190 YORKSHIRE. EAST RIDING. 



objects are found with a single body that it was not the usual 

 habit to bury weapons of war with the dead. There seems to be 

 in this case certainly nothing that can be considered a purely 

 warlike instrument, although I admit quite unreservedly that the 

 axe may have been applied to battle uses. Indeed the only article 

 found associated with an interment, and that alike with burnt 

 and unburnt bodies, which cannot be regarded as intended for any 

 other purposes than those of war, is the perforated stone axe-ham- 

 mer, which from its rounded or squared edge could not have been 

 used for cutting wood or any like purpose, but which still is well 

 adapted for use in battle. As I have elsewhere remarked, the very 

 careful way in which these axe-hammers are finished and the pre- 

 sence of more or less ornamentation upon some of them are also 

 facts in support of the conclusion that they have been weapons of 

 war : for it has always been on such objects that people in the 

 earlier stages of civilisation have delighted to bestow decoration. 

 The arrow-point of flint,, not unfrequently found in the grave, may, 

 it is true, be said to have been employed in war, and to be an ex- 

 ample in contradiction of what is above advanced. But it must be 

 remembered that the arrow was necessarily in much more frequent 

 use in the chase than in battle, and it may have had its place by 

 the body of its owner in its character of subserving towards the 

 sustenance of human life, rather than in that of aiding in destroy- 

 ing it. We do not find in the burial mounds of the Bronze Age 

 those articles which are emphatically 'weapons of war,' the sword 

 and the spear for instance. Certainly the occurrence of bronze 

 swords in barrows is mentioned by Professor Wilson as having 

 been ascertained in Scotland ; but I cannot say that the instances 

 he adduces appear to me at all satisfactory, nor can I find a single 

 case, wherein a sword is said to have been found in association 

 with a buried body, depending upon evidence which may justly 

 be regarded as trustworthy. In Denmark, indeed, it is not very 

 uncommon to find the bronze sword buried with its deceased owner ; 

 in some instances broken, as if to intimate that its use was ended 1 . 

 If ever we might have expected to find weapons of war buried with 

 the dead, it would surely have been in such a barrow as I have just 

 described ; for it covered the remains of a strongly-built and 



1 If it was the belief of these people that what we call inanimate objects were 

 possessed of a soul or spirit, then the purpose in breaking the sword might be to 

 enable the soul of the sword to accompany the soul of the deceased warrior into the 

 land of spirits. 



