132 



Vestiges of the Earliest Inhabitants of Wiltshire. 



It remains only to examine their mode of sepulture. It was the 

 custom among some of the ancient Britons to lay the bodies of 

 their dead in the earth, and among others to burn them previous 

 to interment, after the manner of many Eastern and Southern 

 nations-: both methods seem to have been practised contemporane- 

 ously. 1 Those who buried their dead unburnt, often enveloped 

 them in skins, or some other material ; and then laid them upon a 

 bed of moss or fern, before they covered them with earth. 2 And 

 this ancient custom of providing a grassy couch for the remains of 

 the deceased was long retained, from an intuitive feeling, (beauti- 

 fully expressed by Sir Thomas Browne, in his Hydriotaphia, when 

 referring to the sepulture of the ancients he says,) "that they 

 wished their bones might lie soft, and the earth be light upon 

 them." And then, as their conviction of a future 3 life suggested 

 to them nothing more than a repetition of the joys and occupations 

 of the present, affection prompted them to bury his arms and 

 ornaments with the deceased owner, 4 so that he might be duly 

 provided with all that he most needed on awaking in the happy 



Diodorus even declares that the pyramids themselves were built by the help of 

 mounds, (i. 62 : 6,) but this seems improbable. 



"We may theu, I think, conclude, that in the earlier times, most nations who 

 affected massive architecture had recourse to the same simple but uneconomical 

 plan : and it is the most reasonable supposition that the cross-stones at Stone- 

 henge, and the massive cap-stones of our Cromlechs, were placed in the positions 

 where we now find them by means of inclined planes, in the former 

 case afterwards cleared away, and in the latter remaining and increased as 

 protections to the tomb. [Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchies, vol. i., p.p. 495 — 

 500, and ii., 461 — 2. Layard's Monuments, 2nd series, Plates 10 to 17. Also 

 his Nineveh and Babylon, p. 112.] 



1 Sir R. Hoare's Ancient Wilts, vol. i., p. 23, 24, 28. 

 Potter's Grecian Antiquities, vol. ii., 208. 

 Bloomfield's Thucydides, vol. i., p, 355. 



2 Ten years diggings in Celtic and Saxon grave-hills, by Thomas Bateman, 

 p. 123. 



3 So in the ancient Chaldsean tombs, while the floor was paved with brick 

 similar to that used for the roof and sides : upon this floor was commonly spread 

 a matting of reeds, and the body was laid upon the matting. [Rawlinson's 

 Ancient Monarchies, vol. i., p. 109.] 



4 For flint arrow heads, the produce of barrows opened by him, see Sir 

 R. Hoare's Ancient Wilts, vol. i., 104, 164, 183, 209, &c, and for flint spear 

 heads see vol. i, p. 39, 163, 172. Also Archaeological Journal, vol. viii., 344. 



