416 ANIMAL REMAINS FOUND AT CISSBURY. 



made up by small fragments of the bones of the domestic pig, 

 Sus scrofa v. domesticus ; and all the larger and longer bones were 

 imperfect from old breakages. The pig-bones give evidence of 

 the presence in this pit of at least six individuals, two of which 

 had been very young, and none of which had attained the age 

 of eighteen months, as in none of them had the last true molar 

 come into use. It has only been by the fragments of the lower 

 jaws that I have been able to establish the existence of bones from 

 as many as six pigs in this shaft ; no one set of bones of any other 

 denomination give evidence of more than four individuals of this 

 species having been present. The very large number of pig-bones, 

 and the small size of some of the fragments of the lower jaws, may 

 serve as something of an excuse for my having given four (see 

 p. 376, 'Journal of Institute,' Jan. 1876, vol. i. No. 3) as the 

 number of individual pigs represented in this collection from the 

 1 skeleton shaft.' It is of some consequence, as regards the view 

 we have to form as to the way in which the bones of the lower 

 animals came to be mixed up with those of the human skeleton, 

 to have a precise enumeration of the number of those animals, and 

 as nearly an exact enumeration of the number of bones by which 

 each one was represented as may be possible. If all or a large part 

 of the bones of all the skeletons had been found in the pit with 

 the human skeleton, it might have seemed probable that the 

 animals in question had been sacrificed, as in the familiar instance 

 of the funeral of Patroclus, in honour of, and at the time of the 

 interment of, the human body. But as it was found that the 

 bones, whilst giving evidence of the presence in the pit of six or 

 seven animals, fell far short of containing the proper complement 

 of bones for an equivalent number of skeletons, some skeletons 

 being represented by very few bones, it was plain that the human 

 and the brute skeletons had come together into one and the same 

 receptacle after experiencing, previously to their common inter- 

 ment, entirely different modes of handling. There is no reason to 

 suspect the Cissbury flint-miners of cannibalism, but the animals 

 we may reasonably suppose to have been eaten, most of the marrow- 

 containing bones having been splintered, and the immense majority 

 of the other bones presenting old breakages. 



The fact, which the subjoined table of the bones of the domestic 

 pig will show, that no less than four more or less perfect sets of 



