REPORT ON EXCAVATION AT SIGWELL. 445 



enclosed in an urn, were found lying closely placed together in one 

 spot beneath the stones.' And in the earth that was carted home, 

 f besides a quantity of bits of bone, was found the blade of a bronze 

 dagger.' 



1 Sigwell iii.' Monday, July 23.— Commenced work with seven 

 men upon the barrow to the south-west of Sigwell camp by cutting 

 a trench 17 feet long and 12 feet 6 inches wide to south-west of 

 centre picket. This barrow resembled the two already described 

 as ' Sigwell i ' and * ii ' in the material and mode of its construc- 

 tion ; in containing burnt bones which had been picked out of the 

 ashes of the fire in which the body they belonged to had been burnt 

 and buried apart ; and in containing fragments of coarse pottery 

 it resembled ' Sigwell ii,' but differed from it in not furnishing 

 any specimen of bronze, and in, perhaps by way of compensation, 

 furnishing a very large number of worked flints, some black, others 

 whitened on their fractured surfaces, and in containing a small 

 fragment of a patterned drinking-cup or food-vessel, and a very 

 much larger quantity of human burnt bones as well as two large 

 fragments of unburnt bones, an os innominatum, to wit, and a 

 piece of a femur. 



Among other important lessons taught by the history of this 

 barrow, one of special importance is the ease with which it is pos- 

 sible to miss an interment when that interment lies within a circle 

 of half a foot radius, and consists only of a small quantity of either 

 very finely comminuted or all but pulverised burnt bones. 



A good scraper, labelled ' Sigwell iii c,' was found 3 ft. 5 in. south- 

 west of the centre picket and 4 ft. 7 in. below the level of it. All 

 through this barrow worked flints were found in much greater 

 abundance than in either of the other two. I was inclined to con- 

 nect their presence in this quantity with the absence in this barrow 

 of any rabbit-holes, supposing that a rabbit in burrowing would be 

 likely to throw out a worked flint rather than an equivalent mass 

 of sand for obvious reasons, mechanical and other. But I should 

 not press this view. 



Exactly beneath the centre picket, and 6 feet below it, was a 

 mass of burnt bones occupying a circle of about a foot in diameter. 

 The bones belonged to an adult, sex uncertain. In two other spots 

 in the barrow two other bones were found, viz., a fragment of a 

 right os innominatum, the acetabular portion of which is so shallow 



