PARISH OF UPPER SWELL, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 537 



belongs to a very early period ; one in which the use of metals 

 was unknown, in which stone and bone implements were in use, 

 together with coarse pottery,, and in which the goat, the pig, and 

 the ox furnished food as domestic animals, but were supplemented, 

 and that largely, in that function by the roe, the red deer, and 

 the wild boar. The dog was not found in this as it was in 

 another of the long barrows of this locality. 



M. E. Dupont * appears to have persuaded himself that the earlier 

 stone ages were times when war was less usual than in these later 

 ones ; and it may seem a little difficult to explain the presence in four 

 out of so small a number as fourteen adult skeletons, of traces 

 of such injuries as the breakage of collar-bones, of fore-arms, and of 

 elbow-joints, merely by a reference to the accidents incidental to 

 battles with wild beasts. 



Abundant, however, as are the traces of severe injuries to the upper 

 limbs which were received and recovered from by the people buried 

 in this barrow, I have never observed in any of the many crania 

 obtained in this district from interments of this neolithic period 

 any lesions of the calvarise which appeared to have been inflicted 

 during the lifetime of their owners. But as evidence of injuries 

 of the living skull, both recovered from and not, is unmistakeable 

 enough and common enough in series both of ancient and of modern 

 crania, the absence of such injuries in this series, distinguished as 

 it is by the presence in it of so many otherwise injured bones, is 



sunken grave ; and, secondly, that it is unsafe for us, considering how very small has 

 been the quantity of patterned pottery found either in the Scottish short cairns or 

 in the English chambered long barrows, or in the single cremation barrow above 

 mentioned, to stake much upon the fact of its not having been found in the other 

 kind of barrows under comparison. The similarity of this pottery, whether found 

 in Caithness, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, or Wiltshire, is a 

 fact of less doubtful interpretation and greater significance; especially when 

 we couple with it a consideration of the similarity of weapons and implements, 

 of the similarity of the ground-plans of the Scottish horned cairns and of so 

 many of the Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somersetshire long barrows, and 

 finally of the similarity of the skulls from the neolithic tumuli of all these localities. 

 These similarities are the more surprising when we recollect how difficult intercom- 

 munication must have been at the period when they existed. 



See however for East Hiding pottery p. 509 supra and p. 544 infra. 



For the pottery of the horned cairns of Caithness, see J. Anderson, Proc. Soc. Ant. 

 Scot. vol. vii. June, 1868, pp. 505-511 ; Mem. Soc. Anth. Lond. iii. p. 220. 



For figures of long barrow pottery of Wiltshire, see Dr. Thurnani, Archajologia, 

 xxxviii, 417 ; Crania Britannica, PI. 50, p. 3. 



For figures of that of Gloucestershire, see Professor Buckman, Nympsfield Tumu- 

 lus, Proceedings of Cotteswold Naturalists' Club, vol. iii. p. 187, 1863. 



For a rationale of the uniformity observable in practices of savage tribes, see 

 Bagehot, ' Physics and Politics/ p. 156 seqq., 1872. 



1 L'Homrne pendant les Ages de la Pierre, 2nd ed., p. 236, 1872. 



