Page:VCH Staffordshire 1.djvu/418



These burial mounds occur in every part of this county, but more frequently than elsewhere on the northern moors, and generally, but not always, at high levels. Their sizes and shapes vary. Excepting the exploration carried out by Thomas W. Bateman and his assistant Samuel Carrington very little has been done in that direction.

The prolific results of the diggings of the above-named explorers have found a place in the public museum of the town of Sheffield.

The deposits in the Sheffield Museum represent nearly the whole of what has resulted from the opening out of the ancient burial mounds of the county. It is remarkable that the northern moorlands, the highest parts of the county, should be crowded with these memorials of the pre-historic dead, emphasizing their doings on earth and signifying their faith in a future. Looking at the number of them, localized so thickly though spread over centuries, it would almost appear that the heights of the hills were specially chosen as places of sepulture by those living far and near.