Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar. T. Rice Holmes
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relics have been found that would seem to have belonged to persons of some wealth;742 for while every cist that has been observed in Devonshire either is or was once covered by a mound,743 there are many in Northumberland, as in Scotland, which were left without any monument.744
Perhaps the most curious of all the burial grounds of the Bronze Age is one which has been lately explored at Bleasdale in Lancashire, and which may be compared with the wooden chamber in the neolithic Wor Barrow on Cranborne Chase.745 Here, on a moorland knoll surrounded by an amphitheatre of hills, is a circle made not of stones but of wooden logs closely planted in a trench, and containing a smaller circle, which consists of a bank with a ditch on its inner side. Within this ditch is a low mound, concealing another circle of logs, in the centre of which were found two sepulchral urns. The ditch is floored with poles, which may perhaps have been trodden by worshippers who walked in ceremonial procession around the grave; for the bottom of a ditch surrounding a barrow near Blandford, which was opened towards the end of the last century, was worn into a smooth track by human feet.746
Hardly less remarkable is a circle near Port Erin in the Isle of Man, formed of eighteen cists, in six separate sets, each composed of three arranged in the shape of the letter T, two being placed end to end along the circumference, while the third extended outwards at right angles.747
In Britain, as in other countries, cenotaphs were erected in honour of the dead whose remains could not be found. Barrows have been opened within which, after the most careful scrutiny, not the faintest indication could be detected of any burial, although in one there was an empty urn and in another a small stone pavement, enclosed by a miniature stone circle and resting upon burnt earth, which suggested that an ideal cremation had been performed.748 It seems possible that Silbury Hill was a monument of this sort. This stupendous earthwork, which commands the Bath road, six miles west of Marlborough, is one hundred and thirty-five feet high and covers about five acres. The cost of its erection at the present day would be not less than twenty thousand pounds.749 In 1777 a shaft was sunk from the top to the bottom; and in 1849 a tunnel was driven from the side to the centre. No trace of burial was found:750 but even primary interments were not always made at the centre of a barrow; and the labour of proving, if it could be proved, that Silbury Hill was not erected over a grave would be out of all proportion with the result. At all events its purpose was connected with sepulchral usage. Recent excavations in the meadow west and north of the hill are believed to have shown that it was originally surrounded by a trench, which was filled with water; and a local antiquary has suggested that the mound was an artificial stronghold!751 But what clan would have undertaken this herculean labour in a district where every hill was suitable for defence, and of what use would the mound have been for such a purpose?
Chronology of the barrows.
The chronology of the barrows is somewhat perplexing. There is hardly a single absolutely certain instance in which a socketed celt, a sword, or a socketed spear-head has been found in a barrow, associated with an interment;752 and most antiquaries infer that the round barrows generally belong to the earliest period of the Bronze Age.753 It would follow that during not less than four or five centuries the practice of raising mounds over graves was discontinued, and one could only wonder how it came to be revived at the beginning of the Iron Age. It has indeed been argued that the absence of swords is no proof that they were not used when barrows were being erected, but merely shows that it was not customary to bury costly weapons which were not habitually worn.754 It seems difficult, however, to explain why a distinction should have been drawn between swords and socketed celts, on the one hand, and knives, daggers, and awls, which were often buried, on the other.755 Some may accept the suggestion that in the later period of the Bronze Age, when cremation had presumably become general, the practice of burying weapons or ornaments had ceased;756 but in the Early Iron Age it was not uncommon.757 It would seem, moreover, that in one or two instances socketed weapons were laid with the dead;758 and Dr. Arthur Evans, pointing out that an amber necklace, found in one of the barrows near Stonehenge, is identical in form and arrangement with the amber necklaces of Hallstatt, boldly affirms that the disk-shaped barrows of Wiltshire belong to the end of the Bronze Age.759 Be this, however, as it may, it is morally certain that some of the glass beads which abounded in the graves of South Wiltshire were contemporary with socketed weapons; and a competent antiquary, who has diligently examined their associations, concludes that they belonged to the eighth and seventh centuries before the Christian era.760 Moreover, an earthenware vessel of the kind which are called incense-cups, found in a barrow at Bulford, near Amesbury, was ornamented with concentric circles;761 and, as we have seen,762 this form of decoration, which is common on the covering stones of cists in Scotland and in the north of England,763 is also characteristic of socketed celts and unknown on implements of earlier date. The number of celts which have been found in barrows is so small that it would be premature to lay stress upon the fact that only one belonged to the socketed type;764 and there may have been some reason, of which we are ignorant, for the absence of spear-heads and swords. In Gaul, at all events, relics belonging to every phase of the bronze culture have been exhumed from burial mounds.765
Cremation and inhumation.
