Chapter IV: The Bronze Age and the Voyage of Pytheas (2)

On the borders of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire, and doubtless also in other parts of Britain, small communities erected earthworks for permanent occupation, which differed in size, situation, and mode of construction from the great hill-forts, but were nevertheless adapted to some extent for defence. A considerable number of small entrenchments, approximately square in outline, are scattered over the downs in these two counties; and three of them--Martin Down Camp, South Lodge Camp, and Handley Hill Camp--have been thoroughly excavated. The results left it doubtful whether the last-named had not been constructed in Roman times;[634] but the other two belonged unmistakably to the Bronze Age. Martin Down Camp covered about two acres; and South Lodge Camp only three-quarters of an acre. The ramparts, which were very low, were probably strengthened by stockades. Both camps were situated not on the summits of hills but in sheltered nooks, and were probably used as enclosures for cattle; but an abundance of broken pottery, animal bones, and burnt cooking flints proved that they had also been inhabited by man.[635]

But the evidence for describing the domestic life of our Bronze Age is insignificant in comparison with that which is afforded by the Swiss lake-dwellings. The most remarkable British habitation of that time, indeed almost the only one which can rival those of Switzerland in the richness of its remains, is not a hut, not even an artificial shelter of the poorest kind. In 1859 some quarrymen were removing limestone from a ravine formed by the Stanhope Burn, a tributary of the Wear, when they discovered the now [Sidenote: The Heathery Burn Cave.] far-famed Heathery Burn Cave. Antiquaries hurried to the spot; and when a layer of stalagmite had been removed relics began to be found. During thirteen years exploration went on; and finally, besides the bones of the family who had occupied the cave, those of the animals on which they had fed, and the shells of mussels, cockles, and limpets, a vast number of tools, weapons, utensils, and ornaments were collected, which belonged to the closing period of the Bronze Age. A pair of bronze tongs, unique in Britain, and one-half of a mould for casting socketed celts showed that they had been independent of bronze founders; and their outfit comprised two swords, seven spear-heads, nineteen socketed axes, two chisels, three gouges, two socketed knives, a tanged knife, a razor, two implements of deer’s horn, three bone knives, a stone spindle-whorl and some flint flakes, fifteen bronze and four bone pins, a bronze cauldron, a gold bracelet, numerous penannular bronze bracelets, including one which was so small that it must have been worn by a little girl, eight large bronze bangles evidently intended to be worn on the upper arm, six bronze disks, whetstones, buttons, and other articles too numerous to mention. Indeed the only bronze objects of any importance which are not represented in the collection are daggers, hammers, sickles, and shields.[636] The cauldron, which is shaped like a truncated cone with the broad end uppermost, belongs to a class of vessels which were not made before the close of the Bronze Age, and are exceedingly rare in England, but not uncommon in Scotland and Ireland. It closely resembles one which was dredged up from the bed of the Thames near Battersea, and which may be seen in the British Museum; and perhaps it may have come in the course of trade from Etruria, where the type originated.[637] It had been used for cooking, and was associated with numerous fragments of earthenware. The domestic pottery of the Bronze Age, like the sepulchral vessels, was made by hand,[638] and, unlike them, was fitted to endure rough usage; but while the collection obtained from the cave and nearly all the other examples that have been found are unornamented, the table ware of Dartmoor hardly differs from that which came from the barrows of the same district and is as elaborately decorated.[639] It is also remarkable that many kinds of household utensils--bowls and jars, pans and pannikins, cooking pots, pots for boiling water or meal, pipkins, cups, and strainers--have been discovered in barrows. Some, which were entire, had apparently been deposited instead of regular sepulchral vessels; but many were in fragments, and may have been used in funeral feasts.[640]

The exploration of the Heathery Burn Cave not only illustrates the life of the Bronze Age; it also shows that even in districts far remote from the Continent the use of bronze was not confined to a conquering people but spread to the descendants of the older population. The skeletons in the cave were wholly different from the types which are associated with the round barrows, and closely resembled those which have been recovered from the beds of rivers in England and Ireland.[641]

But what is most remarkable is the contrast between the wealth of these cave-dwellers and the discomfort in which they lived. Here was a family well armed, equipped with the best tools of the time, owning flocks and herds, possessing land which they cultivated, and rich enough to load their women with ornaments, yet content to live in a dark damp cavern traversed by a stream, which one night rose in flood and drowned them in their sleep. It has been suggested that they had huts in the neighbourhood, and only resorted to the cave on extraordinary occasions.[642] What could have induced them to live in it even for a day is difficult to conceive; but that they inhabited it, if not permanently, at least for long periods, is proved by the abundance of pottery as well as by the heaps of refuse which represented the remains of a long succession of meals.[643]

[Sidenote: Dress.]

