BURIAL BY INHUMATION. 19 



interments. Nor does the evidence afforded by the barrows show 

 that the one process was earlier than the other l . It has been held 

 by many archaeologists that burning the body was the more fre- 

 quent, if not the universal, practice during- the bronze period, and, 

 indeed, this seems to be true as regards Denmark, but the facts 

 supplied by the wold barrows by no means corroborate that view. 

 It is perhaps natural, and what might be expected, that, in the 

 rudest states of society, the body, if interred at all, should be 

 simply buried without having been subjected to the action of fire. 

 And this is confirmed by the knowledge we possess of the burial 

 rites of modern savages. But the whole series of the wold bar- 

 rows belongs to a time when civilisation had made some con- 

 siderable progress, and when there was nothing to prevent the 

 use of so artificial a process of disposing of the body as cremation 

 implies. 



Inhumation was by far the most frequent practice upon the 

 wolds. In some groups of barrows however and there is nothing 

 connected with them to show that they are earlier or later than the 

 general mass cremation was the rule. For instance, at Gardham 

 there were six burials, contained in four barrows, five being of 

 burnt, and one of an unburnt body. At Enthorpe, in the same 

 locality, there were twenty-eight burials in six barrows, of these 

 eighteen were after cremation, and ten by inhumation. These 

 six barrows, however, formed part of a much larger group, though 

 to a certain extent they stood apart, forming, as it were, a smaller 

 group within the larger one. The proportion of burnt to unburnt 

 bodies, taking into account the whole series of which those at En- 

 thorpe formed a part, was about three unburnt to two burnt. As 

 marking the relative general proportion of burnt to unburnt bodies 

 in the barrows I have opened on the wolds, it may suffice to mention 

 that out of 379 burials, only 78 were after cremation, whilst 301 

 were by inhumation, which gives nearly 21 per cent, for burials 

 of burnt bodies. And to show that in the wold barrows bronze is 

 by no means more commonly found with burnt bodies than with 

 unburnt, out of 14 instances where I have discovered bronze articles 

 associated with an interment, it was only in 2 that the body had 



1 The occurrence of burial mounds, containing in one case burnt and in the other 

 unburnt bodies, placed in close proximity and apparently belonging to the same 

 period, has been frequently met with, and in many countries. Mr. Jones opened two 

 mounds on the Georgian coast, in one of which the bodies had been buried unburnt, 

 in the other where they had all been burnt together with many vases and implements. 

 Antiquities of the Southern Indians, p. 466. 



C 2 



