70 THE CELTIC TUMULI OF DORSET. 



Hutchins (vol. i., edit, i., p. 25, S.) of a body wrapped in skins, 

 and laid in a roughly hewn oaken log, with which was a small 

 vessel supposed to be made of oak, but which, I am disposed to 

 think, was probably a drinking cup or food vessel turned in 

 Kimmeridge shale. A very beautiful cup of this kind of bituminous 

 material was' found in a tumulus at Honiton.* 



9. Ivory has been very rarely met with in our tumuli ; one of 

 the Woodyates barrows produced an armlet of this material, and 

 this, and the handle of that beautiful bronze dagger, previously 

 mentioned, from a barrow on Kingston Down, are the two only 

 instances of its discovery. 



It will not be out of place here to advert briefly to the source 

 whence these several kinds of ornamental articles, amber, glass, and 

 ivory, have been derived. They are mentioned by Strabo as articles 

 of commerce between Britain and Gallia Keltica. This must have 

 been at a very remote period, probably going on long before the 



Christian sera. His Words are " eAc^ovrtva, \l/d\ia Kal Trepiavx^ia, Kal 

 Xtyyrfupm, Kal va\a o-Kewrj, Kal &AAos panros TOIOVTOS." (Lib. iv., C. IV.) ivory 



bracelets (or armlets) and collars (torques? ) amber and glass 

 vessels, and other small icare" All these articles may have been 

 brought from the countries on the shores of the Mediterranean, 

 including amber, which, although generally attributed to the shores 

 of the Baltic, might also have reached this country from Liguria, 

 now Genoese territory. There can be no doubt that amber was 

 found there in abundance, as we infer from what Strabo says in 

 another place ; writing of Liguria and its products he uses the word 

 \iyy6vpiov as synonymous with ^ACKT^OI/, which we know means 

 amber (Lib. iv., c., 6 2). Amber was a mystery to the Greeks 

 and Romans, who assigned to it a fabulous nature, as though it 

 were a product of the renal secretion, especially of the Lynx, 

 whence they denominated it Lapis Lyncurius. All the articles 

 named were doubtlessly imported by the Phoenician and Greek 



* See " A Memoir of the Examination of Three Barrows at Broad Down, 

 Forway, near Honiton" ; by the Rev. R. Kirwan, 1869. Brendon and 

 Sons, Exeter, &c. Our Stoborough Tumulus is therein noticed, p. 10. 



