PARISH OF GOODMANHAM. 299 



The instrument, to which the name of war-axe may properly be 

 given, for reasons stated in another place, is the fourth of the kind 

 which I have met with in the wold barrows, two having been 

 associated with burnt bodies and two with unburnt. 



A little to the north of the present centre, but no doubt 

 representing what had originally been the central and commencing 

 point of the barrow, was an oblong grave, sunk through the 

 surface-soil, for a depth of 8 in., on to the underlying chalk rock. 

 It was 8 ft. long and 2 ft. 8 in. wide, having the longer axis 

 east-north-east and west-south-west. In it were two bodies, laid 

 in the unusual extended position on the back. The one a young 

 and probably a male person, below 17 years of age, had the head to 

 W.S.W., the legs being crossed above the knees, the right over the 

 left ; the other, a boy between 8 and 10 years of age, was laid in 

 the opposite direction, and to the south of the first, the head being 

 to E.N.E., the left knee of the elder slightly overlying the hips 

 of the other. The feet of the younger person were close to the head 

 of the older, the head being opposite to the lower part of the legs 

 of that body. The hands of both were placed on their respective 

 stomachs. Behind the head of the younger was a small round flint 

 scraper ; and on the left side of the head a bone pin, much decayed. 

 At the right knee of the older person, and touching it, was a piece 

 of a nodule of sandstone, which had been subjected to fire. It 

 appeared to have been placed designedly where it was discovered, 

 but what its use may have been, or the object with which it was 

 buried with the dead person, may not be possible to understand. 



The position of these two bodies, laid at full length, is a very 

 unusual one, and it will be remarked that the other burials in 

 this barrow had been made in the ordinary contracted fashion, with 

 the bodies placed on the side; perhaps it would be an unfair 

 inference to suppose that there was any difierence of tribe, or much 

 difference of time, between the several interments in this sepulchral 

 mound ; the extended position is so very infrequent that we cannot 

 regard it as being more than an individual peculiarity, and not 

 implying any change in the ordinary mode of interment beyond 

 the burial in question. From the intimate connection in the 

 grave between the two bodies, a near relationship in life may 

 fairly be assumed, and it is probable, though the distinctive marks 

 of sex in the older person were not quite certain, that they were 

 brothers. Amongst the material of the barrow were several pieces 

 of plain pottery, some of it dark-coloured, and a single fragment 



