28 INTEODUCTIOX. 



the skill with which, as a rule, his mind moulded the facts it had 

 accumulated into a consistent and reasonable theory, I cannot but 

 regard this opinion as being- both unnatural and out of harmony 

 with the general mass of evidence which the burial mounds aiford. 

 Nor do I see any difficulty in accounting for the absence of bones 

 or other indications of an interment where a careful examination has 

 shown that such evidence has not been overlooked through a careless 

 or imperfect exploration. In the greater number of instances, how- 

 ever, as has already been stated, the barrows are found empty, not 

 because they are so in reality, but because they have not been searched 

 exhaustively \ The absence of any signs of a burial, where a barrow 

 has been minutely and fully examined, is due, in my opinion, to the 

 entire decay of the skeleton, in cases where no weapon, implement, 

 ornament, or vase has accompanied the body. I have myself opened 

 several cists where there was not the slightest trace of bone to be 

 seen, but where the occurrence of flint, and jet, and ' food vessel ' 

 showed plainly that a body had once been placed therein ; in other 

 cases there was absolutely nothing within the cist. In l>urial 

 mounds where no cists had been constructed, and where the body 

 had been laid in the ground without anything to mark the spot, 

 the admission of air or some other destructive agency might easily 

 lead to the total disappearance of the bones ; and if nothing of a 

 more lasting character had been associated with the body, to testify 

 to its having once been there, we should then have an empty 

 barrow — the so-called cenotaph ^. 



There is an incident intimately connected with burials by in- 

 humation, which is rarely, if ever, wanting ; the occurrence of 

 charcoal, in greater or less quantities, in contact with the body ^ 



^ To give an instance in illustration : a barrow at Evcrloy, Wiltshire, opened by 

 Sir R. Colt Hoare, and by bim styled a cenotaph, because he found no signs of an 

 interment therein, has subsequently, on a more careful examination by the Rev. W. C. 

 Lukis, F.S.A., proved to have contained a deposit of bunit Iwnes. The deposit was 

 discovered at the centre, in association with a flint arrow-point and an implement of 

 deer's-horn, the bones being scattered amongst the disturbed material of the barrow, 

 having no doubt been overlooked by the workmen in tlie absence of their employer. 



^ In a paper on ' Buried Cruciform Platforms in Yorkshire,' i)rinted in the York- 

 shire Ai-chseological Journal, vol. ii. p. 69, the late Mr. Charles Monkman, of Malton, 

 has suggested that these empty baiTows may be hotontini, erected by the agrimen- 

 sores for the purposes of land dl\'ision, &c. I think it more than probable that the 

 three mounds he cites, and which contained peculiar cruciform stnictures, were such 

 landmarks. In the absence, however, of anything distinctly Roman, and the presence, 

 moreover, of much that is evidently pre-Roman, I should have gi-eat hesitation in 

 attributing, as a rule, these now vacant barrows to the operations of the agrimen sores. 

 ' The Abbe Cochet appears to have met with the same feature in the Frankish 

 cemetery at Parfondeval, where ' deux on trois squelettes paraissaient avoir ete deposes 



