NOTES ON SKELETON FOUND AT CISSBURY. 429 



off and tumbling down of the more loosely compacted strata of the 

 chalk forming its wall on to such rubble as its excavators had left 

 on its bottom to save trouble. When this process had been ar- 

 rested, owing to the less firmly compacted and coherent parts of 

 the walls having been all removed, under the influence of frost and 

 rain, sufficiently long to allow of the formation of a layer, half 

 mortar half red mud, at the bottom of the downward pointing 

 conical depression which the desquamation of these debris had 

 formed, we may, with the aid of a heliotype taken from a photo- 

 graph by Messrs. Kussell, of Worthing, under the superintendence 

 of Mr. Park Harrison and Dr. Kelly, reproduce in imagination 

 the flint workers in the act of depositing on the smooth surface 

 thus formed the dead body which the skeleton represents. The 

 corpse was laid upon its right side, with its face to the East, 

 with its knees within less than half a foot from its chin, with its 

 lower legs bent back upon the upper, and with its fore-arms similarly 

 at right angles to the long axis of its trunk ; in one word, that is, 

 in the 'contracted' position. In front of its knees a large flint 

 hatchet of oval contour 1 was placed, and the body was then sur- 

 rounded by blocks of chalk and some large unworked flints ranged 

 in greatest prominence round the back aspect of the trunk, head, 

 and limbs, but forming also a less conspicuously marked fence in 

 front of the dead body. Some eight shells of Helix nemoralis and 

 a fire-marked pebble appear to have been placed with the body, 

 and after this had been done, the flint workers must have piled 

 chalk rubble over their deceased comrade to a height of about a 

 couple of feet, and having thrown or put in some half-dozen flint im- 

 plements a little above and behind the spot occupied by the shoulders 

 of the corpse and just outside the line occupied by the line of chalk 

 blocks, they must, so far as the relics left to our inspection can 

 show us, be supposed to have considered the interment completed. 



1 The implement is the one spoken of by Mr. Park Harrison, 1. c, p. 431, as lying 

 1 near the head in front.' There was only an interval of seven inches between the 

 patellae and the skull. Some few worked flints were found, as was also reported to 

 me by Dr. Kelly, around and on a level with the skeleton. [From a letter written 

 Oct. 1878, by Professor Kolleston to Mr. Park Harrison, which the latter gentleman 

 has given me the opportunity to read, it would appear that Dr. Rolleston had modi- 

 fied the view expressed in the text, and was disposed to agree with Mr. Hanison that 

 the level surface on which the body lay was prepared for it entirely by man's hands 

 and not by a dribbling down of earth before the place was chosen for the deposit of 

 the body.— Editor.] 



