PARISH OP UPPER SWELL, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 535 



that it had escaped material disturbance by races later than its 

 original erectors and occupants. For it is easy to understand how, 

 as a grave filled up with rubble was from time to time reopened 

 to admit a fresh tenant, the bones of two or three of the least 

 recently deposited and most completely forgotten previous occu- 

 pants might come to be intermingled more or less confusedly, 

 firstly with each other, and secondly with the rubble, accordingly 

 as more or less care was bestowed upon the task of displacing them 

 to make room for the new arrival. I had observed and recorded x 

 an interstratification of bones and rubble similar to that existing 

 here in other non-cremation barrows; these latter, however, bore 

 marks of having suffered from later, possibly mediaeval treasure- 

 seeking disturbers ; the undisturbed condition, however, of this 

 barrow eliminates this hypothesis, and shuts us up to one which, 

 like the one above sketched out, recognises the fact that this 

 burial-place was found by us in the condition it was left in when 

 it was last used in neolithic times for purposes of interment. 



As so much hinges upon the question whether this barrow was 

 really in an undisturbed condition when examined by us, it may 

 be well to state distinctly our reasons for holding that though the 

 part of the barrow containing these interments may have lost 

 something of its original elevation by being used for walling, or by 

 being ploughed over, it remained otherwise much as the men its 

 original constructors had left it. Firstly, then, otherwise the single 

 undisturbed skeleton in the contracted position would not have 

 been found by us in situ. A similarly-placed skeleton may, it is 

 true, have been removed from a similarly-placed site at the W.N.W. 

 end of the trench-grave, but there is reason to think that a body 

 would not be interred on the non -sunny side of the barrow ; whilst 

 there is no positive reason for supposing that any such interment 

 did actually take place there. And, secondly, the fact of Saxon 

 interments, with the characteristic insignia, having been found 

 in the middle line and seventeen feet from the N.N.E. end of the 

 barrow, and sunk into it, as was the fashion of our forefathers, 

 shallowly, shows plainly enough that it had never suffered from any 

 systematic exploration for treasure, or for any other purpose, till 

 the time of our investigation. 



The barrow, then, may be taken as a fairly illustrative specimen 

 of the horned variety of Long Barrow a variety of the tumulus 

 of the Non-metallic Period which is represented in Caithness, 



1 Journal of Anthropological Institute, vol. vii. pp. 156-157, Oct. 1875. 