The spindle-whorls of stone, bone, and baked clay which have been found in this cave, in barrows,[644] hut-circles, and elsewhere, and hardly differ from those which, a few years ago, were commonly used in Scottish villages and in many parts of the Continent,[645] are not the only relics that bear witness to the development of dress during the Bronze Age. The deer-horn implements which belonged to the cave-dwellers and exactly resemble others that were obtained from the sites of Swiss lake-dwellings, were probably used in weaving.[646] Bone tweezers from barrows in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire and bronze tweezers from Anglesey were perhaps designed for drawing thread through holes in leather: but they may also have been used for extracting superfluous hairs;[647] and the numerous razors[648] that have come to light, some of which have no parallel in any foreign country, show that Britons, even in the furthest north, shaved their beards many centuries before Caesar noticed the custom.[649] Leathern garments, as we have seen, were largely worn:[650] indeed the remains of a stitched leathern dress have been recovered from a barrow in Northumberland;[651] but more interesting are pieces of the woollen and linen clothes in which the dead were sometimes buried.[652] Nor was the apparel of the Bronze Age devoid of ornament, or fastened merely with thorns, like that of the Germans of a far later period [Sidenote: Pins and buttons.] whom Tacitus[653] described. Pins of bone or bronze, some certainly worn with dresses, others perhaps in the hair, were not uncommon; and we have seen how large a store was possessed by a single family.[654] Even the indigent people of the Yorkshire Wolds wore buttons not only of stone, bone, and wood, but of jet, some of which were beautifully ornamented with the pattern of a Maltese cross.[655] During the earlier part of the Bronze Age buttons were pierced on the under side with V-shaped holes, which enabled them to be sewn on to the dress--a device which, on the Continent, was inherited from the Stone Age; and, as far as can be judged from the skeletons with which they are associated, they were used only by men. At a later time the perforation was apparently superseded by a raised loop, which is found on buttons of bronze.[656] In Wiltshire and Norfolk chiefs actually adorned their tunics with buttons of gold.[657] Ivory buttons and ivory pins have been unearthed in Wiltshire; and amber buttons were among the ornaments not only of that rich district but of Norfolk and even of Yorkshire and Dorsetshire.[658] Nor were these costly materials used only for personal adornment. A [Sidenote: Weapons mounted with gold or amber.] bronze dagger with an ivory handle has been obtained from a barrow near Bere Regis in Dorsetshire:[659] an archer’s wrist-guard or bracer of bone, found at Kellythorpe in the East Riding, was decorated with bronze studs, plated with gold:[660] a barrow on Hammeldon Down in Devonshire has yielded a dagger hilt of red amber inlaid with pins of gold;[661] and from a barrow near Normanton in South Wiltshire Hoare obtained a dagger with a wooden handle exquisitely inlaid in a chevron pattern with thousands of golden rivets, each smaller than the smallest pin. ‘It could not,’ he wrote, ‘be surpassed (if, indeed, equalled) by the most able workman of modern times.’[662] With such a weapon hanging at his side and his dress glittering with gold or amber studs, a British chieftain must have made a splendid show. But some were not content with such display. Early in the last century a cairn was opened at Mold in Flintshire, which was said by the peasants of the country-side to be haunted by a ghost in golden armour. Three hundred loads of stones were carted away; and then appeared a skeleton, accompanied by three hundred amber beads that had once formed a necklace, and a golden peytrel, mounted on a copper plate, with which the owner had decorated his horse’s breast.[663] This interment indeed belonged to the very latest period of the Bronze Age; but much earlier was the barrow of Upton Lovel in South Wiltshire, which contained along with personal ornaments [Sidenote: Ornaments.] of gold an amber necklace of a thousand beads that had been worn not by a woman but by a man.[664]

