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HE physical boundaries of the county of Lancashire, which separate it for the most part from its neighbours, impart to its story an individuality that would not have been possible in a piece of land arbitrarily divided as by a county boundary only. In the extreme north-west, however, there lies a detached portion known generally as Lancashire over Sands, which cannot well be separated physically from the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland: the antiquities of this district, therefore, although described in the present articles, do not enter into the general consideration of early culture-development in the county.

So far as evidence shows, it was to the moorlands of the Yorkshire border, though bleak and inhospitable, that man was first tempted to come and settle. The undrained lowlands around the coast were for the most part marshy and uninhabitable, while the uplands and valleys lying between were still largely covered with primæval forest. There can be no certainty, however, in the matter. The disposition of early man is indicated for the most part by sporadic finds in recent times of a small number only of the objects and implements he used; hence, while the suggestion remains of some places in which man lived, the lack of finds in other places does not exclude the possibility of habitation there.

Of the people themselves scant traces have been found. The human skulls found in making deep excavations at Preston for the Ribble Docks constitute the most reliable evidence. They were found associated with bones of the urus, which was already extinct at the dawn of this era, and with remains of earlier ages. The anthropometrical analysis of these (p. 256) shows them to belong probably to a population of mixed race—the original stock of neolithic times upon whom had come the Celtic element usually associated with the rise of the Bronze Age in art; but the numbers of examples are too few to warrant any general conclusion. Other than these, the perishable bones from a few burials in isolated spots and the charred remains of those who were cremated are all that remain of man himself. Some of his burial places, however, are known. The long barrows characteristic of stone-using man, indeed, are few and uncertain; but possibly some mounds on the moors above Rochdale, particularly those which lie towards Extwistle near to Burnley and some few at Wavertree near Liverpool, as will be shown later, may be assigned to this period. The round barrows and burial mounds of the early metal age, however, are more numerous and more readily identified. The neighbourhood particularly of Winwick, near to Warrington, has yielded the best examples. The moors around Rochdale and Bolton in the south, and Bleasdale and Lancaster in the north of the county, are sites of a fair 211