594 EXCAVATIONS IN AN ANCIENT 



longer practised in Christian burials. They show also that the pre- 

 sence of these shards cannot be explained as being' due to accident. 

 Indeed, upon several occasions, I have found fragments of pottery 

 in such relations to the bones of skeletons, in company with which 

 nails were found, as to make it seem highly probable that the shard, 

 when thrown in, must have clanked upon the boards of the coffin, 

 which the nails show us was present there. The thought that our 

 own custom of throwing earth into the grave during the burial 

 service may be connected with this custom, and again, that both 

 may be connected with the classical custom referred to in Horace's 

 line, 'Injecto ter pulvere curras,' and also Virgil, '^Eneid,^ vi. ^6^, 

 and in Sophocles, ' Antigone,' 2^6, Xe-nrrj S' 6,yos (^^vyovros As eir^r 

 KoviS) will at once suggest itself; but only to be dismissed on 

 mature consideration ; for to the modern antiquary it is no paradox 

 to say that the custom of throwing in shards was probably much 

 older than that of scattering earth over the corpse ; and I would 

 suggest, as it is very likely others may have done before me, that 

 the throwing in of the broken pottery may be the perfunctory re- 

 presentation of the deposition in the grave of the entire vase, and 

 that the throwing of earth, for which Archytas and Palinurus 

 begged, may in like manner represent the toilsome but unattempted 

 process of inhumation ^. Massillon, long before prehistoric archae- 

 ology had been thought of, argued for the conclusion that a belief 

 in a future state is a naturally implanted conviction from the fact 

 that ' nulle part vous n'en rencontrez des peuples sans sepultures 

 et sans vases,' and the Abb6 Cochet, in his ' Archeologie Ceramique,' 

 p. I, sa^^s that the custom of placing earthen vessels in tombs is 

 one of the most ancient of all customs, and, as just noticed, that it 

 still exists in secluded and remote parts of France, as in Morvan 

 and La Bresse. This coexistence with the custom of our modern 

 burials seems to disprove any interdependence of the two practices. 

 Again, the fact that fragments of pottery were used in interments 

 by cremation, as well as in interments by inhumation, seems to 

 show that the shard and the handful of earth were not set in 

 motion by the same impulses. In very early times earthen vessels 

 were of great value, and it was in those days a proof of at least 



* For the tendency of customs involving expense to assume cheaper forms, see Sir 

 John Lubbock, 'Nat. Hist. Eev.' Oct. i86i, p. 8oi ; ' Prehistoric Times,' p. 98 ed. i, 

 p. 142 ed. ii. 





