1 32 INTRODUCTION . 



been opened in those districts of Britain where coins were struck 

 and where they have been found in abundance. Iron and silver 

 however were both of them known and used throughout the 

 whole country. That they belong to a time before the Roman 

 occupation of Britain appears to be absolutely certain 1 (notwith- 

 standing what some writers have said to the contrary), from the 

 well-established fact, that neither the pottery, weapons, implements, 

 ornaments, nor anything found in connection with the burials in the 

 barrows shows the very slightest trace of Roman manufacture or 

 even of Roman influence. It must be remembered also, when this 

 fact is taken into consideration, that the wolds are not a tract of 

 country far removed from the centres of Roman rule in Britain, but 

 that the important station and settlement at Malton is upon their 

 very outskirts, whilst they are only a few miles removed from the 

 metropolis of York. In conclusion it may be said, that at whatever 

 time they were erected, one thing is certain, that they are the 

 burial-mounds of a people who occupied the wolds antecedent to the 

 conquest of Britain by the Romans. 



1 I am speaking here with reference to the age of the wold barrows, though I 

 believe the same may be said of similar sepulchral mounds in the greater part of 

 Britain. It is possible, however, that in some remote districts the characteristic 

 features of early burial may have been found in connection with interments of com- 

 paratively late times, and that such things as are justly considered to indicate a pre- 

 Roman interment on the wolds or in Wiltshire, may in other places have occurred 

 with a burial of a much later date. For instance, in a cist under a barrow on Morvah 

 Hill, Cornwall, Mr. Borlase found, together with a burnt body enclosed in an urn of 

 a type not unusual in that district, several Roman coins, one of which was of Con- 

 stantine the Great (A.D. 306 337). Mr. Borlase is confident that the cist had never 

 been disturbed since its formation until opened by himself. If then the integrity of 

 the burial-place is granted, we have in this instance a case where the older mode of 

 interment and the fashion of the pottery were continued down to a late period during 

 the Roman occupation of Britain. Nenia Cornubise, p. 251. 



