508 LONG BARROWS. 



like that so frequontly found in the ordinary round barrows. Ten 

 feet further west were the bones of an adult woman and of a child. 

 Another trench, 2 ft. 10 in. long-, 2^ ft. wide, and 1 ft. deep, was 

 met with 58 ft. from the east end, which contained some human 

 bones. The last deposit of bones was 60 ft. from the east end, and 

 consisted of those of an adult and of a child. In all, parts of 

 twenty-six bodies were discovered, and of these twenty-one were 

 within 32 ft., whilst seventeen were within 17 ft,, of the east end. 

 In the material of the barrow many unburnt bones of deer, ox, pig, 

 and goat were met with, and a bone pin 3|- in. long. 



Though possessing, as 'it does, many features in common with 

 other long barrows containing burials after cremation, there are two 

 points in this barrow which require special notice. The one, which 

 however is not perhaps of very much importance, is the number of 

 burials met with in it, a much larger one than is common in this 

 class of sepulchral mounds. No difficulty need be created by this 

 fact if the view is a correct one which supposes that, in the case of 

 many of the bodies, they had originally been deposited at some 

 other place and only at a later time brought to their final place 

 of burial. The other fact, and one of considerable importance 

 when the relative age of the long barrow has to be considered, 

 is the finding, in the apparently undisturbed material, of a piece of 

 pottery which differs in no respect from that ordinarily discovered 

 in the round barrows. Pottery, in any shape, has not very 

 frequently been met with in the long barrows, and indeed, as its 

 presence is a very distinctive feature of the round barrows, so 

 its absence may be said to characterise the long ones. In the 

 chambered long barrow at West Kennet, Dr. Thurnam it is true 

 discovered great quantities of potsherds, and many of them marked 

 with the ordinary patterns of the sepulchral pottery of the round 

 barrows. But the fact of their being found in a chamber to which 

 access might be had, and which might have been used for burial 

 purposes at any time after its construction, renders it quite 

 impossible to base any argument, from this particular instance, as 

 to the contemporaneous use of this kind of pottery and that of 

 burial in long barrows. When pottery, however, is found under 

 circumstances which imply that it must have been deposited in 

 the burial mound at the time of its first erection, then it has 

 a very important bearing upon the question of the date of the class 

 of barrows in which it is so discovered. In the barrow now under 

 notice a piece of pottery of the same character in every respect as 



