OGBURY BARROWS 295 



animals, for the most part skulls and feet only, the relics of 

 the savage funeral feast. It was clear that as soon as the 

 })uilder8 of the barrow had erected the stone chamber of 

 their dead chieftain, and placed within it his lionoured 

 remains, they had held a {^'reat banquet on tlie spot, and, 

 after killing oxen and chasing red deer, had eaten all the 

 eatable portions, and thrown the skulls, horns, and hoofs 

 on top of the tomb, as otfurings to the spirit of their de- 

 parted master. But among these relics of the funeral 

 baked meats there were some that specially attracted our 

 attention — a number of broken human skulls, mingled 

 indiscriminately with the horns of deer and the bones of 

 oxen. It was impossible to look at them for a single 

 moment, and not to recognise that we had here the veri- 

 table remains of a cannibal feast, a hundred centuries ago, 

 on Ogbury hill-top. 



Each skull was split or fractured, not clean cut, as with 

 a sword or bullet, but hacked and hewn with some blunt 

 implement, presumably either a club or a stone tomahawk. 

 The skull of the great chief inside was entire and his skele- 

 ton unmutilated : but we could see at a glance that the 

 remains we found huddled together on the top were those 

 of slaves or prisoners of war, sacrificed beside the dead 

 chieftain's tomb, and eaten witli the other products of the 

 chase by his surviving tribesmen. In an inner cliambor 

 behind the chieftain's own hut we came upon yet a stranger 

 relic of primitive barbarism. Two complete human skele- 

 tons squatted there in the same curious attitude as their 

 lord's, as if in attendance upon him in a neighbouring 

 ante-chamber. They were the skeletons of women — so our 

 professional bone-scanner immediately told us — and each of 

 their skulls had been carefully cleft right down the middle 

 by a single blow from a sharp stone hatchet. But they 

 were not the victims intended for the piece tie r&sistance at 



