504 LONG BARROWS. 



appearance of the material of the linear deposit itself, which had 

 evidently been subjected to a most intense heat, further evidence of 

 which was afforded by the almost entire absence of charcoal, 

 showing- that the whole of the wood employed had been reduced 

 to ashes. Although some difficulties suggest themselves in con- 

 nection with the trifling extent of burning manifested on the 

 surrounding earth and stones, yet I think the explanation of the 

 way in which the fire had been applied to the bones, and to the 

 deposit enclosing and covering them, which is given in the account 

 of the Westow barrow [No. ccxxiii], is that which is most con- 

 sistent with the facts disclosed in the whole series of these most 

 peculiar burial-mounds. 



At a place 6 ft. distant west-by-south from the highest point of 

 the barrow was a deposit of whitish clayey sand, laid upon the 

 natural surface, and which contained, scattered here and there, 

 a good deal of charcoal and several portions of animal bones. 

 Commencing just to the north of this, a kind of wall, 3 ft. wide, 

 faced on the outside with flag-stones set on edge, ran through all 

 the higher part of the mound for a length of 12 ft., parallel to, and 

 at a distance of 3 ft. from, the mesial line of the long diameter of 

 the barrow, and therefore north and south. At a like distance on 

 the other, or north, side of the mesial line was a second wall, which 

 was neither quite so long nor so regularly built as the first, but, 

 nevertheless, perfectly distinct in its formation from the rest of 

 the mound. Both these walls reached from the surface of 

 the ground to that of the barrow. Amongst the material of the 

 mound were scattered some flint chippings, and at the north-west 

 side was a single piece of thick pottery, black inside, and having 

 pieces of broken stone mixed with the clay. 



It will have been observed that in this, as in other long barrows 

 before described, there was, apparently, no burial of what seemed to 

 have been an unmutilated body, all the bones having been, before 

 they were deposited in the mound, more or less disjointed, and in 

 some cases perhaps fractured. The same very extraordinary cir- 

 cumstance has been noticed in some of the long- barrows of the 

 south-west of England. It is very difficult to understand how any 

 ordinary mode of burial could result in such a state of things. In 

 these cases then, where nothing except incomplete skeletons and 

 disjointed and sometimes fragmentary bones have occurred, what 

 probable explanation of so anomalous a condition can be given? 

 The view which regards them as ossuaries, though on a small scale 



