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supervision of Mr. J. R. Mortimer, to whose notes this account is considerably indebted.

The situation of the mound is on the north side of a valley, through the open end of which, eastward, may be seen the sea, and is about two hundred yards south of Marton Hall.

It was a low, round-topped hillock of boulderstones mixed with a little soil, and thickly covered over with swarth. Its diameter was forty-five feet, and its height about two and a half feet, to which it had, no

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doubt, been reduced by ploughing from an elevation greater by several feet.

The tumulus was found to be the site of six burials. The first was met about eight feet south of the centre, and at about the ground level. There were the much decayed and crushed remains of an adult, laid with head to the north; nothing accompanied them.

The second was on the opposite side of the centre, from which it lay at the distance of about nine feet. These bones, also adult, were so much decayed that

the position of the body could not be determined. It lay at about the same depth as the other.

Between these two surface burials was an oval grave cut down into the chalk, and the long axis of which stretched east and west. It was in depth four feet below the surface level; it measured eleven feet by eight feet at the top, and seven-and-a-half feet by four feet at the bottom.

Before this grave was dug out, there were found on the top, at the surface level, two finely-chipped flint knives, and among the soil of the mound over the grave and that of the grave itself were found, loosely strewn, upwards of a hundred chips of worked pieces of flint.

This central grave contained four burials. In the western end of the cavity, about sixteen inches from the surface level, lay the calcined bones of a child, gathered in a small heap. Among these were portions of a bone pin and a flint flake knife, about two-and-a-half inches long (Fig. 1), both much burnt; near them also was a food vase (Fig. 2). This vase is six

inches in height and six inches across the mouth; round the shoulders is a row of short gashes sloping to the right, and the whole of the sides are marked with oblique incised lines, left and right, forming a rude open reticulated pattern.

Close to these bones and vase, to the west, adhering to the sides of boulder stones, were slight fragments of the bones of another child, also accompanied by a vase, as well as by a flint knife of nearly two inches in length (Fig. 3). None of these shewed any trace of fire. This vase (Fig. 4) is of elegant form, six inches in height, seven inches across the mouth, eight inches at the shoulder, and only three inches across the base. Two grooves run round the upper portion, the lower groove having four large perforated stops or projections. Three lines of rope impression run round the inner side of the lip, and externally from the top of the lip

downwards to the shoulders of the vase run nine other horizontal lines, similarly impressed. Below these, run two rows of oblique lines, in herring-bone pattern, forming a belt about two inches in width all round. Below these, three impressed lines, like those inside the lip, run round the base. The two inches of surface below these is without ornament. The impressions have been made by a two-strand rope about one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness, wound closely round something of about the same thickness-as a piece of stiff thong,

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or slender hazel-twig,—and used by pressing into the plastic-clay before the vase was baked.

Still to the west of this vase stood another, near to which was a worked flint. This vase (Fig. 5) is five inches in height, and six inches across the mouth. Two grooves pass round the upper exterior part. The lower groove has, like that of the other vase described, four small divisional "stops" of clay, arranged at nearly equal distances round the vase. The whole exterior, as well as the inside of the lip, is covered with short gashes, arranged in lines herring-bone fashion, running horizontally round the vase.

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The inference which Mr. Mortimer and others arrived at in connection with this series of vases, was that each food vase and its accompanying flint feedingknife, or implement, had been placed by the body of a child; one cremated, two simply inhumed, the unburnt bones near the second vase having nearly decayed away, those near the third entirely so. The burials had been made close to each other, and probably at the same time.

Near these vases were several small splinters of the leg bones of some large animal, apparently, as is commonly found, split up for the sake of the marrow, and in a remarkably sound condition.

On the floor of the grave, thirty-two inches below the close-lying row of child burials, lay, with the head to the east, the principal burial, the skeleton of a large adult male, probably of about forty-five years of age. Apparently it had lain on the left side, but been forced by the pressure of the earth partly upon the back. The knees were pulled up, so that the thighs were at about right angles to the trunk. The right arm was doubled with the hand behind the head, and the left hand rested on the neck. The bones were those of a strongly-built person, and the right femur being nineteen inches in length, it may be inferred that he had been of a stature of about six feet, which is a height above the average of the race or races found in the tumuli of western Europe. The skull was of a medium length.

Where those most profoundly versed in the details of prehistoric burial-discoveries are silent, it would be well not to indulge in too wide conjecture, yet it may be permissible to give a possible meaning to the facts of the Marton Barrow.

It may first be premised that only persons of eminence chiefs were buried in deep graves, and had barrows, or cairns, raised over them, for the labour of excavation with the tools of those times

must have been enormous. It is probable that at the time of burial the grave was a hollow cist, where the body alone lay, covered in by planks, or pieces of bark, the decay of which have long ago let down the earth, that by its fall and pressure has crushed the bones as well as broken the vases.

After this, conjecture takes the form of questions, to which only the most careful comparison of results of the life work of students like the Rev. Canon Greenwell and Mr. Mortimer could furnish anything resembling reply.

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Does the cremated burial shew that the remains of this particular body awaited the father's death for its own burial? Were the father and two other children carried off by pestilence, or killed in some petty dynastic struggle? Or is the appearance of the children's remains deceptive, and were they and their food urns buried after their father and the cremated sister? Or is it not more probable, in view of the evident symbolism of the knives and food-vases, and of the admitted prevalence of sacrifice and cannibalism, that these children were slaves, killed that their spirits. might carry the ghostly food of the chief on his

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