THE RITUAL OF BARROWS AND CIRCLES. 237 



le chef de Jo'''' Gousard." A similar custom is followed in some 

 of the Swiss cantons. 



Apart from such unsubstantial traditions as a royal " lying-in- 

 state," or as the persistent visitation and decoration of graves, is 

 there any evidence that a dual disposal of the dead was ever 

 practised in the British Isles ? 



As regards the Channel Islands, Mr. Lukis has pointed out* 

 that " the quantity of human bones found within the chamber 

 [of the dolmen L'ancresse] was great, and corresponded with 

 the number of vessels of all sizes discovered with them. The 

 bones were, from their position, brought to their final resting- 

 place after the flesh had been removed by burning, or by some 

 other means." " It was easy to perceive that the various heaps 

 of human remains which lay scattered on the floor of the dolmen 

 had been deposited there at different times." 



INIr. Arthur Evans recalls that " by a succession of archaeo- 

 logical explorers it has been shown how the galleried chambers 

 of the oldest barrows in England present phenomena recon- 

 cileable only with the hypothesis that the bones had lost their 

 fleshly covering and become partially detached from their 

 ligaments previous to interment. In other words these chambers 

 of the dead are ossuaries." 



Of the round barrows of Yorkshire Canon Greenwell mentions 

 one 70ft. in diameter and i^ft. high. After noting later burials 

 in the same mound, he says, of the original interment, "it was 

 the skeleton of a strongly made man in the middle period of life, 

 laid on the left side, with the head to S. E. The hands were up 

 to the face. The sacrum was close to the left scapula, and 

 there were no vertebrae between the cervical and the lumbar 

 region of the backbone. A well-chipped flint knife was found 

 in association, but no metal. It would seem that the body had 

 been interred in some other place, and had afterwards been 

 removed to this barrow." f 



* Arch. Jour. I. 149. 

 t British Barrows, p. 225-6, 



