As in former times, a mound was carefully raised, covering the urn and its contents, and the memory of the dead was preserved by periodic feasts, after each of which earth or stone was added to the top of the mound, each feast being represented by a layer of the broken and burnt bones of the animals consumed. These barrows of the Bronze Age were generally circular in plan.
Cremation did not, however, altogether abolish the older practice of burying. It is evident that both customs were carried on simultaneously. Hundreds of these mounds have been carefully opened at various times and the contents investigated, and, in almost every case, earthen-ware vessels of various forms and sizes have been found. It is entirely to these grave mounds that we are indebted for the examples of prehistoric pottery that are preserved in our museums.
There are four classes of pottery of these early times:—
1. Sepulchral or Cinerary Urns, which have been made for, and have contained or been inverted over, calcined human bones.
2. Drinking Cups, which are supposed to have contained some liquid to be placed in the grave.
3. Food vessels (so called), which are supposed to have contained an offering of food, and which are more usually found with unburnt bodies than along with interments by cremation.
4. Immolation Urns (or Incense Cups), very small vessels found only with burnt bones, and usually containing bones and ashes also, placed in the mouths of, or close by, the larger cinerary urns. It has been suggested that these were simply small urns, intended to receive the ashes of the infant, perhaps sacrificed at the death of its mother. They are also known as incense cups, and are supposed by some to have been used to carry the sacred fire with which to light the funeral pile, or as censers in the funeral ceremonies.
These vessels differ much in size and ornamentation, and in the quality of the clay from which they are formed.
In the examination of barrows, the spot where the funeral pyre has been made can often be detected by the burnt soil there. It is considered probable that, while the body was burning, the clay urn was placed on the funeral fire and then baked.
“Drinking Cups” are usually burnt much harder than the other vessels.