PARISH OF NETHER SWELL. 451 



Argyleshire, and other places in Scotland, and Gower in South 

 Wales \ certain sepulchral mounds, whose interior arrangements 

 for the deposition of the dead are similar to those in the long- 

 barrows, are more or less of a circular form. The principal feature 

 which marks the difference between the earlier and later mode of 

 burial in barrows of a time before the introduction of iron, and 

 where stone receptacles for the body have been constructed within 

 the mound, appears to be this. In the earlier places of sepulture 

 the bodies, burnt or unburnt, have been deposited in what may 

 be called chambers, that is, in receptacles which are not entirely 

 closed, and into which in many cases access was had by a gallery 

 or passage ; in the later ones the bodies were placed in a cist, 

 that is, a receptacle entirely closed, and into which it was not 

 intended that access in the future should be had. In the former 

 case the intention seems to have been the introduction from time to 

 time of additional burials ; in the latter case the sealing up, as 

 it were, of the body or bodies in the first instance buried in the 

 tomb, and the keeping them apart from any other later inter- 

 ment, seems to be indicated. 



The mound now under consideration, which, from its position 

 between and impinging upon two other barrows, may be supposed 

 to belong to the same period as they do, though that cannot be 

 predicated with certainty, possessed a place of burial (if it were 

 a sepulchral mound) in a chamber with a passage leading into 

 it, and it would have to be classed amongst those of the earlier 

 mode described above. It does not therefore appear to be an 

 unlikely supposition to regard it as belonging to a time of tran- 

 sition, when the older manner of burial was being replaced by 

 another one ; nor is it improbable that this change was consequent 

 upon the presence of a different and, it may be, of a conquering 

 race. It has not usually been the case that the conqueror has 

 extirpated the conquered, in many instances indeed the vanquished 

 has in the end absorbed the victor, whose blood has at length, 

 by intermarriage of the smaller in number with the larger, be- 

 come one with it. When such a condition of things existed as 

 two races living together under one rule and mixing in the 

 most intimate way with each other, it might often happen that 

 the one would still (for a time at least) retain many of its own 

 customs, and certainly amongst them not the least likely to be 



1 See Description of the Park Cwm Tumulus, by Sir John Lubbock, M.P., F.R.S., 

 Journ. of Ethnol. Soc., N.S., vol. ii. p. 416. 



Gg 2 