But although necklets and bracelets and other ornaments were commonly worn by knights and Druids in Gaul, their use in this country seems to have been generally restricted to women; and, whatever the reason may have been, the women of Britain, then as now, wore less jewellery than those of foreign countries.[665] Still, many specimens, most of which belonged to late periods, are to be seen in the museums which illustrate the culture of the Bronze Age; but for the most part they were either imported or fashioned after foreign designs.[666] Bronze ornaments are comparatively rare[667] although, as we have seen, the family who lived in the Heathery Burn Cave possessed many, and their armlets are absolutely unique.[668] In Scotland as well as in the wealthier parts of England women displayed gold torques of various patterns, some plain, others penannular, which resembled large bangles, others again funicular, of twisted ribbon-like form, or wrought with a pattern like the thread of a screw;[669] while gold bracelets in equal variety clasped their wrists; and an ivory armlet has been found in a Wiltshire barrow.[670] In 1863 a ploughman, guiding his team at Mountfield in Sussex, turned up a hoard of gold ornaments weighing eleven pounds.[671] A hoard buried in Elginshire contained no less than three dozen gold armlets, belonging to the latest period of the Scottish Bronze Age; and an armlet of twisted wires, made to encircle the arm in four coils, which was considered the finest specimen of the goldsmith’s art of this period ever found in Scotland, was cut up and melted down by an Edinburgh jeweller.[672] The most interesting, however, of all the Scottish gold ornaments are the crescent-shaped lunettes, worn round the neck, which were of Irish origin, and of which only four English specimens are known.[673] They would seem to be of early date; for two were found in association with a flat celt.[674] Rings were extremely rare;[675] and ear-rings have only been met with in Derbyshire, the East Riding of Yorkshire, and the north of Scotland.[676] A pair which was found in a grave in Morayshire can only be described as hideous. They were made of gold, in shape like an open shell or pod, five inches and a half long, and suspended at right angles to the hook.[677] Perhaps the most beautiful and characteristic ornaments of the Bronze Age were the jet necklaces, which were very common in Scotland and comparatively rare in Southern Britain, though they were worn in Northumberland, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and on the Yorkshire Wolds. They generally consisted of flat plates, adorned with chevron or lozenge patterns, and strung together by bugle-shaped beads.[678] A similar necklace of quadrangular amber tablets, connected by beads of the same material, formed part of the treasures of a chieftain’s wife in Wiltshire, and was deposited in one of the barrows at Lake, near Stonehenge.[679] Amber was indeed the most fashionable of all ornaments in this region, where it was worn sometimes alone, sometimes in combination with jet and with blue or green glass beads. In full dress, with one of these necklaces hanging over her bosom, gold bracelets on her arms, a pair of gold disks, bearing devices like a Greek cross, on her dress, and pins of bronze, which shone like gold, in her hair, a Wiltshire dame must have surpassed even her husband in splendour.[680]

Those who could not afford such costly ornaments were not always obliged to content themselves with perforated boars’ teeth or bone beads; for, incredible as it may appear, sham jewellery was in vogue even in the Bronze Age. Not many years ago three penannular rings, picked up by a ploughman near Forfar, were found to consist of bronze coated with gold leaf.[681]

[Sidenote: Distribution of wealth: sources of gold, ivory, and amber.]

While these things help us to realize the circumstances of the people who wore them, they also throw light upon the distribution of wealth, and supplement the information which we have already obtained from implements and weapons about internal trade and foreign commerce. Possibly some difference of burial customs may account for the comparative abundance of gold ornaments in Scotland and the almost entire absence of trinkets of any kind in Cornwall; but the evidence is generally accepted which seems to point to the conclusion that the inhabitants of Wiltshire--especially of Salisbury Plain--were richer than those of any other part of Southern Britain. The most expensive ornaments--amber, gold, ivory, and glass--have been found there in considerable numbers; and all of them must have been imported, directly or indirectly, in some cases from abroad. The glass beads, which, strictly speaking, were made of vitreous paste, perhaps came from the Mediterranean; and a blue one of real glass with yellow spirals, taken from a Ross-shire barrow, had its counterparts in the cemetery of Hallstatt.[682] Where the ivory was procured is doubtful: objects of this material, apparently made from the fossilized tusks of a mammoth, lay among the relics in the Paviland Cave in Glamorganshire;[683] but most of the mammoth tusks in this country are too decomposed to be susceptible of manufacture.[684] Gold has been obtained from most of the alluvial gravels in the West of England that have been worked for tin;[685] but many of the English and perhaps all the Scottish gold ornaments were made of gold that had been won in Ireland, which has been justly called the El Dorado of the ancient world. Many gold ornaments in Denmark are of Irish origin; and the leading archaeologist of Scandinavia affirms that the metal-workers of his own country and of France imported Irish gold.[686] Amber has been washed ashore at Deal and on other parts of the east coast; and the necklaces of Wiltshire may perhaps have been generally of British material as well as of British workmanship:[687] but those of Ireland were probably made from amber that had come from Scandinavia,[688] and may have been taken in exchange for gold. In the time of Augustus amber was one of the British imports;[689] and, although at least one necklace found its way even to Orkney,[690] its rarity in Scotland and in the northern counties of England suggests that it was imported even in the Bronze Age.[691] Indeed, since amber was so much commoner in Wiltshire than elsewhere, it would seem probable that it came generally from abroad.[692]

