544 LONG BAEEOWS. 



association with an interment. The fragmentary pieces which 

 have now and then heen met with amongst the apparently undis- 

 turbed material of the mound, and sometimes in close contact with 

 the bones of the buried bodies, are usually of a dark-coloured ware, 

 and invariably, in my experience, plain \ differing- in that respect from 

 the sepulchral pottery of the round barrows; they seem to have been 

 portions of round-bottomed vessels, with a recurved lip. Less im- 

 portant points of resemblance may be found in the trench which runs 

 along the sides of the mound, but is not continued round the ends, 

 as well as in the occurrence within the barrows of dry walling or 

 facing of stone, and of enclosing walls. 



The disjointed state of the bones and the broken skulls, the 

 several pieces being sometimes found quite detached from each 

 other — a condition of things obviously inconsistent with the idea 

 that the bodies had been buried with the flesh still upon them — 

 has suggested practices at the time of burial which, though repug- 

 nant to our own notions, have, nevertheless, been so universal in 

 the history of savage, and even semi-savage tribes, that we need 

 not be surprised at finding traces of their prevalence in Britain. 

 I refer to cannibalism. It appeared to Dr. Thurnam that there 

 were in these broken and scattered fragments of skulls and dis- 

 connected bones the relics of barbarous feasts, held at the time of 

 the interment, when slaves, captives, or even wives were slain and 

 eaten. In what other way, he argued, could the various circum- 

 stances connected with these deposits be reasonably accounted for ? 

 Dr. Thurnam also adduced some passages fi'om ancient writers to 

 show that ' anthropophagism was practised in the British Islands ^,' 

 though these all refer to a time long posterior to that to which the 

 long barrows can be attributed. 



I confess that I was for long so impressed with the force of 

 Dr. Thurnam's arguments, as based upon the appearance of violent 

 fracture, which he thought he had found sufliciently manifested 

 upon many of the skulls from long barrows, that I accepted his 

 conclusions as to the cause of that appearance. Nor, indeed, 

 though I have now adopted another explanation of the remark- 

 vessel was found with skeletons in a long barrow at Norton Bavant, Wilts. Archseol., 

 vol. xHi. p. 195. 



' A piece of thong-marked pottery was found in a long barrow at Market Weightou 

 by Professor RoUeston, but, for reasons which I have stated at p. 509, I think it 

 possible that it may have only been accidentally present where it was discovered. 



^ Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. cap. 32; Strabo, lib. iv. cap. 5. sec. 4.j Plinius, lib. vii. 

 sec. 2 : lib. xxx. sec. 4; Hieronymus adv. Jovinianuni, lib. ii. 



