444 Mr. Tate o« Yecering Bell, &c. 



north end. This Cist was placed in the centre of a circle of 

 stones 26 feet in diameter. Within the Cist, charred wood 

 and a few bones, which crumbled away on exposure, were 

 found. Immediately however above the Cist and among the 

 covering earth and stones, flints, potsherds, iron slag, and 

 fragments of bone were discovered. From their fragmentary 

 state, the bones were not determinable. The pottery is of 

 the same coarse thick kind as was found on the summit of 

 the Bell ; one fragment is the top of a vessel having the lip 

 turned outward. Though small, most of the flints have a 

 sharp cutting edge, and are portions of broken weapons or 

 instruments. One hoAvever is 2 inches long and f inch broad 

 at the base and contracting towards a point. The edge is 

 serrated and it appears to have been a small saw. (Plate 



XVI. /^r. 13.) 



The broken flints and broken pottery cast upon the An- 

 cient Briton's grave had very probably some religious mean- 

 ing. Mr. Bateman notices, that portions of earthenware were 

 sometimes burnt along with human bodies ; and the Rev. 

 Wra. Greenwell also in his account of the Ford interment 

 states, that burnt fragments of various different vessels oc- 

 curred. I cannot however detect evidences of burning in the 

 pottery and flints of Worm law. 



Fascinated with the simplicity of the Scandinavian classifi- 

 cation of stone, bronze, and iron ages, many of our antiquaries 

 with more zeal than success have applied it to British anti- 

 quities. Weapons of stone or Avood or bone may, in many 

 parts of the world, have been used before those of metal ; but 

 it is not certain, that metals were unknown altogether in any 

 period of British history. Metals are absent from most 

 of the early deposits ; but we occasionally find along with 

 simple flints, which are understood to mark an early 

 period, other objects which imply the use of metals ; as for ex- 

 ample the intractable porphyry querns, which could not have 

 been fashioned by mere stone instruments. The discovery 

 too of iron slag, along with flints and coarse Celtic pottery, 

 has a peculiar significancy. It is the second authenticated 

 instance of iron in Celtic interments in Northumberland. An 

 iron weapon was found in a Cist at Tosson along with un- 

 doubted Celtic urns; and here at Worm law it is in the state of 

 slag ; and this leads to the inference, that not only were these 

 ancient BarroAV builders acquainted with the use of iron, but 

 that they also manufactured it from the ore. 



Similar facts mutually illustrate each other. Slag heaps 



