XXI. 



REPORT OF EXCAVATION OF A TWIN-BAREOW 

 AND A SINGLE ROUND BARROW AT SIG- 

 WELL (SIX WELLS), PARISH OF COMPTON, 



SOMERSET. 



The following" account of the examination of three round barrows 

 at Sigwell, in the parish of Compton, Somersetshire, two of which 

 were in juxtaposition and may be spoken of as a twin-barrow, whilst 

 the other stood apart from any other barrow, but overlooked what 

 we hold to have been a camp of an earlier period than these 

 barrows, throws light upon the following questions. 



Firstly, it shows that in the Bronze age, and amongst men who 

 were practising cremation, considerable variety existed as to the 

 mode of their disposing of the dead. In the two burials discovered 

 no urn had been employed, and the bones had been picked out of the 

 pyre and placed apart, one set in a bark coffin, the other simply in a 

 separate place in the soil of the barrow. Yet in one of the barrows 

 pottery was found of a kind which showed with some probability 

 that urn burial was not unknown to the original constructors of the 

 barrow. 



Secondly, the measurements of the entire mass of each barrow, as 

 compared with those of the very small spaces in which the burned 

 bones were contained, in one case within a circle of 6 inches radius, 

 will show how exceedingly easy it must be to overlook the existence 

 of such a burial, and how cautious we should be in asserting that 

 nothing can be found in such mounds to serve as their raison d'etre. 



Thirdly, the relative position and elevation and other pecu- 

 liarities of one of these barrows, that to be hereinafter spoken of 

 as c Sigwell iii/ and of a small British camp, show, as we believe 

 very unmistakeably, that the camp was earlier in point of date 

 than the barrow, and the work of stone-using, not of bronze-using, 

 men. 



