Byways in British Archaeology

A discussion of burial customs might, in the absence of a little careful selection of material, tend to become rather gruesome. This may be conceded at the outset, but, fortunately, an impersonal treatment is possible, and one need not even imitate the mournful example of “Old Mortality.” There is nothing morbid in a dispassionate review of customs which, in all ages and among all peoples, seem to have been general, because born of that vicissitude which is the common lot of man. Perhaps, in some measure, the antiquary may be able to reach the standard of stoicism set up by John Earle: “His grave does not fright him [the antiquary], because he has been used to sepulchers, and he likes Death the better, because it gathers him to his fathers[657].”

Already we have spoken of the orientation of graves, and the degradation of the barrow to the grave-mound. Several kindred matters must now receive attention, and in a later chapter, when chariot-burial is considered, our eyes will again be turned backward. For customs are like crystals with several facets; to get a true perception we must, in each case, frequently change our point of view.

A few more instances of the development of funeral monuments may be first noted. It has been shown elsewhere that the churchyard headstone may be traced back, step by step, to the unhewn menhir set up by primitive man on some bleak moorland. Within the last two or three years, there have been discovered in France and Italy remarkable connecting links, in the so-called “statue-menhirs,” prehistoric stones rudely carved

to represent the human head and trunk[658]. The evidence derived from observing the gradual evolution is corroborated by strange cases of survival. Thus in St Martha’s churchyard, near Chilworth, Surrey, low headstones, untouched by any tool, have been set up in considerable numbers. The slabs are merely masses of ironstone dug out of the Lower Greensand of the hill on which the church is built. Pursuing another line of descent, Mr J. Romilly Allen claimed that a similar kind of coarse monolith had developed into the “wheel-cross” and the “free-standing” cross of Christian churchyards[659] (Fig. 53 and Fig. 62). The dolmen, or “stone-table,” a familiar prehistoric monument, has been replaced by the family vault and the altar-tomb, the ossuary of Brittany, the flat tombstone of the village graveyard, and the sarcophagus of the cathedral[660]. The cromlech, a circle of upright stone pillars, is by some believed to have been the forerunner of the temple and the round church[661]; but this claim may be waived, as not fully proven (cf. p. 99 supra). More plausible is the theory that the rude, unfashioned grave-stake is represented to-day by the humble wooden cross of our cemeteries[662]. Each of these examples of unconscious imitation and modern survival might be examined at some length, but the theories which they illustrate are now so familiar as to be commonplace. Not quite so well known is the theory that we have derived our custom of placing shrubs on graves from our heathen forefathers of the Bronze Age, who were wont to plant trees on their burial mounds[663].

Mr Grant Allen argued, with some reason, that the pine-trees so frequently found on round barrows in the South of England are survivors of those placed there by the first mound-raisers, since the Scottish pine is not now indigenous to that tract of country[664] (cf. p. 401 infra).

Attempts have been made to connect the noun “barrow” with the verb “to bury,” but the relationship cannot really be upheld. The primary notion involved in “barrow” was that of a height, while “to bury” was associated with concealment or covering. The word “barrow,” it may be remarked, went out of use in English literature before A.D. 1400, but it survived locally in dialects, and was ultimately taken back into the nomenclature of archaeology[665]. But, though philology forbids us to bind these two words together, the actual continuity between mound-burial and pit-burial, as we have seen, has never been completely broken. Something has been said about the later development of barrows and megaliths; it is now desirable to trace the earliest representatives of our wooden coffin. To begin with, we notice that coffins did not come into universal use until a little over two centuries ago. This is proved by numerous terriers and by minutes of parish vestries. In London, it is true, burial in the simple winding-sheet seems to have been discarded so far back as the early years of Elizabeth, but in remote districts the custom lingered much later. Thus in the Isle of Man, down to the early part of the eighteenth century, the bodies of the poor were wrapped in a blanket fastened with a skewer, and were carried on a bier to the grave. A hundred years afterwards, coffinless burials survived to a considerable extent in county Wexford. Sir R. Phillimore quotes Lord Stowell’s dictum that funerals were either “coffined” or “coffinless,” and were charged for accordingly.