[Sidenote: Why was Wiltshire exceptionally rich in ornaments?]

But why was it so abundant in Wiltshire? Why are gold, amber, and ivory rare even in the other southern counties, and wholly absent in Derbyshire, where round barrows are so numerous?[693] Why was the wealth of Wiltshire, so far as it can be estimated from the evidence of the graves, almost entirely concentrated in the south, and especially in the district round Stonehenge?[694] The modern population of South Wiltshire is very scanty: Salisbury Plain is barren; and the only soil at all fertile is in the valleys of the Wiley and the Avon.[695] One would have expected to find that the wealthiest part of Britain was the south-east; and that in the prehistoric period, as in the time of Caesar, the richest of all was Kent. Yet Kent has yielded very few glass beads or gold ornaments of the Bronze Age, and not one of amber or ivory. Doubtless there were once many barrows in the south-eastern counties which have been rifled or ploughed down; but jewellery was not deposited only in barrows; and so many bronze tools and weapons have been found in this region that the scarcity of barrows will not account for the rarity of ornaments. No explanation, so far as I know, has ever been offered; and I offer one with diffidence. First, it is not certain, and indeed improbable, that more than a small proportion of the riches that have been unearthed from the sepulchres of South Wiltshire belonged to families who had lived in the neighbourhood. The prodigious abundance of barrows around Stonehenge can only be explained by supposing that the bodies of chieftains, of their wives and children, were brought from distant parts to be buried there, as to a hallowed spot. Secondly, it is conceivable that the clans which, early in the Bronze Age, settled in South Wiltshire were numerically stronger, better organized, or better armed than their neighbours, and that much of their wealth may have been obtained by plunder.

[Sidenote: British trade and the spiral.]

Another indication of ancient British trade appears in the geographical distribution of the spiral. This form of decoration, which was common in Egyptian and Aegean art, travelled along the route of the amber trade by the Danube valley and Hungary to Scandinavia, and ultimately reached the British Isles, where, however, it occurs only on stone balls,[696] the stones of cists, and megalithic monuments, of which the most conspicuous example is New Grange in the county Meath. The spiral is not found on objects of the Bronze Age in Spain, nor in France except on the dolmen of Gavr’ Inis in Brittany and in a grave in the department of the Aube: in the British Isles it is confined to Scotland, Cumberland, Lancashire, and Northumberland, the north of Ireland,[697] and Merionethshire (which may have owed its solitary specimen to Irish influence); and, moreover, in the British Isles and Scandinavia spirals are connected by the same device.[698] Scandinavia therefore was undoubtedly the source from which the spiral reached Britain.[699]

[Sidenote: Comparative backwardness of culture in Britain.]

Yet while the reader who has been accustomed to suppose that the Britons even of Caesar’s time were mere savages may be astonished to learn that already in the Bronze Age there was commercial intercourse between Britain and the Continent, he must beware of assuming that his forefathers were on a level with the inhabitants of Central and Southern Europe. Our country has long been the geographical centre of the civilized world: in ancient times it was outside the pale. Regular trade did not exist except with Northern Gaul and, probably towards the end of the age, with Massilia and Phoenician Spain:[700] such articles of commerce as found their way to Britain from Central Europe were flotsam and jetsam. Long after swords had come into use abroad the Briton’s chief weapon was still a stout dagger: bronze was used here for centuries after iron had been adopted in more fortunate lands; and the glass beads of which the women of Wiltshire were so proud would have been scorned by foreign ladies who compared them with their own.[701] Moreover, even in bronze our workmanship never reached the pitch of excellence which the artificers of the north, in their prolonged Bronze Age, were able to attain. Just as the neolithic cutlers of Britain were inferior to those of Denmark, so there is nothing in our museums which can vie with the astonishing splendour of the decorated palstaves and shields, the trumpets and vessels of the Scandinavian region.

