OF THE BRITISH PERIOD AT WARKSHAUGH. 165 



immediately above the village of Wark, in reducing the ground to 

 tillage ; and some, if not the largest portion of these, may have 

 been brought down "Wart's Burn, nearly opposite to whose junc- 

 tion with the North Tyne the "Warkshaugh barrow was placed. 

 But one of the small flint implements found in the eastern cist 

 has plainly come from the pure chalk formation — and the nearest 

 point where such nodules are to be obtained is the Yorkshire 

 coast, near Whitby, whither they have been rolled by currents 

 from the coast farther south. Such flints must therefore have 

 been brought from a considerable distance. It is remarkable, 

 that the field on which the tumulus was raised (especially around 

 its immediate site), is well known for the number of flint chip- 

 pings that are continually brought to the surface by the plough. 

 Mr. Snowball tells me that his workpeople are accustomed to 

 look there for a piece of flint on which to strike a match, when- 

 ever they rest from their labours, whether men or women, in 

 order to solace themselves "with a pipe;" and an ancient dame 

 always declared she could find flint readier to hand than the 

 less effective sandstone. 



Prom data already given, it will be seen that this barrow had 

 for its builders some of the earliest, if not the aboriginal inhabi- 

 tants of Britain. The pottery of the urns, and their scorings, 

 differ considerably from those characteristic of urns of the later 

 British or early Eomano-British age, such as that found at Smales- 

 mouth.* It is similar to a fragment now in the Alnwick Castle 



* The larger urn was of the usual cinerary type, ornamented with a zigzag design around 

 the upper part of the herring-bone pattern. It appears that at the period when this barrow 

 was formed two modes of interment were in use — cremation, or burning the body on the 

 funeral pyre, and deposition in a cist with or without an urn placed amidst fine sand. As 

 the barrow was evidently round we can assign with safety the occupants to the brachy- 

 cephalic race who succeeded, and, as a bronze-armed people, probably supplanted the dolicho- 

 cephalic race, whose burial places are the "long barrows." The shape of the tumuli of the 

 two races seems to have borne intentionally a close resemblance to the conformation of their 

 respective crania. It is supposed that the latter race may have introduced both cremation 

 and the use of metals. In the Warkshaugh barrow we find an interesting example of the 

 two stages of inhumation : the first, when the relics of the burnt body were enclosed in a 

 large, partially ornamented urn of coarse pottery ; and the second, when an on of a different 

 type, scored throughout, and of finer make, was deposited by the side of the departed chief, 

 who was laid in the stone-lined grave doubled up with the knees to the chin, and reclining 

 usually on the left side facing the sun in its daily course in the sky. The peculiar flagged 

 way from the cinerary urn to the southern cist proves almost beyond question that the two 

 modes of interment were in this case contemporaneous. 



