PARISH OF COWLAM. 



has been purposely squared ; the other end being also squared. 

 The hole for the shaft has been drilled from both sides, and is in. 

 wide, slightly narrowing towards the middle. The grave was filled 

 in with earth, and a quantity of charcoal surrounded the body. 

 Amongst the earth in the grave were some bones of a disturbed 

 body, three potsherds, and a small and imperfect conical button of 

 jet, ^ in. in diameter, having the usual perforation at the back ; 

 it had probably fastened the dress of the person whose body had 

 either been displaced in making the grave or by the introduction 

 of a new tenant therein. 



Immediately to the north of this grave, and connected with it 

 by an opening 2 ft. wide, was a second grave 1 . This was also 

 oval, running north-east by south-west, 6 ft. by 4J ft. and 3 ft. 

 deep. At the north-east side of it and on the bottom, was a body, 

 probably that of a woman, but the bones were so much decayed 

 that nothing more, with respect to their position, could be made out 

 than that the body had been placed in the usual contracted form, and 

 with the head directed to the north-east. Touching the temporal 

 bones, which were stained green by the contact, were two ear-rings 

 of bronze 2 [fig. 47]. They have been made by beating the one 



upper part of which was ' a very elegantly formed axe-head of granite, with a hole for 

 the shaft, and a very fine bronze dagger/ Ten Years' Diggings, p. 24. I possess a very 

 beautifully formed axe-hammer of quartzite [fig. 116], discovered with a skeleton in 

 a cist at Seghill, Northumberland. 



1 A discovery was made in Dorsetshire of two graves which possess much in com- 

 mon with these at Cowlam ; the two were found under a barrow, each containing an 

 urn and a deposit of burnt bones. * We cannot,' says Mr. Warne, * avoid suggesting 

 that, in this instance, it is not improbable but that they respectively contained the 

 ashes of a chieftain and of his favourite wife. On the present occasion the idea being 

 confirmed by the remarkable fact that the cists communicated with each other, the 

 thin wall of separation being perforated by a circular opening 3 in. in diameter.* 

 Celtic Tumuli of Dorset Communications from Personal Friends, p. 8. The same 

 feature has been observed in Peruvian graves. Mr. Hutchinson says that in a large 

 necropolis at Parara, in the valley of the Rimac, the graves were connected by a hole 

 6 in. in diameter. Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vol. iv. p. 448. 



2 Ear-rings have very rarely been met with in barrows, and this, with another pair 

 found in a barrow on Goodmanham Wold [No. cxv], are the only two I have discovered. 

 The following recorded instances have however occurred to me. In a grave below a 

 barrow near Buxton, Derbyshire, * was a female skeleton . . . between the head and 

 the knees was a broken drinking cup. . . . Both mastoid bones were dyed green from 

 contact with two small pieces of thin bronze, bent in the middle just sufficiently to 

 clasp the edge or lobe of the ear.' Bateman, Ten Years' Diggings, p. 80. In a cist, 

 sunk about 3 ft. deep into a natural sandy hillock, near Orton-on-the-Spey, in the 

 railway cutting close to the Fochabers Station, Moray shire, were two gold ear-rings ; 

 one is now in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. The body, 

 which had been an unburnt one, had gone entirely to decay. The ear-ring is engraved, 

 Proc. Soc. of Ant. of Scotland, vol. viii. p. 30. In Sir W. Wilde's Catalogue of the 

 Antiquities of Gold, in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy, p. 40, fig. 570, ia 