[Sidenote: The information obtainable from graves.]

But we shall be better able to understand the relations that existed between our country and the Continent in the Bronze Age when we have studied the graves, the objects other than weapons, implements, and ornaments that have been found within them, and the rude stone monuments with which they were often associated.

[Sidenote: Round barrows, cairns, and sepulchral circles.]

We have seen that round barrows were already being erected before the Bronze Age began, and that they were used not only by the round-headed invaders but also by the older population.[702] After the close of the Neolithic Age no more long barrows were constructed,[703] although some of those which existed were still used even under the Roman occupation;[704] nor were the dead buried, except perhaps in certain Cornish cairns,[705] in chambers which were intended to be opened from time to time. Thenceforward the graves were cists, commonly made of four stones set on edge, which were closed by a fifth once for all after the corpse or burnt bones had been laid within them;[706] or, where no stones could be obtained, holes scooped in the chalk,[707] and sometimes even hollowed trunks of trees or real coffins.[708] Occasionally, however, the body, burnt or unburnt, was laid upon the ground without anything to protect it from the superincumbent mass.[709] When a tumulus was erected, whether it was an earthen barrow or a cairn, its form was usually round and occasionally oval. The change involved degeneration.[710] Galleries were no longer required. The chambered cairns of the north gave way to structureless heaps of stone: the chambered long barrows of England with their portals, entrance-passages, and graceful exterior curves were succeeded by mere mounds.[711]

What would first impress an ordinary wayfarer is the vast number of the round barrows compared with the rarity of those of the older form. The mounds clustered in the immediate neighbourhood of Stonehenge many times outnumber all the long barrows in Britain. Three hundred still exist in an area of twelve square miles; and from one spot hard by the great stones Stukeley counted a hundred and twenty-eight.[712] Again, while the long barrows almost always stand on conspicuous hills, round barrows are sometimes placed on low ground.[713] In certain maritime districts, for instance Cornwall and Brittany, it has been noticed that the monuments of the dead are most thickly strewn in the extreme west, as if the builders had desired that the spirits of those who had gone before them might look upon the setting sun.[714]

The material, it need hardly be said, varied according to the resources of the district. In Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall cairns are almost universal, some being of gigantic size. In 1876 a cairn in Fifeshire was opened; and after more than a thousand cartloads of stones had been removed, a solitary cist appeared, containing one interment.[715] Sometimes, however, mounds of various kinds coexist in the same region: thus in Devonshire we find round barrows, cairns, and small central cairns covered by round barrows.[716] In other counties again barrows made of earth, of chalk, and of earth and chalk mixed may be seen close together.[717] Curiously enough many barrows on the Yorkshire Wolds were constructed of clay which had been fetched from distant places.[718]

Round barrows range in diameter from twenty to one hundred and fifty feet; and while some are even now twenty-four feet high, others barely rise above the level of the surrounding ground.[719] Those of the oldest form, which, however, continued to be erected contemporaneously with others of later types, have some resemblance to a shallow inverted bowl. More than three-fourths of the Wiltshire barrows belong to this variety, which is also prevalent in Yorkshire and almost invariable in Derbyshire, Dorsetshire, Somersetshire and the Orkney Islands.[720] These mounds are occasionally surrounded by shallow ditches, in which cases they represent a transition to the form which is called bell-shaped.[721] Barrows of the latter kind, which stand on a flat area surrounded by a ditch, but not by a bank, and are larger, steeper, and more conical than those of the primitive form, are far more numerous in Wiltshire, and especially round Stonehenge, than elsewhere; although a few exist in other parts of Southern England, and some of the so-called bowl barrows in the East Riding can hardly be distinguished from them.[722] Latest of all were the disk-shaped barrows,--small mounds standing alone, in pairs, or in groups of three, within a circle defined by a ditch, which is fenced on its outer side by a bank. Occasionally the enclosure contains no mound at all, but only a grave dug out of the chalk; on the other hand, in one instance the whole area within the ditch is covered by a low mound. Disk barrows are commonest near Stonehenge, and outside Wiltshire they are hardly to be found except in the adjoining corner of Dorsetshire, on the Cotswold Hills, in Sussex, and, though rarely, in Derbyshire. As they contained ornaments more frequently than the other kinds, it has been supposed that they were specially devoted to the interment of women;[723] but we may accept the explanation that, like the barrows, the ornaments for the most part were comparatively late.