The use of coffins is extremely ancient, but at first the custom was by no means common[666]. There appears, in fact, to have been no real uniformity in this, as in many other practices, since the earliest days of English Christendom. And in this lack of system we find at once an approximation to the customs of the barrow period, when corpses were either enclosed, or buried without a cist, the exact reason for the difference of treatment being not always explicable by the general ideas held at the time.

Lest there should still be any doubt of the antiquity of coffins, it is necessary to recall those coffins of the Middle Ages (Fig. 54), often hewn out of a single block, and familiar to persons who have inspected the relics of ruined abbeys and the nooks and corners of our existing parish churches. These stone coffins are obviously the representatives of prehistoric tombs, though they may not be in the true British line of descent. Rather do they suggest the Roman coffins of stone, lead, or brick (Figs. 55 B, 56). Occasionally, Roman coffins of stone are

Fig. 54. Mediaeval stone coffins. A. From Wellesbourne churchyard, Warwickshire (Bloxam’s Mon. Archit.). There is a hole in the bottom of the coffin, as in the prehistoric specimen from Gristhorpe (Fig. 55 B). An almost exact replica of this coffin may be seen in the Guildhall Museum, London, associated with a thirteenth century lid bearing a foliated cross. B. From Eynesford church, Kent. This specimen has a raised head-rest.

found, covered with a lid of undoubted Saxon workmanship, proving that there had been a re-adaptation. We note, in passing, that the stone coffin must be carefully distinguished from those hog-backed or coped stones which were employed as grave covers in early Christian times, and to which Mr Romilly Allen assigned a Saxon or Scandinavian origin[667]. With respect to the wooden coffin, commonly adjudged as of Christian design, there is occasionally some difficulty. At Colchester, wooden coffins have been found associated with leaden ones,

Fig. 55. A. Prehistoric coffin, formed of a hollowed oak trunk, found in a barrow at Gristhorpe, near Scarborough. The bark is still adhering to the timber. A hole (3´´ × 1´´) has been cut in the bottom of the coffin. The relics indicated that the grave probably belonged to the Bronze Age. (After T. Wright.)

Fig. 56. Roman coffin of lead, found at Colchester. Length 4´ 3´´; depth, exclusive of lid, 9½´´; width at head 15´´, at foot 11´´. The lid has overlapping edges. The decoration consists of scallop shells, concentric rings, and lines of beaded ornament.

and have been taken to indicate a Christian element among the population. In connection with the leaden coffins were found Roman coins, mainly, of the Constantine group, so that the burials were of late date. Yet, although there were probably many converts in that part of England by the time of the Diocletian persecution, A.D. 303, Mr Guy Maynard, who records the discoveries, admits that there is little corroborative evidence of the Christian character of the graves[668]. Looked at from either standpoint, the association of coffins and coins seems to show a period of transition.

We are able, however, to extend our view much beyond the Roman invasion, and to find the counterpart of the coffin in many primitive burials. Some of the stone cists which enclosed unburnt bodies of the older Bronze Age barrows are actually described as “coffin-shaped receptacles[669].” A Bronze Age barrow at Hove, Brighton, contained an oak coffin in which objects of bronze, stone, and amber had been deposited with the skeleton[670]. Belonging to the same period was the famous barrow of Gristhorpe, near Scarborough; in this example the interment had been made in a hollowed oak trunk, specially prepared for the purpose[671] (Fig. 55 A). King Barrow, near Wareham, Dorset, was found to be raised over a coffin, wherein a cup of shale had been deposited with the body[672]. Mr J. R. Mortimer asserts that traces of wooden supports for protecting the body are often found. In a barrow at Easington, in Holderness, broad slabs, made from the trunk of a willow, formed the covering. It would be superfluous to continue the list, but should the reader desire to examine further material in justification of the plea of continuity, he will find ample opportunity in Mr Llewellynn Jewitt’s interesting volume[673].

