Notes on Bowl's Barrow. 



105 



barrow, was a floor of flints regularly laid, and on it the remains of 

 several human bodies deposited in no regular order. It appeared, 

 therefore, that they had been thrown together promiscuously, and 

 a great pile of stones raised lengthways along the centre of the 

 barrow, over them. This pile (in form like the ridge of a house) 

 was afterwards covered with marl excavated from the north and 

 south sides of the barrow, the two ends being level with the plain. 1 

 Although four men were employed for three days, they could not 

 explore more than the space of about six feet by ten ; yet in this 

 small portion they found fourteen skulls, one of which appeared to 

 have been cut in two by a sword. It is rather singular, that no 

 fragments whatever of pottery, charred wood, or animal bones, were 

 found in the course of the above operations/' " At a subsequent 

 period Mr. Cunnington made a second attempt on this tumulus by 

 opening more ground both on the east as well as the west end ; at 

 the former he found the heads and horns of seven or more oxen ; 

 also a large cist close to the skeletons ; but owing to the great 

 height of the barrow, and the large stones continually rolling down 

 upon the labourers, he was obliged to stop his operations/' 



In 1864 excavations were again made by Dr. Thurnam, and an 

 account of the results was published by him in the Journal of the 

 Anthropological Society (I. 472, &c). He found the remains of 

 the skeletons as left by Mr. Cunnington more than sixty years 

 previously. Four skulls were obtained tolerably perfect. Of these 

 measurements are given in a table. 2 There were also fragments of 

 the skull of a girl of eight or ten years, and the jaw of a child ; the 

 Doctor found, altogether, traces of ten or eleven skeletons. There 

 were many fragments of cleft skulls, and one of the more perfect 



1 Mr. Wyndham favoured the idea that these large oblong barrows were 

 battle barrows. On this subject Mr. Cunnington remarked, in reply, " It ap- 

 pears strange that the dead bodies, if of the victorious party, shonld have been 

 interred with so little ceremony, and so broken up ; and if they were the bodies 

 of an enemy, it is remarkable that those who constructed the barrow should have 

 taken the pains to pave the bottom and to collect such large flints and stones to 

 form the ridge over them in the centre." 



2 These, with more than one hundred other skulls, from Wiltshire barrrows, 

 were sold, at Dr. Thurnam's death, to the Cambridge Museum. 



