10 INTRODUCTION. 



as to further the preservation of bone) without a considerable 

 number of them being found scattered indiscriminately throughout 

 the mound ; and where they have not been so found, their absence 

 is no doubt in many cases to be attributed to decay of the bones. 

 In some barrows they are very abundant ; for instance, in one at 

 Rudstone they were literally in hundreds, placed, with flint chip- 

 pings and sherds of pottery, in a dark- coloured, unctuous layer, 

 which extended throughout the whole area of the mound, on the 

 natural surface of the ground. They are nearly always, when of a 

 nature that admits of such a process, broken, so as apparently to 

 extract the marrow. There can, I think, be little doubt that these 

 bones are the remains of feasts, held at the time of the funeral, or 

 at some subsequent one, such as its anniversary. Practices of a like 

 kind have been common to many different peoples, and so prevalent 

 was the custom in some parts of Europe in the early times of 

 Christianity that frequent orders, directed against holding feasts or 

 sacrificing at the graves of the dead, are to be found in the 

 Prankish Capitularies l . They may also be the remains of food 

 offered to the dead, an observance which has extensively prevailed 

 in many countries and in various ages. They would in this case 

 form a part of the practice of the worship of ancestors, which has 

 been a feature almost universal in the growth of the religious feel- 

 ing of the human race, and allied always with fear. The attempt 

 to propitiate the dead, in one way or other, with the view of 

 averting their displeasure and warding off the danger of their in- 

 flicting injury, might be illustrated very fully and from many 

 sources in the history of almost every people and religion. Nor 

 is it impossible that the habit of placing arms, implements, and 

 ornaments in the grave with the dead (of the purpose of which 

 other explanations will be found later on), may have had its 

 origin in ancestral worship. The prevalence of this custom has been 

 of great service in enabling us to gain a considerable knowledge 

 of the animals which, at the time of the erection of the barrows, 



1 Even Christian priests appear to have indulged in the practice. Pope Zacharias 

 in a letter to Boniface says, * Pro sacrilegis itaque presbyteris, ut conscripsisti, qui 

 tauros, hircos, diis paganorum immolabant, manducantes sacrificia mortuorum/ 

 Magna Biblioth. Vet. Patrum, ed. 1618,, viii. 130. In a capitulary of Karloman, Dux 

 Francorum, A.D. 742, is a decree against ' sacrificia mortuorum/ Pertz, Monum. 

 Germanise Historica. Legum, torn. i. p. 17. An ' Indiculus superstitionum et pagania- 

 rum,' which appears to be of the time of Karloman, A.D. 743, contains two articles 

 which seem to refer to holding feasts at burial-places De sacrilegio ad sepulchra 

 mortuorum/ and ' De sacrilegio super dcfunctos, id est, dadsisas.' 1. c. p. 19. 



