SOCIAL CONDITION OP PEOPLE. 113 



placed in cists, with which vessels of pottery and other articles 

 are associated, have been met with, but in the smaller mounds, 

 an}^ indication, beyond the presence of charcoal, that a body had 

 once been placed below them has very rarely occurred. In these 

 cases it would appear as if the small mounds covered the bodies 

 of the poorer and humbler members of the tribe, placed in the 

 grave without any accompaniment, and where the bones have 

 gone entirely to decay, whereas the larger mound, with its cists 

 or other more special places of interment, was the monumental 

 record of the more important persons of the community. In ad- 

 dition to the burials which are found simply made in the ground, 

 without any weapon, implement, or vessel of pottery associated 

 with them, others have been met with, in cists and graves, 

 sunk below the surface of the ground, but having no mound 

 over them, and which, to judge from the various articles de- 

 posited with the body, may be supposed to be those of people 

 of some social distinction. Nor does the time when these 

 burials must have taken place appear to differ from that of 

 the barrows, if the character of the pottery and other things 

 associated with the dead are to be considered as conclusive evi- 

 dence, for these are identical in the two cases. It may be that 

 some of these burials have once had a barrow over them, and no 

 doubt many of them had, but in numerous instances it does not 

 seem likelv that there can ever have been a mound at the place ; 

 they are frequently, however, met with on the summit of a natural 

 swell of the land, itself a mound, and so fulfilling one requirement 

 of a barrow, — the furnishing a conspicuous landmark. It seems, if 

 we may judge from this, that the two customs of burying under 

 barrows, and in simple graves without any mound to distinguish 

 them, were practised at the same time, though we can scarcely 

 suppose that the two modes were applied indifferently to persons 

 of the same importance, for the very mound itself appears to make 

 a distinction. 



It is quite possible that such a government as has been described 

 might have existed amongst people in the condition of hunters, 

 without domesticated animals and ignorant of agriculture, though 

 an organisation like that supposed is more consistent with a state 

 of greater progress. Still it is certain that the inhabitants of the 

 wolds had advanced beyond the hunting stage. Wild animals indeed, 

 as had already been stated, seem to have formed a very small part of 

 their food. What we learn from the barrows as to the condition 



