204 Rev. W. Greenwell on Ancient British Tumuli. 



three-sixteenths to six-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. The 

 cylindrical beads are jet, the round ones shale or some similar 

 material ; ten cylindrical and ninety-one round ones were 

 found, but some of these last were no doubt overlooked amongst 

 the sand. Near the middle of the cist, amongst the sand, was a 

 flint knife or scraper, chipped carefully along both edges upon 

 one side, the other being a clean slice from the core. It is If 

 inches long and f inch wide, and has had a piece at the end 

 broken oif. At a distance of 12- feet 8 inches from the centre, 

 we found a third cist, lying north-east by south-west. It is 

 2 leet 4 inches long, 1 foot 5 inches wide, and 1 foot 5 inches 

 deep, and was made of four stones, with a cover. There was 

 about six inches of sand at the bottom, in which nothing 

 except a few bits of charcoal was found. In this case, as in 

 the other two cists, the body, in consequence of the cists 

 lying so near the surface, had gone totally to decay. 



The examination of this circle has further corroborated 

 what many previous investigations of such structures has 

 shewn, that they are sepulchral. Similar places of sepulture 

 are frequent in Wiltshire, where the circle is made of a ring 

 of earth. In most of the Wilts examples, the burial appears, 

 from the associated articles, to have been that of a woman, and 

 such apparently has in one of the Blawearie cists been the sex. 



Before concluding, I will add a few words as to the prob- 

 able date of these burials, and the people to whom they are 

 to be attributed. It is impossible to give even an approxi- 

 mate date, but one thing is, I think, certain, that they belong 

 to a time before the Roman occupation. There has never 

 been found in these tumuli any pottery, weapons, or orna- 

 ments, which shew the slightest trace of Roman influence, a 

 fact which is perfectly inconsistent with a post Roman date. 

 Taking then for granted that they belong to a period before 

 the Romans set foot in Britain, to what date may we carry 

 them back ? With our present evidence no satisfactory 

 answer can be given, but I should hesitate very much in 

 suggesting a later period than B.C. 1000, for the earliest of 

 our round barrows. Iron was in use when Csesar landed, 

 and was so common for tertain purposes, that Ave cannot 

 view its introduction as having taken place but at some con- 

 siderable distance from that time ; but nearly all the tumuli 

 are of a date before the use of iron, of which metal very few 

 traces have been found in them,* and we are therefore obliged 



* Iron has been found, as at Tosson, in cists with unburnt bodies and the later 

 type of urns ; but it seems scarcely possible, that in these cases, any tumulus 



