Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/221

Rh to the Roman invasion—how long a more minute criticism and a greater accumulation of facts than is now possessed, can alone determine.

There are, however, one or two points peculiarly noticeable about this barrow—first, the enormous quantity of burnt earth, suggesting that the funeral pyre was actually lit on the spot, which certainly was not the case in most of the other barrows, where the charcoal is only sprinkled here and there, or appears in the form of a small circular patch on the floor. Secondly, the two bands of charcoal, so full of osseous matter, would certainly go far to prove, what has been surmised by Bateman and others, that the slaves or prisoners were immolated at the decease of their master or conqueror.

Again, too, the different sizes and positions of the urns may, perhaps, indicate either degrees of relationship or rank of the persons buried. And this theory is somewhat corroborated by the contents. The central urn was examined on the spot, and, like all the others, with the exception of a round stone slightly indented, contained burnt earth, limy matter, and at the bottom the larger bones, which were less calcined, but which, owing to the want of proper means, we could not preserve. The other two were opened at the British Museum. At the bottom of the north-easternmost were also placed bones in a similar condition, amongst which Professor Owen recognized the femur and radius of an adult. The smallest urn also showed bones placed in the same manner at the bottom, but in this case smaller, and amongst them Professor Owen determined processus dentatus, and the body of the third cervical vertebra, and was of opinion that they were those of a person of small stature, or, perhaps, of a female. This is what might have been expected. And the fact of their being put in the 203