102 



Notes on BarroiC'digging8. 



instances the legs were doubled up, and has led his readers to sup- 

 pose that in all of them the knees were bent. Without giving 

 the orientations, he has mentioned two more skeletons as having 

 been laid on their left side, and two on their back. With regard 

 to these various burial customs he has remarked that the early 

 custom was to place the head to the north, and that at a later 

 period (the iron age) when the body was laid at full length, the 

 heads were placed at random in a variety of directions. Upon 

 meeting with an instance of the latter kind he says : "here we 

 find an interment of a later era, of the same period as that before 

 described on Rodtnead down, when the custom of gathering up the 

 legs had ceased, and when the use of iron was more generally 

 adopted : for in the early tumuli, none of that metal has ever been 

 found." (Ancient Wilts, p. 174.) We are not to understand 

 from this remark that with the introduction of iron the custom of 

 gathering up the legs actually ceased, for we have an instance to 

 the contrary in one of the interments belonging to the group 

 (barrow No. 3) I have been describing, and we know that it con- 

 tinued to be in use in the early Anglo-Saxon period. 



Eastward of this group of barrows, across the road leading from 

 Collingbourne to Salisbury, in the direction of Windmill hill, there 

 are two small barrows which were examined in November, 1861. 

 At about one foot from the apex of one, were found a small Roman 

 coin, much corroded, a piece of slate in which a hole had been 

 begun to be drilled, and a fragment of Samian pottery. A few 

 fragments of coarse dark pottery were scattered about the mound, 

 indicating a previous disturbance. Near to this barrow is a second, 

 part of which has been removed in making a roadway. A large 

 number of flints lay close under the turf, and among them were 

 many fragments of two large urns (mouths downwards) of dark, 

 coarse, and thick ware, which originally contained human bones. 

 The urns rested on a layer, one foot thick, of large flints, and 

 under them, in the centre of the barrow, was a circular hole dug 

 in the chalk, two feet wide and two feet deep, containing a mass of 

 charcoal and incinerated human bones. The bottom and sides of 

 the hole were red and discoloured by fire. 



