5 INTRODUCTION. 



my experience, in only one case upon the wolds \ Nor have I 

 ever found that the body had been placed amongst any peculiar 

 soil, or brought in contact with any other substance than what 

 might be obtained in close proximity to the barrow 2. 



It has already been suggested that it is probable the wold 

 barrows had circles round the base, in the shape of mounds or 

 ditches, as is not uncommon elsewhere. In some rare instances 

 they certainly had enclosing circles within the barrow. I have met 

 with this feature, in the form of a circle of flint stones, and of a 

 circular trench. In both cases the circle was an incomplete one. 

 In the ring of flint stones there was a space left vacant ; in the 

 trench, which was hollowed out of the chalk rock, there was one 

 portion, or more, which was necessary to complete the circle, not 

 excavated. The same peculiarity is found to exist in the barrows 

 and cairns of other parts of England and in Scotland, and indeed 

 this incompleteness appears to be almost invariable in connection 

 with sepulchral circles ■^. 



The circle, which occasionally is double, sometimes includes the 

 whole barrow, at other times it defines the bounds of an individual 

 burial, it may be of one out of many which have been placed within 

 the barrow, and only encloses a portion of its area. Similar en- 

 circling mounds and trenches are found to surround spaces of 

 ground which have been devoted to the purpose of burial, but 

 where, apparently, no barrow has ever surmounted the graves. 



^ The Rev. J. C. Atkinson, of Danby, found a baiTow in Cleveland, in the North 

 Riding, to have been made to a considerable extent of sand, Iwsalt, and rolled jx-bbles, 

 none of which materials are to be met with within several miles of the place. 



^ Colonel Meadows Taylor remarks that fine earth, brought from a distance, almost 

 universally surrounded the urns and cists in the Dekhan cainis. The same feature 

 has been supposed to have been observed in baiTOws in England, but, I think, without 

 sutficient foundation. See ' Cairns, Cromlechs, &c., in the Dekhan,' a pajjer liy 

 Colonel Taylor, in vol. xxiv. of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy ; and 

 'Ai'chseology of India,' Journal of the Ethnological Society, New Series, vol. i. pp. 167, 

 168. 



^ The great circles of Avebury, Stonehenge, Callernish, &c., are all incomplete, 

 though perhaps it may be said that in those gigantic strvictures the idea there 

 expressed was an entrance, and not incompleteness. Examples, however, where no 

 such object as the obtaining an entrance was intended, might be multiplied in- 

 definitely from Great Britain. The saine featui-e is found in connection with 

 sepulchral circles in other parts of the world. Colonel Meadows Taylor mentions 

 it as incidental to circles in the Dekhan, ?. c. p. 336. In a paper in Re\'ue Ai-che- 

 ologique, Nouvelle Serie, ix. 372, entitled, Description d'un Tumulus sepidchral des 

 Tchoudes a Arrayione siir la Kama (Russie), the following passage occurs, ' a I'in- 

 terieur on remarque une enceinte formee par des blocs de pierre calcaire et affectant la 

 forme d'un fer a cheval. L'ouverture, large de neiif i^as, regarde le sud. Unc autre 

 petite ouverture sc trouve aussi a Test.' 



