PARISH OF COWLAM. 217 



After having completed the examination of this part of the 

 mound, I then proceeded to remove all the south side, as also such 

 part of the north side as had not been already carted away. During- 

 this process a large number of burials were met with, the majority 

 showing the same signs of displacement and imperfectness as those 

 already described. It will perhaps be best to commence any de- 

 tailed account by beginning at the centre, and describing the 

 several interments as they occurred with reference to that point. 

 Upon the natural surface and at the centre were the remains of a 

 body, that of a young man of strong make, which had been dis- 

 turbed and replaced. It was laid upon the right side, the head 

 being to E. There was no lower jaw present, the elbow end of the 

 right humerus touched the face, and the knee end of the right 

 femur was also close to the face, the tibias were laid alongside the 

 femurs, but reversed, and the ball of the left femur was not in the 

 socket of the hip-bone, and was also turned outwards. In front of 

 and almost touching the face was the head of a hammer made 

 from the burr end of a red-deer's antler 1 [fig. 33]. It has been 

 formed out of a shed horn, the brow tine having been cut off. 

 Through that part of the horn a roughly-circular hole, in. in 

 diameter, has been pierced to admit the handle, and the horn has 

 been cut off at a distance of 6 in. from the burr end. From the 



1 Somewhat similar implements have occurred in Derbyshire and Wiltshire, and 

 I have found one in a cairn in Westmoreland. Mr. Bateman records that ' a skeleton 

 in a cist had in the angle of the knees a hammer-head ingeniously constructed out of 

 the lower part of the horn of a noble red-deer : one end of this instrument is rounded 

 and polished, the other is cut into a diamond pattern similar to the wafer-stamps used 

 by attorneys.' With the same interment were associated two boar's-tusks, two flint 

 arrow-points, two flint axes polished at the cutting edges, two ' spear-heads ' of flint, 

 two flint ' knives polished on the edge, one of them serrated on the back, and a drink- 

 ing cup/ Vestiges, p. 42. Sir R. Colt Hoare found at Cop Head, near Warminster, 

 at the south-east side of a barrow, a skeleton, with which were deposited ' some frag- 

 ments of stags' horns, the butt-end of one of which had been cut off and perforated, 

 and from its appearance used as a hammer.' Ancient Wilts, vol. i. p. 68. The Rev. 

 W. C. Lukis, M.A., F.S.A., met with a hammer of deer's-horn, not very unlike that 

 noticed in the text, in a barrow at Collingbourne Ducis, Wiltshire ; it was deposited 

 with a burnt body, which appeared to have been placed in a hollowed tree-trunk, the 

 hammer being laid by the side of the bones, Wiltshire Archseol. Magazine, vol. x. 

 p. 96, pi. iii. fig. 4. One not very unlike the Cowlam specimen was discovered with a 

 skeleton, a bronze sword, &c., in a cist at Veuxhaulles, Cote d'Or. Les Sepultures 

 ante-historiques de Veuxhaulles, par Ed. Flouest. Materiaux pour FHistoire primi- 

 tive de FHomme, 2nd Ser., vol. iv. p. 265, pi. xx. fig. 1. 



Deer's-horn hammers have been found in considerable numbers in various places 

 where the circumstances of their deposit have been such as to tend to their preserva- 

 tion, as for example in the rivers Thames and Seine, in peat-mosses in Denmark, and 

 on the site of the Swiss Lake Dwellings. Indeed, as might be expected, the antler of 

 the red-deer was very freely used both by the people of the Stone and Bronze Age as 

 a material in the manufacture of several different implements. 



