138 YORKSHIRE. EAST RIDING. 



above the natural surface, upon a layer of flat stones, and with a 

 similar layer above it, by which means it was to some extent 

 protected from the pressure of the soil. The body had been laid on 

 the right side, with the head to S.W., the right hand was across 

 the chest, the left up to the face. Immediately about the bones 

 was a noticeable quantity of charcoal. In front of the waist, and 

 lying close together, as though at the burial they might have been 

 placed in a bag, were several articles, evidently the implements and 

 ornaments of the woman with whom they had been buried. They 

 consisted of three bronze awls or prickers * ; two bone instruments, 

 one fashioned from a boar's tusk, 3f in. from point to point with 

 a groove at each end, and possibly being the bow of a drill, though 

 more probably a pin [fig. 94], the other made from a beaver's 



Pig, 94. i, 



tooth 1^ in. long, curved and narrow, and having a sharp cutting 

 edge J in. broad ; a flat circular jet bead [fig. 44] ; a piece of an 

 animal's tooth, pierced [fig. 46] ; a nerita, pierced [fig 45] 2 ; 



1 I have met with similar instruments in other barrows on the wolds, as at Sherburn 

 [No. xii], Rudstone [No. Ixii], and Goodmanham [No. cxii]. One is noticed and 

 figured in the Reliquary, for Oct. 1868, from a barrow near Fimber on the Wolds. 

 Sir R. Colt Hoare records the finding of several, which he calls pins, associated with 

 burials after cremation ; one is figured, Ancient Wilts, vol. i. pi. xii, and shows it to be 

 identical with those from this barrow. Mr. Bateman met with them in the Derby- 

 shire barrows, some having the remains of the wooden handle still upon them. 

 Vestiges, p. 105 ; Ten Years' Diggings, pp. 67, 72, 107, 155, 171. They are fre- 

 quently found in the sepulchral mounds of Denmark accompanying burnt bodies. 

 Though they have usually been called pins, they are by no means well adapted for 

 any purpose to which pins would be applied, and I have little doubt that they are 

 awls or prickers, and were used for piercing leather or other material in the operation 

 of sewing. 



2 Sir R. Colt Hoare met with a single nerita in the Wiltshire barrows. Ancient 

 Wilts, vol. i. p. 68. A necklace, consisting of a number of perforated shells, was 

 found with a skeleton at Knock -Maraidhe in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. Crania 

 Brit., pi. 22 ; Wilde, Cat. of Ant. Museum of Royal Irish Acad., p. 183. 



A skeleton discovered in a cave at Mentone and another at Cro-Magnon, both of 

 which have been attributed, though I scarcely think on quite sufficient grounds, to the 

 palaeolithic age, had been buried with similar necklaces. 