Gen. Pitt-Rivers discovered “dug-out” coffins at Woodyates, and other sites in Cranborne Chase, and he inferred the former existence of further specimens by the presence of nails which were associated with the burials. To ascertain whether the record can be extended into later historical times, we might turn especially to our Northern churchyards. Some examples of the stone cell, found at Alloa and elsewhere, are described by Sir Arthur Mitchell as being simply cists, enlarged so as to avoid doubling up the body[674]. Later stages of survival are witnessed by the rude box-shaped tombstones of many churchyards in Devonshire, Gloucestershire, and other counties[675]. Stone coffins have been dug up in the Dorsetshire graveyard of Worth Matravers, almost identical with those which have been unearthed from barrows in the surrounding Isle of Purbeck. In short, it is clear that the stone coffin and the table tombstone are derived from the ancient stone cist, and this, in its turn, bears some analogy to the chamber of the long barrow.

This endurance of custom becomes the more remarkable when we remember that great changes have occurred in the mode of treating the corpse at burial. At first there was inhumation; then we have a period during which inhumation and cremation were, to some extent, contemporaneous, while, as a variant, partial burning of the body was common. Cremation gradually becomes obsolete, and earth-burial again comes into vogue. If we carry back our thoughts to the advent of Christianity into Britain, we see that the trend of custom was the exact reverse of that which obtains in our day, when cremation is very slowly replacing earth-burial. The substitution of inhumation for the funeral pyre is one of the four chief distinctions drawn by Mr Romilly Allen between the burial customs of the Celtic pagans and the Celtic Christians[676]. Yet the change was a slow one; in the remote fastnesses of the country, the custom of burning bodies lingered for generations, though it was generally extinct in the fourth century of our era[677]. Indeed, Macrobius, the critic and philosopher, who wrote at the beginning of the fifth century, declared that cremation had been discontinued for so long a time that it was only from books that he could glean information concerning the custom[678]. Whether the turnover from cremation to earth-burial were always the result of religious or of racial influences is a moot point[679]. The evidence seems to prove, as already hinted, that in Britain the cause was mainly religious (p. 263 supra), though one dare not assert that religion was the sole cause.

Cremation must always have been a comparatively expensive process. Someone has well said, “To this day we speak of the ashes of the great, and the bones of the poor.” At all events, transitions may be noted, as in the case of the famous flat-earth burial-ground at Aylesford, which was referred to in the preceding chapter. The ashes of the “family circle” represented at Aylesford had been enclosed in urns, and then placed in pits, as before stated (p. 261 supra). Sir A. J. Evans supposes that the variation of custom was due to the influence of Belgic conquerors. The urn-burials represented at Aylesford superseded the old skeleton interments of the late-Celtic peoples, as exemplified in the “chariot-burials” of Yorkshire, where the skeleton of the departed warrior is laid alongside the chariot[680]. In Scandinavia and Northern Germany there was a further intermediate stage, for the ashes were sometimes deposited in the grave without any enclosing urn. To such graves the Northern archaeologists apply the term “Brandgruben,” or cremation pits. This mode of burial is connected with the La Tène period of culture[681].

