Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/230

Rh frame some theory from these results. I, however, here prefer to allow the simple facts to remain. As we have seen, the barrows in this part of the Forest, like all others of the same period, contained nothing, with the exception of the single stone-hammer, and the slinging pebbles, and the flake of flint, but nearly plain urns, full of only burnt earth, charcoal, and human bones. No iron, bronze, nor bone-work of any sort, was found, which would still further go to prove their extreme early age. Curiously enough, too, no teeth, bones, nor horn-cores of animals were discovered, as so often are in Keltic barrows. Like all others, too, of an early date, there seem to have been several burials in the same grave, though this, as on Fritham Plain, is very far from being always the case. Some little regularity evidently prevailed with the different septs. Some, as at Bratley, placed the charred remains in a grave from two to three feet in depth; others, as at Butt's Plain, on the mere ground. On the other hand, a good deal of caprice seems to have been exercised as to the materials with which each barrow was formed, and the way and the shape in which it was built, as also the arrangement of the charcoal.

Further, perhaps, the different grades of life and relationship were marked by the presence and position of the urns. 212