The significance of the ditches and banks has puzzled many antiquaries. There are barrows close to one another, some of which are surrounded by ditches, while others have none; while in districts in which stone is abundant there are barrows enclosed by or enclosing small circles of stones, and others which have neither one nor the other.[724] Perhaps the barrows enclosed by circles are comparatively late, and the stones may sometimes have been intended, wholly or in part, to give form and symmetry to the mound; for in Derbyshire, where the barrows of the Bronze Age are really cairns, a structural improvement was made by building up the whole mound of concentric rings of stones.[725] Again in Wiltshire ditches and banks are invariably complete;[726] whereas on the Yorkshire Wolds banks and ditches or circles of stones are generally incomplete; and this characteristic, which belonged, as we have seen, to certain long barrows,[727] is repeated not only in megalithic circles in the British Isles and in India, but also in rings which are carved on rocks and on the covering stones of cists.[728] It has been suggested that the banks and stone circles were intended to bar the exit of the dreaded spirits of the dead;[729] but if this was the purpose of the builders, why did they leave the barrier imperfect? It is possible that their motive was not superstitious but utilitarian: the break may simply have been a causeway intended to give access to the barrow.[730]

Round barrows and cairns, like long barrows, are commonly supposed to have been erected only as memorials of chiefs, their relatives, and perhaps their honoured retainers;[731] for, it is said, no humble family would have had the needful command of labour: but considering that in Wiltshire, where there are more long barrows than in all the rest of Britain, round barrows are thirty-four times as numerous,[732] it is difficult to accept this opinion. Many of the round barrows are small; and it is surely probable that the poorer clansmen sometimes voluntarily gave their services to provide respected members of their own class with a distinctive monument. Barrows and cairns, however, are not the only sepulchres in which interments of the Bronze Age have been discovered. A cave at Gop, near Rhyl, which had been used as a dwelling, contained a sepulchral vault;[733] and Rains Cave in the same county was used alternately as a dwelling and a cemetery.[734] Many graves also exist over which no mound was erected.[735] Thus on Handley Down in Dorsetshire no less than fifty-two interments of cremated bones were found in holes dug out of the chalk on the western side of a barrow. They were evidently later than the funeral in the barrow itself, and were doubtless the remains of the descendants or connexions of the chief who had been buried there.[736] In Scotland numerous cemeteries, most of which were on knolls or sandhills, were unmarked by any external sign;[737] and at Elton, near Beverley, in the East Riding, more than seventy bodies were interred without a barrow.[738] It has been supposed that such graves belonged to the poor and lowly; and doubtless where they occur in large numbers and are almost or entirely devoid of accompanying relics the assumption is justified.[739] In certain cases also, where one or two large barrows are associated with groups of tiny mounds, the latter were devoted to the humbler members of the tribe. Two of the Scottish cemeteries, however, contained gold armlets, others beautifully ornamented bronze blades;[740] and three of the only four graves in which Pitt-Rivers found the sepulchral vessels which are known as drinking-cups lacked any memorial.[741] These may have been the graves of men of rank; and so may the simple stone cists, in which 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?

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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 it was often settled simply by individual preference. Moreover, the expense of cremation was far greater than that of inhumation;[783] and it is not improbable that long after the former had become prevalent among the wealthy the poor were generally obliged to content themselves with the latter.

