CONTRACTED POSITION OF THE BODY. 23 



found to be contracted, and placed at one side of the grave, thus 

 occupying- but a very small portion of its area. Where the body 

 has been simply laid upon the ground, and when it might have 

 been extended at full length without any difficulty, the same 

 bowed form is preserved. In the Gristhorpe barrow, where the 

 man had been interred in the split and hollowed trunk of an 

 oak-tree, and when, from the narrowness of the coffin, the usual con- 

 tracted position could not be fully adopted, the knees, so far as they 

 would admit of it, had been drawn up towards the chin. Even in 

 the process of burning the body, the contracted position seems to 

 have been retained; this was clearly shown in a barrow at Enthorpe 

 [No. Ixxxvi], as well as in another instance [No. Ixxix]. The 

 body had in these cases been burnt on the spot, and the calcined 

 remains had not afterwards been collected and laid together in the 

 ordinary manner, but left in the condition in which they remained 

 after the burning had ceased. The bones, imperfectly consumed, 

 and which were all quite distinct and lying in their proper order, 

 showed that the corpse had been prepared for the funeral fire with 

 the knees brought up towards the head, which was itself bent for- 

 ward. In the barrow at Enthorpe, it appeared, from the remains 

 of the charcoal, that the body had been burnt by placing the wood 

 upon it, rather than by laying it upon the wood. 



The position, therefore, was not due to the requirements of space, 

 but originated in some settled principle, the meaning and purpose 

 of which it may be said we have not the means of fully understand- 

 ing, though I think a satisfactory explanation can be given. Nor 

 does the question receive elucidation from any knowledge we possess 

 of the cause of its adoption by modern savages, for though it is 

 a common practice amongst many of them, no reason, except 

 custom, is given for its use. This manner of disposing of the body 

 has been so common and so widely diffused that it cannot be 

 accidental. It scarcely seems to suggest itself as a natural position, 

 and it must certainly have required in many cases very con- 

 siderable force to bring the limbs into the required form. Some 

 writers have thought that, in placing the body in the ground after 

 this fashion, a reference was made to the way in which man lay in 

 the womb, before he came into the world, and that as his entrance 

 was, so his departure from this, or rather perhaps his entrance into 

 another, world should be \ This explanation, I think, can only 



' This view is advocated by M. Fred. Troyon in a letter to M. Alex. Bertrand, Sur 

 I'attitude repliee dans les sepultures antiques, in the Revue Archeologique, Nouvelle 



