62 INTRODUCTION. 



conclusion as to the purpose of the vessel from the name which has 

 been popularly assigned to 'it. 



The cinerary urn (to which name no objection can be made, 

 since it fully answers to its use) and the ' incense cup ' have hitherto 

 been found to accompany burnt bodies, though on Langton Wold 

 [No. ii], and in a few other cases, a vessel which is in every 

 respect of form and ornament a cinerary urn was placed close to 

 an unburnt body. The * food vessel ' and ' drinking cup ' are met 

 with in association alike with burnt and unburnt bodies, though it 

 is very rare to find a ' drinking cup ' accompanying burnt bones. 

 I have only found it so deposited in one barrow [No. Ixii], at Rud- 

 stone, where three bodies, one unburnt and two burnt, were placed 

 in a deep grave, each having a ' drinking cup ' of very similar shape 

 and ornamentation buried with it. 



Though, as has been stated, these vessels are found with burials 

 much more frequently than are weapons, implements, and orna- 

 ments, they are by no means associated with the majority of inter- 

 ments. Thus out of the large number of bodies, burnt and unburnt, 

 met with in the series of wold barrows, an account of which is con- 

 tained in this volume, amounting to 379, only 108 had any vessel 

 of pottery buried with them, and of these 9 were cinerary urns 

 holding the ashes of the dead. 



The four classes of vessels mentioned above have been discovered, 

 slightly varying in form and style of ornamentation, in many locali- 

 ties from the Orkney Islands to the extreme south-west of England, 

 and (except ' drinking cups ') in Ireland. In the last-named country 

 they are, and especially the ' food vessels,' upon the whole of better 

 workmanship, and are more elaborately and tastefully ornamented 

 than in most parts of Great Britain. Many of the ' food vessels ' 

 however found in Argyleshire and in other districts of the south- 

 west of Scotland, as might be perhaps expected, are very Irish in 

 character, and may claim to be equally fine in the paste and delicate 

 in the workmanship with those from Ireland. 



Beyond the limits of the United Kingdom they are represented 

 by vessels of a very different character. In the Channel Islands 

 the type approaches to that which is found in the dolmens and 

 other sepulchral places of Brittany l . This type, which occurs more 



1 Some few of the Guernsey sepulchral vessels, however, somewhat resemble those 

 found in Britain. One type, and the same occurs in Brittany, where it is not unusual> 

 has much in common with the ' drinking cup ; ' and another is not unlike the Dorset- 

 shire cinerary urns. See a paper by Mr. F. C. Lukis in the Archaeological Journal, vol. i. 

 pp. 142, 222. 



