EARLY MAN 
F the earliest inhabitants of the district now known as Cumber- 
land, the men of the Stone Age, whose only implements for 
war, for the chase, or for domestic use were of stone, bone or 
shell, no histories written with the pen have been handed down 
to us: for what we know of them we are indebted to such of their relics 
as may be accidentally found on the surface of the ground, or beneath it, 
or may be turned up by the spade in the hands of trained observers. But 
little work with the spade, compared with what might have been done, 
has been undertaken. When the Cumberland and Westmorland Anti- 
quarian and Archeological Society was formed in 1866, Canon Greenwell, 
D.C.L., F.R.S., F.S.A., and the late Canon Simpson, LL.D., F.S.A., 
both experienced excavators and trained observers, urged upon the new 
Society the importance of this kind of work. They also cautioned the 
Society as to the danger of entrusting it to unskilful hands, who too 
frequently disturb and disperse the contents of barrows without putting 
on record a satisfactory and sufficient account of the barrow itself, of the 
mode of burial, and, in case of a burial by inhumation, of the type of 
the skull ; or, in case of a burial after cremation, of the character of the 
urn containing the ashes. ‘These exhortations have not been without 
effect in the sphere of the Society’s work (viz. Cumberland, Westmor- 
land and Lancashire north of the Sands). More exploration of this 
kind has been done, and better done, in Westmorland and in Lancashire 
north of the Sands, than in Cumberland. The chief workers in 
Westmorland were the two eminent archeologists just mentioned and 
the late M. W. Taylor, M.D., F.S.A. In Lancashire north of the 
Sands, Mr. H. S. Cowper, F.S.A., has done good work, which is re- 
corded in Arch@ologia, vol. liii. For the work in Westmorland, and 
what little Canon Greenwell and his colleagues did in Cumberland, 
Greenwell and Rolleston’s British Barrows should be consulted. That 
prehistoric work in Cumberland has been comparatively neglected is due 
largely to the existence there of the Roman Wall, and the interest it 
excites among all archeologists resident within reach of it. Other 
working archzologists resident in Cumberland have had their own 
1 As the writer of this contribution died before it was set up in type, Dr. W. Boyd 
Dawkins has been so good as to read the proofs, ‘The author’s statements have not been 
interfered with. 
J 225 Q 
