By Lt. Col. W. Haiohy, F.S.A. 



627 



remote, even from them. In doing so the original Bronze Age 

 burial was disturbed. 1 



In addition to the objects found in barrows mentioned above 

 there is in the British Museum a fragment of a bronze spear-head 

 from Brigmerston Down, with lunate openings in the leaf-shaped 

 blade. This type Canon Greenwell notes as occurring not un- 

 commonly in Great Britain and Ireland, but very rarely on the 

 Continent. It belongs to a late period of the Bronze Age. There 

 is also from the same locality the remarkable spear-head illustrated 

 in the Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age, p. 84, Fig. 74, 

 for the loan of the block of which, here reproduced (Fig. 9), we are 



Fig. 9. — Bronze Spear-head. 



1 Interments of skeletons at full length have been found in many Wiltshire 

 barrows, generally in the upper part of the barrow. In many cases it is not 

 possible to say with certainty to what age these interments belong, but 

 taken as a whole they may be said to be either of Romano-British or Saxon 

 date. Hoare records such secondary burials in several instances, and Gen. 

 Pitt-Rivers {Excavations, II., 258, 259) mentions the occurrence of pre- 

 sumably Saxon skeletons in two Bronze Age barrows on Winklebury Hill, 

 in one of which the intruding skeleton was found actually in the original 

 grave, whilst the bones of the original owner were scattered through the 

 filling of the grave. Again, in barrows on Handley Down (Dorset) [Ex- 

 cavations, IV., 137, 173], skeletons of Romano-British date were found in 

 the ditches, and at Wor Barrow (Excavations, IV., 63, 64, 78, 79) similar 

 secondary interments were found both in the long barrow itself and in the 

 ditch. Indeed the idea of the sanctity of the barrows as burial places, and 

 the custom of burying in them, seems to have lasted well on into Christian 

 Saxon days, so much so that it was deemed necessary to forbid Christians 

 using the burial places of the heathen. This survival of the feeling of 

 sanctity, however, did not prevent the men of the Roman or Saxon periods 

 from disturbing the bones of the original tenant, any more than it prevents 

 the modern sexton from disturbing ancient interments in our churchyards, 

 when digging a grave for a new one. On the other hand, in mediaeval times 

 licences were specially granted by the Crown to treasure seekers to open 

 barrows in search of valuables. Ed. H. Goddard. 



2 T 2 



