16 INTRODUCTION. 



from the funeral pile, upon which, from one cause or another, some 

 animal bones might have been placed, these might easily and with- 

 out intention be gathered up with the rest, and so become a part 

 of the general mass of calcined bones. It is quite possible, however, 

 that these bones may represent animals killed at the funeral and 

 burnt with the body 1 . Csesar, writing of the custom of an 

 age later than that when the wold barrows were erected, and of 

 another people, kindred if not in blood, at all events in many 

 habits and practices, says, ' Funera sunt, pro cultu. Gallorum, 

 magnifica et sumptuosa ; omniaque quse vivis cordi fuisse arbitran- 

 tur, in ignem ferunt, etiam animalia 2 . ' 



Burnt bones have frequently a blue or green tinge, and this has 

 sometimes been thought to indicate the former presence of some 

 article of bronze, which had entirely gone to decay. The colour, 

 however, is not owing to the bones having been in contact with 

 bronze, but on analysis has been found to be due to the presence of 

 phosphate of iron, a salt which can assume various tinges of blue 

 and green. It is further to be noted that this discolouration is by 

 no means confined to the superficial layers of the bones thus 

 affected. The infiltration of stalagmite, sometimes to be observed 

 in bones, enables us to understand how a salt of iron, carried in 

 solution into the internal structure of a bone, may there, by double 

 decomposition with phosphate of lime, produce the salt in question. 



It has already been mentioned that bodies occur at various levels 

 in the barrows, and there can be no doubt that the burial mounds 

 were used over a considerable period for later interments. When 

 this has been done by making excavations in an existing bar- 

 row, great disturbance of the bodies already there has frequently 

 taken place. A large number of cases will be found in the follow- 

 ing record of barrow openings, where primary and other interments 

 have been cut through, the bones broken, and the vases and other 

 associated articles scattered, by the introduction of later burials. 

 When this has occurred, the bones of the disturbed bodies have 

 sometimes been treated with care, and re-interred with as much 



1 A very valuable account, as illustrative in many points of what has been met with 

 in British barrows, is contained in the Iliad, xxiii. 166-176. Homer, there writing of 

 what Achilles did at the burning of the body of Patroclus, says that, after placing 

 the fat of many sheep and oxen (whose carcases were heaped round the pyre) about 

 the body of Patroclus, from head to foot, he set vessels (' food vessels ' ?), with 

 honey and oil, slanting towards the bier. He then threw horses, pet dogs, and captive 

 Trojans, after slaying them, on to the pile, to be burnt with the body of his friend. 



2 Comm. de Bello Gallico, vi. c. 19. 