Inhumation was accompanied by many varieties of usage. Most of the Wiltshire barrows contained only one interment, though in a few--evidently family tombs--there were two or even more.[784] Those of the Yorkshire Wolds, on the other hand, generally contained several, two or three having sometimes been laid in one grave; and where one only was found the barrow was of the conical kind which is common in Wiltshire.[785] In the Scottish cists also, single burial is the rule, though occasionally husband and wife were interred together, and sometimes a father with his child.[786] The same variety has been noticed in connexion with cremation: a group of eight barrows in Lincolnshire contained one urn each, while inside a barrow in Dorsetshire was found a cairn which covered nearly fifty interments.[787] When a mound was erected, the primary interment was generally made in the centre.[788] The body was almost always laid in the crouched position. In Wiltshire this custom was absolutely, and on the Yorkshire Wolds almost, universal: the same posture indeed was commonly adopted there even when the body was cremated.[789] In Dorsetshire, on the other hand, the extended position appears to have been occasionally met with.[790] When secondary interments have been found, they were generally on the surface of the barrow or just outside it, and were covered with fresh material.[791] There is a barrow on Lord’s Down in Dorsetshire, formed of alternate layers of mould and chalk, which represent no less than five successive interments, each of which was covered by a new tumulus.[792] Almost invariably on the Wolds secondary interments were made on the southern or eastern side of the mound, doubtless in order that the dead might face the sun; and this fancy underlies the prejudice, which still exists, against burying on the northern side of a churchyard.[793] Probably the same purpose is discernible in the orientation of the skeletons. Generally in Wiltshire they were laid with their heads towards the north so that they looked southwards;[794] and although in Yorkshire and elsewhere the head has been found directed to almost every point of the compass, yet, as a general rule, it was so laid as to face the sun: thus when it pointed westward or to the north or south of west, the body was commonly laid upon its right side; when to the east or the adjacent points, upon the left.[795]

It is probable that bodies were generally interred either in the clothes which had been worn in life or in a winding-sheet; for at Kelleythorpe in the East Riding a linen cloth was underlying a skeleton: bones have been found in divers parts of Britain with fragments of woollen or leathern fabrics clinging to them; and buttons in their natural positions on the breast-bone.[796] In one instance Hoare found a skeleton in a disk-barrow near Amesbury, lying on the ground, without cist, grave, or coffin, beneath a heap of stones, and quaintly suggested that the dead man had suffered the doom of Achan.[797] Occasionally, however, corpses were not buried entire; but, as in the Stone Age, the bones were disjointed and interred separately.[798]

When the dead were cremated the customs which governed the disposal of primary and secondary interments remained the same: indeed in the Lord’s Down barrow the latter comprised both skeletons and burnt bones. The mound was sometimes raised over the funeral pile; but more commonly the ashes were brought to the place of interment.[799] Although they were often enclosed in urns, this custom was by no means universal. In the disk-shaped barrows of Wiltshire, in which cremation was almost invariable, urns were very rare: the remains had generally been wrapped in a skin or a linen cloth.[800] In Dorsetshire, on the other hand, except in the north-eastern corner, the customs of which closely resembled those of Wiltshire, urns were used three times out of four;[801] while some barrows have been opened which contained both urns enclosing burnt bones and burnt bones without any urn.[802] Occasionally an urn has been found which, instead of containing the bones, was surrounded by them.[803] Sometimes the urn was placed upright; but much oftener, at least in Wiltshire, it was inverted;[804] and occasionally one urn was inverted as a cover over another.[805] In more than one instance a custom described by Homer had found its way to Britain: the urn which contained the ashes of Patroclus was wrapped in a cloth;[806] and in a barrow in Cambridgeshire, as well as in six of those which Hoare opened, the same ritual was observed.[807] In several Scottish graves tiny urns, containing the remains of infants, were placed inside vessels of ordinary size;[808] and it is remarkable that in a few instances empty cinerary urns have been found in association with unburnt bodies.[809] Why urns were sometimes broken into fragments before they were placed in the grave it would be vain to guess.[810]

[Sidenote: Sepulchral pottery.]

The urns and drinking-cups which have been so often mentioned were not the only kinds of sepulchral pottery. Besides them were bowls which have been called food-vessels and incense-cups. The custom of placing vessels in graves was not, however, universal: both in Wiltshire and in Yorkshire the majority of interments were without them.[811] All four kinds are worth studying, not only as illustrative of funeral customs, but also because they throw light upon the origin of the round-headed invaders and upon the intercourse which subsisted in the Bronze Age between Britain and other lands.[812]

Like the domestic pottery of the same period and of the modern inhabitants of the Hebrides, they were generally made by women: the markings, produced by the impression of finger-tips and finger-nails, with which they were often ornamented, were the work of small hands.[813] The potter’s wheel, which, more than two thousand years before the Christian era, was used in Hissarlik, the town on whose site Troy was afterwards built, was as yet hardly known in Britain,[814] and the British pottery of the Bronze Age was baked at open fires.[815]

