MOTIVE FOR DEPOSITS WITH BURIALS. 59 



It is certain that amongst some of the many peoples who have 

 been in the habit of depositing- various articles with the dead, 

 a belief that they might be of use in another world has been 

 the motive which prompted the action. With others a dislike 

 or superstitious dread, attaching to the use of what had belonged 

 to the dead, was the reason which caused them to place such 

 things with the body in the grave 1 . Though it is quite possible 

 that either one or the other, or both, of these feelings might 

 have led the dwellers on the wolds to adopt the practice, there 

 is nevertheless a circumstance which it is difficult to account 

 for on such grounds. It will have been observed that it is only 

 upon rare occasions that anything whatever has been found 

 associated with a burial ; whilst in several of these instances 

 the articles are merely such as were connected, in the shape of 

 fastenings, with the dress or other covering in which the body 

 had been clothed or the corpse invested. In the large number 

 of 379 burials, of burnt and unburnt bodies, not more than 94 

 were found to be thus accompanied; and, of these, 15 had nothing 

 more than pins or buttons with them. It appears strange, if 

 either of the reasons stated was that which led to the depositing 

 of different articles with the dead, that so few of them should 

 have been thus provided. If it were thought that in another world 

 persons would pass through a state of existence similar to that 

 which they had lived upon earth, and that it was therefore 

 necessary to send them into that sscond state equipped with 

 the essential means of such existence, it is difficult to understand 

 why so few persons were laid in the grave with these provisions 

 for the necessities of that after life. This difficulty becomes greater 

 when we consider the labour that was bestowed upon the barrows ; 

 showing, as it does, that neither care nor trouble was spared 

 upon that which was connected with the funeral rites. Or, if 

 it was believed to be unlucky for the survivors to make use of 

 those things which had been the property of the deceased, and 

 that for this reason such things were buried with them, then we 



make does not, however, always imply that such things came from the same manu- 

 factory. And besides, though there is a very great general resemblance, a close 

 examination of a large series of these articles discovered in the two countries will 

 show many points of difference, sufficient, I think, to imply that they were not all 

 made in the same workshop. 



1 Mr. Whymper stated, at the Norwich Meeting of the British Association (1868), 

 that the Greenlander has a great objection to use the property of the dead, and that, 

 in accordance with this feeling, their goods were deposited in their graves. Flint Chips, 

 p. 278 . 



