Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/459

] used as an ornament, and may be looked upon as a survival from the Bronze age.

These barrows are considered by Dr. Thurnam to be those of Gallic tribes, and to range in antiquity from a century before, to a century after Christ. They give a vivid picture of the burial customs of the time; the warrior and the hunter were sent off on their last long journey in their chariots and with their horses, and in some other cases, such as that at Aspatria in Cumberland, with their swords, as well as with trophies of the chase; while the women were buried with ornaments which would render them conspicuous in the world of spirits.

These discoveries, made in the years 1816-17, have recently been followed up by the exploration of another barrow in the neighbourhood, by the Rev. W. Greenwell, in which he found a skeleton in a contracted position, with the remains of horse-trappings and two wheels of a chariot, but no traces of the body of the chariot. The skeleton is considered by Dr. Rolleston to be that of a woman, and a small, round, iron mirror was found along with it ornamented with a plating of bronze. A bronze brooch of the safety-pin type has been discovered in another barrow in the East Riding of Yorkshire, along with solid bronze bracelets and other articles belonging to the Prehistoric Iron age.

One of the most remarkable discoveries of works of art of foreign derivation in a burial mound was that made, by Mr. John Langford in 1832, in a cairn near Mold in North Wales. On removing upwards of three