Though this question of cremation may appear to have slight connection with the use of coffins, a little study will show that there is a bond of association. The ashes of the dead were, it is true, usually enshrined in a cinerary urn, and this vessel was often placed in a chamber specially constructed for the purpose. But it was the coffin which was essentially a receptacle for preserving the entire body, and which therefore became the sign of earth-burial. Dr Rock lays down the rule that bishops, kings, and persons of rank were interred in stone coffins, while the bulk of the people had coffins of wood. Whenever the receptacle was made of wood, and not of stone, one might have supposed that it would readily become an accessory in the rite of cremation. This was apparently not the case, though, obviously, proof would be difficult to obtain. The body seems to have been burnt in an open pyre, not enclosed in a chest. Contrariwise, in a Saxon cemetery at Sibertswold, in Kent, ninety-nine of the coffins had been “submitted to the fire,” the bodies themselves being unburnt. Again, in the early Christian burials a cist of stones, instead of a coffin, was sometimes placed around the corpse[682], but there was no reversion to the funeral pyre. Yet, as already noticed, the employment, in isolated instances, of rude coffins, to say nothing of the cists by which they were foreshadowed, was probably in some measure contemporary with the general pagan custom of burning the dead. There was an overlapping of custom.

Such seeming anachronisms, while they puzzle, do not greatly surprise the archaeologist, to whom such occurrences are no new feature. He frequently sees remote traces of the beginnings of a practice of which the general adoption was long delayed; he observes rites and customs overlapping in time and struggling for victory; and, in his own day, he is a witness of extraordinary vestiges and of ceremonies which must be deemed reversions or “throw-backs.” The overstepping of one burial rite by another of older origin is not a whit more inexplicable than the contemporaneous use, by man, of diverse kinds of clothes or of varying types of habitation. It is perhaps the more difficult problem to determine, in the absence of additional data, why, at a particular period, one group of men is found dwelling in pile-houses on the margins of lake or mere, while another class frequents caves and rock-shelters, and a third prefers the wattled hut with sunken floor, and roof of reeds or heather. Convenience was doubtless a partial cause of these diversities, just as belief was the great regulator of burial customs, but this is not the full answer. We must look to primary race distinctions, in which were the germs of the variations, and to the fact that human immigrations to Britain occurred at intervals, so that mental as well as physical territories were invaded and transgressed.

A remarkable instance of anticipation will illustrate, to some extent, what has just been said. The antiquary is well aware that, during the Stuart period, in order to encourage the woollen industry, statutes were passed (A.D. 1666, 1678, 1680), which made it compulsory to bury the dead in woollen shrouds. An interesting chapter of burial-lore might be written on this curious subject, for the Acts, though they had long been in abeyance, were not repealed until late in the reign of George III. (A.D. 1814)[683]. The practice is recalled in our own day when, by request of the dying person, the body is enfolded in some special garb, usually of wool, before being committed to the earth. The strange circumstance, however, is that such a custom should have been foreshadowed in the far-away past. In Danish burials belonging to the earliest Bronze Age, the bodies are sometimes found to have been placed in hollowed tree trunks, and the remains show that a woollen shroud had been used. Skeletons wrapped in a woollen textile have likewise been discovered at Rylston, in the Western Riding of Yorkshire[684]. I have provisionally regarded these instances as revealing anticipations rather than origins, but it is possible that many intermediate examples could be supplied. One of these gradations is perhaps traceable in the custom of burying a person in his ordinary dress. If these links were complete, there would obviously be entire continuity, but if we encountered a gap, it is probable that the eighteenth century practice would have to be considered as a “throw-back.”

It is now time to review the custom, still common among uncivilized peoples, and once extremely popular in Britain, of placing objects with the corpse in the grave. A mass of evidence has been collated and examined, and though only a portion can be given here, we must, while shunning tediousness, present as much detail as is actually profitable. A rough preliminary classification of these funerary objects would include, (1) weapons and useful implements; (2) amulets, talismans, and symbolical objects; (3) trinkets, ornaments, and decorative articles; (4) a miscellaneous group, partly useful, partly symbolical or commemorative. It is necessary to premise that this classification is conventional, and lacks well-defined boundaries, hence, while dealing with one series of relics, other groups will be forced upon our attention, producing, later, unavoidable repetition.