In the Bronze Age, as in the period of the long barrows, both cremation and inhumation were practised in Britain. In Cleveland and on the coast between Scarborough and Whitby cremation was almost invariable:766 in Northumberland nearly twice as common as inhumation.767 In Derbyshire,768 on the other hand, inhumation interments are slightly commoner than those by cremation; and on the Yorkshire Wolds more than three times as numerous.769 In Wiltshire and Dorsetshire inhumation is as rare as cremation on the Wolds; and in Gloucestershire, Devonshire, Cornwall, Merioneth, Carnarvon, and Denbigh cremation is practically universal.770 In Devonshire interments by inhumation have been found, but never in barrows.771 In Scotland the numbers are about equal.772
Archaeologists generally hold that cremation was not practised in the Bronze Age until a comparatively late date—probably not before 1000 B.C.; and this view seems at first sight to be supported by the facts that it was unknown in Scandinavia in the earlier period;773 that cinerary urns were not the earliest of the sepulchral vessels; and that drinking-cups, which were in use before any of the others, although they continued to be used after cinerary urns had been introduced,774 are generally found with unburnt skeletons, and have never been found with the cremation interments in Cleveland.775 On the other hand, in Brittany in the centuries which immediately followed the introduction of metallurgy cremation was almost invariable;776 burnt bones, as we shall presently see, were often buried without urns; and since cremation was not uncommon in the Neolithic Age, the custom probably persisted into the Bronze Age independently of its introduction by immigrants who possessed weapons of bronze. Indeed, unless cremation existed from the very beginning of the Round Barrow period, it seems impossible to account for the fact that in the sepulchres of certain districts not a single instance of inhumation has ever been observed. Before the inhabitants of Bute emerged from their Stone Age they practised both cremation and inhumation; and there is no evidence that the latter was earlier than the former.777 Not infrequently both in Scotland and in many parts of England skeletons and burnt bones reposed under the same cairn, in the same barrow, within the same stone circle, even in the same cist; and in some cases they were buried at the same time.778 A cairn has been opened at Greenhill in Fifeshire, in which four different modes of sepulture had been practised: cremated remains had been laid in the earth, and beneath a stone slab; an unburnt body had been buried in a cist, and another lowered into a pit.779 In some barrows one unburnt body has been found accompanied by several deposits of burnt bones; and it has been inferred that, even after cremation had become general, the bodies of chieftains were very rarely burned, although those of their wives and retainers were.780 It is possible that this distinction may sometimes and in some places have been maintained; but obviously it was very unusual. For otherwise we should be compelled to suppose that in Cleveland and in those western districts in which cremation was universal no chiefs were buried in barrows at all, although it is universally admitted that it was in their honour that barrows were erected. And if the presence of an unburnt body surrounded by urns is a sign that wife and dependents were sacrificed in honour of the dead chief, what conclusion is to be based upon the association of nine skeletons with a single cremated interment?781 On the Yorkshire Wolds the question as to which method should be adopted had nothing to do either with rank or sex or age;782 and one may reasonably suppose that