Fig. 113.
The next division, the so-called “Incense Cups,” a name which ought to be discarded, consists of diminutive vessels which, when found at all (which is seldom) are found inside the sepulchral urns, placed on, or among, the calcined bones, and frequently themselves also filled with burnt bones. They range from an inch and a half to about three inches in height, and are sometimes highly ornamented, and at others plain.
The examples I here introduce (figs. [114] to [125]) will give a good general idea of these curious little vessels, which I believe have not been “incense cups,” but small urns to receive the ashes of an infant, perhaps sacrificed at the death of its mother, so as to admit of being placed within the larger urn containing the remains of its parent. The contents of barrows give, as I have before stated, incontestable evidence of the practice of sacrificing not only horses, dogs, and oxen, but of human beings, at the graves of the Ancient Britons. Slaves were sacrificed at their masters’ graves; and wives, there can be no doubt, were sacrificed and buried with their husbands, to accompany them in the invisible world upon which they were entering. It is reasonable, therefore, to infer that infants were occasionally sacrificed on the death of their mothers, in the belief that they would thus partake of her care in the strange land to which, by death, she was removed. Whether from sacrifice, or whether from natural causes, the mother and her infant may have died together, it is only reasonable to infer from the situation in which these “incense cups” are found (either placed on the top of a heap of burnt bones, or inside the sepulchral urn containing them), and from their usually containing small calcined bones, that they were receptacles for the ashes of the infant, to be buried along with those of its mother.
Fig. 114.
Fig. 115.
Fig. 116.