336 YORKSHIRE. NORTH RIDING. 



surface, but at some height above it. There must consequently 

 have been a mound existing previously to the interment of the 

 deposit of burnt bones which appeared in either barrow to constitute 

 the primary burial. This feature, though by no means a common 

 one, has nevertheless occurred to me in a few other instances, as well 

 as to others who have examined barrows in different parts of 

 England \ 



PARISH OF OVER SILTON. Ord. Map. xcvi. N.W. 



CXXVI. On the moorland occupying the high ridge of oolitic 

 limestone above Kepwick are several barrows, amongst them a long 

 one which will be found described in another part of this volume. 

 I examined one of the round barrows, the only one remaining quite 

 undisturbed. It was 64 ft. in diameter, 5f ft. high, and was made 

 of clayey sand. At the centre and If ft. below the surface of the 

 mound, placed in a hollow 8 in. in diameter and 6 in. deep, was a 

 deposit of burnt bones, those of a person of uncertain sex under 

 24 years of age. Five feet south-east-by-east from the centre was 

 a cinerary urn standing upright, at a distance of 3J ft. above the 

 surface of the ground, filled with the burnt remains of another 

 young person about 20 years of age, and amongst the bones was a 

 long narrow flint flake calcined. The upper part of the urn was 

 quite destroyed, apparently by persons digging for rabbits, so that 

 it cannot be said what ornamentation, if any, was upon the rim. 

 Immediately underneath, and in contact with the urn, were some 

 other burnt bones, but it was not possible to say whether or not 

 they belonged to the same body as that whose bones were within the 

 urn. Many flint chippings, both burnt and unburnt, were found 



1 Mr. Bateman records some instances in Ten Years' Diggings. In a large barrow 

 on Middleton Moor the interment was found near the top of the mound. 1. c., p. 18. 

 In his account of another barrow he says, ' The hunter chief, who, with one of his dogs, 

 was deposited high up in this considerable mound, was interred in accordance with a 

 previously observed custom/ I. c., p. 110. Another large barrow he says had no other 

 trace of an interment than some burnt bones about a foot below the surface of the 

 mound. 1. c., p. 175. In a barrow 120 ft. in diameter and 18 ft. high, at a depth of 

 5 ft. and at the centre, were found some * small pieces of an urn and a few pieces of 

 calcined human bone. . . . Besides these we observed nothing; and it does not appear 

 that any interment had ever been deposited on the natural level, in which respect 

 the barrow resembles many other large mounds of earth in which an interment by 

 cremation has been made at a high level or near the summit/ I. c,, p. 183. A barrow 

 near Pickering, in the North Riding, is stated to have contained no other interment 

 than one by cremation 'just beneath the summit/ 1. c., p. 217. 



