ON THE PEOPLE OF THE LONG-BARROW PERIOD. 379 



it should be said, have been used for sepulchres in Scottish tumuli. 

 But it is unprofitable to speculate further upon the real meaning 

 of this lost structure. We tread on much surer ground in dealing 

 with the locality in which the eight more or less perfect skeletons 

 were discovered. The way in which the skeletons, three in number, 

 were found, in 1867, to be arranged within the chamber, itself a 

 space which was reported to me as being but 3 feet square, and 

 which was in all probability of even less size, was described to me 

 with much precision as follows : — There were in the middle the 

 bones of a child ; all round the north side of the cist were coiled 

 the bones of one of the two adults, with the vertebrae in situ, and 

 the legs protruding through a hole in the cist to the outside of it ; 

 whilst in the south-east angle of the cist was the other adult, 

 ' sitting up/ or, as it was otherwise expressed to me upon another 

 occasion, 'squatting,' with the head resting on the ribs. The 

 covering stones, the existence of which was not noted, as also 

 some of the side stones, must have got displaced, and the chamber 

 had got filled with rubble. 



From the chamber there came also to me, in 1867, the jaws of a 

 very young pig, those of a cub-fox, and a part of the occipital bone 

 of a sheep. Some other bones, of ox and of sheep, were sent with 

 them, and may have their presence referred to the practice of 

 feasting at graves. Bones of oxen and sheep were found in various 

 parts of the barrow to the westward of the transverse ossiferous 

 zone ; and some of these bones, from being crumbly in consistence, 

 and, like the human bones from the chamber and its neighbour- 

 hood, much stained with the manganic oxide, may be supposed to 

 be of the same age. No other human bones besides those already 

 specified were found in the barrow. Large quantities of ashes and 

 charcoal were found here and there, both at the east and west end of 

 the barrow. The structure, indeed, of the eastward end of the 

 barrow, removed in 1 867-1 868, was reported to us as having been 

 quite different from that of the west, and this mainly by virtue of a 

 line of deposit of ashes along and on both sides of its centre line. 

 This deposit was said to have consisted of heaps of ashes lying on 

 stones, with stones again laid over them. The heaps of ashes were 

 not in a continuous line, but were, as reported, separated by 

 intervals of 10 feet or so. The ashes themselves were reported as 

 being of a ' pinkish, fleshy colour, not at all like the ashes from 



