32 IXTEODUCTION. 



of the nature of a shroud. The association of weapons, implements, 

 and ornaments, in cases where they occur, may be fairly considered 

 to presuppose the presence of g-arments. The knowledge we pos- 

 sess upon the subject, from the evidence afforded by the wold bar- 

 rows, may be further augmented by an account of some of the 

 discoveries which have been made in other districts in Britain, 

 as well as in countries beyond its limits. Remains of woollen 

 and leathern ^ garments have been found in cists and graves ; and 

 buttons and other fastenings have remained undecayed in many 

 cases where the dress to which they were attached has perished. 

 In a barrow at Scale House, in Craven, numerous fragments of 

 woollen fabric [fig. 2], the remains, no doubt, 

 of the dress in which the body had been in- 

 terred, were met with in a hollowed oak-tree 

 trunk. The presence of charred cloth amongst 

 burnt bones, with other articles, such as a kind 

 of fibula of bone, connected with the dress, 

 Fig. 2. i. shows that the body was in some cases, if 



not always, placed on the funeral pile in the garments worn during 

 life. The evidence, however, is much stronger which is afforded 

 by the contents of some tree-coffins of the bronze age found in Den- 

 mark. In one instance there the whole dress was found complete, 

 and has been preserved, and it shows, in the long catalogue of cap, 

 cloak, shirt, leggings, and probabl}^ boots, that the wardrobe of these 

 ancient people was by no means slenderly provided. As to the make 

 and shape of the dress which w^as worn by the occupiers of the 

 wolds, the barrows give us no information ; the only facts that we 

 learn from the burials are, that these people, as might be expected, 

 notwithstanding the popular notion about our naked and painted 

 predecessors, wore clothes, and that sometimes, if not always, they 

 were buried in them. 



Fastenings for the dress have already been alluded to. They 

 include buttons of jet, stone, and bone, in some cases highly 

 decorated [figs. 3, 4] ' ; a peculiarly formed ring, the application of 



1 Where remains of leather have been found it is difficult in most eases, on account 

 of the imperfect state of the material, to say whether the body had been clothed in a 

 dress, or merely enclosed in a hide by way of shroud. At Stowborough, Dorsetshire, 

 where a body was discovered in 1767, in a tree-coffin, it appeared to have been 

 wrapped in skins sewed together and then passed several times round the body. 

 Hutchins's Dorset, vol. i. p. 25. 



_' A small button-shaped article of jet has not unfrequently been found associated 

 with necklaces made of beads of various shapes, and has been usually considered to 