That the groups enumerated have a somewhat arbitrary basis is rendered clear when we perceive a principle running through the whole series, most effective in prehistoric days, but probably reaching, in a vague and partial manner, to the utmost confines of modern religious thought. This principle, which must be briefly outlined, has been well described by Professor Tylor under the name of Animism. The term implies the doctrine of Spiritual Beings or Souls—a deep-lying belief in the two-fold nature of both animate and inanimate objects, as opposed to the teachings of Materialistic philosophy[685]. Animism supplies us, according to Professor Tylor, with “a minimum definition of Religion[686].” The primordial idea, which impelled early man to acts of worship, was, according to this theory, the belief that not only his own fellows, but the beasts, trees, and surrounding objects, natural or artificial, possessed spirits—ethereal images, as it were—of themselves. Hence the dead man must be provided with food, weapons, and other necessaries; not that these material objects themselves, but their corresponding phantasmal shapes, might, when disembodied, accompany the departed warrior or huntsman on his journey to the spirit-world[687]. In the earliest times, when the dead man was thought to be merely asleep, it may have been believed that the actual objects were of service, but at a later period, when it was recognized that the soul had actually left the body, the weapons were burnt, or perchance broken, before being interred.

The precise mode of transmission of the simulacral forms to the dead man’s service was left in vague suspense, but the duty was clearly understood. The spirit of the weapon or ornament must be set free; the ghost desired the immaterial wraiths or shadows, not the solid earthly utensils. Mr Grant Allen has ingeniously, and with considerable force, contended that the two faiths may be correlated with the Long-Barrow Period and the Round-Barrow Period respectively. During the former age, when inhumation was in fashion, the life of the grave was considered to be as material and real as life on the earth, and the weapons would serve equally well for both worlds. Among the cremationists of the Bronze Age who imagined the existence of “a realm of incorporeal disembodied spirits,” the ghost was conceived to be immaterial, therefore the weapons were broken or charred with fire[688]. It must further be noted that Mr Grant Allen, along with some other writers, does not altogether accept Professor Tylor’s theory of animism. He does not believe that the ideas involved in animism are demonstrably primitive[689], and, following in the footsteps of Herbert Spencer, he seeks the origin of religion in ancestor-worship and its associated ancestral ghosts. According to this hypothesis, objects were first placed in, or on, the grave, to propitiate the dead. As fear of the corpse gradually diminished, respect became the dominant idea, and ghost-worship and shade-worship were established.

Between this “Humanist” school of thought, and that of Animism, as represented by Professor Tylor and Professor Frazer, a reconciliation may, to some extent, be effected[690]. We may perhaps look upon ancestor-worship as a sub-division of the animistic belief, and as tending towards a higher plane of religion. Professor Frazer, in his work on Totemism and Exogamy, has cleared the ground by showing that totemism, which has often been regarded as a primitive religion, is only occasionally found in connection with the doctrine of external souls. In pure totemism, the totems are in no sense deities, to be propitiated by offerings or sacrifices. Professor Westermarck declares that there is no justification in facts for regarding the worship of the dead as “the root of every religion.” The spirits of the dead were not originally conceived as the only supernatural agents existing. Whichever be considered the primitive type of religion is a matter which will not greatly affect our present review of the facts of continuity. Nor need we feel much concerned with a third claim—that certain races may have reached the pastoral stage of society without passing through the nomadic stage, and may have been worshippers of the sun or some of the other external powers of Nature without embracing animism.

From the animistic side itself, Professor Tylor has uttered a significant warning against straining the theory. While in the vast number of cases, the idea of object-souls is, he informs us, both clear and explicit, yet it is notorious that there are peoples who sacrifice property or deposit offerings to the dead from other motives. Affection, fancy, or symbolism, a desire to abandon the dead man’s property, anxiety to appease the hovering ghost, may each, in particular cases, be an efficient motive[691]. Again, although the animistic conception, so far as primitive peoples were concerned, was world-wide in its extent, yet, in our day, and among civilized folk, the system seems to be drawing in its outposts. It has outlived the belief in the objective reality of apparitional souls or ghosts; the notion of the souls of beasts is similarly being left behind. The central position is now held by the doctrine of the human soul[692].

