The Grave-mounds of Derbyshire, and their Contents. 261. 



ornamentation. The urns, of whatever kind they may be, are. 

 formed of the coarse common clay of the district where made, 

 occasionally mixed with small pebbles and gravel ; they are 

 entirely wrought by hand, without the assistance of the wheel, 

 and are, the larger vessels especially, extremely thick. From 

 their imperfect firing, the vessels of this period are usually 

 called " sun-baked " or " sun-dried " but this is a grave error, 

 as any one conversant with examples cannot fail, on careful 

 examination, to see. If the vessels were " sun-baked " only, 

 their burial in the earth — in the tumuli wherein, some two 

 thousand years ago, they were deposited, and where they have 

 all that time remained — would soon soften them, and they would . 

 ages ago, have returned to their old clayey consistency. As it 

 is, the urns have remained of their original form, and although, 

 from imperfect baking, they are sometimes found softened, they 

 still retain their form, and soon regain their usual hardness . They 

 bear abundant evidence of the action of fire and are, indeed, 

 sometimes sufficiently burned for the clay to have attained a 

 red colour — a result which no u sun-baking " could produce. 

 They are mostly of an earthy brown colour outside, and almost 

 black in fracture, and many of the cinerary urns bear internal 

 and unmistakeable evidence of having been filled with the 

 burnt bones and ashes of the deceased, while those ashes were 

 of a glowing and intense heat. They were, most probably, 

 fashioned by the females of the tribe, on the death of their 

 relative, from the clay to be found nearest to the spot, and 

 baked on or by the funeral pyre. The glowing ashes and bones 

 were then collected together, and placed in the urn, and the 

 flint implements and occasionally other relics belonging to the 

 deceased, deposited along with them. 



The Cinerary, or Sepulchral, Urns vary very considerably 

 both in size, in form, in ornamentation, and in material — the 

 latter, naturally, depending on the locality where the urns 

 were made — and, as a general rule, they differ also from those 

 of most other districts. Those which are supposed to be the 

 most ancient, from the fact of their frequently containing flint 

 instruments along with the calcined bones, are of large size, 

 ranging from nine or ten, to sixteen or eighteen inches in 

 height. Those which are supposed to belong to a somewhat 

 later period, when cremation had again become general, are of 

 a smaller size, and of a someAvhat finer texture. With them, 

 objects of flint are rarely found, but articles of bronze are 

 occasionally discovered. The general form of the cinerary urns 

 of the Derbyshire barrows, will be best understood from the 

 annexed engravings. 



Their principal characteristic is a deep overlapping border 

 or rim, and their ornamentation, always produced by indent- 



