FORM OF BARROWS. 3 



mode the great chambered cairns at New Grange and Dowth, in 

 the County of Meath, on the banks of the Boyne, and Maeshowe 

 in the Orkneys, are the most remarkable examples in the United 

 Kingdom. 



As a rule they are circular, though at times approaching an oval 

 form, but a long-shaped mound is common in some parts of Eng- 

 land, and has been regarded with much probability as the earliest 

 form of barrow, and belonging to a period before the introduction of 

 the use of metal into the country. 



It has been stated in the Preface, that the Introduction will be 

 mainly confined to a consideration of the facts which an extended 

 examination of the barrows of the Yorkshire Wolds has supplied, 

 and to certain deductions which may be drawn from those facts. It 

 becomes necessary however, in the first place, to give a description 

 of the barrows themselves, preparatory to giving an account of their 

 contents. 



In form they are either long or circular ; but as the long bar- 

 rows, and the various interesting questions connected with them, 

 are fully considered in the account of the opening of several of them, 

 given in the sequel, the present remarks will be limited to the round 

 barrows. 



They differ considerably in outline, and the slope of the sides is 

 sometimes very gradual, at other times quite sharp. In most cases 

 they have become so greatly altered, during the course of years of 

 cultivation of the surface, that it is difficult to ascertain what has 

 been the original form ; but judging from some which still remain 

 untouched by the plough, and from the present appearance of the 

 whole of them, they may be described as being bowl-shaped and 

 conical ; those of the former shape being perhaps the most numerous. 



resemblance between some of these receptacles for the dead, especially in Scandinavia, 

 and the places of abode of the Eskimo and other Arctic residents. Nilsson, Stone Age, 

 ed. Lubbock, p. 124 seq. The supposition is not one which bears in itself anything 

 of improbability, but rather is the expression of a natural feeling. Some of the early 

 twelfth-century grave-stones are miniature high-pitched roofs, the covering in fact of 

 man's last home. 



The same idea, connecting the dead with the living, and retaining in the grave 

 some reminiscence of the former life, may possibly have been sought to be embodied 

 by the use of a peculiarly shaped urn, holding the ashes of the dead, specimens of 

 which have been found at Albano and on Mons Crescentius in Italy, and at several 

 places in Germany. They are imitations of huts, and have a moveable door, which 

 was secured after the bones had been deposited within them. They belong to the 

 Bronze Age. Birch, Ancient Pottery, vol. ii. 196, 391 1st ed., 446, 595 2nd ed. ; 

 Pigorini and Lubbock, Notes on the Hut Urns ... of Marino, Archaeol. vol. xlii. 

 p. 99; Materiaux pour THistoire primitive de 1'Homme, 2 do Se;% vol. iv, p. 4 

 Lindenschmit, Alterthiimer, vol. i. Heft. x. Taf. 3. 



B 2 