A still more modern theory, the psychological, is put forward by Mr A. E. Crawley, in his recent work, The Idea of the Soul. Mr Crawley considers that the world of spirits is a mental world, and that the soul itself is “the mental duplicate of reality.” As soon as man had the power of perception to enable him to form a memory-image, he possessed a soul. The mental replica of the object perceived was, in the earlier stages of savage life, concrete, though immaterial; at a later period, under the influence of language and science, abstractions were formed. One is bound to add that Mr Crawley’s theory does not seem to meet with general approbation, though it will have to be reckoned with in all future discussions.

We shall expect, from these preliminary observations, to encounter various gradations of belief as we proceed to consider the evidence for continuity of custom respecting burial gifts. In order that the forest may not lose its importance by being considered in detail, tree by tree, let us keep to our proposed classification, and glance first at the practice of burying weapons and other useful objects with the dead. Though the custom was not a marked feature of the Long-Barrow Period, the original inspiration dates from that age at least. The Round-Barrow epoch, however, was pre-eminently associated with the burial of weapons and utensils. A rough enumeration made by Canon Greenwell showed that about one-fifth of the barrows which he had opened contained implements of some kind, the commonest materials employed in the manufacture being stone, bronze, or horn. To be exact, out of 379 burials by inhumation or cremation, 77 had associated implements[693]. A study of the researches of Mortimer and Pitt-Rivers will give similar results. Nor when we trace the story onwards to the advent of Christianity, does the force of custom diminish, even if its direction becomes slightly changed. Flint scrapers and useful instruments of many kinds are turned out of graves belonging to the Roman period, just as Early Iron Age burials yield corresponding relics. A fragment of a flint celt was found with a Late Roman or Early Saxon burial at Leicester[694], while a Saxon grave at Ash, in Kent, yielded a polished celt, together with a Roman fibula[695].

The celt, in this instance, was evidently an heirloom from an earlier period, and had been regarded by its finder with superstitious reverence. One need scarcely recall the celebrated Saxon tumulus in Taplow churchyard, Buckinghamshire (p. 81 supra), which contained, in addition to Anglo-Saxon relics of the ordinary kind, flint flakes, cores, and scrapers[696]. On the Continent, flint arrow-heads are frequently found with Merovingian remains dating from the fifth to the eighth centuries of our era. In one case, an iron sword of the Frankish period accompanied the arrow-heads. Such occurrences are not well-attested with respect to Britain, though the collocation of flint and bronze articles is frequent[697]. The most remarkable instance of the survival of celt-burial is that supplied by the tumulus in Flanders, described by Evans. Within this barrow, arranged in a circle around the body, the mourners had placed six celts in an upright position. The celts, seemingly of different ages, had been gathered from the surface of the soil, and deposited within the tomb as amulets[698]. There can be little doubt, however, that the custom, thus shorn of its primary significance, was once the expression of a deep conviction of service. An ancient Vedic hymn, or dirge, has the words, “Take not the bow from the hand of him who lies dead.” Does not also Ossian give instructions to Oscar on this very subject? “Remember, my son, to place this sword, this bow, the horn of my deer, within that dark and narrow home, whose mark is one grey stone[699].”

When we observe that parallel ideas are actually common the world over, we shall be inclined to believe that Macpherson has here recovered a bit of genuine Celtic tradition. Thus, the Greenlanders inter bows and other weapons with the dead, the Turanians of Eastern Asia bury axes, flints, and food, and supply the deceased warrior with a spear that he may be ready for future combat[700].

