206 THE BRIGANTES. 



laid naked among the flints, chalk, or stone, or these materials 

 were in some degree compacted about it, or it was enclosed in 

 a walled cell or kist, or placed in an excavated wooden coffin. 

 Usually the body was laid on the back, or on one side, with the 

 legs drawn up, and the arms bent so that elbows and knees 

 touched or approached each other. It was not placed constantly 

 in one position, such as with the head to the west, so as to face 

 the rising sun a Greek custom but was frequently in a north 

 and south direction, with the head to the south or north. 



Many of the tumuli which were opened on Acklam Wold in 

 1850, by the Yorkshire Antiquarian Club, yielded entire skele- 

 tons, which had been quietly interred ; but the articles useful 

 in savage life were very rare. Two remarkable bone needles of 

 great length (one was 9 inches long) were found, and several 

 urns, all of rude construction ; not made by help of the potter's 

 wheel, but ornamented by the point of a stick. Some of these 

 urns contained the ashes of burnt human bodies and the bones 

 of small animals ; but others were placed in the earth either 

 empty, or filled with perishable matters perhaps food. In one 

 tumulus we had a buried skeleton and burnt remains, so placed 

 that the contemporaneity of cremation and burial is certainly 

 proved*. 



The circumstances which accompany the interment of the 

 aborigines of Britain vary with the district, and probably with 

 the tribes. Along the chalk districts the material of the fune- 

 ral mound is in a considerable degree derived from the flint and 

 chalk rubble of the adjoining surface ; the dryness of the ground 

 allowed of simple burial in or upon the rock ; and as arrow-heads 

 and other weapons or instruments of flint were common among 

 the living, they are sometimes found with the dead. In a tumulus 

 on the Acklam Wold, however, it was observed that the centre 

 was occupied by blue clay; perhaps the clay from which the 

 rudely constructed urn, full of burnt remains, was made. This 



* See the recent publication of Mr. Wellbeloved, entitled ' Descriptive 

 Account of the Antiquities in the Yorkshire Museum.' 



