Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/289

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Between nine and ten o'clock the members assembled on the Breach Downs to be present at the opening of some barrows, under the superintendance of the noble President. The workmen employed had previously excavated the barrows to within a foot of the place of the presumed deposit. Eight barrows were examined. The general external character of the Breach Downs barrows, together with the objects found in many others of this extensive group, have been well described in the last volume of the Archæologia. They are generally of slight elevation above the natural chalky soil, the graves, over which the mounds are heaped, being from two to four feet deep. Most of them contain skeletons, more or less entire, with the remains of weapons in iron, bosses of shields, urns, beads, fibular, armlets, bones of small animals, and occasionally glass vessels. The graves containing weapons are assigned to males; those with beads, or other ornaments, to females. The correctness of this appropriation seems determined by the fact that these different objects are seldom found in the same grave. The deposit in one of the barrows opened this morning, presented the unusual association of beads and an iron knife. All contained the remains of skeletons much decayed; in some, traces of wood were noticed, and vestiges of knives.

After the examination of these barrows, the whole party visited the mansion of the noble President, at Bourne, and having inspected his lordship's interesting collection of antiquities, and partaken of a substantial repast, attended the excavation of two barrows in his lordship's paddock, forming part of the group of which some had been recently opened, and described by Mr. Wright in the present volume, p. 253—256.

The chair was taken at eight o'clock by the Dean of Hereford. The various objects discovered in the barrows at Breach Downs and Bourne were exhibited on the table, together with an urn and glass cup found in one of the latter, the former of which had been repaired, and the latter restored as far as the fragments remaining would permit, by Messrs Bateman and Clarke. The restoration of the vessels by these gentlemen was effected in so skilful a manner, as to call forth the marked approbation of the meeting,

Mr. C. R. Smith made some remarks on the perfect correspondence of the barrows excavated in the morning with others on the same sites previously examined. The successful results of the day's explorations fully confirmed the opinions of those who had referred the date of these barrows to the fifth and sixth centuries. Their extension over a large tract of ground, systematic arrangement, number, and the care with which the objects interred with the bodies had been arranged in the graves, denote the appropriation of the