EARLY MAN 
First of all, as to the methods of burial adopted by these prehistoric 
people in the north of England. They practised both burial by inhuma- 
tion and burial after cremation, but the former was by far the most usual, 
a little under twenty-one per cent. only being after cremation, that is the 
burials after cremation only amount to about rather less than a fourth 
of those by inhumation. There appears to be some rule regulating the 
practice, but in the present state of knowledge that rule is unknown : it 
is not a question of sex, or of wealth, or of position, or of age; the 
instances found prove that. The unburnt body is almost always found to 
have been laid upon the soil in a contracted position, that is with the 
knees drawn up towards the head, which is generally more or less bent 
forward, the back, however, is sometimes quite straight. So invariable 
is this rule that out of 301 burials of unburnt bodies which Canon 
Greenwell examined in the barrows of the Wolds, he only met with four 
instances where the body had been laid at full length. These cases may 
have been subsequent interments of Angles, who buried in the extended 
position and flat on the back. The probability is that the contracted 
position was the position in which the prehistoric races were accustomed 
to sleep, drawing up their knees for the sake of warmth. Charcoal is 
frequently found scattered throughout the greater part of a burial mound. 
It may have been the ashes of fires on the ground from which the 
material of the mound was heaped up, or of the fires at which the 
funeral feasts were cooked. But Canon Greenwell suggests it may be the 
ashes of a fire through which a corpse was passed without being actually 
consumed—a ritualistic ceremony, resembling, as the Canon says, the 
substitution of aspersion for immersion in the rite of baptism. The 
occurrence with burials by inhumation of buttons of bone and of jet, 
points to the bodies having been interred dressed as in their lifetime, 
while the occurrence of bone pins suggests the use of some sort of shroud. 
Weapons and implements, either of bronze or stone, are rarely found in 
company with interments of either burnt or unburnt bodies. When they 
do occur they are much more frequently of stone or flint than of bronze, 
and such bronze implements as do occur are small and insignificant, 
conveying the idea that the round barrows are of the early Bronze Age, 
when only small articles were fabricated from that metal, either because 
it was rare and expensive, or because the workers in bronze were up to 
then but moderately expert. Personal ornaments also occur in barrows, 
generally in connection with the burials of women. 
In Hutchinson’s Cumberland (vol. i. p. 151) mention is made of the 
removal at Hayton about the year 1790, of a bank of sand and gravel 
(probably a tumulus) and the discovery of three objects of gold, which 
the country people called ‘shekels,’ as similar in form to the ‘shekels’ 
of a plough beam, ‘shekel’ being a name, says the writer in Hutchin- 
son, which is applied to the ring fixed to a plough beam. They were 
penannular in form, plain and smooth, except the two knobs at the open- 
ing. They measured 3 or 4 inches in diameter, and about 14 inches in 
thickness. Had they had tongues they would have been fibule; they 
233 
