Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/395

] the dead were interred surrounded by the implements, weapons, and ornaments for use in the future life. In the Bronze age the dead were burned,—were purified by being passed through the fire, along with their possessions. Cremation, however, did not altogether abolish the older practice of inhumation. It is evident that both were carried on simultaneously, from the researches of Thurnam in the south of England, Bateman in Derbyshire, and Greenwell in the northern counties. The one may have been connected, as Dr. Fred. Wiberg suggests, with the worship of fire, and the other may have been employed by the descendants of the Neolithic Britons from the force of habit, and from its cheapness by the poorer classes. 137.—Disc-shaped Barrow.

The barrows and cairns of the Bronze age are generally round, and without large sepulchral chambers with passages leading into them, such as we have seen in the more important Neolithic burial-places. In Scotland, however, and in Ireland and in France, large sepulchral chambers of this age are not uncommon. Sometimes the barrows are disc-shaped, and consist of a circular area about a hundred feet in diameter, surrounded by a ring of earth and a ditch with a low mound, or mounds, to mark the interment in the centre (Fig. 137). Sometimes they are bell-shaped, and at others bowl-shaped (Figs. 138, 139) or oval. These varieties have been