CHAP. X.] 



BURIAL CUSTOMS. 



367 



the dead were interred surrounded by the implements, 

 weapons, and ornaments for use in the future life. In 

 the Bronze age the dead were burned, were purified by 

 being passed through the fire, along with their posses- 

 sions. Cremation, however, did not altogether abolish 

 the older practice of inhumation. It is evident that 

 both were carried on simultaneously, from the researches 

 of Thurnam in the south of England, Bateman in Derby- 

 shire, and Greenwell in the northern counties. The one 

 may have been connected, as Dr. Fred. Wiberg suggests, 

 with the worship of fire, and the other may have been 

 employed by the descendants of the Neolithic Britons 

 from the force of habit, and from its cheapness by the 

 poorer classes. 



The barrows and cairns of the Bronze age are generally 

 round, and without large sepulchral chambers with 



FIG. 137. Disc-shaped Barrow. 



passages leading into them, such as we have seen in the 

 more important Neolithic burial-places. In Scotland, 

 however, and in Ireland and in France, large sepulchral 

 chambers of this age are not uncommon. Sometimes 

 the barrows are disc- shaped, and consist of a circular 

 area about a hundred feet in diameter, surrounded by a 

 ring of earth and a ditch with a low mound, or mounds, 

 to mark the interment in the centre (Fig. 137). Some- 

 times they are bell-shaped, and at others bowl-shaped 

 (Figs. 138, 139) or oval. These varieties have been 



