PARISH OF RUDSTONE. 243 



which may be considered more or less analogous ; namely, that a 

 hollow has been first made in the limestone rock, and then lined 

 with slabs of sandstone. Such cases speak very emphatically of 

 the great care which was shown f in the burials of these people, and 

 of the importance they attached to the due disposal of their dead ; 

 to which indeed the entire system of barrow-burial testifies in the 

 strongest way. This particular case appears moreover to point to 

 the eminent position which must have been occupied amongst the 

 tribe by the tenant of a tomb which had been constructed at so 

 great an amount of labour. 



To proceed with the description. Just west of the second cist 

 were some bones of a full-grown person, as also some of a young 

 child; but they were merely fragmentary, and probably the re- 

 mains of disturbed bodies, numerous other and like relics of which 

 were found, as has been noticed, in the filling-in of the grave. 

 From the discovery of these remains of disturbed bodies and of the 

 fragments of a ' drinking cup,' not only in the filling-in of the 

 grave but also in that of the cutting through the barrow above 

 the grave, it seems quite impossible to consider the cist burials as 

 the primary ones. This conclusion is further confirmed by the fact 

 that the cutting through the barrow and the outline of the grave 

 itself were conterminous; for it is scarcely likely that, assuming 

 the grave to be co-existent with the formation of the barrow, any 

 cutting afterwards made into the mound from above should have 

 coincided exactly with the dimensions and outline of a pre-existing 

 grave. I therefore regard the grave and the cists it contained as 

 secondary : though they probably received the bodies of people 

 of as great importance as the person or persons over whom the 

 barrow was originally raised. Is it possible to form any reasonable 

 conjecture as to the relative positions of these people when living ? 

 If it had not been for the great care bestowed on the second cist 

 burial, and the ( drinking cups ' accompanying the two burnt bodies, 

 we might have concluded that there was contained in the first cist 

 the body of a man, probably the chief of the tribe, together with 

 two of his children ; and that the burnt bones within the second 

 cist and those outside the first comprised the remains of slaves or 

 dependants who, with the children, had been killed at the funeral. 

 Nor perhaps are the facts inconsistent with this view. The five 

 burials had evidently been made at once, and it is scarcely possible 

 to conceive in this, any more than in previously mentioned in- 

 stances, that all the persons buried had died at one and the same 



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