SOO Rev. W. Greenwell on Ancient British TumuU, 



•which were commonly made of metal, it was not the usual 

 habit to deposit with the dead, whilst such as were made of 

 flint were the ordinary accompaniments of an interment. 

 For instance, swords, spears, and celts, have very rarely, if 

 ever, been found in a tumulus, now these are nearly always 

 made of bronze ; on the contrary, arrow heads and knives, of 

 which we possess no examples in bronze, but innumerable 

 ones in flint, are the commonest adjuncts to a buried body, 

 burnt or unburnt. The articles of bronze which it was usual 

 to inter with a body are daggers and pins, and such are not 

 unfrequently found; but only certain persons would be buried 

 with a dagger, and as a bone pin answered the same purpose 

 as a bronze one, we may easily account for the absence of the 

 more valuable material. We may thus, when we find no 

 bronze with an interment, understand that such was not caused 

 by the want of knowledge of that metal, but because, in that 

 interment, no implement of metal was thought to be the 

 proper one to be deposited with the body. The two materials, 

 bronze and flint, were in use, I have no reason to doubt, for 

 difierent. purposes, all through the period which elapsed before 

 the introduction of iron,* and it was the knowledge of that 

 metal which did away with the use of flint. I have never 

 observed any difference in the mode of burial in round bar- 

 rows where only flint has been found, from that in those 

 where bronze exists, nor do the urns or flint implements 

 differ in the two cases ; precisely the same kind of urn and 

 the same shaped flint knife or arrow head is found in a bar- 

 row where a bronze dagger or pin occurs, and in an adjoining 

 one where not a vestige of metal appears. I cannot, there- 

 fore, see any reason to suppose that some of the round barrows 

 were made before bronze was known, whilst others are of a 

 date after its introduction. The general absence of bronze is 

 due, as I have before said, to the fact that the weapons and 

 implements usually deposited with the dead were such as 

 were not commonly made of that metal. 



November 21st and 23rd were spent in an almost fruitless 

 examination of some tumuli upon Whitsun Bank, in close 



* I must be understood to speak of tlie period during which Britain was 

 occupied by the race who buried in round barrows. There was an earlier period 

 and a previous race who buried in long barrows, to which the use of bronze was 

 unknown ; and before that time and during an age when Britain had not assumed 

 its present geographical features or existing fauna or climate, still earlier forms 

 of man lived here, whose implements we find associated with the extinct mammals, 

 but whose sepultures have not, as yet, been discovered. 



