26 INTRODUCTION. 



whereas when the head pointed to the East and its adjacent parts, 

 the larger number of bodies were laid on the left side. From this 

 fact I infer that the habit was generally to place the body in the 

 grave facing the sun. When the head was to North or South, the 

 face would look to East or West according to the side on which the 

 body was laid, the position being regulated by the time of day 

 at which the burial took place ; but when the head pointed to East 

 or West, it must, to face the sun, have been placed, in the one case, 

 on the left, in the other, on the right side; and so we find, as a 

 rule, that the bodies have this relative position of side and head. 

 It is true that such does not appear to have held good in every 

 case; but the proportion is too large, and the facts fit in too accu- 

 rately with the supposed custom, to admit of the coincidence being 

 merely an accidental one. It is quite possible that some of the 

 instances, where the rule seems to have been departed from, may 

 be more apparent than real; and, moreover, it is not difficult to 

 adduce cases where it would be impossible to place a body facing 

 the sun ; for instance, when two persons nearly connected were 

 buried together, and where, as will be seen in the account of some 

 of the barrows, they had been laid in the grave in front of and 

 facing each other, one must have looked away from the sun, in 

 order that such a position might be preserved. 



The bodies, including men, women, and children, have been 

 placed indifferently on either side ; women, however, are more 

 frequently laid on the right, whilst men and children are most 

 commonly laid on the left side l . The whole number of burials by 

 inhumation that I have examined in the wold barrows is 301 ; of 

 these, 124 had been laid on the left, 112 on the right side, and 4 

 extended and on the back ; whilst the position of 61, owing to the 

 decayed state of the bones, could not be determined. When these 

 burials are further classed into sex and age (and no bodies are here 

 taken into account except those where the sex may fairly be deter- 

 mined), it results that 40 men had been laid on the right side, and 

 52 on the left ; 26 women on the right, and 19 on the left ; and 

 12 children on the right, and 21 on the left. 



Though it is most commonly found that a grave contains but 



1 Mr. Bateman appears to have found in the Derbyshire barrows that the bodies 

 of men were generally placed on the left side ; he says that he met with ' a man . . . 

 who lay with the knees drawn up, contrary to the usual custom on his right 

 side/ Ten Years' Diggings, p. 58. Indeed in Derbyshire the body was discovered 

 by Mr. Bateman to have been laid on the left side four times as frequently as on 

 the right. 



