A HISTORY OF CORNWALL 



In view of the scarcity of cases of contracted burials in the barrows in 

 Cornwall to which attention has been already directed, 1 the discoveries at 

 Sheviock 2 and Harlyn Bay s are of peculiar interest as evidence of the exist- 

 ence of a race of people quite distinct from those by whom the barrows 

 with their accompanying burial urns were created. 



At Trethill, in the parish of Sheviock, in 1881, some workmen, making 

 a hole in order to set up a pole, came across a flat stone, and on raising this 

 they found several objects like iron bars. They then saw a skull in the corner, 

 and perceived that it was the remains of a human body doubled up so that the 

 arms were hugging the knees. With the body were fragments of a small 

 earthenware vessel from which Mr. Spence Bate was only able to conclude 

 that it must have been about four inches in diameter. It was ornamented by 

 lines impressed by twisted cord or bark, the ends of which overlapped each 

 other. Ornamentation made in the same way, but apparently more skilfully 

 has been noticed on urns from the barrows.* 



The kist in which the body was placed was 3 ft. 3 in. long, 3 ft. broad, 

 and 2 ft. 9 in. deep. Mr. Bate, who examined the place immediately after 

 the discovery, had no doubt that it was a genuine case of contracted burial 

 accompanied by a food vessel resembling those found in Derbyshire and else- 

 where. The body was placed with the skull in one corner of the kist (' the 

 east or south-east ') and lying on the right side ; the kist itself, formed of four 

 flat stones, with the soil for a bottom, was almost square. In these details the 

 Sheviock burial differs materially from those discovered at Harlyn Bay in 

 1900, where the graves are four feet or more in length by two in width, and 

 the bodies generally are found lying on the left side with the head to the 

 north and in the middle of the grave. 



HARLYN BAY 



Pre-historic antiquities of bronze and gold had already been found in this 

 neighbourhood when, in 1900, while digging for the foundations of a house, 

 an important group of interments within cists, or stone-lined graves, was found. 



Under 12 to 15 ft. of fine wind-blown sand, the surface of an old 

 brown sand hill was found, and a few inches under this a large number of 

 shallow stone graves, the sides and ends consisting of flat slabs of slate-stone 

 and the covering stones of the same. A careful removal of the overlying sand 

 showed that there were great numbers of these graves, which were arranged 

 in lines, the graves being placed end to end, a space of about three feet sepa- 

 rating the head of one from the foot of the next. There were several of such 

 lines running in parallels, and they have been traced for a length of at least 

 ninety feet, and there is no reason to doubt that they extend into the sand hills 

 to a much greater distance. The majority of the graves were oblong and 

 contained a skeleton lying on the left side facing east in the ' contracted ' 

 position, but some were six or eight sided, and one was round, divided in the 

 middle, and some contained remains of more than one skeleton, while in some 



1 See p. 362 supra. ' Journ. Roy. Inst. Corntv. vii, 136. 



' Plym. Inst. xiii, pi. iii (1900), 203 ; Harlyn Bay, by R. A. Bullen. 



4 Gerrans, Borlase, Naen. Corn. 204 ; Trevelloe, Trans. Penz. Nat. Hist, and Antiq. See. i, 231 ; Edmonds, 

 The Land's End District, 3 1 ; Borlase, Naen. Corn. 208 ; Denzell Downs, Borlase, Naen. Corn. 244 ; Morvah Hill, 

 Borlase, Naen. Corn. 248. 



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