PREHISTORIC ARCHEOLOGY IN YORKSHIRE 45 



North-East Yorkshire, where they are most frequent on the coast, Lime- 

 stone Hills, and in the Vale of Pickering. Their almost complete absence 

 from the Eastern Moorlands is significant in view of the intensive and 

 widespread Mid Bronze Age culture of that region (18). 



Again, the unchambered long-barrow culture of East Yorkshire, also 

 regarded as typically Neolithic, overlaps the Early Bronze Age. The 

 long barrows excavated by Greenwell (19) and Mortimer (27) have 

 been reviewed by Elgee (18), who considers them a degenerate and late 

 expression of the chambered long-barrow culture of the south-west. 

 Raistrick (33) has described a stony long barrow at Bradley, near Skipton, 

 the first and only known example in West Yorkshire. Its primary inter- 

 ment lay in a cist, not a chamber, a circumstance indicative of Early 

 Bronze Age influences, when cist-burial was frequently practised. 



The Yorkshire long barrows give no support to the theory that their 

 builders were prospecting for metal, for they are concentrated on the 

 Wolds, Howardian and Limestone Hills, non-metalliferous areas, then 

 scrub and grassland, suitable for pasturage. 



The Bronze Age. 



The excavation of hundreds of round barrows in East Yorkshire between 

 the Tees and the Humber by Bateman (6), Atkinson (5), Greenwell (19, 

 20), and Mortimer (27) laid the foundations of our knowledge of the 

 Yorkshire Bronze Age. The most important barrow excavations in the 

 period under review were those carried out by W. Hornsby and his 

 colleagues on the Cleveland coast (23-25). Raistrick (32-33) has described 

 the contents of some West Riding barrows, our knowledge of which falls 

 far below those of East Yorkshire. 



The relative chronology of the pottery from the barrows was fully 

 established by the late Lord Abercromby in his monumental work on 

 British and Irish Bronze Age pottery (i). He proved that the oldest 

 barrow pottery was the beaker or drinking-cup, 150 having been found in 

 Yorkshire. This ware was introduced by invaders from the Rhinelands, 

 who almost invariably interred their dead in deep graves under round 

 barrows, and used simple bronze knives, awls, and flat axes of Early 

 Bronze Age type. 



These invaders were chiefly brachycephalic and of rather stocky stature. 

 Amongst them, however, were members of a tall dolichocephalic race, 

 to which Elgee has recently directed attention, and which he assigns to 

 the stone battle-axe folk of Central Germany and Denmark, who possessed 

 similar physical characters (18). Seven skeletons of this type have been 

 recorded.* 



More or less contemporaneous with beakers was the food-vessel ware, 

 a totally different kind of pottery, which, as R. A. Smith has shown, was 



* From Duggleby Howe, C.I. 68-8, S. 6 ft. 3 in. {27, pp. 31, 39) ; Aldro (with 

 beaker), C.I. 70, S. 5 ft. 11-3 in. ; Carton (with food-vessel), C.I. 72, S. 6 ft. 

 •03 in.; Carton (with beaker), C.I. 72, S. 5 ft. 10-3 in.; Mortimer (/. A. 

 Inst., vi, 330-4), Borrow Nook (Mid-Wolds), three (one C.I. 70-51), nearly 

 6 ft. high (29, p. 492). See also (30). 



