Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar. T. Rice Holmes
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is uncertain. No bronze has been found in them, but abundance of pottery, and cists which are undoubtedly later than the chambers. One, standing on the cliff which rises above Cape Cornwall, contained a double-walled dome, and reminded its explorer of the huge tope at Bhojpur.408
Chambered cairns of a peculiar kind remain in Argyllshire and the islands of Islay and Arran, the like of which have been discovered nowhere else except on the opposite coast of Ireland.409 Nearly all the pottery that has been found in them closely resembles that of the dolmens of North-Western France and the Pyrenees, while none exactly like it has been exhumed in England; and, combining these facts with the geographical position of the sepulchres themselves, the antiquary who has explored them concludes that their builders came late in the Neolithic Age from Brittany, and, sailing up St. George’s Channel, settled on the opposite shores of Scotland and Ireland.410 Physically, however, they belonged, as their skeletons show, to the same stock as the great majority of the neolithic people of Britain.411
Inhumation and incineration.
Here, as also in France412 and Northern Germany,413 funerals were performed both by inhumation and incineration. In the barrows of South-Western Britain, cremation, although not unknown, was very rare;414 in Yorkshire415 and the chambered cairns of Bute,416 almost universal. Judging from the analogy of other countries and from the fact that inhumation persisted into the Bronze Age, and then for a long period was generally superseded by cremation,417 it seems probable that the latter was not introduced until a comparatively late epoch.418 The two modes of burial were, however, contemporaneous not only in different parts of the country but in the same district and in the same grave. Burnt and unburnt bones have been found lying together in such a manner as to prove that they had been interred at the same time.419 Cremation was generally performed in the chamber or on the floor of the barrow where the body was deposited.420 When the corpse was buried entire, it was usually laid upon the ground421 with the knees doubled up towards the chin, or placed sitting in a similar posture by the side of the tomb.422 This custom, which was almost universal in prehistoric times, and is still practised by many savages, is best explained by the assumption that it was thought seemly to bury the dead in the position in which they had slept, and that, for the sake of warmth, they had commonly lain down to rest in an attitude which most of us have occasionally adopted for the same reason.423 In some barrows only single skeletons have been found; but generally in unchambered barrows, where more than two persons had been buried in one grave, the bones lay heaped together as though the bodies had been unceremoniously flung down;424 while in certain cases they were found disjointed in such wise that it was evident that the dead had not been buried entire, or, as is often the case in savage countries and even in Brittany and the Catholic cantons of Switzerland, until long after the flesh had decayed.425 The Balearic islanders, in the time of Diodorus Siculus,426 used to sever the bodies of their dead in pieces and inter them in urns; and the same practice prevailed in Spain in the Age of Bronze.427 British explorers, moreover, have often noticed, in opening barrows, that skeletons were incomplete, many of the bones being absent.428 Since the piled skeletons belonged to old and young, male and female, it can only be concluded that corpses were often stored, as in a mortuary, until a sufficient number had accumulated, and then buried all together.429 In a barrow situated at Upper Swell in Gloucestershire, Rolleston found evidence which convinced him that interments were sometimes made successively upon the same spot. An undisturbed skeleton was here surrounded by a great quantity of bones, the arrangement of which was such that he was forced to conclude that they had been displaced in order to make room for it.430 In chambered barrows successive interments were of course regular, gallery and chamber being designed to admit them.
Human sacrifice.
Thurnam was convinced that in the barrows which he explored there were unmistakable evidences of human sacrifice. In nearly all of them he found fractured skulls, the broken edges of which were so sharp that he inferred that the skull had been cleft in life by a club or a stone axe; while in some cases one skull only was unmutilated. His conclusion was that the few entire skulls were those of chiefs or their relatives, while the others belonged to slaves or captives who had been sacrificed. In one instance, in which only two interments were met with, the broken skull was that of a woman, while the bones of the other corpse, which belonged to a man, had been imperfectly burned. Thurnam argued that the burnt bones belonged to a chief, and that the woman was his wife.431 Rolleston, on the other hand, could see no reason for believing that the broken skulls had been cleft deliberately.432 He pointed out that the fragments were so numerous that if the persons to whom they belonged had been sacrificed, they must have been slaughtered by a succession of wanton blows; that the fractures were utterly different from those of skulls which are known to have been broken by deliberate blows, and resemble those which have been caused by the shifting of soil or the collapse of stones; and he argues that from what we know of the sentiments of savage and barbarian peoples it is in the last degree improbable that slaves or captives, if they had been sacrificed, would have been allowed to repose side by side with their lords. Nevertheless it is not safe to reject all the evidence which Thurnam adduced. In a round barrow near Stonehenge Hoare found a skull which appeared to have been cut in two as deftly as by a surgical instrument;433 and one may believe that what was done in the Bronze Age was not unknown in the Age of Stone. When we remember that evidences of human sacrifice have been detected in French neolithic tombs,434 and that the practice was universal in ancient times,435 we shall be safe in assuming that neolithic Britain was no exception to the rule that after a chieftain’s obsequies his dependents were immolated in order that their souls might be set free to minister to his.436
Traces (?) of cannibalism.
But Thurnam also believed that the long barrows contained evidences of cannibalism.437 The numerous passages in which ancient writers accused the inhabitants of the British Isles of devouring their own kind refer mainly to the Irish:438 but they were speaking of their contemporaries; and when some of the Yorkshire barrows were opened it was evident that the flesh had been removed from the bodies before they were interred.439 But even if cannibalism was practised in our Neolithic Age, the motive was not hunger. The numerous bones of oxen, swine, red deer, goats, and horses440 which are found in the barrows, mingled with fragments of pottery, prove that a funeral was an occasion for a feast, and may show that, as in later times, offerings were made to the ghosts of the dead.441 If human flesh was eaten, it was doubtless in the hope that moral qualities which had distinguished the dead might be absorbed by the living.442
Interment of animals.
Perhaps the most curious feature in neolithic interments is that animals were sometimes buried entire.443 It is not indeed surprising that at Eyford in Gloucestershire there was buried with a woman a dog which may have been her companion;444 but in a long barrow near Stonehenge was found the skeleton of a goose which had evidently not been eaten.445 Was it a sign that neolithic people had the same religious prejudice against eating geese which Caesar noted,446 or had this goose been sacrificed?447
Religion.
We can hardly err in regarding the sepulchral monuments on which such stupendous labour was expended as witnesses of a belief which may be called religious, and perhaps as a further illustration of the apophthegm, ‘The first begetter of gods on earth was fear’.448 For if the spirits of ancestors are believed by savage tribes to be on the whole well disposed towards those whom they leave behind, yet when their bodies do not receive due burial their wrath is terrible.449 The most eminent of modern French archaeologists maintains that the dolmens, chambered tombs, and standing stones of France were erected under the influence of Druids;450 and in this country also the belief has long been growing that Druidism was of non-Celtic and neolithic origin: but since our knowledge of it is confined to the period when it was a Celtic institution, we must defer our consideration of it.451 But, apart from the graves themselves, there is hardly any certain evidence in our neolithic interments of religious belief. While in France, Scandinavia, Northern Germany, and other lands, the tombs of this period were stored with implements, ornaments, and weapons, the spirits of which were doubtless consecrated to the service of the dead,452 such relics are so rare in Britain453 that unless the barrows were despoiled in bygone days by heedless explorers, we can only suppose that it was not generally thought necessary to provide those who had passed away with the means of continuing their life in another world; and it may be that the few arrow-heads, flakes,