CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



have been interred with their owners, in Britain 

 at least. It is doubtful if a single well-authenti- 

 cated instance of a bronze sword associated with 

 a British interment can be produced. But in 

 Denmark, unburnt interments of the Bronze Age, 

 in which the body was inclosed in a coffin made 

 of a hollowed tree-trunk, have been found with 

 the arms (including swords of beautiful finish), the 

 personal ornaments, and even the clothing of the 

 deceased, in the most perfect state of preservation. 



Iron Age. In the Iron Age, although the 

 earlier mode of unburnt sepulture had again 

 become more common, cremation still continued 

 until finally extirpated by the rigorous prohibi- 

 tions of the early Church. In France, it had not 

 wholly ceased in the time of Charlemagne, as we 

 learn from one of his capitularies that those who 

 persisted in the pagan custom of cremation were 

 to be punished with death. The Scandinavian 

 Northmen clung to the barbarous rites of sepul- 

 ture by cremation, and immolation of victims at 

 the rearing of the barrow, till a very late period. 

 Sometimes the heathen Viking was burned in his 

 ship ; sometimes a barrow was raised over his 

 unburnt body, placed in the vessel he had com- 

 manded during his lifetime. Such a vessel of the 

 Viking period was recently disinterred from a 

 barrow at Tun in Norway, and is now preserved 

 in the Museum at Christiania. Sometimes the 

 burnt bones were placed in a stone cooking-pot, 

 and over them was laid the long Viking sword, 

 bent and twisted three or four times on itself. 



Roman. In England, besides the earlier sepul- 

 chral structures and interments of prehistoric 

 times, we meet with corresponding burials of the 

 Roman, Romano-British, and Anglo-Saxon pagan 

 periods. Among the Romans in Britain, though 

 the practice of burning the dead appears to have 

 predominated, simple burial was also common. 

 Cemeteries, in which the ustrinum, or public 

 burning-place, was distinctly marked, have been 

 found in several places in England, as at Littling- 

 ton near Royston, and the ancient Isurium at 

 Aldborough, in Yorkshire. When the Emperor 

 Severus died at York, his body was burned, and 

 the ashes placed in an urn of alabaster, which his 

 sons carried with them to Rome. Roman graves 

 are distinguished by the absence of weapons, by 

 the elegant form and finer texture of their urns, 

 which were of various shapes and sizes, wheel- 

 made, and well burnt. With them were also 

 deposited groups of vessels, such as unguent- 

 bottles, glass-vessels called lachrymatories or 'tear- 

 bottles/ paterae, lamps, &c. When the body 

 was buried unburnt, it was inclosed in a coffin, 

 sometimes of wood, sometimes of lead, and occa- 

 sionally of clay or earthenware ; or placed in a 

 stone sarcophagus, or a cist made of bricks or 

 tiles. Sometimes they buried in barrows similar 

 to those of the earlier time. A remarkable group 

 of Roman barrows occurs at Ashdon in Essex. 

 They are called the Bartlow Hills, and are conical 

 in form, the largest being 45 feet in height, and 

 about 150 feet in diameter. It contained a 



736 



chamber constructed of wood, in which was a large 

 square-shaped bottle of glass, a bronze patera with 

 a reeded handle, terminating in a ram's head, a 

 bronze dish and lamp, a pair of strigils, and other 

 articles of distinctively Roman type. 



Romano-British interments are often found in 

 groups or cemeteries of oriented graves, which 

 never contain anything but the skeleton. 



Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxon graves of the 

 period of their heathendom are recognised by 

 their accompanying weapons when unburnt, and 

 by their peculiar urns of globular shape, orna- 

 mented with impressed stamps, and usually 

 having knobs or projections on the sides. With 

 the unburnt interments are found the long double- 

 edged sword, the peculiar ploughshare-like knife, 

 or scramasax, long narrow spear-heads, axe-heads, 

 and bosses of shields, all of iron, with fibulas 

 of bronze of various forms, often beautifully 

 enamelled, adorned with interlacing patterns, and 

 terminating in devices resembling the heads oF 

 animals. 



Scandinavian. Anglo-Saxon graves of the 

 heathen period are not known in Scotland ; but in 

 its northern districts, graves of the Scandinavian 

 Vikings are occasionally found, characterised by 

 their long heavy double-edged iron swords, 

 with short guards and heavy pommels, their 

 peculiar oval and bowl-shaped or ' tortoise ' 

 brooches of brass, and iron shield-bosses of semi- 

 globular or cup-like form, with long round-backed 

 combs of bone, and other distinctively Scandina- 

 vian relics. 



Christian. In the canons of the early churches, 

 the Christians are forbidden to use the burial- 

 mounds of the pagans, and commanded to abstain 

 from burying with the dead, arms, clothing, horses, 

 and accoutrements, as had been the custom of 

 the heathen. Yet, while Christianity abolished 

 the custom of burying the warrior's panoply with 

 the dead, it retained, with a strange inconsist- 

 ency, the ancient practice for the consecrated 

 orders of the Church militant. The bishop was 

 buried with his crosier and comb, his chalice and 

 vestments ; and even the funeral urns and stone 

 cists of the pagan period have their parallel in 

 the earthenware jars which were deposited as 

 incense-vessels in the stone coffins of late medi- 

 eval times, and are so often exhumed among the 

 churches of France, 



In this brief review, attention has been confined 

 to Western Europe, where the progress of dis- 

 covery has been rapid and the materials are most 

 abundant. But in the New World, as well as in 

 the Old, the history of human progress is exempli- 

 fied in similar stages, from the savage condition 

 of the early mound-builders of the great valleys 

 (whose rude implements of flint are in some of 

 their types indistinguishable from those of the 

 European drift) to the comparative civilisation of 

 the bronze-using races of Mexico and Peru, finally 

 overwhelmed and supplanted by the imported, 

 civilisation of the fully developed Iron Age. 



