534 LONG BARROWS. 



to think it may do to others of the same period. For in a collec- 

 tion of bones from a modern ossuary the number of calvaries will, 

 I think, be always found to exceed the number of lower jaws ; these 

 latter bones, as palseontological as much as modern osteological in- 

 vestigations have taught us, having a great tendency to separate 

 themselves from the skulls to which they properly belong. The 

 same may be said of the long bones ; but precisely the reverse of 

 all this is what we have found in this Upper Swell Barrow. 



That a number of bodies must have been stored away, and then 

 simultaneously disposed of, there is no doubt as regards the long 

 barrows in which cremation was practised ; the structure of these 

 barrows implies unity of deposition and simultaneity of ignition. 

 And, as regards tribes which did not practise cremation, there can 

 be no doubt that the accidents of war, the difficulties entailed 

 by expeditions to a distance, when such expeditions were under- 

 taken, and perhaps, above all, the increase in mortality which 

 severe weather must have produced in those, as it does in these 

 days, may frequently have left them with a number of dead bodies 

 upon their hands, and without the usual facilities for disposing of 

 them. Out of such difficulties the practice of storing the dead 

 would naturally develope itself. But the bodies thus temporarily 

 stored away would be finally buried either before or after the mutual 

 attachments of their bones had been destroyed by decomposition. 

 If the former had been the case as regards this barrow, the various 

 skeletons represented in it would have maintained the normal re- 

 lations of their constituent parts, which they have not done here ; 

 if the latter, those constituent parts would not have maintained the 

 numerical proportions which we have here found them to do x . 



But, secondly, the intimate intermingling and interstratification 

 of the human bones with the rubble filling up the trench-grave in 

 this Upper Swell Barrow is a fact which, when coupled with the 

 second fact of one skeleton, which we have no reason to think was of 

 a different period, having been found undisturbed in it, appears to me 

 to necessitate the conclusion that the Successive Interments Theory 

 is the true one for this barrow at least : the only non-cremation 

 barrow with bones in a tolerable state of preservation which I have 

 been fortunate enough to see with reasonable grounds for holding 



1 I am not prepared however to say that the same numerical proportions have 

 always ruled in other long barrows, even when they have escaped disturbance by later 

 races. For the separation of the lower jaws in Ked Indian ossuaries, see Professor 

 D. Wilson, Canadian Journal, 1861 On the Huron Race. 



