to prove their extreme early age. 

 Curiously enough, too, no teeth, bones, nor horn-cores of 

 animals were discovered, as so often are in Keltic barrows.* 

 Like all others, too, of an early date, there seem to have been 

 several burials in the same grave, though this, as on Fritham 

 Plain, is very far from being always the case. Some little 

 regularity evidently prevailed with the different septs. Some, 

 as at Bratley, placed the charred remains in a grave from two 

 to three feet in depth ; others, as at Butt's Plain, on the mere 

 ground. On the other hand, a good deal of caprice seems to 

 have been exercised as to the materials with which each barrow 

 was formed, and the way and the shape in which it was built, as 

 also the arrangement of the charcoal. 



Further, perhaps, the different grades of life and relation- 

 ship were marked by the presence and position of the urns. 



has been already done, and too many barrows have been already rifled, 

 witliont any record being made of their contents. Nearly all that we 

 know of Kelt or Old-English we learn from their deaths. Their history is 

 buried in their graves. 



* In Mr. Birch's Ancient Pottery, vol. ii. pp. 382, 38.3, will be found 

 a list of tlie notices of the various discoveries of Keltic urns, scattered 

 tlirough the different Archaeological Journals and Collections, which will 

 save the student much time and labour. A most valuable paper on the 

 subject, by Kemble, was published in the Archceologicul Journal vol xij. 

 number 48, p. .309. 



212 



