542 LONG BARROWS. 



tended to be burnt, and, in the main, had undergone the sustained 

 action of fire ; whilst in the long barrows of Wiltshire, Glouces- 

 tershire, and other neighbouring counties, the bodies in all of 

 them, with a very few exceptions 1 , had been buried unburnt. 

 That the practices of burial after cremation and by simple inhu- 

 mation do not of themselves prove any difference in either time or 

 people is abundantly shown by the fact that both modes are fre- 

 quently met with, not only in the same barrow, but also in cases 

 of burial so closely connected that two bodies, disposed of in the 

 two diverse manners under notice, must undoubtedly have been 

 buried at one and the same time. This will be seen by reference 

 to the account of the examination of many of the round barrows 

 as recorded in this volume, which, however, belong to a different 

 period from that when burial in the long barrows was in practice. 

 Nor has the contemporaneous use of cremation and inhumation 

 been confined to Britain : the evidence is conclusive on this point 

 as regards Denmark, Germany, France, and other countries of 

 Europe, not to mention America. The Greeks and Romans, as is 

 well known, used both modes at the same time. 



The points of resemblance between all the long barrows hitherto 

 examined throughout England are many and important. In the 

 first place, there is the shape : they are very long in comparison 

 with their breadth ; and, as connected with this, it should be re- 

 marked that they are almost always placed, at least approximately, 

 with their long diameter running east and west; and that the 

 east end is both broader and higher than the west. The inter- 



1 In the Knock long barrow Mr. Cunnington found in 1801 c a large quantity of 

 burnt bones.* Archseologia, vol. xv. p. 345. Sir R. Colt Hoare gives further notes of 

 it. Ancient Wilts, vol. i. p. 83. The barrow was lately reopened by Dr. Thurnam, 

 who met with ' burnt bones and many scattered brittle flints, some of a red, others of 

 a blackish-grey colour, as if scorched by heat/ Archseol., vol. xlii. p. 193. In a long 

 barrow at Tilshead, Dr. Thurnam found, at the east end, ' a pile of large flint stones, 

 beneath which, and on a pavement of similar flints, many of them of a red and blue 

 colour, and very rotten and brittle in texture, was a large pile of burnt human bones. 

 ... It was observed that the fragments of burnt bones were much larger than those 

 so common in the circular barrows, and that they were far from being so completely 

 incinerated/ At the same level, but about 2 ft. from the burnt bones, were portions 

 of a female skeleton, the skull of which showed signs of having been cleft during life, 

 and which was in many fragments. The same pile of flints covered both the burnt 

 and unburnt bones : 1. c., p. 191. In a long barrow within the earthwork called 

 Bratton Castle, Dr. Thurnam found on the natural level, and just beyond an opening 

 made some time before by Mr. Cunnington, ' a heap of imperfectly burnt, or rather 

 charred human bones, as many, perhaps, as would be left by the incineration of one or 

 two adult bodies/ With reference to the bones in these three instances, Dr. Thurnam 

 remarks, ' the cremation seems to have been of an imperfect and defective sort, quite 

 different from that of the round barrow period :' 1. c., p. 192. 