There is no need to press this point, but having carried the custom to Saxon times, when objects of stone still survived along with such burial relics as iron swords, daggers, and knives, let us consider one or two later observances. In Mediaeval days, burial in armour was considered most honourable. Not seldom, the warriors lay uncoffined, their shroud a panoply of iron. Their arms and weapons, again, were suspended over the tomb. This practice lasted a long time, and allusion to it may be found in Shakespeare. Laertes, speaking of the burial of his father Polonius, complains of

Every ecclesiologist is familiar with such arms and accoutrements as are here mentioned. Dr J. C. Cox has enumerated churches where personal armour is still preserved[703]. No further digression can be made here, but the reader may again be reminded that many armorial relics belong to a later period, and are counterfeits which constituted part of the undertaker’s trappings (cf. p. 159 supra). One attenuated survival lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century in the form of square or lozenge-shaped hatchments (= “achievements”), made of wood. On these wooden shields, which, after the funeral, were nailed up in the church, were blazoned the coats-of-arms borne by the family of the deceased person. The most recent spectacle of this kind, surprisingly belated, was witnessed at the church of Hunmanby, in the East Riding, during the year 1897[704].

Strangest of all the warrior superstitions was that exemplified in the ceremony of offering food to weapons. The custom, which is plainly traceable to pagan ideas of worship, continued without interruption, we are assured, until the reign of Elizabeth. One instance must suffice. Sir Howel-y-Furyall, known to his fellows as “Sir Howel of the Battle-axe,” a weapon which he wielded bravely at Poitiers, ordained that his axe should be hung up in the Tower of London, and a “messe of meat” served before it daily. The injunction was obeyed, and each day, after the rite had been completed, the food was distributed to beggars[705].

Arms and food do not, however, complete our list of serviceable gifts to the dead. Among implements of this nature must be reckoned divers kinds of fire-producers. Excavations have shown that flint and iron pyrites were occasionally concealed in round barrows, while, in the mounds of later periods, a piece of iron replaced the customary mineral nodule. These ignition agents, the forerunners of our “strike-a-lights” and tinder boxes, are found so late as the Saxon period. Certain small “nests” of chipped flints occurring in Merovingian, Frankish, and Saxon sepulchres, are also believed by some authorities to have been intended for fire-kindlers[706], by means of which the departed spirit could be provided with cheerful warmth. To the present writer this theory is not entirely satisfactory, at least as regards the later developments of the practice. The cases just cited seem to be analogous to those described by Pitt-Rivers, who repeatedly found, in British barrows, urns filled with chips of flint[707]. In a notable barrow at Winkelbury Hill, on a Northern spur of the Wiltshire Downs, not only was the urn packed with flakes, but it was surrounded by a mass of similar objects[708]. Besides the flakes placed in the cist or urn itself, we have to take into account the very common occurrence of flint spalls in the body of the mound, a sight familiar to the barrow-digger. The number of chips is often out of all proportion to what might be incidentally brought together in piling up the substance of the mound from the surface soil.

They were evidently struck off for the particular occasion. Now, although the germ of the ceremony may be discoverable in the burial of a trimmed flint and a lump of iron pyrites, there is no manifest virtue in the multiplication of the chips. Each tribesman may indeed have thrown in his tributary flint, or perhaps a handful of small flakes, but the intention would scarcely be to increase the opportunities of procuring fire. Rather do the chips seem to represent some esoteric doctrine, such as that which was held by the primitive Lapps. Hidden in the flint lies the spark, the emblem of life and animation, ready to burst forth. The scattered flakes of flint were therefore probably the proofs, not alone of dutiful respect, but of a strong faith that the dead man was merely asleep, that his spirit would return. Pliny’s Natural History has been credited with the statement that Northern peoples used to throw flint chippings into graves in order to confine the dead within those dark dominions. Pliny does, indeed, describe certain stones that consume dead bodies, and other kinds that have the power to preserve the corpse, and to turn it into stone[709]. But the reference to the flint flakes, as commonly given, is bibliographically incorrect, and, although the passage may exist, I have not been successful in finding it. Except for the sake of the reason assigned to the custom, the passage is unimportant, since we possess actual relics as a testimony of the practice.