Although they all comprise numerous varieties, the four groups are so distinct that an observant eye, after an hour spent in a well-stored museum, or even after studying the illustrations alone, would be able, in almost every instance, to assign this or that specimen to its proper class. Drinking-cups are generally about seven or eight inches high, and fall under three principal types. That which is apparently the earliest and, in Southern Britain, by far the commonest, is globular in its lower part, and rises from the waist into a high brim with straight sides. In cups of the second class an oval body passes into a brim which curves outward. The third kind, almost all the examples of which belong to Northumberland and Scotland, and which, from its accompaniments, would seem to have been the latest, is also somewhat oval in the lower part, and has a very low and more or less straight brim. A few high-brimmed cups have handles, and are not unlike modern tankards. Drinking-cups in general are the handsomest and the most skilfully baked of all the British sepulchral vessels; but in course of time their forms gradually deteriorated, for each generation had inferior models to copy.[816]

Food-vessels, which range between three and eight inches in height, are very diversified in form, and, unlike drinking-cups, vary greatly in quality. They commonly resemble a large cup or bowl with a narrow bottom, and sometimes they are slightly contracted towards the mouth. Many of them have knobs round the neck, which are sometimes perforated, so that they might have been suspended by a cord; and those which have no perforations are doubtless mere survivals.[817]

Cinerary urns, which were certainly introduced later than food-vessels or drinking-cups, are as a rule much larger, although one or two have been found which were as small as the smallest incense-cup. Many of them are more than two feet high. The commonest form resembles a double truncated cone with the base in the centre, the upper being much the smaller of the two; but some urns are cylindrical, barrel-shaped, or even like flower-pots; while a few, which are peculiar to central Dorsetshire, are nearly globular, and, except for the scantiness of their ornament, not unlike certain drinking-cups.[818]

Incense-cups are the smallest, perhaps the latest of all sepulchral vessels, and the most various in form. Some contract from the centre towards the top and the bottom; others expand, others again contract from the bottom to the top. A few resemble saucers in shape; and many are perforated with oval, lozenge-shaped, or vertical holes, one example having as many as twenty-seven.[819]

Drinking-cups have been found on the Continent not only in Germany, Gelderland, and Denmark, from which countries, it should seem, they were introduced into Britain, but also in Spain, Portugal, Brittany, and the Channel Islands.[820] On the Continent they all belong to the Neolithic Age; and this fact alone is sufficient to show that the people who brought them into Britain had no bronze implements.[821] Moreover, although they continued in use in this country during a considerable part of the Bronze Age, they have rarely been found with bronze.[822] Only two specimens have been obtained in Ireland,[823] an additional indication of the erroneousness of the theory which identifies the earliest round-headed invaders who introduced drinking-cups into Britain with the Goidelic Celts. Like food-vessels, drinking-cups were receptacles for solid food or perhaps some kind of porridge; for remains which have been proved by analysis to be animal or vegetable have been found in both.[824]

Food-vessels are unknown outside the British Isles, and are frequent in Ireland,[825] while hardly a single specimen has been found in any of the numerous barrows of Wiltshire or Dorsetshire.[826] Like drinking-cups, they accompany skeletons far more frequently than burnt bones;[827] and they were obviously invented after drinking-cups had been some time in use, though, as it would seem, while incense-cups were still unknown.[828]

Incense-cups, like food-vessels, are common in Ireland as well as in Britain: a few have been found in the Channel Islands; but on the Continent they do not exist. They, too, are rare in Dorsetshire and the western counties,[829] although cremation was even more prevalent there than in Wiltshire, where they are numerous, and although they have hardly ever been found except with cremated remains.[830] It is remarkable that they were often deposited inside the urn and among the burnt bones.[831] The purpose for which they were designed has been a subject of much controversy. It is difficult to believe that they were really censers, for incense was probably not obtainable in Britain, though amber, which has occasionally been used as incense, may possibly have been burned in them. The numerous holes with which so many of them are pierced, and which would have stimulated combustion, might suggest that they were intended to carry the sacred fire from which the funeral pile was to be lighted; but as many specimens contain no holes it is impossible to acquiesce in this explanation.[832]