446 REPORT ON EXCAVATION AT SIGWELL. 



as to suggest that it has been affected by disease and absorption, 

 and a fragment of a femur also of the right side. The burnt bones, 

 1 iii d,' were in much greater quantity than those found in ' Sig- 

 well ii,' and had some, though very little, charcoal amongst them : 

 differences which may be accounted for by the place in which they 

 were burnt having been in close proximity to the place where we 

 found them. The place of burning we discovered thus. At a 

 distance of I foot 9 inches below the burnt bones there was a thick 

 seam of burnt wood 4 inches thick, and the floor below the ashes, 

 at a spot a little to the north-east of the centre, was very much 

 reddened, showing that a fire had been lighted and had burned with 

 much intensity upon it. In these ashes on the floor of the barrow 

 were a few fragments of human bone, f iii. e,' well burnt, like those 

 above, which we may suppose, therefore, to have escaped the careful 

 out-picking which had removed so large a number of the burnt 

 bones from interminglement with the ashes, and had placed them 

 together, as described, on the top of a mass of earth, piled up to a 

 height of nearly 2 feet above the site of the pyre. A similar up- 

 piling of earth must have taken place in the bark coffin in { Sig- 

 well ii/ as the description shows, and a similar picking out of the 

 bones from among the ashes. That the fire had been lighted on 

 the original surface without paring away the turf was plain enough, 

 from the fact that in paring it immediately below the ashes, at 7 feet 

 9 inches to 8 feet below the centre picket, the stalks of coarse 

 grass and bracken were very plainly visible in section. But besides 

 this we found also round sections of small stakes about 1 inch in 

 diameter, which penetrated 6 inches or 7 inches down into the 

 natural soil, and some of which tapered towards their lower ends. 

 They had been stuck in to support the pile of wood we may sup- 

 pose. A chipped flint disc, %\ inches, chipped on both sides, was 

 found in the centre of the burnt wood, ' Sigwell iii. c,' which might 

 have been used as a sling-stone with a riband sling. Of the other 

 flints some have black fracture surfaces, others have been weathered 

 before being put into the barrow ; two good scrapers were amongst 

 them, one, ' Sigwell iii. c,' having been found by us 3 feet 5 inches 

 south-west of the centre, and 4 feet 7 inches below the surface ; the 

 other, ' Sigwell iii. f,' having been found by the Rev. A. J. Bennett 

 in superintending the filling-in of the excavation. One flint has a 

 saw-edge, as I think purposely produced ; another has the appear- 



