Rev. Wm. Greenwell on Two Ancient Interments. 415 



which was possibly a mortar for bruising corn in, previous to the 

 invention of querns. The depression was oval. 



VI. Stone Balls. 



18. Stone-bullet, larger than a marble, formed of serpentine 

 or some allied stone, being soapy to the touch. Believed to be 

 ancient. Found near Wooler Brewery, May, 1865. 



19. Small stone-bullets of greywacke ; supposed to be sling- 

 stones. Fields, Penmanshiel and Oldcambus. 



On Two Ancient Interments at Wooler and Ilderton. 

 By the Rev. William Greenwell, F.S.A., &c. 



On two previous occasions I have given an account in our 

 Proceedings of the occurrence of pre-historic burials within 

 the limits of the district to which the Berwickshire Natural- 

 ists' Club confines its researches. I propose in the present 

 paper to follow that up by putting on record the facts con- 

 nected with two burials, which were met with in the 

 neighbourhood of Wooler. The burials in question, though 

 they present no features of novel interest, nevertheless have 

 a claim to notice, inasmuch as when evidence is so scanty, 

 every item which adds to our store of accurately recorded 

 details is some addition, greater or less, to that accumulation 

 of facts from which we hope in time to be enabled to deduce 

 something of a history of, at least, the burial customs of the 

 ancient inhabitants of Britain. And as life and death are so 

 intimately bound up together, and the incidents connected 

 with each are so interwoven, especially amongst people who 

 are in the lower stages of civilization, we may look, from a 

 knowledge of the treatment of the dead, to obtain some 

 insight into the condition of the living. 



The two interments to be noticed did not differ much, the 

 one from the other, in the way in which the body had been 

 treated in the process of burial. They were both burials by 

 inhumation, where the body was laid in the grave without 

 having undergone the action of fire in burning ; a rite which, 

 however, was widely and extensively practised at the time to 

 which these two interments belong. Each of the bodies had 

 been placed, as is usual in the districts where suitable stone 

 is easily to be obtained, in cists ; small chambers of stone 

 sunk below the level of the ground, and formed of four or 



