482 LONG BARROWS. 



duced, in association with unburnt bodies, numerous implements 

 and weapons. These implements are all made of stone or bone, 

 nothing whatever of metal having been discovered ; nor can there 

 be any doubt, when the many burials which have been disinterred 

 and the abundance of associated articles are taken into consideration, 

 that these barrows belong to a time antecedent in that country to 

 a knowledge of any metal, gold perhaps excepted. And as the 

 long barrows of Britain and the chambered mounds of Scandinavia 

 agree in this particular, that metal is absent in each, so do the 

 barrows in both countries, which belong to a time when bronze 

 had come into use, agree in an equally characteristic feature. At 

 that time the burning of the dead was in Scandinavia the prevailing 

 though not universal custom, whilst in Britain cremation and in- 

 humation were practised in something like equal proportions. In both 

 countries, however, the custom of interring the dead in chambers 

 had passed away, and whenever the bodies were placed within a 

 receptacle of stone, that took the form of a cist. So far then as the 

 construction of the burial mounds of the two countries is concerned, 

 reference being made to the long barrows of the one and the 

 chambered barrows of the other, and having regard also to the 

 occurrence in each case of no other implements or weapons than 

 those of stone or bone, they might be considered as the places of 

 sepulture of one and the same people. But when the crania are 

 taken into consideration, the identity between the people of Scan- 

 dinavia and Britain, at the time of the construction of the barrows 

 in question, cannot be admitted. The skulls are as markedly dif- 

 ferent as any two series of crania can be ; the skull of the long 

 barrows of Britain being emphatically dolicho-cephalic, the skull of 

 the chambered barrows of Scandinavia being, with few exceptions, 

 as emphatically brachy-cephalic, and presenting many features in 

 common with the ordinary head of the later and round barrows of 

 Britain, which in the main probably belong to a time after the 

 introduction of bronze. This fact seems to be quite inconsistent 

 with the theory which would make what have been called the 

 dolmen-builders a single race which dispersed itself along the 

 western shores of Europe, from Sweden even as far as Algeria. It 

 is indeed true that there is a very remarkable identity in many 

 respects between the several examples of the particular class of 

 burial mounds we are now considering in the countries just above 

 referred to, but in the absence of identity of skull-form it appears 

 impossible that they can have been constructed by the same people. 



