Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/208

200 When the body was burnt the incinerated remains were carefully collected and usually placed in an urn, and then buried, either in the earth, or in a prepared grave. A common practice was to bury an urn in a more ancient tumulus or barrow, and hence these are known as secondary interments. When no urn was used the cremated remains were laid in a little heap in the grave, or in a hole in earth that had already been consecrated, such as a barrow or cemetery. The corpse, thus reduced to a few handfuls of ashes and calcined bones, required no great space for its preservation. Hence sprung up a tendency to diminish the size of the grave, and thus the megalithic chambers gave place to short stone cists containing the body in a contracted position. These stone-lined, short cists generally contained skeletons with brachycephalic skulls, while the chambered cairns contained those of the earlier dolichocephalic race. In the Yorkshire barrows the two races became mixed.

The pottery found in prehistoric burials consists of a variety of vessels, collectively called urns, but as they are found with unburnt, as well as burnt, interments, they could not all be intended for cinerary purposes. Hence they have to be classified according to their ascertained functions. Urns found with inhumed bodies are supposed to have contained food or drink, and are therefore called "drinking-cups," or "beakers," and "