EARLY MAN 
tumuli, and into them the pieces of burnt bone have been placed without 
urns and then covered with earth. 
The accompanying illustration, fig. 59, represents a contracted inter- 
ment in the circumference of a large round tumulus examined by the 
writer, which once existed on Dunstable Downs. The tumulus has now 
been levelled for agricultural purposes. Its position was one third of a 
mile south-east of the ‘ Five Knolls’ on Dunstable Downs, in the field 
on the east side of the road. The chief skeleton represents a woman, 
one of the bronze age dolichocephali, 4 ft. 11§ in. in height and from 
eighteen to twenty-five years of age ; the child clasped by the mother 
was about five years of age. Near the head of the woman were two 
broken pots, near the right hand a stone muller and a white pebble; else- 
where in the grave were two other mullers, two scrapers and two very 
rudely chipped celts. About 200 fossil Echini were found surrounding 
the skeleton as illustrated. ‘The owner of the land, Mr. F. T. Fossey, 
found an arrow-head in the excavated material but lost it again. Near 
by, in the same tumulus, the remains of a cremation were found buried 
in a small hole excavated in the chalk. Another tumulus, a little to the 
south of this, contained in its circumference the skeleton of a crouching 
boy about fourteen years of age; between the hands was a nodule of iron 
pyrites. 
Very few finds of bronze implements have been recorded from 
Bedfordshire, and the county is unrepresented in the bronze age collection 
of the British Museum. This is not because bronze antiquities have not 
been found in the county, but because they have not been preserved, and 
when found by field workmen have been lost again, or sold for old metal. 
The late Mr. Joseph Cooke, the former owner of Maiden Bower, the 
camp near Dunstable, once told the writer that when he was a boy his 
father had a quantity of bronze weapons in one of his barns at Sewell, 
but none are there now, and Mr. Cooke did not know what had become 
of them. There can be no doubt that the people of the bronze age were 
spread over the whole county, and further investigations may bring many 
remains of this age to light. Sir John Evans’ records the finding of two 
bronze spear-heads, 7? inches and 6 inches, near Toddington, and about 
sixty socketed celts at Wymington.” A socketed celt has been found at 
Toddington.® 
In fig. 60 is shown a piece of antler, from which a number of long 
narrow pieces have been sawn or cut 
out, as if for the manufacture of rude 
pins. In fig. 61 a bone is shown 
with the surface cut and end pointed 
with a knife to form a long bone peg. 
In fig. 62 two views of a bone are 
given, showing numerous axe marks 
which have been delivered by a polished stone or bronze celt. These 
1 Ancient Bronze Implements, p. 321. 2 Op. cit. p. 113. 
3 Man, the Primeval Savage, p. 316, fig. 230. 
I 169 22 
