54 



INTRODUCTION. 



The barrows of Wiltshire have, however, produced many more 

 articles of personal decoration, and those of more varied and 

 costly materials, than the wold barrows. At the same time 

 there are many points of very close resemblance between the 

 contents of the sepulchral mounds of the two districts. In both 

 are found perforated axe-hammers of stone ; knife-daggers of 



Fig. 50. \. 



bronze and flint ; barbed flint arrow-points ; axes and awls of 

 bronze ; buttons and rings of jet ; beads of bone, with almost 

 identical patterns upon them ; not to speak of the vessels of 

 pottery. If the contents of the burial-hills are to be taken in 

 evidence, and they afford the most certain we possess, the people 

 who dwelt upon the wolds of Yorkshire appear to have been in 

 a humbler condition and to have had less intercourse with other 



.Fig. 51. -}. 



districts than the inhabitants of many parts of Britain. The 

 Scotch cists and graves have been more prolific of ornaments, 

 so have the Derbyshire barrows; and in fact no district, whose 

 burial-mounds have been extensively explored, seems to have 

 been in possession of so little bronze and so few personal decora- 

 tions as the wolds, with the exception of the north-eastern moor- 

 land of Yorkshire, and Dorsetshire, with the extreme south-west 

 of England. In the barrows of other districts, and which, from 

 their general features, may be considered as belonging to the 



