PARISH OF GILLING. 343 



the marks of the tooling- upon so soft a stone would have been 

 speedily effaced), seems to preclude the idea that they were intended 

 for any domestic or manufacturing- process. On the whole I prefer 

 to reg-ard them as symbolic representations ; thoug'h as to what 

 their significancy may be I confess myself unable to offer anything- 

 more than conjecture. They present a marked resemblance to the 

 similarly-shaped pits which, found sometimes alone and sometimes 

 in connection with incomplete circles, have been discovered so 

 extensively in Northumberland, Yorkshire, Argyleshire, Kerry, and 

 other parts of the United Kingdom. In many cases these markings 

 occur upon rocks, but they have been very frequently found upon 

 detached stones of greater or less size, and in a large number of 

 instances, some of which are recorded in the preceding note, they 

 are connected with burials after cremation ; sometimes covering the 

 deposit of bones, sometimes placed beneath it, and sometimes forming 

 the side or cover of a cist within which the bones were deposited. 

 This connection with burial, always a sacred rite, seems to bring 

 them within the class of symbolic representations ; in other words, 

 suggests the notion that they are or may have been figures, after 

 a very rude and conventional manner, of some object embodying an 

 idea that involved the deepest and most esoteric principle of the 

 religion held by these people. The tau symbol of Egypt, the pine- 

 cone of Assyria, the triangular-shaped stone of India, the cross of 

 Christianity, outward expressions of that which has been in almost 

 every religion its most sacred belief, may well have been, however 

 different in form, yet the same in essence with these mysterious pits 

 and circles \ 



Parish of Gilling. Orel. Map. xcvi. s.e. 



Upon the opposite side of the valley to that on which the last- 

 described barrows were placed, and rather further to the south- 

 west, is Grimston Moor. Many evidences of occupation in early 

 times are still to be seen upon that part which has not been 

 cultivated. A line of entrenchment runs across the moor in a 

 direction east and west, consisting of a mound and ditch, and 

 close by it are several barrows, six of which I opened, and four 

 rectangular mounds with rounded corners, not apparently sepul- 



^ A very complete account of these markings, with careful and numerous iigm-es of 

 the different vaiieties, will be found in the works referred to in a note at p. 7. 



