14 INTRODUCTION. 



it had been lined with wood. The body seems not unfrequently to 

 have been placed upon wood, not extending much beyond the bones, 

 and in one case protected on each side by a thin slab of willow, 

 there being no appearance of wood either above or beneath it ; but 

 in other cases wood, apparently planks, had been laid over the body. 



What has already been said refers to unburnt bodies, but the same 

 rule holds good with those that are burnt, except that, so far as I have 

 observed, upon the wolds they are not found in connection with any 

 protection of wood l ; and that they are sometimes placed within an 

 urn 2 , which usually is deposited standing upright, but very fre- 

 quently is reversed over the bones. When the urn is met with in 

 an upright position it is sometimes covered by a flat stone ; and the 

 mouth is now and then found to have been closed with clay, 

 both in cases when the urn is standing on its base and when 

 it is reversed. It is not unlikely that the mouth of the urn was 

 occasionally covered with cloth or hide. If we may judge from the 

 careful way in which the bones have been collected after the burn- 

 ing, it would only be natural to expect that some provision should 

 have been made for protecting them from the surrounding earth, so 

 as to keep them separate from it ; though that might, be done by 

 enclosing them in some material or other before they were deposited 

 in the urn. Nor is it impossible that the overhanging rim may have 

 been provided for that purpose, the cloth being drawn down as far as 

 to that part, when a cord or thong was then passed over it and round 

 the urn below the projecting rim. It may, however, be objected 

 to this that if the rim was thus intended to be concealed, it would 

 not have been, as it is almost universally, highly decorated. 



In the greater number of cases the body appears to have been 

 burnt apart from the place where the bones were ultimately 

 deposited ; but numerous instances occur where the calcined re- 

 mains have been interred on the site of the funeral pile, which was 

 frequently constructed over a hollow, previously made to contain 

 the bones. In some rare cases the bones were not collected after 



1 Sir E. Colt Hoare found the deposit of burnt bones in four instances placed in 

 what he calls a wooden box. Ancient Wilts, vol. i. pp. 122, 126, 207, 211 ; and in 

 one case in a hollowed tree trunk, p. 185. The Rev. W. C. Lukis met with a burnt 

 body, enclosed in a hollowed tree trunk, in a barrow at Collingbourne Ducis, Wiltshire. 

 Notes on Barrow Diggings in the Parish of Collingbourne Ducis, p. 12. 



2 Burnt bones are found enclosed in urns much less frequently on the Wolds than 

 in other parts of England. In Wiltshire, Sir R. Colt Hoare met with them in the 

 proportion of one to three ; and in Dorsetshire they are still more commonly placed in 

 urns, being in the proportion of three to one. In Cleveland, Mr. Atkinson, out of 

 fifty burials after cremation, found that the bones were deposited in an urn in 

 thirty-two cases. 



